How very English!

How very English it is to obsess about the weather – I know we’re famous worldwide for it!  And walking along to the village post office all the greetings go something like this…. “Hello! How are you? Lovely/awful/chilly etc etc day isn’t it?”  But can you wonder at this when yesterday it didn’t stop raining once.  Not once.  In the morning we had heavy rain, followed by torrential rain at lunchtime.  Then a brief lull when it only rained lightly (we managed to squeeze in a rather damp walk in that interlude) before the heavy rain resumed until after dark.  I lit the fire for the first time this year as it was cold as well as wet …

Whilst today I woke to a clear blue sky, sunshine and warmth too!  I’ve packed away the summerhouse office for this year and am working inside again…..

Enjoying the sunshine streaming through the windows onto my table.  And when I went outside to take some photographs (see next month’s magazine projects lining up beside my laptop ready to have their patterns written) there was real warmth in the sunshine and for a while I regretted closing down the summerhouse…..

Though at this time of year the sun is lower in the sky, there are only a few hours of warmth, and most probably a chilly night to come – unless the rain clouds return to blanket us!  Can you spot the terrible twosome in the photo above?  They’re quite hard to see. Ben is towards the end of the garden facing down towards me and Daisy – who is staring at him very hard – I seem to have chopped off half of her body and you can just see the back of her head and front legs.  There’s a bit of a bare patch on the grass which I must reseed while there’s still some warmth in the soil – playing with their young visitor, Miss Tilly, earlier this month was fun for the Newfies – but hard on the garden!

Another very English characteristic is a reluctance to blow our own trumpets, that is to tell people about our proudest achievements – it’s very much seen as showing off which is not a good thing at all.  But this weekend that’s exactly what I’ve been asked to do.  Not show off, but to tell people about one of my proudest achievements – Bustle & Sew of course!  I’ve been asked to do a presentation about Bustle & Sew, from the very earliest days as a crafting blog back in 2009, to where it is today.

There will be 100 (yes ONE HUNDRED) delegates listening to me and I’ve been asked to speak for an hour.  AN HOUR!!  That’s 60 minutes or THREE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED SECONDS!!  I’m really pleased to be doing this as it’s great to perhaps be able to help others with their own small businesses, but the closer Saturday comes, the more nervous I get!  So please everybody, can you send positive thoughts my way on Saturday morning – I need all your help and support as I’m so far out of my comfort zone I might as well be on another planet!

“We’ll be thinking about you Mum!”

And finally, don’t forget  – there’s still time to enter my Toadstool Bag giveaway over on my Facebook page.  And if you don’t do Facebook, then don’t worry, I have another great giveaway planned very soon here on the blog as part of my month of celebrating our new website!