I wanted to tell you about two things and the local paper, the Ashbourne News Telegraph, known familiarly as ‘the Stunner’, has got in first! Talk about being pipped at the post, but never mind, I can still tell you…

Firstly, Ashbourne has a new library! One keeps hearing of library closures so we feel very lucky to have such a wonderful new one, and right in the centre of things so it will be so much easier to pop in to borrow books and DVDs etc or use the free wi-fi.  The much smaller old one always felt rather out of the way and inconvenient if on was on a hurried shopping visit.

The new one is across the Henmore from Waitrose and here is a pic of John (one doesn’t often see him in a photo these days as he is the photographer and plainly I am not). I will also include another I took inside, of one section. It doesn’t show the bank of computers, all in use, and all the shelves are on castors so can be moved into different permutations as the need suggests.

On our same first visit of the library John spotted an urban moorhen, nesting peacefully below the crowds crossing the bridge above. The sun was shining albeit rather coldly, this being before this lovely sunny Bank Holiday weekend and I was struck by what a lovely little place Ashbourne is (see here for a brief Wikipedia summary to save me doing it!)… It is a town where a moorhen feels quite happy to raise its family.

It does have its numerous estate agents and charity shops where other types of shop used to be but it has always been known for its excellent independently owned shops and also there has been a number of small, new independent shops starting up over recent years, many not on the main streets but tucked away down little snickets: it’s worth exploring. It has everything, I think, a post office, several churches, numerous antique shops, three good butchers, a fishmonger, a couple of hardware shops, a couple of greengrocers, two excellent delis, numerous coffee shops and restaurants, two art galleries, several newsagents, book, dress, shoe and toy shops, Waitrose, M & S and Sainsbury’s and an excellent Majestic. Phew! And I am sure I have missed out several other categories… You’d be far better advised to look at the Visit Ashbourne website which will tell you all you need to know.

To my mind one of the many delights is that it is very old, with plenty of history, and really so small and friendly – and only minutes away from the countryside: not for nothing is it called the Gateway to the Peak District.

The skippers, viewed from the galley

We have been away for eight days and I must admit, have had a wonderfully relaxing and fun time, helped no end by uninterrupted sunshine and warmth and blissfully peaceful stretches of water where there seemed to be no one else but John and me and our two very good friends Erica and Colin on our boat and some wonderful views and birds.

Hopeful plans that I might sit on the deck of our Norfolk Broads gin palace composing one enticing blog post after another were soon dashed by the fact there was not at any stage the slightest whisper of any  internet connection or mobile phone network.

The outcome was that I had an even more relaxing time on the ‘ocean’ wave than i had expected and that we returned home to 396 emails to deal with and not a single word of a blog post composed!

Sorry. I’ll try to make up for it. The silly thing is I love doing the blog, it’s not that I find it a hardship at all. But after such a long silence  the first thing I must do before regaling you with tales of Norfolk is bring you up to date with any news. All I can really think of is that David our lovely joiner made and fitted a new bath panel for the Douglas’s Barn bath while we were away. Janet reports that it looks really good, but we have yet to see it…

We also before we went away, decided – somewhat on impulse – lured by a most enticing offer from the local Honda dealers – to trade in our purple low mileage 2009 model for a shiny khaki 2013 version with 10 miles on the clock. We picked it up yesterday, and since then have lived in terror of at the least scratching it on the narrow lanes, or at worst meeting a tractor head on round a bend. So far, after 24 hours, all is well and unscathed.

A fairly major minor drama arose when we discovered that my key to the old car was unaccountably missing, nowhere to be found. When we were told by Honda that to replace it would cost £250 we realised the enormity of the loss. They gave us until today as the deadline, when they would have to order a replacement… We spent two days hunting and rehunting, lifting cushions, going through pockets, even looking in the washing machine. Almost literally at the 11th hour I found it in a coat pocket, that John and I had both previously checked, but what a relief!

We are also in the process of  updating our  holiday cottage payment process, eventually transferring from our current static card machine downstairs to a ‘virtual terminal’ which we can access wherever we are. It hasn’t happened yet so we may find all sorts of disadvantages but are hoping that it will make everyone’s lives easier. At present, if someone wants to pay by bank card while we are away we have to wait until we get home again to process it…

So that sort of brings you up to date. Tomorrow, or during the weekend, I will tell you more about our actually trip on the Norfolk Broads, and then our little detour home via Wales.

The Vanishing World of the Photograph Album

The Format 13 ‘Album Beauty’ exhibition is in the Derby Quad Gallery. The exhibition is free, and remains open until 26th May. It is described as an ode to this vanishing art form, whose purpose apparently was to ‘document and display the mundane’ – the private reality of people’s lives.

Mundane or not, I found the exhibition most touching. One moves through a rather dated personal photograph album. The subjects on the whole look self-conscious, and very carefully still for fear of wrecking the (expensive) film. There are little boys in corduroy shorts, and girls with bows in their hair and puffed-sleeve dresses. There are baby pictures, and couples, cars and bikes. Most have no description at all, so very private.

The two photos I have used are actually from one of our family albums, my father, and my paternal grandparents – his father and mother. I used personal photos rather than risk violating any copyright issues by using the Album Beauty images exhibited in the Derby Quad gallery. These Album Beauty images, once proud personal possessions, are all ‘found’ photos, taken from abandoned, long-forgotten family albums, bought from market stalls or car boot sales and curated by Eric Kessels.

Ask anyone below the age of 40 if they have an album and they’ll probably assume you mean a Facebook album or just possibly a wedding or baby album which is both a record and just possibly an ostentatious desire to impress. Nowadays our ‘reality’ is no longer private. It is brazenly public, viewed on YouTube, Facebook or Flickr, stored in the Cloud, buzzing around the ether like a swarm of flies.

The aim is to impress, entertain, amuse or embarrass, reaching as many social media viewers as possible; or to show the world that one has actually been to Timbuktu, or Derby Quad.

Some of the older generations – my own husband for one – will still carefully document the mundane in albums, for the quiet and private delight of a few.

But private or public, where will these images eventually all end up? Either lost for ever on an outdated memory stick, or mouldering unseen in a junk shop.

So will our reality vanish too, whatever the art form…

Marion Fuller-Sessions
18/3/2013

The last week has scampered fast, busily and enjoyably but leaving very little time for quiet reflection or blog posts (let alone mundane chores like ironing…

Starting backwards, Mothering Sunday today was a very happy day for this mother but possibly more about that tomorrow. Ruthie and Nick, our two London-based young, came up for the weekend which sadly is something Sara in Australia can never do. Two other friends were here on Friday night with plenty of reminiscence and happy chat. On the Saturday Ruthie and I walked in to Ashbourne along the Tissington Trail (John dropped us off at Alsop Station (no trains for many a long year although when my father was young they used to come up by train from Lichfield). We walked briskly and reached Ashbourne in 2 hours 1 minute (according to the map it is 7 1/4 miles) which we were pleased about but were we glad to sit down in Bramhall’s cafe in Ashbourne and enjoy a cup of tea and a flapjack afterwards!

We can well recommend Bramhall’s, across the road from the Ashbourne Market Place. You can have breakfasts, lunches and teas here. The service was efficient and very friendly, our tea was hot and plentiful and the flapjacks deliciously ‘homemade’. Which leads me seamlessly on to the Macmillan Lunch that Fischer’s Baslow Hall laid on last Tuesday. Fischer’s is the only Michelin Starred restaurant in Derbyshire, and eating here is a wonderful experience whatever the occasion – whether dinner, their 2013 Lunches or a charity event like this. We all were treated to sparkling wine and nibbles when we arrived, then a three course meal with more wine and coffee; needless to say, the food was all quite delicious!

Someone from Macmillan described the sort of work that is done locally, and Nicky, someone who had benefitted by Macmillan care herself spoke very movingly about the lifeline they had provided her. Fischer’s handed over the entire proceeds of the lunch – over £1600 – to the Macmillan representative who was of course delighted. All of us attending felt we could not have found a pleasanter or more luxurious way to feel good by helping a charity.

For a so far photographless post, the last entry may seem rather surprising. There is a big photographic exhibition in Derby – a ‘festival of photography and related media’ for the next month and amongst many things on offer I spotted a 4-week (2 hours each week) course ‘Blogging for Photographers”. Well, heaven knows, I am no photographer but I do write a blog and I do have a husband whose photographic skills I hope more than make up for my lack! John was quite happy to suggest it would be extravagant for us both to attend, so I shall be cooperating with him in absentia as it were.

We have had one session so far, which was setting up a blog so I spent a fairly relaxed 2 hours. I suspect it will be a different story on Tuesday when I go for the second session. Meanwhile, horrors, we have homework! We have to write a 200 word blog post and send it in beforehand which means I have little time and should not be sitting here writing this.

Bound for the boiler scrap heap

Now, exactly a week later and with a new boiler installed, serenity has been restored after what has been a fraught week affecting many more than the hapless owners. These words may sound glib but the reality was several troubled nights and continuing anxiety until everything was sorted out.

Our first worry and indeed our first priority in all such drama is our guests, who have paid good money and come in good faith, needing and expecting nothing but the best. Our immediate concern was for the lovely couple who had just driven up from London with a young baby, for their first holiday away together since their baby was born. They hadn’t been here more than two or three hours when black smoke started issuing forth from the boiler…

Quick choices had to be made. We offered to pay for our guests to be ‘rehoused’ in a choice of cottages belonging to friends and colleagues who rallied around with offers of help but our couple very gamely opted to stay on in a central heating-less cottage with no hot water. We borrowed two portable electric heaters and gave them the sole use of our spare bathroom, and of course other than bathing and showering every other facility in Douglas’s Barn was still available to them. When they came to say goodbye on Monday morning we were very touched when they generously thanked us very warmly for a really lovely holiday!

Their situation was one any holiday cottage owner dreads; another dread is having to put guests off as we had to do to another very understanding and generous-mided couple who had been looking forward to a midweek break here in Douglas’s Barn. We were most fortunate that Steve Ogan of Blakelow Farm, a nearby friend and fellow-Premier Cottages member, was able to offer them his two-person cottages which happened to be empty and which most fortuitously happened to be the same price as our guests had paid us. We were very happy that our would-be guests popped in to see us on their way home and were not surprised to hear that Steve had looked after them very well and they had been most comfortable. They’d had personal reasons for choosing Douglas’s Barn, but like our firt couple, big-hearted enough to accept the change of plan forced on them in very good part.

It is the machinery which let us down; it is the people who come up trumps all round. We were blessed with two sets of guests who understood the predicament we were in, could have made it awkward but absolutely went out of their way to cooperate. We are also extremely lucky to have a most excellent self-employed boiler engineer, Phi Jennings, for whom nothing is too much trouble (unlike the local Worcester Bosch engineers who seemed to need three working days to respond to an urgent call-out).

Phil came out at 8.30 pm on the Friday night that the boiler died, hoping – as we all thought – simply to fix it (again). Like vets, I imagine boiler engineers often find themselves dealing with far more than simply practical mechanical problems. Phil managed to reassure everyone that there was no danger in spite of the lingering smell of hot oil, that he’d move heaven and earth to order and install a new boiler within the week. And he, and Andy his no 2, did what they promised.

So now, a week later, a new boiler is installed. Phil and Andy assure us it will be more powerful and more economical than its disgraced predecessor. What we fervently hope is that it is also going to be more reliable! We heard a worrying instance on Facebook of faulty Chinese circuit boards causing combi boiler problems: that is all we need! At least we know that if there are any teething problems Phil will be out in a flash to sort them. How lucky we are, living in a rural area like this and able to count on really loyal ‘human’ tradesmen.

It’s that funny time of year. Christmas and New Year have come and gone and we are all still here in spite of seriously gloomy Mayan prognostications.

So what to do? How do we keep up the sense of excitement and euphoria? To avoid inertia we’ve got to have a purpose, we’ve got to see a way ahead… Everywhere you turn there are predictions and announcements about the year ahead, what will and won’t happen, what will be the latest fashion and what will not, who will be in and who out.

The travel industry is as keen as any to enthuse potential customers into future activity. I read somewhere that Thomson’s Holidays is braced for a massive number of bookings and enquiries on Sunday (Jan 6th) which is apparently THE key day for forward planning in the post-Christmas spell of apparent gloom. So, the message they want you to hear is, if you want to book a Thomson’s holiday, get in quick! It will be amusing to see what happens to our bookings. (We’ll let you know…)

TripAdvisor recently commissioned a review of 5,600 people, and announced with a roll of drums which echoed round Facebook and travel blogs, that 25% of those questioned intended to spend more on their holidays this year. No one seemed to have read further on to see that in fact far more – 42% – intended to spend the same and indeed nearly one third intended to reduce their expenditure.

But even though this seems less optimistic figures like these are meaningless. If last year you went on a round the world cruise, you surely would expect to be spending less this year unless you were going to repeat the exercise, but you might still be spending a lot of money by ‘normal’ standards. Or someone else might be pushing the boat out by by spending two nights in a budget hostel rather than one.

Visit Britain is planning a big ‘staycation’ campaign to encourage people to holiday at home. This suits us, of course, and holiday cottages would not be so popular if no one holidayed at home anyway! Funnily enough earlier today we were talking to our guests who were leaving after their New Year week here. They were saying they used to go abroad but planned now to keep exploring Britain and to avoid the frustrations and stress of airport travel.

They were marvelling over the variety of scenery our small island has to offer, and how standards have risen including the quality of food. We agreed whole-heartedly with that. In the thirteen years since Tom’s Barn was ‘born’ our own expectations have risen, and those of our guests. We have always aimed, right from the start, to provide top quality five star service but the quality of this top quality service has increased…

So how do you measure quality? How do you define ‘value for money’? How long is a piece of string? Just occasionally someone will ring up to enquire about booking a week in high summer, or perhaps at Christmas, and when we mention the price (£655 is the top rate now) we will be told with a horrified gasp that they can easily get a week for under half that. No doubt you can, somewhere, but is the price fully inclusive? Will you perhaps arrive and find the cottages damp, dark and unloved without even a comforting teabag awaiting you? Do you have to pay for extra firewood, or electricity? (We once stayed in a holiday cottage where I rather disappointingly spent the first day cleaning, simply enough to make it hygienic and throughout the holiday the children had to sit on their anoraks on the seriously greasy/grubby/damp sofa. We were freezing cold because we didn’t learn how to work the electricity meter until the last day and just as well, the rate it gobbled up our £1 coins. That holiday and that cottage has gone down in family history as one of mother’s very worst family ‘treats’!)

It was a useful first lesson in what we, as a fairly ‘normal’ family without particularly demanding high standards, would try hard to avoid in future and what we would look for instead: care, comfort, cleanliness and good quality throughout. So, my moral is, if you want a bargain basement discount cheapie don’t look here! If you don’t mind paying more for the best quality and service we can provide for you, we might be the place you’re dreaming of. You might even feel it was a bargain at the price…

This will really be a non-blog post, a rather negative explanation and warning of possible inaction or a surprising geographical shift. Just where is the Peak District? Are we talking Tuscany or Derbyshire? Who knows?

The truth is we’re talking both, really. For the next week we will be on a long-awaited family trip to Florence, where we shall meet up with our daughter, Sara and her Australian husband and son, Derek and Tom whom we haven’t seen for two years since our family skiing holiday (and someone broke an ankle!).

I will have minimal time and possibly even more (less?) minimal wi-fi access but I intend to try to send pictures and brief reports so let’s hoodie this proves doable.

As you probably know, after we, the ‘Mr and Mrs Mary Portas’ from Orchard Farm, had spent a very happy few days doing our best to identify the slightest failing Douglas’s Barn, we had been planning to focus our relentlessly beady eyes on Tom’s Barn and to be fair, enjoy a few relaxing days there too at the same time

However, after an extremely busy and long day on Friday the spirit failed and we rather weakly decided to delay until the (Saturday) morning and start on our quest feeling fresh. That was our lucky undoing. Quite late on Friday evening we received a very last minute enquiry from an eagle eyed couple who had spotted we had a gap. And less than 24 hours later they are here, and happily settled in until Wednesday. And we are still at home, foiled for the time being.

There is still one midweek break available in Tom’s Barn, Monday 10 to Friday 14 December. The normal price is £330 but because it is so soon and because it is just before Christmas and because… we would reduce the price to £295. We do actually want to stay there ourselves but we don’t like having our barns empty and anybody who would like to come has priority over us!

The snag is, we will ask you to do the mystery shopper things for us, and help us spot what needs repairing, replacing or even introducing. It does mean we would hope you would shamelessly try out everything, from DVD player to toasted sandwich maker and let us know what your findings are.

If you are dogless, there is a gap in Douglas’s Barn too, same thing goes for the price… You could try the mystery shopper role but hopefully we have got there first. Now there’s another challenge – spot our deliberate mistakes.

We seem to be having some bother with our email, which is deeply concerning. On the face of it, at this end there seems nothing wrong, and numerous emails are arriving all the time. But of course, it is not obvious what emails are NOT popping up, if you are not even expecting them in the first place.

We are looking into our email problem urgently, but meanwhile, please ring if you do not receive a reply from us.

It has become clear that although people are receiving our emails, we are not receiving their replies. That is not clever when people are trying to book, or want a bit of a conversation before they do.

The other thing we need to tell you about, is also to do with communication. From December 8th to the 16th we shall be away on a family trip to Florence. Everything always carries on as normal while we are away – Janet and Carol and our faithful team are all about, and all being well we will be in email and mobile contact.

As many of you know, Janet is absolutely wonderful in every way except she hates spiders and computers. This usually doesn’t matter but we have a fairly full schedule for our week in Florence, and a lot of the time will not be able to receive or send emails immediately they arrive so there may be a delay. Please do not worry if there is a shortish delay but if there is more than a few hours delay, perhaps you could try again, or send a quick text to +44 7813 686899 in case our emails are playing up again.

Failing all else, ring our landline (01335 390519) and leave a message for Janet.

Sausage supper in Douglas’s Barn

Are our lovely guests just being polite? we wondered, and having a spare midweek short break without a booking this week we decided this was the signal for another hard-hitting personal inspection.

So in we moved in, from next door (a nicely green ‘car-free’ journey) to see how we would fare, with the aim once again of trying absolutely everything out, from boot dryers to using our brand new TV (wih HD) and Sky (where I quickly became unstuck, ditto the microwave) which is quite sobering. How do our poor guests cope? We have a file with all the manuals, conveniently placed in the drawer beneath the microwave, but apart from needing an advanced degree in Microwave technology and accompanying jargon, a month or two of spare time would help.

Making full use of the kitchen

We cooked a full meal, using the oven and grill, electric beaters (I’m sure the misshapen cake was my fault), the electronic scales, several saucepans and a cake tin, measuring jug etc etc. So far so good: except the electric beaters looked very tired and smelled a bit hot after a minute or two; the ‘leather’ place mats didn’t pass muster, we discovered under a bright light one of the wine glasses to be slightly chipped so…

Note 2: Compile a (long) shopping list for urgent replacements.

We already knew it was time for our six monthly ‘decor spruce up’ and had arranged with Jason Fowkes, our wonderful decorator, to come on an inspection of walls and paintwork so we could plan what to do. Jason is excellent also as consultant. He has an artistic eye and very high standards, and as he is in close contact with so many really super properties he has a keen idea of what works well.

So he has been hard at work all day and is coming back for another, just making everything as smart and bright as possible. We identified together that the bathroom flooring needs replacing, probably with tiles, and we are hoping our joiner, David Goldstraw, will make us a nice wooden side panel for the bath to replace the original one that came with the bath six years ago.

Phew! We had to shed a few layers…

Finally, I must admit that we were very warm in Douglas’s Barn, coming as we do from our draughty, old and distinctly coolish house. With the oven going, saucepans on the hob, central heating on with all the radiators full bore, we were soon down to t-shirts and going outside for a quick cool down/breath of fresh air. So now we have learnt, to turn the radiators down to the lowest setting and not to rely on more than one sweater! Modern house insulation is a wonderful thing, and a very novel experience for us… We’ll certainly advise our guests not to have the radiators turned up too high (thank goodness they all have an individual thermostat).

We still have another night, before shortly moving the microscope onto Tom’s Barn. No peace for the wicked.