June at the Duckpond

Many many years ago I used to do a "weekend at the duckpond" round-up on Mondays. I think Jane from Is That You Darling (who was one of the first bloggers I followed) used to do a 'Mondaying' post and I liked the idea of that so did my own version. 

There's absolutely no way I can keep up with doing a weekly round-up nowdays (to be honest, I'm not sure how I managed to keep it up all those years ago) but I might attempt a sort of monthly round-up instead. Sometimes I feel like there's things I'm quite happy writing about, you know, books I've read, places we've been, good recipes, etc but none of them really are quite "big" enough to warrant a blog post all to themself. So I suppose a monthly post is a way of collecting up all those little things that make life interesting but aren't really significant in any way. Well whatever, let's see how many months I keep it up for. 

So yep, how was our June?

• Photo an hour took place on Saturday 12th - we spent most of the day doing a bit of gardening and a bit of sewing before collecting our supermarket order in the evening. There's a round-up here - http://duck-in-a-dress.blogspot.com/2021/06/a-photo-every-hour-saturday-12th-june.html - and July's date is Saturday 17th. Feel free to join in if you fancy :-)

• We had a lovely swim in Mendip Farm Pool, a privately-owned pool local to us that lets households or bubbles rent the pool all to themselves for an hour. Going swimming is something I miss about the pre-COVID life; I used to swim lengths while Lily was having her swimming lessons and also do aqua aerobics. I mean, I miss it but I don't miss it enough to willingly swim with 20 or so other people (all maskless) in a poorly vetilated room. 

• We bought a load of cheap plants from a couple of garden centres and B&Q back at the end of April and they all seem to be growing quite well.

• It's been a strange month of two halves - sunny at the beginning with the paddling pool out and ice lollies in the garden. Wet at the end with temperatures getting cold again. I imagine the mixture of hot and wet weather had helped the plants! 

• It's been very strange without Glastonbury for the second year in a row. I usually work in Pilton village and get a staff pass to enter. Children of staff are also allowed in free of charge (up to the age of 12) and when Lily was born I thought it'll be great that she'll grow up going to the festival each year. As it is, she's only been to 3 so far - 2016 at 4 months old, 2017 at almost 1 and half years and 2019 at almost 3 and half. 2018 was a fallow year and obviously we all know what's happened to this year and the last. If we assume it does go ahead next year, she'll be 6 and half and halfway to the age where she's not allowed in with me. 

• Andrew's had his second COVID jab, my second one is in a week. He's had AZ and me being a few years younger (under 40) had Pfizer. Between both our families we've had a mixture of the two and Andrew refers to the ones of us who've had Pfizer as "the chosen ones"...

• My 'Shows I've Seen' Twitter thread came to an end. I started it on 7th June 2020 and finished it a few week ago. Now I need a new project for Twitter! 

• Some bits of sewing I've completed over the last few weeks - a skirt for me, a tshirt for Lily and Paw Patrol-themed dress for Lily. Don't look too closely at the seams but they're wearable and she seems to like them :-)

• Good books I've read - A Beautiful Spy by Rachel Hore (all about a woman who becomes a spy in the late 1920's/early 1930's - also based on a true story), Becoming by Michelle Obama (a really interesting look at her early life and time in the White House) and Failures of State: The Inside Battle with Britain's Coronavirus by Jonathan Calvert (both fascinating and horrifying to read).

• My favourite theatre company decided they were going to close. Which is incredibly sad but also understandable (the guy who founded it was 70 last year and decided to step down as artistic director earlier this year). This article in the Guardian is really good - https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/jun/16/running-away-with-the-circus-thrills-shocks-genius-kneehigh - and sums up the company I think. 

• Good TV we watched recently - Feel Good on Netflix and Bristol Old Vic's 'Touching the Void' theatre show (they streamed it both as a live performance and also on demand). Andrew's watching The Big Bang Theory from the start - the characters in it are very much like some people he works with! I'm also watching the Great British Sewing Bee on iPlayer; I'm only up to week 4 so far although I already know who won from Twitter. 

• We managed to see the partial eclipse the other week using Andrew's welding mask. Amazingly the clouds actually parted long enough to get a good shot!

• We have several tickets for shows in the autumn which were rearranged from 2020 but I also booked tickets for a new show - Wise Children's 'Wuthering Heights' at the Bristol Old Vic in October. It did feel a bit weird booking them but they're obviously not going to run the show if it's not safe so either it'll be okay to attend or the show will be postponed. 

• We're looking forward to our summer holiday to Scotland and hoping it doesn't get cancelled and it's okay to go! Our holiday style is 'road trip', 'car picnics' and 'sightseeing by driving' so we're not really planning on mixing with other people anyway. 

• We had a nice walk around a nature reserve near Bristol - Golden Valley Nature Reserve. I've been using ViewRanger to find walks and also creating my own on there. My Golden Valley walk is here. 

• Back in January I decided to listen to every song on my 'liked songs' playlist on Spotify. You know how you add a whole album when actually it's only one or two songs you like? And then never get round to removing the ones you don't like? Yep, well I thought if I listened to every single song then I can remove all the ones I didn't need. There's almost 2200 songs on my 'liked songs' list and I'm up to 'R' at the moment. The idea is that when I've done the whole list then every time I press 'shuffle' I will only ever get good songs I enjoy. 

• We ordered a some food gift boxes for Father's Day for the various dads - all were very good so I'm told! We used Georgie Porgie's Puddings, Warren's Bakery and Made Marion Gluten Free.

• And lastly, Lily took part in her very first exam - LAMDA Solo Introductory Stage 1 - where she had to recite a poem, talk about how to play a game and talk about her favourite toy (a dinosaur, obvs). She came out of the exam saying it was lovely! 

How was your June?

 

A Photo Every Hour - 2018

So the last photo an hour post I wrote on here was for February 2018. As I mentioned the other day, for the sake of completeness, I'm going to cram the whole year into one post. 

Here's a whizz through March to December 2018 where in the space of a few seconds of scrolling, you can watch Lily go from just-turned-2 years old to almost-3. Also watch in amazement at all the things we used to be able to do pre-COVID!

24th March 2018 - We had a day trip to the West Somerset Railway for their Spring Steam Gala and managed to find the tallest tree in England!

28th April 2018 - I had a child-free day trip to London to see Kneehigh Theatre's fantastic stage production of 'Brief Encounter' at the Empire Cinema Haymarket. I did a bit of sightseeing too, collecting some geocaches at Paddington Station, Kings Cross Station and the British Library. 

19th May 2018 - Happened to be both the Royal Wedding of Harry & Meghan and also Andrew's 40th birthday. We went along to a local church to watch the ceremony (they were providing free sandwiches and cream teas), Lily did some flag waving (or should it be "fleg" nowdays...?) and in the evening, had a birthday meal at Toby Carvery. 

16th June 2018 - I volunteered at a local NCT sale, helping with the running of the stalls. We were also selling out stuff too and managed to shift quite a bit (as well as bringing home a few purchases of course). 

28th July 2018 - Was the first day of our annual roadtrip around the UK to Edinburgh and back. Our first stop was Leicester for a couple of nights so we drove along the Fosse Way doing some geocaching on the way. We finished our journey with a holiday treat of a meal from Five Guys. 

18th August 2018 - There was another Gromit Unleashed trail that year and we'd spent a large amount of time finding them all. We took a trip out with my dad to tick off a few more Gromits and ended up at a playground in the nice weather. 

22nd September 2018 - Carnival season had rolled around again and it was Frome Carnival that evening. I spent the day doing some tidying and cleaning then we headed out to watch the procession, picking up a McDonald's for dinner on the way. 

27th October 2018 - We started the day at Lily's nature class then did some cleaning before heading out to Warminster carnival. Dinner that evening was a meal from Morrisons Cafe, sheltering from the rain!

17th November 2018 - By this time, we're into proper "big" carnival season and it was my first time back dancing on a carnival float after having had a few years off. We started the day with a big breakfast before getting my costume and clothes ready then heading out to Glastonbury Carnival. It was the last procession of the season so we always try and do a big cast photo and after the show, the float is packed up and driven back to its shed to be taken apart ready for next year. 

15th December 2018 - Me and Lily went out to watch a Christmas music concert then we spent the afternoon making sandwiches and mince pies ready for helping run a Christmas quiz night in the evening. 

Excellent, that's 2018 done. Now to do 2019, 2020 and the first 3 months of 2021 :-) 

A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 15th July

And the final photo an hour catch up, July's date was Saturday 15th.


Here's what the day looked like...


11am - Starting the day a bit later with a lie in.

12pm - Playing about with attempting to redesign and revive our local NCT newsletter (don't worry, we didn't use this design - you can see the final version here)

1pm - Tidying...

2pm - Dinner prep for a slow cooker meal later on.

3pm - Look who's back after visiting the grandparents!

4pm - And then time for a nap.

5pm - Getting ready for a toddler-free night out at the theatre (to see one of my favorite shows, for umm...the 14th time. Believe me though, it's worth it - I wrote about how good it is a few years ago too).

6pm - Date night at McDonalds (#keepingitclassy)

7pm - And off to the theatre we go (and yup, we had tickets for all the shows advertised on the poster...)

8pm - Interval...

9pm - And even after seeing the show so many times, it still brings tears to my eyes.

10pm - And homeward we go.

It was Jane's turn to do the round up that month and for August, she chose the Saturday of the Bank Holiday weekend - which you can read all about here!

Also, check out what I was up to in...

July 2016

July 2015

July 2014

This Little Big Life: Theatre Shows and Swimming Pools

This Little Big Life is a weekly link-up started by Sarah and Louise - all about capturing the little moments which make up a big life from the previous weekend.


Saturday was all about spending time at Auntie J's house in Cornwall, testing out the big girl's pushchair seat and sleeping through a duck-themed theatre show.

 

 

 

Sunday was all about deserted swimming pools, enjoying new toys and travelling home.

Pop over to Sarah's blog and Louise's blog to see what they got up to...

The Lost Gardens of Heligan

It's been six months since I took these pictures and only now, have I actually got round to editing them and writing a review. Pretty poor by anyone's standards, especially mine!

 

We visited The Lost Gardens of Heligan on 6th September, the same day we went to see Kneehigh Theatre's show, Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs). Our theatre ticket included entry to the gardens so we went along a couple of hours in advance to have a wander and explore.

 

 

Despite visiting Cornwall rather a lot (with a sister in law living there it's hard not to) Heligan is somewhere I've never been to. I first heard about the gardens in a roundabout type of way in the late 1990s; I was (still am) a little bit obsessed with Kneehigh Theatre Company and when the Eden Project was being built, they were involved a bit with the artistic side of it. So naturally I wanted to find out all about this magical new place called Eden (if it was something Kneehigh were involved with, it had to be good). Of course, once I'd read up on Eden, I realised that the guy behind it all (Tim Smit) was the same guy behind The Lost Gardens of Heligan - which sounded equally delightful. I said back in about 1999/2000 that I should visit and well, I suppose it only took me 14 years to do it!

 

 

 

 

Heligan is a botanical garden estate, originally created by the Tremayne family from Cornwall in the mid 18th century. After the First World War the gardens fell into disuse and were only re-discovered in the 1990s when Tim Smit and his team took it upon themselves to bring them back to their former glory. It's a bit of a magical place, with landscaped gardens, secret passages, woodland trails and a farmyard.

 

 

You're allowed to wander around in your own time although I could see how it would be quite easy to get lost. We almost ran out of time doing the woodland trails bit and ended up missing out a section near the entrance. That was probably because we spent far too much time peering at the Emus though.

Andrew grew up with an (cuddly) emu at home and then I bought him one for his 30^th birthday, seven years ago which he absolutely loved. 

The Heligan estate had emus back in the 1920s and they used to roam around the grounds freely. I love the old photo of them, you can just see one of the birds scarpering on the right hand side.

 

 

These two were Queenie and Edmund, probably grandchildren of the original ones but they seemed pretty happy. I have to say though they did remind us remarkably of this…

 

 

As I said, we almost ran out of time and had to look round the vegetable garden really quickly which was a bit of a shame as it's easily one of the most spectacular areas of the Heligan estate. Established in the Victorian era as a production garden, it's been lovingly restored to supply heaps of heritage fruit, vegetables, salads and herbs and they try and use as many things as they can in their restaurant on site.

Speaking of which, the food there was very tasty indeed. I'm not sure what it's like the rest of the year round but during the Kneehigh Theatre Asylum season they'd laid on a special menu for theatre-goers. I had a pulled pork bap and Andrew had a cheese and tomato pizza/quiche thing followed up with lemon drizzle cake and toffee cake. The salad though - look…all the colours!

 

 

Obviously I'm going to say Heligan is well worth a visit but if you fancy combining culture and vegetables and feeling very high-brow for a night, then Kneehigh Theatre's Asylum is back at the Lost Gardens this summer. The show this year is '946', based on the Michael Morpurgo children's book 'The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips' set on the sands of Slapton, Devon during 1944.

 

It's on from July 25th to August 23rd most nights (plus some matinees) and tickets are available from the Hall for Cornwall box office. If you're in Cornwall this summer and want something to do for an evening, it might well be something worth considering.