The Distancing Diaries - 27th & 28th November, 2020

On Friday morning, just before my final Wii Fit session of the week, I booked next week's National Trust visit and then did a load of washing, hanging it up to dry in the utility room. After our breakfast I caught up with blog comments while Jon measured up the radiators in the lounge and middle room and placed a click and collect order with B&Q which we went and collected before heading over to Liz and Al's.

Liz and Al live in a Victorian toll keeper's cottage on the banks of the Wyrley and Essington Canal in the middle of a nature reserve in the village of Pelsall, a four mile drive from the centre of Walsall. In line with current lockdown regulations we are allowed to meet one friend to go for a walk, so Liz and I went on ahead and the boys followed at a 20 metre distance. There'll be no rule breaking here!

The West Midlands has an extensive canal network and Birmingham is said to have more miles of canal than Venice. Round these parts we call the canal "the cut" and if anyone tells you that they're going up the cut, it means they are walking along the canal towpath. It's an expression frequently used in Peaky Blinders.

After just being made redundant from her 25 year visual merchandising career (bloody Covid!) Liz is now a full-time artist. Check out her website HERE or on Instagram HERE

It was another eye-wateringly cold, bone-chilling day but it felt good to out amongst nature.

After a bracing walk we were sent on our way with a mince pie each , the first we'd had in years, and a pleasant change from noodles!  I spent the rest of the afternoon crocheting. Tea was the other half of the pizza we'd had on Wednesday along with a bottle of ale. Later we opened the rum and caught up with BBC4's new thriller series, The Valhalla Murders which is wonderfully dark and chilling, just how we like our Scandi Noir. 

On Saturday morning Jon was up first. The lads insisted on going out despite the torrential rain and soon joined us back in the bedroom where we lay drinking tea and reading till 8.30am. While Jon started breakfast I stripped and changed the bed, loaded the washing machine and put away yesterday's laundry.

Breakfast was veggie sausages with poached eggs on a slice of Jon's home made spelt bread along with lashings of French's mustard. As the rain showed no signs of stopping I sat in the lounge with  A Place in The Sun on the TV and spent the rest of the morning crocheting. 

A couple of hours later and I'd finished my latest project - a pair of wrist warmers (aka beer mittens) in a super chunky sea green yarn. As the rain had finally stopped Jon put them on ready for a walk around the block. I wore the crochet creation I'd spent Thursday working on, a winter hat with a bastard massive pom pom in the same super chunky wool from Shaw's (a bargain at £1.25 a ball!)

 

Walsall is wonderfully diverse especially Highgate, the area where we live. You'll pass enormous Arts & Crafts mansions, ten-bedroom Edwardian villas, Victorian gentlemen's residences, 1930s bungalows, '60s tower blocks and tiny back-to-back terraces, a Sikh gurdwara from 1964, a cricket pitch, a huge Indian supermarket (Johal's), derelict buildings, numerous postboxes (including this one which is a designated Covid test drop off point), an empty pub, two-hundred year old cobbled alleyways and an early 19th Century windmill all within a couple of streets. 

The nicest thing about walking around here though is the famed friendliness of our fellow Black Country folk. Everyone, without exception, smiles and says hello. When Jon was taking my photo a dashing  gentleman told him what a beautiful view he was capturing. I thought he was talking about the wall - Jon said he meant me! 

Vintage Swedish army parka & Rockport desert boots (charity shop), Levi 510 skinnies (eBay), wrist warmers (made by me)

Vintage navy suede jacket (eBay), Van Allen mittens on a string (bought new in 1971), 1970s Mayur Indian gauze dress (local selling page), Ilse Jacobsen handmade rubber boots (new, retail, 2018), pompom hat (handmade by me)

When I mentioned my collaboration with the Swedish design company on my last post I was surprised by what a couple of people saw as Swedish style mentioning word like minimal, white and festive.

When I got home from our walk I thought I'd better give one of my Lundby doll's houses a dusting down (a 1971 Gothenburg) and show you what I imagine Swedish style to be.

The furniture is mostly original Swedish designed pieces, many made in collaboration with Ikea in the 1970s. 

 Several room are furnished in the Gustavian style, after King Gustav (1771 - 1792), very similar to the French & English Regency style of the same period.

There are nods to the painted folk art furniture that was big in the 1970s.

Lot of the wallpaper and textiles I've used are by Josef Frank (1885 - 1967) an Austrian designer who became a Swedish citizen after fleeing the Nazis in the 1930s. He was the Swedish William Morris.

Rest assured - like my Swedish doll's houses - there'll be no minimalism or pared-down style in Stonecroft!  Going by the Scandi dramas and films I've seen Swedish people decorate their homes as eclectically as we do.

All that doll's house dusting took me up to teatime, which was spinach and ricotta tortellini with Jon's homemade sauce and plenty of freshly grown basil. Tonight will involve lashings of rum and some grisly Nordic Noir.

Stay safe and see you soon!