Seeing Out the Spring

Spring 2023....

...has flown by. Buds on the tree outside our window have appeared and burst into leaf in a week.

It's been a beautiful time, but also a brutal and frightening time. There have been so many things I took for granted that are gone, unbroken sleep, being able to walk more than a mile without need ling two paracetamol and an hour sit down, never having needed to go to UHW.....But there has been love and kindness, happiness and hope.

Most of all I am more grateful than I can ever really express for my loved ones, friends and family, the ones I can no longer see who are with me in spirit, and the ones who are have given me so much love and kindness. 

Toadstools, cinnamon and rosehip

The flavours of september have been pumpkin pie tea, strong coffee, butter cinnamon cookies cut into leaf shapes,  aloo gosht - rich tender mutton and potato curry and tart damson apple crumble covered in custard. 

The last few weeks have been like summer with autumn standing on her porch. Last weekend on a trip to Barry, we saw white butterflies drifting up and down the railway tracks alongside rosehip, blackberries, ripe apples and pears. I even saw what I thought was a cloud yellow butterfly, which I've never seen before. 

 There were so many fruit trees on the tracks I wonder if the seeds came from the lunch boxes of Victorian railway workers.  TfW should make railway cider and girder jam... 

In Barry we enjoyed watching the sea change from green to grey, and vast clouds billowing over the sea. Looking out from the old WW2 defense outlook we could see as far as Exmoor, Dunster, the Quantocks.

My crochet project has been a garland of toadstools, oak leaves and acorns for mam's birthday, often worked on while listening to a radio play of 'The October Country' by Ray Bradbury, or the theme music to Twin Peaks or sometimes Demon Slayer. I got the lovely willow wreath form from a company in Somerset, and the wool is leftover from autumn projects and 'little boxes of crochet' past.

I've rounded up cardigans and blankets from  the murky wilds of the flat, and fished out my leaf lights and pumpkins from the depths of the second bedroom. 

The autumn decorations are up now and maple leaf lights and apple honey butter and pumpkin spice scented candles twinkle through our evenings, often as rain lashes outside.

This month has been a season of loss and  sadness for us in many ways, but the sheer beauty and joy this season gives me has helped me to see a little good in every day.

May this season bring you many happy memories in the future.

Caramel tea, Welsh Cakes and Amber

Today I've been in TK Maxx, cherry picking my favourite candles for autumn. It was a very close call between 'Fall foliage' (in a glass jar patterned with leaves), 'Seasalt Pumpkin' (blue glass jar) and 'Pumpkin Creme Brulee' (orange glass), Pumpkin patch (skeleton riding a bike on the lid!) but in the end 'Apple Honey Butter' won the day, along with some blackcurrant macarons for tea.

We had a wander in Cardiff market, which is still proud and lovely despite the drubbing it's had since covid. I think Clancy's is my favourite stall. Do you know it? Some of my friends use it for the spices (side note, I want to learn how to make proper Indian curries, not just the jar kind), but I've been experimenting with their teas, today we picked up a tiny bag of caramel creme black tea (my choice) and a tiny bag of rose black tea (his choice, bleugh!). 

There's a gorgeous flower shop in the market too! They had beautiful dried grass, pampas of rich biscuit and apricot colours, like fireworks, and very tempting house plants with thick green leaves. 

There were also great looking cake places, including Noglu, where I had some Welshcakes.

Saint John's park was open, and we sat there for a while, eating delicious food from Cardiff market, watching the little sparrows hop in and out of the geraniums, and even spotting a very lost looking dragonfly. We bumped into a friend we haven't seen for a long time, too, who gave us his nice dry bench.

We tried a different coffee shop too! Uncommon Ground in the Royal Arcade, where I had a delicious iced latte.  After years without, I've magically been able to start drinking coffee again this year, and iced coffee is definitely it for me this summer. I had a peanut chocolate flapjack, a bit like a Reese's Piece's stern grandmother, and he had the most gorgeous looking biscoff cake. 

The best bit was definitely people watching -- there's a jewellery shop opposite, Ganesha, where we got to see women press their noses to the glass (and their sheepish significant others watching on), young people in tank tops go in for incense, soon to be students filming, mothers and daughters longing for the same tray of crystals. 

My favourite jewellery piece was a chunky necklace of alternating lemon, honey and rich brown amber. At £300 it was, shall we say, too rich for my blood. We may not quite have got that £300 necklace, but our few little purchases to local businesses are definitely something I was glad to do, to help keep Cardiff's lovely old market and arcades alive. 

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They say that we are in a 'false autumn'  brought out by the drought, and golden leaves shed by the parched trees are skittering around the square. It's cooler now, and wet, and I have even been lucky enough to watch the rain hammering the window while I'm snug inside. I'm no fool, I know it's sad and ominous, but I feel in a strange, guilty way like my soul's craving for the change of season has been answered like a prayer. 

I try to never wish time away, but hankering for change and renewal is very strong in me this year. A new start  always makes me think of the coming of September, clean air and new leather shoes crunching through leaves, sharp pencils and new books. I want to do so, so much. After a long time asleep I'm hoping my blog will help me to enjoy all the things that happen in the clean months to be grateful for.

Caboose, Christmas Pudding Fudge and a Few Mummies

When the first customers sipped their beer in the Haunch of Venison pub in  Salisbury, King Edward II was still on the throne (though not for much longer). 

A mummified hand was  found during building renovations to the pub. It is thought to have dated to the 1700s, and to have belonged to an unlucky gambling cheat. The hand (a replica after the original mysteriously vanished) is displayed behind a glass in one of the rooms.

On the night we visited, we had the top floor dining area virtually to ourselves. The waiter stoked the log fire especially for us. Mr F had a venison casserole with a hank of warm seeded bread - it  looked like something the pilgrims might have eaten in the Canterbury Tales. I had braised pig cheeks followed by a venison trio of sausage, casserole and steak. Washed down with a glass of red wine, listening to the evening bells of a nearby church, then walking back under icy stars and fairy lights, it was a truly lovely night, followed by indigestion all round. 

We went to Salisbury thinking there would be a Christmas market on the scale and loveliness of the one we went to in Chester in the before times. In truth, this turned out to be a solitary beer tent and a bratwurst stand on a large empty market square. I'm not sorry though; Salisbury had plenty of lovely places to spend a night.  

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I have a vivid memory of a guide in York Minster when I was a little girl saying 'of course if we had a spire we'd dwarf Salisbury'... 

I finally got to visit Salisbury Cathedral on a crisp, frosty, beautiful winter morning. It was worth the wait. 

The cathedral has some wonderful volunteer guides in green sashes. They appear to tell you the best stories cherry picked from the centuries of Cathedral history and then slip back into the distance. They have a specially reserved seat in the cathedral café that makes me hope they get paid in free cake. Maybe they square off against York Minster guides like the Sharks and the Jets...

When we stopped to admire the tomb of a medieval knight called William Longspee a green sashed guide appeared. He told us that Sir William died a few days after a feast. Years later, he was exhumed and a mummified rat was found in his skull. The rat's body was found to contain traces of arsenic. Said rat is on display a few inches from the tomb. Both Sir William and the rat appear to have died because of the same fateful meal.

There were so many interesting and beautiful things to see at the Cathedral putting them all here would make this post run into chapters.There is a large and beautiful modern font which reflects the stained glass in its water.  A stained glass window with a cameo from 'Mr Ginge', the one time cathedral cat. A stone pockmarked to a crater by centuries of choir Boys heads being bumped on it, a medieval 'clock' bigger than a quad bike. Scarier even than Mr Rat were the twisted pillars and cracked ceilings around the cathedral's spire. 

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In the afternoon,  we visited a few of the shops on the High Street. There were some brilliant windows, sweet shops, ornament shops, gift shops, and my favourite, Roly's Fudge, which had 'fudge henge'....we bought some Christmas pudding fudge there which was extremely delicious.  

Our afternoon was spent working our way through a few pubs of the town, the Ox Row, the Bishop's Mill, and finally we came back to Caboose, our b&b come cocktail bar for drinks. They were pretty amazing drinks, served in crazy presentation trays. The bar was entirely painted in turquoise and 1920s themed. 

My favourite drink was a locomotive, which came with its own little train. 

The next morning I had a delicious ham, cheese and mushroom omelette for breakfast. Caboose, as its name suggests, is just a short walk from the station, so we didn't have long in the cold before we got to chase the rainbows back to Cardiff...

Welcoming Winter

Autumn is drifting slowly to its close and winter is coming. I'm very grateful for the change in season. 

The skies have been clear bright blue, an we've had a few days of being a tourist in our own city. Last week we boarded the 'Lady Helen', for a tour of Cardiff Bay. 

The Bay was unusually quiet, perhaps because of the busy weekend in town, so we had the Lady Helen and her skipper to ourselves.  We saw seagulls (lots), coots and ducks. We saw the cormorants taking flight on the wetlands reserve, and drying their wings majestically on the wooden structures around the Bay.  

It was dreamy watching the sea and sky change colour from gold to silver to blue to purplish grey to lead, and to feel the rush of wind on my face. 

We finished with a large hot tchai latte (me) and hot chocolate (him) in the warmth of Cadwalladers.

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Sunday the 14th November was an astonishingly bright, warm, beautiful autumn day. We arrived in the museum park just as the military bands were playing their last numbers for Remembrance Day. 

We sat outside Brodies under a radiantly red leaved oak tree with the sun on our back and a cup of hot chocolate apiece. We shared slice of raspberry and coconut flapjacks and listened to the clock tower chiming.

Afterwards we walked quietly around Alexandra Gardens, looking at the beautiful  leaves.

When we got home, I even tried to capture the leaves in orange fondant on a carrot cake I baked. It tasted better than it looked....

And now November is more than half way done and its time to wrap up warm and light the fire.