“What tone should I set with this Isabella review?” “Don’t Swear” Editor in chief Mrs EBF doesn’t like colourful language in blog posts. She’s just asked me to write a post about our holiday to France, a 1000 mile tour, incorporating 3 separate campsite stays, with two different caravan awnings to put up, with no swearing involved. You know what. It’s easy. To really understand what our holiday meant to us I need to take you back 2 years ago. My Dad was diagnosed with incurable ...
The Shed
Creating a mud free zone – Engineered wood flooring
Laying a new floor in a 400 year old cottage has its challenges. We love living in the countryside (you may have noticed). There are very few downsides to living in a field next to some woods with no neighbours for miles. One of the few, is mud. All it takes is a couple of days of rain, 2 children, a dog and a cat to turn the kitchen into something resembling the front of the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury. When we first moved in the ground floor was a thread bear carpet. ...
Cricket is Summer – a review on behalf of Net world sports
We are very lucky to have space outdoors to play. While Dylan being a typical 10 year old would love nothing more than to be glued to his Xbox for hours, he does, without too much coaxing, love playing out. He’s absolutely football mad, I admit that this may have been nurtured by me, but it wasn’t exactly hard. He knows all the players, follows the gossip and loves to play in goal. While I’ve always loved the game, it was really not my sport in terms of playing. No, my love, was a ...
Driving me round the bend
This summer, we are spending three weeks towing our Caravan though western France into Spain. We start our journey from home to Portsmouth, then the Ferry to Caan, on down though Le Mann, Ile de Rae, Biarritz and then in Spain and the ferry home from Santander. 860 miles. 860 miles towing 1.75 tonnes with three bikes on the roof, two children in the back, dog in the boot, wife navigating (and mediating!). There has been a recent survey about distractions while ...
Staying connected in the countryside
This year marks our tenth anniversary of moving from the City back to the countryside. When we took the decision to move, we wrote a list, Pros and Cons of living in both the city and the countryside. Lifestyle, freedom, entertainment, employment etc. One of the things we absolutely did not think about was how to stay in touch. In the city we had a choice of mobile networks that all worked, we could choice cable, satellite or broadband, find the best deal and not really consider the ...
A good day? (By Mr EBF ❤️)
My Dads got Cancer. Inoperable, terminal liver and oesophageal cancer. I’m still very much coming to terms with this fact. I’ve not cried, I’ve not got angry, I’ve not questioned the existence of a God or asked “why?”. I’ve got on with the fact that my Dads time is limited and wherever I can I’ll spend some time with him. But is not as easy as that is it? Every time I see him I’m reminded that he’s got cancer. His condition is starting to define him and my relationship with him. This ...