Excitement

I’ve been doing one of those tagged challenges on my FB page: Post a photo every day for a week with the theme of nature.  It’s quite fun, really, because it’s meant I’ve spent time looking through folders of photographs in Picasa and in doing so, I’ve revisited several places and enjoyed the remembering.  I took the photo above whilst on a cruise a few years ago, sailing off the coast of Papua New Guinea and thought it looked as though someone had thrown a pot of paint at the sky.

As regular readers will know, we really enjoy our annual cruise.  I never tire of watching the sea, the sky and the ever changing pattern of the waves.  Though I love the fun and spirit of our road trips and am curious enough about the world to want to spend time travelling independently off the beaten track, there can be no more comfortable way to see the world than from a luxury cruise ship. 

There’s one problem though: if the ship isn’t going somewhere you fancy, then you have to think again and that’s exactly what happened when we were ready to book something for early 2017.  We were not ready to revisit the same places we’ve been in recent years and the itineraries didn’t include places on our wish list at the time of year we want to travel.  There wasn’t an obvious answer, so we dithered a while until one possibility occurred to us.  It was on a brand new ship which was creating much curiosity and excitement and of course, by the time we had the idea, others had got there first and there was a waiting list.

We placed our deposit and added our names to the bottom of it, hoping that, as the weeks sped by, people would change their minds and cancel.  We were advised that we were twelfth in line, which seemed pretty far from the top, but then, a few weeks later, we were seventh.  We were unsure whether to be “squeaky wheels” and call the reservations people from time to time to ask how things were going, or whether to be patient and have confidence that they would call us if something came up.  The final payment for the cruise in question was due mid-August, so as July came to a close we were hopeful that money might provoke at least a couple of cancellations (I know, horrible, isn’t it!?)  But whereas we Europeans have steep cancellation policies which make us think twice before committing to a booking, in other parts of the world, full refunds mean that plans are frequently changed when a better offer comes along.

In the meantime, we were musing on alternatives for early 2017.  Maybe we’d head in an easterly direction and meet up with Tra in Saigon for a few days before exploring another corner of SE Asia?  My Hero fancies seeing some of the Silk Road and so we’d been looking at Uzbekistan and maybe some of the historic parts of Iran. But I didn’t fancy the idea of wearing a burqa for two weeks and one way and another, we hadn’t really focused on anything specific.

To satisfy our little cruise “itch” we agreed to join our sweet Californian friends Ellis and Mary  in the Baltic this autumn.  Originally, we were just going to meet up with them for a weekend in Copenhagen, but the more we thought about it, the more we realised we really wanted to sail off on our long-time favourite ship with them too!  Well, it would just mean that our 2017 cruise happened to be in late 2016, wouldn’t it? 

So, here we were, in early August, still mulling over thoughts of travelling somewhere fun and exciting in the New Year, even if we haven’t a clue where just yet.  A chat with the cruise company last Friday confirmed that the new ship had proved very successful during its first couple of cruises and that, yes, we were still waitlisted.  Seventh in line.  Never mind.  We had thought when we placed that deposit that this might happen and decided that perhaps we’d better begin thinking more seriously about our plans now.

Imagine my Hero’s reaction then, when checking his email in between University Challenge and Only Connect last evening, he found an email with the header “Your Booking #XXXX, Suite XXXX”.  Sure enough, on closer reading, we find ourselves with a confirmed booking for just the right suite in just the right place on the cruise we rather fancied on the posh new ship next January.

Less than 24 hours later, we have confirmed flights, we’ve selected our seats on both outward and inbound planes, we’ve booked hotels and the car park, we’ve spoken to or emailed friends and decided which excursions we would like to take, booked places on those we can and putting our names down for a couple which are currently full. 

We are so very lucky!!

A mystery on my hands

Our family is not one for having heirlooms.  My parents had nothing much of value in their home and neither of them had family treasures such as old photograph albums to illustrate their heritage.  So researching my family history is a bit of a challenge.  I have the facts but not much of the back story.  Thankfully, I began to record what little they knew before it was too late and a few of their memories got me off to a good start. 

My Mum, however, did have one real treasure, which she gave to me.

The sampler had been passed to my Mum by her mother and she understood that it had been passed through her mother’s side of the family – but knew no more than that.  So, one of my aims in finding more about my family was to identify who Mary Farthing was and how she fitted into my story.

Considering its great age, the sampler is in pretty good shape and years of being stuffed in a dark sideboard cupboard means the colours are still bright.  When I was out judging a class of cross stitch pictures at Thornbury Show yesterday, I wondered how many of them will still be around in more than 250 year’s time, still looking good and provoking questions for their owner?

So, what has provoked this little flurry of excitement?  What sent me to my cupboard to retrieve the sampler and scan it into my computer?

The answer is, I have found Mary Farthing!  Not only have I found her, she’s there on the correct side of my family with links to the people I’d expected her to be linked to.  She’s not exactly a close relative: Ancestry.com identifies her as the 3rd great aunt of the wife of my 1st cousin 2x removed!

The bad news is that her dates don’t tally with the sampler.  “My” Mary Farthing was born in 1769, rather too late to stitch a sampler in 1754. 

One step forward, two steps back.

But I’m not done yet.  “My” Farthing family lived in the area of Foston in the Wolds, East Yorkshire, where there are other Farthings to investigate.  I have another lead from Google, which turned up this, which states that, “A tablet on the east wall commemorates Mary Farthing, who died in 1763.”  Could this be Mary the embroiderer?  I think I have some further investigations to make.

It’s not easy, but that’s the fun of researching family history, isn’t it?

Another book on the shelf

I have completed my Road Trip journal.

I finished it yesterday but as I was about to put the spiral binding on the pages, I found a couple of gaps with post-it note reminders of things still to include.

I mean, I really did need to record the blood-red stain of a footprint on the carpet by the bed in the Charleston hotel, didn’t I?

And although I’d intended to draw a picture of the two very vocal guys at the First Confederate White House and left a space for it too, I hadn’t actually  done the drawing.

But here it is, finished, and I’m wishing that I had a rather larger wire binding for it, because it’s a bit stuffed!

Still, I squeezed it into place alongside all the other travel journals on my shelf in the studio.

The trouble is, now I need a bigger shelf too!

Spatchcocked

In between completing the last few pages of my Road Trip Journal and catching up with the washing and ironing mountain, somehow we find we need to eat.  When it’s hot, neither of us feels much like eating, but now the wind has changed and the clouds set in, we feel more in need of comfort.  Summer comfort eating is different from Autumn/Winter comfort eating though, isn’t it?

Our go-to comfort food this year is most certainly spatchcocked chicken.  If they’re on offer in Waitrose at 3 for £10, then all the better, because those cheap little chickens are absolutely delicious cooked this way.  I claim none of the ownership: that has to go to Nigella, whose Forever Summer is a bit of a go-to resource at this time of the year.  Her recipe comes more in the form of general advice rather than specific ingredients and suits us just fine.  My hero does the kitchen scissors bit and I’m the olive oil, garlic, lemon, thyme and plastic bag girl.  Having added the bits and pieces to the rather comical bird in the bag, we smoosh it about a bit and leave it in the fridge overnight or a bit longer.

An hour in the oven with a few new potatoes thrown in for good measure and it’s done.  Just the thing for a rainy Tuesday evening when all the recent heat seems to have disappeared.

There might even be a little left over for a sandwich tomorrow as well.

Progress

I can’t believe it’s the 1st of August today.  Just where did July go?

I thought it was about time I began the job of completing my Road Trip journal so sorted through a few bits of ephemera, gathered my stuff and got going this morning.

I haven’t got too much still to do, but wanted to make sure I continued in the same style as I had started, so I took a look through the pages I’d completed so far.

It was a great trip and I realise I’d already forgotten quite a few of the small details which make our trips so special.

What a good job then, that I have my scribbly notebook which is a useful reminder of all those little details, like the sign outside the church in between Vicksburg and Shreveport which announced:

“7 days without God makes 1 weak”

Not to mention the slogan on the T shirt, worn by a woman at the filling station where we refuelled.

“Have you clucked and tucked today?”

Well? 

Answers in the comments, please!