A Busy Week

Last week I have had to be really organised to get everything done as I have been out every night doing something different. Monday was the monthly W.I craft group meeting. The crafts can be a bit hit or miss for me. This month's was fun and reminded me just how stress relieving needle felting can be. 

Tuesday was the actual W.I, meeting and this month's was a social evening playing board games. I am not the greatest fan of board games so I chose ones that were quick to complete. It was funny to see how competitive some of the ladies got and the accusations of cheating (mostly in good humour). 

Wednesday was Zumba. I am trying to get a bit fitter and I have taken out the membership for the local authority leisure centres. I find that if I book a class then I am going to go. Unfortunately a lot of the ones I am interested in are during the week day when I am in work. Zumba is really the only one that appeals to me. I do have access to other centres in the area through the membership but classes get booked up really quickly.

On Thursday I went with Craig to one of his Masonic meetings. Women are not permitted to attend normally but this was a special one as it was a talk from a lady from Hearing Dogs for The Deaf. She brought the gorgeous Abney, a cocker spaniel, who was so well behaved.

Friday night was Book club and this month's book was 'A Good Girl's Guide to Murder' by Holly Jackson.

Each month a genre is chosen and the theme was 'Young Adult'. Bearing in mind I am the youngest and I am in my mid 50's I thought this would be a genre that would take the ladies out of their comfort zone. The lady who chose this also enjoys murder and thrillers so I was not surprised that there was a murder involved. I did enjoy this and like a lot of the 'cosy' murder mysteries I read I had to suspend belief in police procedures and how people tend to open up more to people who are not the police. I did get upset at one particular part of the story involving the pet dog but I will not say more in case someone wants to read it. The next choice as 'humour' so hopefully I will find out the next book to read from the lady whose turn it is soon. We don't meet in December so there is no rush to get it finished.

On Saturday we had friends visiting from Oxford which is always lovely. We don't get to meet as often as we would like. I am hoping that they will eventually move north as they keep thinking about doing, though it would be a little further north and east than where we are. They stayed overnight and on Sunday we went to Elizabeth Gaskell's house as my friend has read a few of her books and we did not have the time to go to Lyme Park (She is also a huge Pride and Prejudice fan and has watched the BBC adaptation many times but has never managed to visit Lyme Park a.k.a Pemberley).  The House is not a mansion like Lyme but it is a good size, You are able to touch a lot of things as they are not the original items that would have been in the house at the time. A lot of work has been put in to reproduce how the house would have looked when Elizabeth lived there. 

I learnt that Elizabeth initially wrote for Charles Dickens and that Charlotte Bronte stayed for a week and they corresponded regularly. There was a letter from Charlotte to Elizabeth on display and all I can say is the language used was a lot more eloquent than is used today. It made me feel sad that we seem to have 'dumbed down' our language . I wish I had remembered to take photos but I was so intrigued by everything on display that I forgot. The photos here are from the official website.

                                                    The Study

The Dining table set for Christmas

Of course copies of her books were available to buy. Cranford was the only one I have read so far so I ended up buying a copy of her last novel 'Wives and Daughters' which I will probably read at some point next year.

I am hoping for a quieter week next week but it is also the start of the Christmas party season and I really need to get a move on with my own Christmas preparations.

Starting to feel the Christmas spirit

 For the first time this year I have felt the Christmas spirit. It is rather late for me as normally I would start to get excited from the end of September. Maybe it was because I watched a couple of Christmas movies on Netflix over the weekend.

Saturday started well with Craig raking up the leaves from the garden as you could literally not see the grass or patio because of the fallen leaves. I did the patio. There are still leaves left on the trees at the bottom of the garden so no doubt we will have to rake them again next weekend. We then took Penny for a walk along the canal to the lighthouse and the loopline where Craig treated me to a hot chocolate from the mobile café that is there every weekend. I don’t normally drink hot chocolate because I find it too sweet but they serve the Galaxy hot chocolate which is lovely.

I had an evening on my own as everyone was out and that is when I decided to watch my first Christmas movie ‘Haul out the Holly’ on Netflix whilst working on a jumper I was determined to finish this weekend.

Penny work me up nice and early on Sunday morning as she needed to go out to ‘toilet’ as she would not go out in the evening. It was then I realised we had an unexpected overnight guest sleeping in my craft room. One of Emma’s friends ended up staying so he didn’t have to walk home alone from their night out as the people he would have normally walked home with ended up having to leave early. I wish I had known as I was planning on finishing a jumper I had been knitting and I had left the bag in there. The early start at least meant that Craig and I could have a leisurely breakfast before he had to go and do something for the Masons.

Sunday mornings are my ‘chill’ time and I watched the sequel to the Christmas movie I watched yesterday. This one was called ‘Haul out the Holly, Lit Up’ which was just as OTT as the one yesterday but fun, perfect for a Sunday morning. I did feel in the mood for Christmas after it had finished and as I needed to go to Aldi to pick up a few bits I decided to go to the one that was on the same retail park as B & M, Home Bargains and TK Maxx so I could go and look at the decorations on offer. I ended up buying some from Aldi. I also treated myself to some Apple Crumble Mince pies.

I did manage to sew up the jumper to get it finished but there are loads of mistakes as I got so fed up with having to pull it back that in the end I just went with it. I also need to practise picking up stitches as I am not sure if because the light I was trying to knit in wasn’t brilliant especially with the navy wool, or if I am rubbish at picking the stitches up, but the neckline is not as it should be. I will just wear it when I need to do stuff in the garden so nothing decent gets ruined.

I have a busy week ahead and I must try to keep the Christmas feeling going and come up with a plan, as I normally try to get everything done by the end of November (except putting up the tree) and this year I have done very little as I have not really felt like it. On the flip side though I have enjoyed Autumn more and have been more present for the season rather than being solely focused on Christmas preparation.

How are your Christmas plans coming along?

Harry Potter Studio Tour at Halloween.

Last week on Halloween all of us and one of Emma’s friends went to the Harry Potter/Warner Bros Studio tour in Watford. I booked it in February as we specifically wanted to be there at Halloween. The last time we went was in 2018 and that was at Christmas so there were lots of new things to see. 

We had to drive down in two cars as there was 6 of us and we left at 9.30am. Traffic was heavy and what should have taken us 3 ¼ hours ended up taking just over 4 hours to get to the hotel and then it was another 20 minutes to get to the Studios from there. We literally only had time to grab a McDonalds (not my favourite but unfortunately the quickest option) to eat in the car as we drove there before our booking time.

The start of the tour was the first thing that had changed though not the entrance to the Great Hall which did have the floating pumpkins as in the films. Even though it is the actual size I am always surprised at how small I think it looks and getting the 4 rows of tables in seems to be a squeeze.

The next area hadn’t changed much as it was some of the smaller sets used and lots of the props. Matthew had fun trying to find all the Golden Snitches which are tiny. Clues were given in the activity passport that we all picked up at the beginning of the tour. I gave up trying to find them and just looked for the stamps and the letters for the secret word. 

The Burrow kitchen is always my favourite set as it is so homely, I would love to see the living room set but that isn’t there. 

The divination classroom was new and the stack of teacups was amazing, they must have taken ages to collect from the charity shops and car boot sales.

The Forbidden forest was the next part of the tour with Buckbeak and Aragog before going onto Platform 9 ¾ with the Hogwarts Express. You got the chance to get a picture of you pushing a trolley through as you can do at the real Kings Cross station (but without the queues). 

That marked the end of the first half of the tour and there was the Backlot Café and Butterbeer bar to get a much needed drink. I don’t like Butterbeer but I did try the Butterbeer ice cream which was delicious. There was also a courtyard where you could see Privet Drive, the Night Bus, the wooden bridge and fountain from Hogwarts and the greenhouse where you could pull up Mandrakes (nobody passed out despite not having earmuffs on😊). We also saw the special effects secrets show.

On the previous visit the second part of the tour was more to do with the production side but this time there was Gringotts to see which was amazing to see. That has now become one of my favourite parts. You could also see Bellatrix’s vault and take a photo of trying to retrieve the Horcrux cup.

The next set was Diagon Alley which normally has been very crowded but by the time we got there it was an hour before it closed so it was quieter and I was actually able to get to see the shop fronts which is just as they are in the film, although Ollivanders was after the Death Eaters had blown it up. 

The final section was the scale model of Hogwarts and even though I have seen it before I had forgotten how large it was.

You then end the tour by coming out into the gift shop. I didn’t buy anything as nothing appealed to me but Matthew bought Sirius’ wand and Emma bought Hermoine’s wand. The prices there for the wands were much better than in Florida where the prices were ridiculous ($85 compared to £32). The only wand I would have probably wanted would have been Mrs Weasley’s but she didn’t have one there.

I was glad to get back to the hotel but unfortunately there was nowhere apart from McDonalds that was still open to get anything to eat. I wasn’t too bothered but Matthew and Craig weren’t happy and ended up with crisps.

They made up for it next day with a good breakfast though before we headed off on the long drive back home which was another 4 hour stint without a stop as Craig and Matthew needed to be back as they had arranged to go to see an organised firework display with one of Matthew’s friends. I was staying home as poor Penny is terrified of fireworks and spent the whole evening hiding behind the sofa. She wasn’t shaking as much as she dos normally as I had been giving her some calming treats which has been the most effective thing we have tried. I also put the TV on a little louder than normal to try and drown out some of the noise. That is the plan for every night until after the weekend as hopefully everybody will have let their fireworks off. I will just have to make sure that I have some more of the treats in for New Year.