The Perfect Railway Holiday (aka as the "Best Train Holiday EVER") - Part 1

Where do you go on holiday if your child is mad about trains?

The answer is simple, Wales.  Berwyn to be precise where for a reasonable amount of money you can hire the Station Master's house at Berwyn station.  It's situated right on the railway platform where regular steam and vintage diesel trains run.

Here's the link if you want to have a nose. Berwyn Station Masters House

I can't remember how I found the house but find it I did and I booked it there and then.

I can hand on heart say it is the BEST holiday home I have ever stayed in.  The view from the living room is stunning with sweeping views of the platform and the River Dee.

 
Berwyn station is a vintage lovers dream with lovely vintage touches here and there.

The house is beautifully furnished with everything you would ever need on holiday, including an iron.  Several of our past holiday homes were without one so I was especially thrilled to find an iron in a cupboard.  Simple things!  To welcome us on our arrival at the house there was a lovely bottle of wine and beautiful fresh flowers.  And of course the obligatory carton of fresh milk in the fridge for a cuppa. 

The Wee Man spent many happy hours playing on the platform.  The station is rather quiet with not many people getting on and off at Berwyn so he had the run of the platform and for one whole week he was the Station Master of Berwyn railway station, complete with train cap, whistle, flag and official badge.

As part of the holiday home hire we were given complementary tickets for the railway which allowed us to ride the trains as many times as we wanted during our stay.  This made the holiday very worthwhile as at £12 for an adult ticket and there being four adults we saved a lot of money.  The tickets were used almost on a daily basis.

The majority of the railway staff are volunteers and were exceptionally lovely which really made the Wee Man's holiday.  He was given a tour of the signal box at Llangollen station, allowed into the driver's cab of a steam train, helped with the coupling up of several trains and the highlight for him was a ride in the driver's cab of a vintage diesel train.

I think you need to be a parent to a train mad child to fully appreciate why all of the little extra treats were really special.  I have to add though that the little extras are not part of the holiday package, but merely the staff recognising how especially train obsessed the Wee Man is and indulging him in his obsession.  He really is obsessed!

More holiday posts to follow where the Wee Man's train obsession will become very apparent.

Where do you keep your recipes?

There was a bit in a Nigella Lawson programme many moons ago that had an effect on me.  In it she showed us her mother's and grandmother's recipe books and told how they had been handed down over the generations.  She then proceeded to cook some of the recipes in the books.

It got me thinking, my mum is not one for keeping things or writing things down.  I learned to cook her recipes from watching and helping her in the kitchen and I have never watched either of my grandmother's cook or bake.

I am a sentimental old thing so after the programme I decided to start a recipe book that I hoped would be handed down through the generations. What started out as a lovingly handwritten keepsake has, over the years, become a rather stained book with lots of loose papers, post it notes and crappy handwriting.  I hope my great grand children will be able to decipher my scrawls.

I nabbed a book from work, one of the many marketing materials we use to get on a daily basis.  I liked the ribbon tie on it and the sturdy wipe clean cover.  See I can be practical.

Post it note and printer paper recipes.  

A print out of recipes from the Wee Man's dietician, recipes torn from magazines and some more scrawls on printer paper. 

A recipe from a Pret a Manger sandwich box! 

One of the first recipes I wrote in the book.  Written in 2004 and check out the neat handwriting. 

 

Recipes from the Big Man's Mum.  She wrote them out and my father in law typed and printed them for me.  Very sweet of them. 

 

I need to transfer all these recipes into the book but the thought of hand writing them all scares me.  I don't do hand writing, as you can see from the spidery scrawls.

Do you keep recipes?  Where do you keep them and what do you keep?

A Handbook for Christmas

Come December, the shops are choc full of guides and handbooks on how to have the best Christmas ever.  How to dress your tree, how to serve a Michelin starred dinner and how to make exceptional presents that will become heirlooms.

Not one to deviate from the bandwagon I found the best Christmas handbook ever published.  Bought for a meagre £1 from a charity shop last week, the book has given me a lot of  lightbulb moments and a few chuckles.

It covers everything you need to have a very merry Christmas for all the family with recipes, decorating ideas, craft ideas and even instructs you on how to take down and store your decorations for next year. 

By far my favourite section in the book is the "Choosing of Presents".  With a handy illustrated guide on which presents to give and not give each member of your family.  For example,  who knew giving Gran a corset for Christmas would elicit this response from her?  

And it is really not a good idea to give Mum toilet paper and a scrubbing brush?

The kids would take exception to receiving a school uniform or writing paper.  And poor baby should definitely not be reminded of his incontinence.

There's also a chapter on how to decorate your tree to a theme with great crafting ideas for ornaments.  There's the Children's tree.

With wool and stick stars.  I remember making these at school.

Sweetie garlands which will no doubt rapidly become an empty sweetie wrapper garland.

And fluffy woolen pom poms.  Did these at school too and hated it.  They are so monotonous to do.

There's also the Victorian tree with gravity defying doves at the top of the tree.

A Soft and Safe Tree for baby with cotton wool garlands and paper chains.

And my favourite tree is the Wildlife tree for your garden.

Who needs gawdy Blackpool lights in your garden when you could have this lovely creation?  It's so simple to make and the little birdies will be kept happy through the Christmas season.

The book also gives some handy tips on how to build with snow.  Who'd have thunk you could use a cardboard box to make snow squares or a wasing up liquid bottle to make towers?  Genius!

All I need now are four trees, two feet of snow and definitely not toilet paper or scrubbing brushes.  

Strike a Pose!

We went to visit my brother on Tuesday to meet our lovely new niece.  Needless to say I was super excited and spent the whole time holed up in the bedroom with my sister in law and my new niece.  Meanwhile the Wee Man and Big Man got decidedly bored watching children's TV.  So out came the Wee Man's Lego camera and the boys got down to some serious "art".

The Big Man explained the feet shots were the Wee Man's attempts to use the timer on the camera.  A timer that doesn't actually exist.  

I spy with my little eye...a bit of Cath?

Last week I took the The Big Man's Mum and Dad to a local market.  The Big Man's Mum likes markets and I must admit I use to turn my nose up at them, but now I'm a true convert.  Looking for that every elusive bargain to spend my (the Big Man's) pennies on is such a thrill. 

Whilst we ambled along, (the Big Man's Mum was walking with an elbow crutch, but that's a whole other story), I spied a rather "interesting" stall.  "Could it be?  Surely not?  What if it is?"  Pushing my disabled Mother In Law aside and dragging the Wee Man behind me I dashed to the stall and gasped.  Obviously not at those prices.  It can't be!  But did I care?  Not in the slightest.  

I wanted to take a photo of the stall but I'm sure the stall holder would have taken offence though probably not to the extent that she would have called the police, considering what she was selling.  

It was CK heaven, think of all the CK bags, in CK fabrics at market prices.  T'was heavenly.  By the time the Big Man's parents had caught up with us (disapproving looks included), I had a haul of bags in front of me deciding which one I wanted.  I wanted all of them obviously but I'm sure the Big Man would have had some chose words for me if I'd gone home with the entire collection.  

After some posing in front of a shop window and getting strange looks from the patrons of the bookies, I finally chose this gorgeous beauty. 

Lookey at the gorgeous flowers.  Pink and blue and all pretty looking.  It makes my tummy go all topsy turvy. It has all the pockets and space I need to carry all the Wee Man's stuff around with me.  Though probably not to the extent of my gorgeous tote bag from Cartier.  

The Wee Man got in on the act too and posed with a London print bag and insisted I bought that one instead.  As much as I love the London print I just can't see myself with it.  Maybe if I were four years old and London bus mad, I could have though.

As I paid I for the bag, second guessing my choice all the while, I noticed the Big Man's Mum barking her usual orders at the Big Man's Dad (he's ever so slightly hen pecked!).  She'd decided she wanted some CK action too.  Now I must tell you something about my dear Mum in Law.  She is a self proclaimed shopaholic and will buy things for the sake of buying things.  This drives me insane, as she will happily spend £20 on something that will spend it's life in the back of a cupboard.  I could go on, but I won't. 

I tried in vain to talk her out of buying a bag as I knew she would not use it.  It's not her style at all and it was way too big for her.  She has trouble getting around and the last thing she needs is a huge oilcloth bag swinging at her side.  But it was to no avail and she promptly bought a a bag because she "..wants one!".  Sigh!  

Can you guess what she's done with the bag that is of no utter use to her?  The bag that is way too big for her and will hinder her already hindered movement?  The bag that her insane shopaholic magpie mind insisted she buy?  Go on have a guess!

She gave it to me!  Her beloved, caring and thoroughly deserving daughter in law!  Yippeee!!!  That night she posed  with it and decided it was a bit too big for her and she didn't like the design and Dad in Law hated it too.  So I got it, cos I'm a good girl!  

So I have two.  Lookey, lookey, see. 

Bless my Mum in Law and her Shopaholic ways.  Bless her insane mind.  Bless.  

How do you eat yours?

The Big Man and I don't have your average run of the mill arguments.  Indeed we don't have arguments at all more like heated debates.  In the many, many years that we've known each other we've never gotten into a slanging match of the door slamming kind.  I suppose I am very lucky in that the Big Man knows that his wife is always, always right...to a degree.

What we do have are heated debates about the rights and wrongs of the world in general.  Regular readers will know about our recent debate about the Universe.  Last night we moved on from the high brow, intellectual debate to a more, some may say "mundane" topic of scone eating.  That's right, scone eating.

The past week we've been "gorging" ourselves on scones, complete with strawberry jam and clotted cream.  The same week as two of the Wee Man's nursery teachers remarked that I had lost weight.  I am now a true believer of the cream scone diet(!)

How can the simple act of eating a scone cause such disharmony in a seemingly stable relationship?

Simple.  I prepare my scones with jam first then clotted cream on top, whereas the Big Man has cream first then jam on top.

Now that the debate dust has settled I can see that there is no right or wrong way as such but it is purely an individual's choice.  But the part of me that always wants to win wants to know...how do you eat yours?