Nothing says ‘I love you’ like Interflora does it? Alas this little beauty which was on the doorstep when I got home earlier wasn’t from a secret admirer, MrSpud or any other funny little hobbit type creature. It was sent with compliments by Interflora themselves. But a flower delivery is a flower delivery, right?

What was in the box? A gorgeous gerbera and roses bouquet in Autumnal shades. The heatwave is making them look ‘slightly’ unseasonal but no matter, they are gorgeous.

I don’t get flowers very often. MrSpud even failed to bring me flowers after I’d given birth. Twice. Luckily for him I’m not one to hold a grudge and I’ve totally let it go and rarely mention it …

… anyway. I remember very vividly the first time I was sent flowers, by Interflora in fact, back in the days where orders had to be telephoned across the land and same day flower delivery was just a twinkle in a marketing man’s eye … it was on my birthday back in pre-historic times, 1977, when I turned 7. My grandmother sent me a bouquet because she said I was a ‘grown up lady’. I think I appreciated the gesture but no doubt I would have preferred some kind of plastic tat instead.

Having admired my flowers I fished out my macro lens and demonstrated, once again, that you really shouldn’t even attempt macro photography without a tripod.

I didn’t receive any payment for this post, although a did receive a huge bouquet. I WIN!

I couldn’t stand it for another day. I couldn’t bear to look at my beautiful writing room piled high with boxes and ‘stuff that doesn’t have a home yet’ a moment longer. We moved in getting on 2 months ago and, since then, I’ve been perching on the dining room table to work, do admin, pay bills, download and process photos and all that. I’m waiting for delivery of a lovely writing desk, my 40th birthday present from MrSpud, which is why I let my writing room turn in to a dump. It was due for delivery next week, but it’s been delayed for another month. I suspect it will be delayed again…and I couldn’t stand it a minute longer. I need space, physical space and head space.

The boys had a friend to play today and MrSpud was involved in Important DIY Tasks so I had the day to myself mostly (apart from regular provision of food and drink for said children). So I cleared the room, forced MrSpud to help me {wo}manhandle and old table from the ‘shack’ at the bottom of the garden. I flung a table cloth on it and TA DA…I have my writing room. It will be a few years before it’s the way I want it, since we won’t be redecorating/changing floor covering etc until after we’ve built the extension to the house. But I know how it will look and, for now, I’m happy to live in my dreams. And have a little space, full of light, all to myself. I’ve even found the key to the french doors which lead out to the scrubland garden. And we managed to open the catflap cut in to the metal plate at the bottom, which we thought was long since seized up . A 1930s catflap is something to behold. One of ours cats took it for a test drive today and managed to squeeeeeeeze through it. I can only imagine that cats in 1934, when the house was built, were rather more slender than today’s mega moggies.

Probably calling it a ‘writing room’ is rather affected. But that’s the way it was described to me when I very first looked around the house with a view to buying it and, in that moment, I fell in love with the house. It’s small, long and narrow with a glass door out to the garden and a window next to it. It’s on the ground floor, sandwiched between the dining room and the drawing room. In my mind, the lady of the house would retire here after breakfast to deal with the post and attend to her correspondence.  Oddly, there is no light fixture in the room. Either the lady of the house only used the room in the mornings, when light is so plentiful in this south facing room. Or only subtle ‘lamp’ light was allowed.

Moving on…also occupying my newly refreshed mind…a couple of snippets from Delayed Gratification which I blogged about yesterday. There’s a small feature about books which have had to be pulped due to almost unbelievable errors including ‘The Charles I Bible’ (1631) which included the achingly wonderful misprint ‘Though shalt commit adultery’ (peasants and noblemen rejoiced everywhere) and ‘The Pasta Bible’ (2010) which listed ‘salt and freshly ground black people’ in its recipe for spelt tagliatele with sardines and prosciuto. So wrong…so…so…wrong. How could that every have got through 256 proof reads? Hilarious, I giggled for ages.

Hmm…the writing room isn’t ‘quite’ the sanctuary I’d first thought. Hot water pipes in here are noisy.  The whole system is being replaced in a few weeks thankfully. I need peace to attend to my lady’s correspondence…

Oooof, after many many many painful and secretive months we have finally bought our dream house and what is, please please please, our forever house. Well, until we are ancient and crazy and have to shipped off to a home of course.

We’ve had to keep it so quiet as it was a private sale and we knew it’s a house that’s been the object of affection in the past. We thought it would all happen so quickly as there was no chain either side, the house was unoccupied, everyone involved was friendly and wanted it to happen. Inevitably there was a hiccup in the shape of a tedious issue over the boundary of the land the house sits on. THANKFULLY resolved easily and quickly as the surrounding land is owned by friends who were able to resolve the issue without a fuss [gives up a million thanks to the gods]. I think we looked around in July and, in theory, it should have been done by early September. We now have an ‘enforceable contract’ ie the vendor can’t back out but it won’t be finally done for a good few weeks. I don’t think we’ll move in until January.

But who cares because we’ve done it! It’s very near to where we live now and the location is perfect for us. The house is lovely but needs some updating and an extension to add the number of bedrooms/reception rooms we need. But it’s more than livable for now so we’ve been fortunate in that respect. Although I’m no looking forward to a year or so of building work, ouch. It’s an early 20th century house complete with a croquet lawn, oooh how fancy is that? Although the 20 million rabbits that rule the garden have long since turned the croquet ‘lawn’ in to scrub. I read an article on Autumn lawn care with interest last week, until I remembered I don’t actually have a lawn at this stage. Just ‘scrub’. Oh well, one for MrSpud. Anyone got any tips for Autumn scrub care?

Here’s Diggy picking his way up the field towards the back of the house, hidden by a wall a trees that surrounds the garden.

There’s a well in the garden. I have no idea what to say about that other than don’t tell the boys because it’s terrifyingly deep.

Also, the original 1930s ‘bell’ system is still in existence in some of the rooms, including the bathroom. Why? The buzzer is right next to the bath? WHY? I have no idea but, again, don’t tell the boys. My idea of a peaceful pre-bed bath does not involved being SUMMONED from the kitchen every 20 seconds only to find a heap of giggling chaps in the bath. Pah.

I would show you some photos but it’s a really recognisable house Round These Parts. I know I sound like a pretentious freak but we’ve been hidden away from The Public for years in a house that can’t be seen from the road at all. Our new place can Be Spotted and thus a little discretion is probably sensible. So, the photo above is snapped through the gates…that’s My New House Bokeh in the distance..waaaah!

Instead I give you….Diggy…truffling through the leafs on the drive…

Oh, close up! Loving the alarming wood carvings above the stairwell window. What..the…feck? DRAGONS? In deepest Suffolk?

Anyway, please expect a lot of moaning and whinging from me over the next few months as I negotiate my way through yet another house move. Then, more moaning and whinging as I negotiate my through my first ever major building project.

Yay! It’s all sweetness and light round here. Feel free to unsubscribe right now. I would. If I could, I’d unsubscribe myself to be honest and resubscribe when it’s all over.

Last one out is a ninny!

Chocolatetastic! My Green & Black’s Organic hamper arrived, my prize for winning Tara at Sticky Finger’s Gallery competition ‘Nature’.

Woohooo, what a bumper crop! Beautifully packaged and it weighs a tonne. And soon my tummy will weigh a tonne because that’s where it’s all going. I am going to eat every last bit myself and I won’t be content until I’ve  drifted off in to a cocoa induced coma. It’s my prize and I’m not sharing it [only child/].

Thanks to Tara for hosting the competition and to Green & Black’s for their very generous prize. What a treat!

I have recently rediscovered the delicious treat of buying books from a Real Bookshop, one with walls and shelves and books which you take home in a bag, not books that Postman Andy delivers in boxes branded ‘Amazon’. I love Amazon, don’t get me wrong, I love it for its speed, its range and, of course, its prices. There is no way around the fact that buying books from a bookshop and, especially, a local independent bookshop is substantially more expensive than having a quick Amazon fix. And my local bookshop is an indepedent; nothing is discounted, no ‘buy 2 get 1 free’ offers. You pay the price that’s printed on the back of the book, no exceptions.

When you look at the figures it’s hard to justify my new found love. A recent trip resulted in Sex & Stravinsky (Barbara Trapido), The Secret Intensity of Everyday Living (William Nicholson) and The Man Who Disappeared (Clare Morrall). Cost? £27.97. Ouch. The Trapido was £11.99, kind of pricey for a paperback? Cost via Amazon? £17.14. I can’t be bothered with the maths but even a total maths dunce like me can see that a book fix of £17.14 is a long, long way from one costing £27.97.

But then how do you account for the ‘value’ of shopping in a bricks and mortar shop, the pleasure of browsing…picking books up, rifling through them…letting yourself be entranced by beautiful covers or typeface…being persuaded by personal recommendation…picking up what other people seem to be drawn to.  All those elements have a value that are above mere ‘cost’. But is it worth the additional spend?

Our local bookshop is small, so every inch of the shop has to earn its keep. But the owner, and the staff, are all passionate about books and seem to have a knack of presenting their wares in a way which means I absolutely CANNOT leave the store without at least one or two books I had no intention of buying. The back of the shop is a coffee shop, of course, and the rest of the shop is lined with shelves with the exception of two large round tables. The tables are my downfall. The tables are the shop’s ‘candy’ as far as I’m concerned…a rotating presentation of new books, themed books (currently cool camping/caravaning, sewing, crochet, knitting, crafting etc etc), topical books, local books, seasonal books. The tables, plus a small selection of ‘recommended by our staff’ are the shop’s only ‘hard sell’ opportunity really although their window presentations are exceptionally appealing. Their final punch in the stomach is by the till, ‘This month we are reading’ and a copy of the shop’s book club’s ‘book of the month’. I’ve been ‘had’ at least twice that way…both happy experiences I am delighted to say.

Without doubt the shop experience delivers a value to me. I’ve read books I never would have even considered on Amazon as a result of their careful presentation. I bought books as gifts which I never would have stumbled across on Amazon, and which have been huge hits. I’ve spent a number of carefree half an hour or so browsing which online shopping can never compare with. Plus, whilst Amazon is quick,  nothing compares to the adrenalin ‘high’ you get from walking out of the shop clutching your purchases immediately.

What I can’t decide though is…’how much is too much’? How much of a premium am I prepared to pay for the ‘value’ offered by the whole experience of shopping in a local bookshop? £27.97 compared with £17.14 seems painfully expensive. But, then, I didn’t know Barbara Trapido (one of my very favourite authors) had published a new novel and I was so excited to happen upon it on one of the Siren Tables and it’s a total winner. The other two were bought on impulse. I’m ploughing through The Secret Intensity of Everyday Living and thus far it’s not earning a place on my ‘to keep forever’ shelf. A bit disappointing to be honest.

A few days later two other books had found their way on to my Amazon wish list, on the recommendation of Grethic. I mulled on it for a few days and decided to see if the local bookshop stored them and, if they did, I would buy them there. In fact neither Wild Swimming (Daniel Start) nor Wild Swim (Kate Rew) were on the shelves. I could have ordered them of course, but there was a nagging sense that I would end up ‘overpaying’ for them without having had the ‘value added’ experience of either just happening upon them whilst browsing, or having the pleasure of an ‘immediate hit’.

A quick search on Amazon showed I will save myself £10.01 if I buy from them, rather than the local bookstore. Around 50% in fact.

I’m so undecided on the whole ‘cost v value’ issue that I haven’t bought them at all. Perhaps I’ll try the library and save myself the moral dilemma! Of course none of my musings have touched on the value of a local independent that goes beyond my own, personal gain. Because there is a wider, community value of shopping locally without a doubt. And if you choose to live in a small town, as I do, do you have a responsibility to be part of keeping local business alive? Hmmm.

I don’t have the answer. I can’t decide whether to stop buying on Amazon and either suck up the cost of buying locally, or limit my purchases to ‘essentials’ and perhaps making better use of the library and the Oxfam secondhand bookshop which is opposite. Or find a kind of happy medium…perhaps Amazon for Things I Know I Want…and local bookshop for ‘browsing hits and gifts’.

What do you do? I would hate not to have access to wonderful, thoughtful independent bookshops…but can I afford to shop there consistently? Or is the value added so great that, in fact, we as a community can’t really afford not to?

Discuss.

]]> http://www.spudballoo.com/2010/07/cost-v-value-or-how-much-is-too-much/feed/ 17 http://www.spudballoo.com/2009/12/new-kid-on-the-block/ http://www.spudballoo.com/2009/12/new-kid-on-the-block/#comments Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:05:24 +0000 spudballoo http://www.spudballoo.com/?p=1064

Hello…the Grudge Book (TM) has competition. Look at this, a fabulous late birthday present…a most splendid notebook called ‘Fuck you and your blog’ where those passive aggressives amongst us are encouraged to write down their venting ‘n’ ranting rather than vent their spleen on the internodes. ‘Comments on this post are now closed’ is printed along the bottom of each page. It’s beautifully designed and printed, I love it. Designed by Ray Fenwick and published by Chronicle Books.

Thanks for all the comments on yesterday’s Christmas card post. The winner of the giveaway (who will also immediately be entering the Grudge Book for adding to my pile of Christmas wrapping, grrr and snarl) is RXBambi, with this memorable response to the question “What is your worst Christmas chore?”

“My worst chore is all the damn blow jobs I have to give to get the damn DIAMONDS!!!!!”

Um, right. OK…whatever tickles your fancy. Or MrRXBambi’s, as the case may be….your present is a bucket of cold water by the way…

Mr Diggy had his first ‘proper’ haircut today. I’m not counting the random chopping I’ve done over the last few months. But his lovely curls had gone from angelic to dragged-through-a-hedge-backwards and it was time to call in the The Professionals.

So I hauled myself out of my sick bed, and dragged those Megaboys to the children’s hairdressers for a chop. Bertie no longer looks like a girl, and Diggy now looks angelic again.

Here he is, sitting on the chair making eyes at the hairdresser and taken with my shiny new camera [swoon], a self-present to celebrate one year of photography, five years of marriage, 39 years of being alive and Christmas.

I’m still getting to grips with it and I will be for a while. But I’m pretty pleased with how this turned out, taken at ISO 1250 using available light. The D70 couldn’t cope with anything over ISO 400 without excessive noise and blur. I’m so pleased to be able to take sharp shots in very low light conditions without resorting to flash.

I love my self-present so much that I’m putting forward a proposal that self-presenting is the new praying. Do I have a seconder? Move over writing, your time is up….you’re pretty cool and improving and all that ….but we just want presents. Thank you x

A mere 17 hours after I received A Sign that I should blow a load of cash on a new camera…she arrived. And here she is, my [not very] little bundle of joy….my D700 accessorised with a Big Fat Lens.

Since the incident of the Disappearing Wig back in the summer, Andy the Postman can’t be trusted with important packages tied up with string. Cry. But I was very impressed to see the Parcelforce van trundling down the drive at 7.30am. I set forth in the rain in PJs and wellies to take ownership, but mostly to make sure I’d got the invoice snaffled away before MrSpud spotted it and collapsed in a dead faint. That’s the downside of early deliveries, MrSpud is still home to give me ‘the look’. I give him ‘the look’ back, but already his ‘look’ has spoiled my shopping pleasure. There’s just too much ‘looking’ going on…

So I shoveled him in to the Shit Picasso to make a start on his 4 hour round commute and 24 hour working day to earn the money to feed my internet shopping addiction (and I expect him home at 6.30pm sharp) and then broke in to the goodies. Mmmmm, Nikon goodness…

I was going to take a photo of the camera body sans lens. But they look kind of weird, naked really. I felt embarrassed for the D700 in the buff, and spared its blushes and popped the lens on. When I say ‘popped’ I meant, ‘heaved the gigantic weight of the lens on huffing and puffing and making weird gurning faces’. Sheesh, that lens is weighty. Surely they should supply some kind of slave girl or helpful imp to lug it around for you? It’s so heavy it has a serious protective case WITH A CARRYING STRAP (question mark whether backpack shoulder style straps more appropriate given gigantic weight?)

And it’s got a wee jobbie on the side where, I assume, you’re supposed to put your name and address or something? A kind of ‘If found please return to Spudballoo, Spudland’?

Although I might put something like ‘HANDS OFF YOU THIEVING BASTARDS’ or ‘IF YOU CAN CARRY IT, YOU’RE WELCOME TO IT’…

It took me 20 minutes to put the strap on the camera, and about an hour to work out the basics as there are lots of bells and whistles I’m not used to. I completely heart it already and feel very confident that my interpretation of The Sign was correct and thus MrSpud was wrong. As usual.

I read somewhere on some Camera Club that you must always read your camera manual and that you’ll never get the most out of your camera unless you do. Sigh. Must I really? Which insufferable little miss know-it-all said that? Because look at the size of the manual…

Even my Grudge Book isn’t as big as that…

I got a present today. A present from me for me. A Self-Present. No reason really, I pretended it was a ‘Well done Spud on your new job, From Spud xx’ present but really it was a ‘just because’ kind of gift. I’m OK with that…I come from a long line of Self-Presenters, well my mother was one anyway. Every Christmas she would buy herself a present from herself, wrap it up, pop it under the tree and then be absolutely delighted with it. Every one a winner!

For about a year I’ve had Ravenhill’s Etsy shop marked as a favourite and, in particular, her beautiful matryoschka dolls.  I particularly love the ‘attachment parenting’ ones with babies in slings but my babywearing days are pretty much over and, besides, I’m not that keen on those muted tones.

So I chose the one in my favourite colours…turquoise and acquas. Lovely. This one, the one on the left. Isn’t she a doll (well she is, of course, but you know what I mean). Here she is, out of her beautiful packaging and settling in to Chez Spud, looking around anxiously for marauding Megaboys…

She’s quite a delight. I’m rather thrilled with my Self-Present actually, I know it’s indulgent but I Don’t Care and I’m Worth It (flicks hair about in manner of just stepped out of the salon smuggery).

It’s only very recently that I’ve realised that turquoise/acquas are my favourite colours, and I wear them with increasing frequency. Here…

and here

oh and these shoes. I love these shoes, they have GOLD soles…if only they had diamonds on the soles then I could write a song about them and become a gazillionare…

But it turns out other people have tuned in to my preferences before I managed to notice it myself…the wife made this for me Diggy

Julochka made the fish in this photo for me, and her daughter made some of the clay figures (I made the crap ones), and Kristina gave me the little cup

And when I look around I see this corner of Diggy’s room

and remember the decorative border in Bertie’s room as a baby

and hints of it in the curtains even…

All of which has made me decide that if I EVER find and keep a web designer to overhaul Chez Spud, I will be going with turquoise and acquas as my colour theme. The post I wrote a few weeks back about having finally found a designer who didn’t disappear off the planet was premature as, erm, she has disappeared off the planet. I am worried about her though as she is having a complicated pregnancy.

The first one also disappeared off the planet without warning. I was so worried about her too but it turns out I needn’t have wasted my energy. Whilst she was supposed to be working on the final template design for my blog, having taken 50% of her fee, she was overhauling her own website which has now launched. I’m very very cross, she just never replied to emails…many, many, many emails asking if she and her family were OK (they had been ill with swine flu). Eventually I got my money back through a paypal dispute but I’m furious to find I needn’t have been anxious about her welfare, she was just off doing her own stuff. I’m so, SO tempted to name and shame actually. I just can’t think what the problem was…although I her prices have increased massively from the amount she quoted for me. Perhaps she realised she’d undersold herself so didn’t see the job through? Really unprofessional, shabby actually.

And breathe.

I need a turquoise/aqua gin cocktail made by Julochka

Served in the blue room, where else?

Well I did my storyboards for my Grandad’s birthday tomorrow. The top is is ‘September in the garden’, all taken in our garden yesterday and the bottom one is self-explanatory. They didn’t exactly turn out as planned, I wish I’d had more time to consider which shots to put in. Plus, I should learn how to use Photoshop a bit better before tackling something like that!

They look very colourful and vibrant printed out on A4, I hope he likes them. x