uk – Page 3 – Foxes Den

A few days at Mr.Gilberts

My wife’s best friend is getting married this weekend, so we have ventured away from our place in the East Midlands, down to the smoke on the outskirts of north London.

For 54 years of my life I lived in this area so I know it very well both man and child. Most of my formative years were spent in and around here just doing what kids growing up used to do. But today I’m back here as an adult and things today look so different from when I was younger. However one place looks as serene and beautiful as ever.

And that is Mr. Gilbert’s place.

When I was at my junior school we put on a show called, “The pirates of Penzance”. I remember dressing up and singing many jaunty songs but at the time I never made the connection.

Then one day, playing with my friends we ventured up to Old Redding on the borders of Harrow, Stanmore and Oxhey, where there were woods and cycle tracks and people walking dogs, in avenues of what I now know are rhododendron bushes. There was a small lake, and then when you wandered through the beautiful display of flowers you came upon this beautiful sight.

Speaking with my parents it now became clear that we had stumbled across the former home of the dramatist W.S Gilbert, him of Gilbert and Sullivan fame who’d written that show I was in at school, it all now fell into place.

The manor is now a hotel and that is why my wife and I are here this weekend. The Manor House is steeped in history and is still the HQ of the W.S Gilbert society who regularly stage his shows in the environment in which they were written.

Now Mr.Gilbert unfortunately saw his demise here at the lake in the grounds. In 1911 he was giving a swimming lesson to two ladies when one of them got into trouble whilst attempting to swim, he dived in to save her but unfortunately had a heart attack and his life ended there.

The manor went through changes of ownership throughout the years before being taken over by Best Western a few years ago.

The grounds are some of the best maintained that you will ever see in a hotel environment, there is wildlife freely roaming and as we were having a drink just last evening we had the company of some small deer not far from us.

It’s hard to believe we are just a few hundred yards from busy main roads, it’s just so quiet. You are guaranteed a peaceful stay here at Mr.Gilberts, it our go to place whenever we are in this part of the world.

If you’re ever in this part of the world just walk through or stay for a while. There are excellent travel links to central London and not many better places than this to have a base. It’s a touch of total tranquility on the outskirts of one of the world’s most manic city environments.

The best laid plans and all that…

It’s just gone four in the morning, the birds are awakening and I’m stuck in an office in Leicestershire awaiting my next call out of this long night shift.

Despite weather reports being favourable it has been heaving down with rain for the past few hours , and it doesn’t look as if it’s going to let off at any time today.

This is pretty much a post about gardening, another activity I like to get involved in, and at the moment I have a project underway that was pretty much weather dependent.

I have begun the digging out of a small part of the garden in preparation for laying a small patio area. Our garden is pretty much clay based under the grass and to be honest as a result of that drainage is not brilliant. We never used to have issues with drainage due to there being 12 trees in situ that the previous owner had planted, he never looked after them and they became diseased. These sucked every bit of moisture from the garden and never gave us any issues with pooling water.

Fast forward a couple of years and those trees had to be removed due to the aforementioned disease, right down to the roots. Now during the normal British rain season ( most of the year ) we have pools developing around the garden. We are replanting a number of smaller trees but it’s going to be some time before they are drinking the quantities of rain water we usually get here in the East Midlands.

I chose this week to do my digging as it was forecast to be the driest week in a while and there was a sufficient chance of me getting all the digging done and getting the sub base in place before any inclement weather arrived.

I sit here this morning cursing so called weather forecasts.

I have been doing work between night shifts spreading it out and was so pleased with progress thus far. I removed all turf yesterday and today started digging out to about 15 c/m and started to level the area out. All excess soil was being spread around the flower beds of the front and rear garden so nothing was going to waste at all.

I stopped work on the garden at about 4 pm yesterday, well happy with progress telling the wife I had about another 2 days of work to do on levelling before we could start to get the sub base in place and compacted prior to paving, hopefully the job would be completed by next Sunday.

That’s not going to happen.

Looking at my security camera in the garden I can see that the patio area has now taken on the look of a pond and later today I half expect to see a couple of ducks taking residence.

The moral of this story is , weather forecasts don’t work. It’s not yet an art despite all the technological advances over the years.

Check progress here: The best laid plans and all that…Pt2

And don’t tell the wife when the job will be finished as she’s now got me tied to that timescale and I know now that is not going to be achieved.

I am a fool

Stay happy people. You are so special.

Snow in the Uk

Panic, everything grinds to a halt, you’ve guessed it the Uk has had a sprinkling of snow satisfying the egos of the poison media that have been promising an apocalypse for the last couple of weeks.

Why are we so unprepared? A question with a thousand different answers I’d guess, I’ve a few of my own but I just can’t bring myself to air those views. As I’m writing this item sitting in the car waiting for my wife to finish her nail appointment, I may not have the time and could well lose my flow if she was to interrupt me.

The thing is we have recently spent an enjoyable week in Iceland and they truly know what snow is and it dosen’t seem to impede them in any way. The infrastructure is superior in many cases what with directing geo thermal water under the roads to warm them after it has initially heated your property. All vehicles crack on at the normal speed un impeded and everyone seems to be happy. The only cars stuck that we witnessed were tourists not quite used to what they were experiencing.

I guess familiarity with such occasions prepares you better, so that may be the answer in the long run.

Either way snow looks lovely, it’s the only time that my garden looks as good as everyone else’s 😂

I just hate driving in it though. What’s your views on snow where you live? Can your infrastructure handle it. I’d like to know.

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