23 November: Ten Things of Thankful

Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

1 – Snow was forecast this week, and sure enough, it came, but I was grateful it was just a dusting on the hills since it was a drive to work day…

The view from our kitchen window

2 – The weather forecast also alerted me to wrap the olive tree against frost, in good time, so we are now stuck with this ghostly shrouded prescence for the Winter…

3 – A giant toddler has been let loose on the sky with a white crayon – anyone remember Harold and the Purple Crayon?

4 – Last weekend I was in our local town, Keighley, and saw this shop window, and as you know, I love repetition and took the first shot, but then went inside for more repeated ballas of wool. However the best bit, was I got talking to the shop owner who turned out to be a mine of information about fabrics and I mercilessly picked his brains (he was delighted – really!) for my A to Z upcoming in April, on the subject of Fabrics. He was made redundant in the ’80’s, and turned to recycling waste from the fabric mills around Yorkshire – cardboard and polythene, obviously, but also waste fabric pieces. He started sorting the latter and sold them back to mills that reprocessed them and included a percentage in new yarns. In ten years, he went form having £200 in the bank, to £100,000! Where there’s muck, there’s brass! Best of all, he alerted me to the fact that so many fabrics are “Warp knitted” as opposed to older weaving techniques – think T-shirt “Jersey” material…

5 – It was my day to take the Micro-biology samples from work, for testing at a firm at Luddenden Foot, in the Calderdale Valley. I always love this drive and the drive home “over the tops” and this Thursday it was crisp, sunny with blue skies and mercifully, there was so little traffic, I was able to dart into the little quarry/layby on the wrong side of the road and take the following pictures and a video. It is one of those spots where you could point the camera in any direction and get a beautiful shot as proved by the panoramic video.
If any of you want to come and live in “God’s own county!” (Yorkshire) – you would be most welcome…

And further up, emerging onto the moors, this Wild Rose bearing rosehips…

6 – And no Ten Things of Thankful without a texture shot, this week, Autumnal, frosty leaves…

7 – We had a most enjoyable hour reading our poems at the dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night Live session yesterday – read a poem about COVID lockdown in Crete, where we were fortunate to spend 6 months out of harm’s way… https://how-would-you-know.com/2025/11/this-is-crete.html

8 – Our new business (by which I mean my boss’s family) – a Self-Storage facility, opened without mishap this week and we had the first customers! I did various bits of design in the run-up and may pop in to give a hand as it gets busy…

9 – Beverley had her birthday and was delighted with the brightly coloured inside, unglazed outside Tapas bowls I bought for her in Aldi six months ago, you have to buy then when you see them as when they’re gone, they’re gone…

10 – Despite her depression, Barbara has taken charge of buying Christmas presents for the family and has almost completed the task!!!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

07 September: Ten Things of Thankful

Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

1 – Our Olive tree seems to have set the majority of flowers – whether they turn into lovely black olives remains to be seen but there are far more, potentially than last year…

2 – We were loaded up more or less according to schedule to depart for our holiday in Cornwall – and no, there is no kitchen sink in there…

3 – Grateful to our neighbour opposite for agreeing to water the garden (containers) whilst we are away – the Rhubarb is the bellweather – I hav e never tried to grow Rhubarb in a pot before and it has grown so much this year, after already being repotted once, that I think it will need an even larger pot for next year. It started from a fragment of plant that came away with a stalk I picked two years ago! It has wilted several times with this years heatwaves but has perked up within the hour after being watered…

4 – Gratefull not to have been travelling an hour earlier when a serious accident happened en route for the motorway at a place where, stuck in the queue waiting for it to be removed (took another hour) we could do nothing but chat to other drivers and I took this picture of the landscape. There was no alternative to waiting, no lanes that could be used to bypass the incident – es la vida…

5 – Glad to have been once more passing surely the best motorway service station, possibly in the world! Looking like some ancient megalithic structure embedded in the landscape, this service station is a Farm Shop selling amazing artisan breads and cakes, fruit and wholefood goods. I bought a Sourdough loaf which will last our first week on holiday, apples and a Pistachio cream filled Croissant…

Even the Fuel Station is different from usual…

6 – Glad that this is the season of native English apples and here is my favourite a Discovery apple. The intens red of the skin permeates the flesh inside – and the taste – well, this is to other apples as Champagne is to other wines! Sadly, supermarkets favour apples that last longer (at the cost of less taste) and have their supply lines set to a steady flow of foreign apples – so all the more reason to savour English apples when they are in season and you can manage to find them…

7 – We arrived at 9 o’clock at night after an epic 12 hour drive and this is the little garden at the back of the static trailer. The approach to it is not very prepossessing – a building site! But the accomodation is nice if bijou and there is a stream flowing alongside which gives a constant gurgling soundtrack…

8 – On the other side of the wall is a disused China Clay drying works since we are on the outskirts of St. Austell, Cornwall, where china clay mining has been an industry for a long time supplying clay for uses from toothpaste to glossy paper…

9 – It is raining this morning but we are on holiday so es la vida! (That’s life!) We shall just relax and go with the flow…

10 – We had chip butties for lunch yesterday – how decadent is that!

I hope you are all living your best lives too and if you want to join in – click the link below…

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

https://fresh.inlinkz.com/js/widget/load.js?id=c0efdbe6b4add43dd7ef

22 Aug: Ten Things of Thankful

Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

1 – Glad we found the perfect spot for these carved Elephants in a corner of our winding stair – we bought it last year in the market in Dieppe whislt on holiday…

2 – This week’s harvest/scrumped apples and plums plus Blackberry and Apple jam and Apple sauce. – I say scrumped but the apples and plums were eithe wild or hanging over a wall into the public domain…

3 – Grateful that the fern I placed in this lovely Macramé plant holder, is finding sufficient light to thrive. The Macramé was a gift from our son’s crafty girlfriend – Yayyy the 70’s…

4 – Grateful for the cards I have received through the Postcard Poetry Festival – the ones on the left are from my list – List 4 and on the right are the bonus cards from the International list. Everyone wants to send to a person outside the USA so they publish an International List – there is no obligation on recipients to respond to these but most include their address so I gues they are hopeful of a return card and I will not disappoint…

5 – Glad that I finished and sent the last of my official PoPoFest cards – this one to a lady in Dublin, so I decided to paint Ben Bulben in Sligo where we lived for 10 years for which I am also grateful…

6 – After a week without rain and with watering by hand at 100litres a pop, I was glad to see a little drizzle today (manifested on my windscreen) – enough to moisten the leave though I had to do a proper watering testerday…

7 – Can you guess the texture I spotted this week (useful for backgrounds in graphic work)? It’s a towel drying on the washing line…

8 – Glad that my partner has managed to get up and see her best friend locally, followed by a haircut in advance of our holoday njext month

9 – Glad that my working week is over but grateful to still have a job 2.5 days a week…

10 – Glad to have found this list to do each week…

I am new to this – my second week but in these difficult times it seems an excellent thing to have to focus on Ten Things of Thankful each week…

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!
Click Here to Enter!