Charity Shopping, Films and a Trip to the Priory

Wednesday was a complete washout with incessant rain all day so we took ourselves off to the cinema and joined nine other people for the matinee performance of the The Duke which we absolutely loved - go & see it if you can. 

The reviews are spot-on. 

It was too wet for outfit photos which is a shame as the hand-embroidered Spanish dress I wore has yet to make an appearance on my blog. The evening was spent quaffing rum and cola and watching the final episode of The Ipcress File.

Thursday saw a trip out to one of our favourite Black Country towns for a bit of charity shopping. We came back with a 1970s crochet waistcoat, a 1980s Richards crinkle cotton maxi skirt, a 1980s Burton raincoat, a vintage snakeskin bag made in Toyko, a 1980s Frank Green block printed Indian maxi skirt, a 1970s Kumar Bros embellished cardi, a large collection of vintage bow ties, a 1980s Italian label metallic snakeskin clutch, a fabulous 1960s linen dress, a 1980s kilim bag, a 1970s midi dress from Debenhams, a handmade 1970s top, a 1950s fake astrakan coat and a novelty print 1980s jacket by Bassler.

I'm not sure what happened to my other leg! I wore another of my Dilli Grey dresses and my red leather Moshulu boots I'd scored in a charity shop last December. 

On Friday we visited Stoneywell, the Arts & Crafts cottage in Leicestershire which I blogged about HERE. Later we watched the brilliant - but harrowing - film, The Courier.

On Saturday, after pegging the washing out on the line and breakfasting on vegetarian sausage sandwiches slathered with wholegrain mustard, we drove over to Sandwell Valley Country Park for a walk in the glorious spring sunshine. It had been almost forty years since I'd last visited and Jon had never been.

 Covering an area of over 660 acres and extending from West Bromwich to the edge of Walsall, the park has woodland with many varieties of native trees and some introduced species, pools inhabited by wildfowl and two working farm visitor centres with walled gardens and rare breeds including Hereford cattle & Berkshire pigs. Managed by the Sandwell branch of the RSPB, Forge Mill Lake, also within the park, is an important breeding ground for lapwings and oystercatchers and also seemed very popular with squirrels which showed no fear.

Sandwell Valley Country Park was once the site of Sandwell Priory, a 12th Century Benedictine monastry, closed on the orders of Cardinal Wolsey in 1525, ten years before Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monastries. By 1705 the site had been redeveloped once again, as Sandwell Hall for the Earl of Dartmouth. From the late 19th century the hall was used as an asylum, and then in 1907, a home for boys, Sandwell Hall Industrial School for Mentally Defective Boys. In 1928 the building was demolished due to subsidence caused by mining from Sandwell Park (Jubilee) Colliery which employed over 600 miners.

Very little remains of the priory, although its ground-plan has been marked out and the lay-out of the church is quite clear. There are some low level walls of the structure and the remains of an open stone grave that resides in the eastern transept. The site is beside a footpath and is open to the public free of charge at all times.

Like with everywhere you visit in the Black Country, everyone smiled and said hello. A young woman went into raptures over my dress, a vintage Indian block printed gauzy cotton midi dress by Mayur. Too warm for a coat, I wore a 1970s denim cowboy shirt (on permanent loan from the Kinky Melon stockroom) and some ridiculous 1970s sunglasses from my collection.

Jon's in secondhand Levis with a cord worker jacket and Clarks boots, both charity shop finds. He was most upset when he couldn't find his Lock & Co leather cap last week and was delighted when he phoned Laboni, the Indian restaurant we'd been to after visiting the pub with Liz & Al, to be told by the owner that it was safe and sound. Even better that the boss lives in the next street and hand delivered it a few hours later.

What a gorgeous place - next time we'll go back with a picnic.

Flour-free peanut butter biscuits (recipe HERE)

The rest of the day - which saw temperatures reach the giddy heights of 17°C - was spent sorting out the garden and doing a bit of ....shock, horror....baking! I bit into the first one and managed to break my tooth, what luck that I'd already got a dentist appointment booked for next week, my first visit in almost  two and a half years!

The evening was spent with rum & TV. Keen to reacquaint ourselves with Crete we watched The Two Faces of January, the film adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel of the same name and then started watching Deadwind, a Finnish crime series that Vronni had recently mentioned on her blog.

Sunday brought more warmth and sunshine. After a bowl of porridge we drove down to the clearance charity shop and got there just as the staff were opening up.

Finds included The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsover and a travel journal called Hit the Road, Jac! about a woman who spent seven years travelling the world on a Royal Enfield as well as all three of Carol Drinkwater's books about her life on an olive farm in Provence (I read The Olive Farm when it was released, its been twenty years now so overdue a revisit). There was also a 1980s Thai silk shirt, a couple of teeshirts for Jon, a vintage snakeskin bag, some barely worn leopard print Converse All Stars and a Moschino skirt with a cool motorbike print (I wonder if it came from the same home as the book?)

I also got these pristine not-Converse pink pumps for £3 which matched the (second-hand) Dilli Grey Farah dress I was already wearing perfectly. Here's another pair of vintage sunglasses from my collection. 

Whilst I continued with my garden tidying, Jon ticked off a few more jobs on Gilbert's to-do list. Back indoors we booked the accomodation for our next escape, Jon sorted out the airport parking & I hunted down some reusable 100ml plastic bottles to decant our sunscreen into as, once again, we're opting to take hand luggage only. There's weeks to go but we like to be organised!

See you soon!