Winter's last hurrah
I've been thinking of the coincidence that it's 100 years since the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank, and it's this same Centenary year that I may have solved the mystery of the Welsh ghost ship
Resolven, whose Captain was my great-grandfather. The
Resolven also seems to have hit an iceberg in the same waters in 1884 and in 2012 I tracked down the original account of this maritime disaster ... I've written
about it here.
 |
View from my living room
on Wednesday morning |
 |
Dinner, if you can wait. Click on pics
to see larger size... |
Meanwhile, back in the hills, I woke up on Wednesday morning more or less back in the 19th Century myself.
The electricity was off, so no Internet, no Today Programme, no cup of tea, no hot water, and there was a blizzard in full spate outside, northerly winds blowing snow into feet-high drifts against the door and windows. My car was under the snow, waiting for me to dig it out. I later heard that some villagers further up the hill were actually trapped in their houses by the weight of the drifts and had to climb out of side windows, or be rescued by neighbours with shovels.
Unable to go anywhere, I lit a coal fire, sent some texts (just to stay connected) and put an old cast iron pan full of rice on the grate to gently boil something for dinner. (It took 2 and a half hours and a lot of stirring to cook the rice through.) Taken by surprise by the blizzard I'd managed to run out of bread and also candles, apart from some tea lights left over from a dinner party, so I was mighty relieved when the electricity came back on. I had a cup of tea, checked my emails, dug the car out and headed down to Tesco. Two fields down the hill, hidden from me by the mist, there was not a flake of snow.
Much progress on the house, and I'll let the following pictures speak for themselves. I'm off to see the
Easter Rocket War on the Greek Island of Chios and spend some time in Turkey, so I'm glad I've got most of the decorating finished.
 |
Bathroom. The feature wall colour is called 'Light Rain.'
No comment on that. |
 |
| Bedroom with stripped fireplace and cottagey woodwork |
 |
| Dining Room |
 |
| Pine doors after dipping to remove old gloss paint |
 |
| Living room - door frame still to do! |
 |
| Kitchen - a work in progress |
 |
| Parlour (living room) with fire lit |
 |
Stripping old gloss paint on kitchen shelves - that's one
job that I haven't finished |
 |
| Spring |
