Home Thoughts Weekly

The weather’s set fair so Tom and I decide Wednesday’s the day to tackle Snowdon. Armed only with sandwiches, sushi, Gala pie, Mars bars, a tray of Bakewell tarts and lots of water (yep, you can tell we were determined not to starve), we’re up at the Crack of Doom and out the door at 6.30 am to be at the car park for our walk at 9 am. After a slight false start when one of us spots the sign which states ‘Watkin Path’ and one of us who ‘has been here before’ ignores it, we are on our way. At first, I wonder what all the fuss is about; it’s just a series of wide stone steps, isn’t it? But the ‘steps’ are high, uneven and the incline just keeps getting steeper. Along the way we have a very slow race with two men neither of whom has climbed Snowdon before and who are both a little daunted by the path – or lack of – across the treacherous scree slope which leads to the summit. Tom’s hearty reassurances that the path isn’t as dangerous as it looks make me completely obli...

A spell of bright sunshine here in west Wales brings bright illustrations of Dylan Thomas’s ‘force that through the green fuse drives the flower’; vibrant new leaves unfurl, pale buds unfold into blossom and the hedgerows are a jewel box of colour. But all this energy, this renewal, brings, as Thomas’s poem also identifies, a strong sense of time marching on and nagging feeling that there are things I need to get on with. Seeing the glorious photos my seventeen-year-old niece took when she recently climbed Snowdon reminds Tom of his walk there with my stepson and me that it’s still on my ‘to do’ list. We can just see the top of Snowdon from an upstairs bedroom window so it’s high time I stopped looking at it and walked up it instead! I’ve bought some new boots, taken them out for some test walks and we’re keeping an eye on the weather with a view to heading off to the mountains this week. Now we’ve completed our utility room , it’s time to tackle the jungle that is our garden. ...

It's a beautiful day!  Here are a few sights from this morning's walk to the beach... The hedgerows in bloom: The woods in dappled light before the canopy of leaves casts a shade (although there is someone lurking in the shadows!). And a beach all to ourselves:

Pre-loved but unloved Following a brief discussion about Preseli bluestone and Stonehenge, Tom comes up with a cunning plan to shift our brand new beech worktop from the carport to the utility room. The worktop weighs nearly as much as me, but with the use of three kitchen chairs the two of us manage to slide it along and make stately progress towards the front door with only a minimum of raised voices. There is a slight hiccup when we reach the front steps and the lovingly polished worktop takes a gentle tumble into a flowerbed, but all the effort is worth it for the moment of triumph when we finally see it in place. The utility room’s the one space we left after our frenzy of renovation when we moved here four years ago. It sort of worked, so we lived with it, but now it’s finished I can’t believe what a difference it makes; suddenly the house no longer stops at the kitchen door but feels bigger and with a better flow. And although we gutted the room, thanks to a bit of forw...