Sunday

Just before my mum fell ill and was admitted to hospital we had signed up to having our kitchen revamped starting on 6th January 2025.

Mum being in hospital (and still not home) and Christmas left us rushing around at the last minute to clear the kitchen. We got there just in time.

Those who have known me for a while will know it isn’t that long since our kitchen was refubished. Some aspects of the kitchen did not stand the test of time, needing repairing or replacing which in some cases proved difficult. Reluctantly we came to the conclusion it would be easier to start from scratch again.

The lack of kitchen facilities led to us having lunch in Truffles, Ironbridge before we visited mum. And later we dined in Willow, Southwater.

Just over a week ago, early on Friday morning Mr C learned that one of his closest friends had passed away suddenly the previous evening. It was difficult to take in the reality as the friend was only 51 and always so full of life. This left us both a little sombre over the weekend.

On Saturday we ordered curtain material to replace the living room curtains to co-inside with the fitting of a new curtain track. On Sunday Mr C was celebrating his birthday so we went out Warwick where we visited the Lord Leycester Hospital which houses The Queen’s Royal Hussars museum and the Warwickshire Yeomanry museum. Mr C had planned on visiting Warwick Castle but I was not so keen on the idea. Whilst it is still a castle it has been turned into a theme park.  Theme parks are not at all my thing! We did make our way to the castle shop to see if it had a good book selection related to the historical period of the castle. It did not, so I waited outside in the courtyard watching some of Britain’s finest wandering around.

I had to go back to work on Monday but Mr C had the day off and had volunteered to cook a roast lamb dinner. I was relaxing in the living room whilst Mr C was popping backward and forward to the kitchen attending to the meal. Mr C poured two glasses of sherry and brought me one and returned to the kitchen. As he did so there was a loud bang, a small exclamation followed by silence…

The cooker had shot out a large blue flame and had unsurprisingly stopped working taking out the cooker circuit with it. Luckily the rest of the house electrics were working fine. But what were we to do with a half cooked dinner? The gas part of the appliance was still working although obviously we had to resort to matches to light the rings so the veg were cooked on the stove top and the roast lamb and potatoes were taken around the corner to a family member for them to complete that part of the meal in their oven. The neighbours must have wondered what Mr C was up to ferrying a roasting tin to and fro in his car!

After a previous accident when the grill in the top oven was left on with the glass door shut we decided it would be more sensible to have a new one rather than repair the old one. Whilst all this was going on a replacement cooker was ordered for delivery on Friday.

The cooker arrived yesterday but unfortunately it couldn’t be fitted by the company who delivered it because the electrician had not yet been to check out the electric circuit. The reason for this was the cooker was unexpectedly delivered at 7.30 in the morning!! The electrician turned up, checked the circuit and everything was fine. A gas fitter was booked for 9.30 this morning. He arrived on time and connected the gas supply to the cooker and started to test it out. When it came to turning on the main oven it made a horrendous racket. There is something wrong with the fan. After several phone calls between the supplier and manufacture the best arrangement they could come to was that a repair agent would come out next Friday to see if it could be repaired or if it needed replacing. Another seven days without a cooker!!

Whilst all this was going the curtain fitter turned up early to fit the curtain track. The fitting mostly ran smoothly although he had forgotten that the track was being attached directly to the ceiling and not to wooden batons, which were to be removed. That was soon sorted out and it looks very nice. Now we just have to wait for the curtain material which was supposed have arrived this week but is nowhere to be seen…

Yesterday some good friends visited for the afternoon, a good time was had by all.

Lustau have changed their distributors and my local wine supplier doesn’t deal with the new distributor.  On the plus side they have promised to get samples of similar Sherries from their new distributor.  I will let you know

In the meanwhile a good discussion on fine Sherries can be found here.

PS: I couldn’t resist posting this after seeing the fernery that featured in my post yesterday

When left to my own devices I got a bit carried away and stripped the wallpaper off the walls too

Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of the Welsh Dresser to hand, it used to be where the boxes are in the first photo.  You will just have to imagine that