The Distancing Diairies - 15th & 16th May, 2021

Jon was first up on Saturday morning, making tea and bringing it back to bed where we lay, read and listened to the rain pitter-pattering on the window panes until the lads demanded his attention. I stripped and changed the bed, loaded the washing machine and joined Jon in the kitchen for sausage sandwiches. 

Despite the on-off rain, I spent the morning in the garden, emptying the compost bin, wheeling it down to the rockery I'd cleared at the front of the house yesterday and forking the compost into the existing soil. 

Meanwhile, Jon, not happy with the black netting we'd used to screen the garden from the street, stapled some military camo net he'd found on eBay over the top. I planted the rockery up with cranesbill (aka wild geranium) which grows like a weed in our garden along with some nasturtiums & sunflowers I'd grown from seeds aka free plants! Jon had come up with a plan for the dog/schoolkid barrier for the front of the house, rummaged through the woodpile for something suitable and started sawing.

After a coffee, we checked the live feed for the council tip and saw that it was empty (hardly surprising given the weather) so loaded the van with the sacks of garden waste and drove across town to dispose of them. Back at home, I emptied the cloche containing nasturtium seedlings, potting some into modules and planting the rest around the garden. Jon filled the space with tomato plants and gherkins freeing up some room on the kitchen windowsill for more seeds.

By now we were damp and muddy so we called it a day - these photos of the stuff currently growing in the garden looked a lot more attractive than we did! We enjoyed a super fiery Goan veg curry made from a spice kit Jon had spotted on offer in the supermarket.

Highly recommended!

I bought this vintage Indonesian batik kaftan from a charity shop ages ago, it was in the Kinky Shed but I decided it would be perfect for lounging around in....so I borrowed it.

Whilst Jon watched the FA Cup final, I spent an hour on ancestry following the branch of Jon's paternal great-great uncle, Richard Hartshorne, and found more notable relatives. His 11 x great grandfather, Sir Francis Ottley (1600 - 1649) was a Royalist MP, the military governor of Shrewsbury during the Civil War and later served as the High Sheriff of Shropshire. 

The Ottley family C.1636

The Ottley family were part of Shropshire's landed gentry. The family owed their status to wealth made as merchants in Shrewsbury with the monopoly of the finishing of Welsh cloth. They bought Pitchford Hall in 1473 which, these days, is available as a holiday rental HERE (if you're loaded)

Pitchford Hall, Shropshire

Francis's son, Sir Richard Ottley (1626 - 1670)  was born on 5th August meaning he shared his birthday with Jon (his 10x great-grandson). Like his father, Richard served as a Royalist politician and was employed as a gentleman of the privy chamber to Charles II, a position only available to the noble-born. He fought as a youth in the English Civil War, hopefully without the pearl earring and lace collar. 

Sir Richard Ottley as a 10-year-old 

Richard's daughter, Dorothy Ottley (1558 - 1636) married Thomas Lee (1551 - 1620) and lived in the Lee family's ancestral home, Coton Hall in Bridgnorth in Shropshire. Thomas's nephew, Colonel Richard Lee (1617 -1674) emigrated from Shropshire to Virginia in 1636 where he prospered in tobacco. Nicknamed The Immigrant, by the time of his death he was the largest landowner in Virginia with 13,000 acres and was said to have been the richest man in the state. 

Colonel Richard Lee, Jon's ninth cousin

 Richard Henry Lee, another descendent, was one of the signatories of the American Declaration of Independence, whilst Robert E. Lee (Richard's 3x great-grandson) was commander of the Confederate States Army and his 2 x great-grandson was Zachary Taylor (1784 - 1850), the twelfth president of the United States - I'm not sure what relation they are to Jon but they must share some DNA. Coton Hall remained in the Lee family for over 500 years, only changing hands after Harry Lancelot Lee died in 1831. It's currently up for sale (HERE) but at £2million it's well out of our price range.

LEFT: Robert E Lee  RIGHT: Zachary Taylor

The more ancestry research I do, the more I wonder where all the money went! 

Coton Hall, Bridgnorth

We spent the evening drinking rum and watching the Dutch cop series Floodland, wonderfully dark, damp and gloomy and co-starring the wonderful Monic Hendrickx from compelling Dutch crime drama, Black Widow. Jasmine Sendar, who plays Inspector Tara Dessel, is fantastic, too. 

On Sunday morning I went for a walk around the garden before bringing mugs of tea back to bed and reading till 8.30am. We had toast for breakfast, had the Andrew Marr Show on in the background whilst we pottered about cleaning and compiling our Wilko shopping list. We arrived at the charity shop just as it opened, handed over our bag of donations and spent half an hour rummaging to an Armand Van Helden soundtrack - pure joy. The next stop was Wilko where we purchased grass and wildflower seeds, garden netting and a tub of wood treatment.

Charity shop karma - donate and be rewarded! Today's finds were a 1960s handmade lace coat, a 1950s day dress, a 1970s super funky maxi dress, a 1970s Indian block printed wraparound skirt and a printed cotton leisure shirt. Jon's earmarked the shirt for Greek holidays, I shall be adding the skirt to my wardrobe, taking the total number of Indian block print skirts in my collection archive to fourteen, a much nicer number than 13.

Technically I didn't find this cuff, another shopper did, kindly handing it to me saying that it was just my style. The nails are Barry M's Beach Club in a velvet finish, I painted them last night in front of the TV. 

The day had started dry and sunny but by the time we'd had our lunchtime noodles the sky had clouded over and it was looking like the forecast for torrential rain and thunder was correct so, after I'd washed the purchases and hung them up in the utility room, I posed for a quick outfit photo. I've always felt like a goddess in this 1970s cotton-gauze dress, made in India by Mayur but I feel even better wearing it with the vintage cotton slip I bought from the chazza last week as opposed to my usual 1980s nylon ones which I donated back to the shop today.

Despite the ominous skies, we planted out the dahlias and I managed to turn over half of the area outside the gates in preparation for sowing our wildflower lawn later in the week. Jon had just called me in for a coffee when the thunder and torrential rain started. I don't think we'll need to water those dahlias in!

Tea was Ryvita, cheese and pickles eaten off our laps whilst watching a documentary on Tutankhamun, we know how to live! Later it'll be more Floodland, although looking out of the window, it looks like we might be able to recreate it in Walsall.

See you soon!