My Family's Obsession With Cream Tea

I must make it sound like my family are so posh. Really, its a Northener and a Brummy with 2 Derby speaking kids. Yet for some reason we all seem to have this "The Good Life" outlook on life. My Dad is the perfect farmer, to the point where he sometimes gets up at the same time as me on a saturday morning as I am off to work at 5.30, just to check the chickens. My Mum is just as a good a farmer's wife. We have had to build a special cupboard in a space where the computer was for all of the jams and chutneys that my Mum makes.

My sister is a typical 15 year old really. She is not quite sure who she is yet, trying to be cool with her side fringe, blackberry and annoying statuses on facebook, that are easy pickings for a bit of casual sibling bullying. However she is never happier than when she is sat on a ride-on mower. And the worrying thing is she is blooming good at driving it!

Anyway we are digressing from what I actually started out writing this blog about. Th essence of that long winded and pointless background was that we are country folk at heart, and because of this we spend our weekends chilling up the allotment. Today my Dad even bought some fuel specially for his petrol lawn mower so he could mow around the edges and when I got in from work I was greeted by my Nana and my sister and the smell of something baking in the oven.

After a whole morning of baking bread, this was to be honest the last thing I wanted, but there we go. I was informed to have a shower and then get the car ready (complete with camping stove and gas kettle) to take warm scones up to the allotment. Firstly, who on earth thinks of making scones? Secondly, who on earth knows how to make scones? When I asked my sister this she replied, in a teenagers grunt: "It came in a bag." Upon clarification from my Nana, apparently there a several shops around the country full of bins full of stuff like scone mix and bird seed. Apparently too, my family have nothing better to do than to identify where these shops are and tour the country buying scone mix.

So there we are sat next to a veggie patch full of funny looking plants, in the playing field of my old primary school no less, eating scones, jam and clotted cream and waiting for what seems like eternity for a kettle to boil on a gas camping stove. This part of the story links quite nicely with previous blogs: the tea was made in my new university mugs, which for some reason my Mum thinks I need 4 of... 1 for me and the rest for my imaginary friends I suppose...

That said, with the great British sunshine burning down onto us whilst we ate warm (either because they were fresh or because they had been sat in the sun, not too sure which way) scones and tea, like posh people. 

The fact that this appears to be the highlight of my weekend is probably making you think I need to get out more. And you would be right, had I not have this story to tell from the day before: http://tomstalkblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/the-inaugural-university-preparations.html Yes that's right: University shoppping!

Thanks for reading!

Follow me on twitter: @peachy146

My Sister's Crazy New Idea

So a few of you may have read the post a few days ago where I said about my Dad's new idea for a lawn mower - a small flock of sheep. I have recently learnt that really my entire family appears to want to naturally live in the country. 

My sister, pretty much like many girls when they grow up, has an obsession with ponies. My sister in particular is a one we can't understand. She has got involved with looking after a few really really small ponies, called miniature ponies. So called because they must only stand a bit higher than my knee, about the size of a dog really. We joke about horse-sized dogs, but these really are dog-sized horses.

My sister's mad idea is to do with the family farm in Yorkshire. She has spotted some potential grazing areas which are in competition with Dad's equally implausible and crazy sheepish idea, and has even started to think about a stable for her to keep a few pets. The trouble is that Mum appears to be fully behind this idea.

She even said to me today as we picked up my sister from the stables: "Tom, you need to take note of these as you are going to have to build some at the farm." Now I can tell you I am my father's son, and while I try and do a good job of building things, and have to say that the chicken run I built is still standing today, as I said, I am still my father's son. And that means that no matter how hard I try to saw a straight line or measure an accurate measurement, it always always always ends up wonky, uneven and useless.

So I would really be interested to see how these stables would turn out. I fear mainly for my sister, that she may have her dreams literally crushed within a few weeks of aquiring these horses. I also fear for the landscape of the Yorkshire Dales of what a mess a supposed stables might look like. 

Nevertheless, it might at least resemble a structure a little bit more than Dad's bird table.

Thanks for reading!

Follow me on twitter: @peachy146

My Summer Holiday

Apologies for no posties for a long time, but that is basically because I have been on my summer hols. Nowhere exciting and even more boring when I tell you what I spent my summer holidays doing!

I drove up the M1 for the third time this year in Lucy and arrived in lovely sunny (really it was rainy, I could barely see 20 yards in front of me...) Yorkshire. For 2 weeks we stayed in the cottages in a little village in Wensleydale: Home of Wensleydale cheese, funnily enough. 

For those 2 weeks, we spent our time being very productive. We fitted a new kitchen into one of the cottages, repainted all the window frames and sills, as well as chopping down half the foliage on the nearby railway embankment so to quote me dad: "We could see the steam trains properly."

Why, I hear you ask, did we spend our summer holiday doing DIY and gardening projects. Well that is a very good question. If you ask my mum and dad it is so that we can enjoy the cottages properly in the future, but if you ask me and my sister, considering the fact I am going to university next year and won't be about to enjoy the cottages, I say it was slave labour. I suppose we did get a MacDonalds and a curry out of it though!

Nevertheless, I did spend a lot of time at my 88 year old great uncle's farm, which is no longer actually working if you like, but there is still everything there. So our 2 projects were to start the 1972 Land Rover Series 3 and also to start the 1951 David Brown tractor. Now that was something special in itself. I has so much history on the farm. My uncle was saying that when the farm was operational and fully functioning, that tractor arrived new on the farm in 1951, an has been the workhorse on it ever since. It is one truly beautiful piece of machinery and not only that, but my uncle bought another tractor exactly the same which he used for parts, and another with a front loader on it so he could pick up the bales of hay.

So that was my summer "holiday." I put that in inverted commas, because that is what it was sold to me and my sister as by the rents. It was far from! 

Thanks for reading!

Follow me on twitter: @peachy146