South African Silence

Recently I always seem to be apologising for silences (not something I am normally known for) but while we were away in Ireland we heard that my sister had even taken very ill in Durban, South Africa, and we had not been back home many days when I decided to fly out to see her. Cripplingly exorbitant internet costs if I were to use my English phone or iPad while I was there meant that I was forced into uncomfortable blog, website and Facebook inactivity.

A return visit to Africa has long been a dream so it was sad to find myself going back on a flying visit to a much-loved sister in hospital, returning home without having seen much more of Africa as such than Durban Airport, our friend Jen’s flat on the Berea and the Entabeni Hospital where my sister is. She is being well cared for in what appears a terrific hospital, very clean and bright with lots of staff, and I was very kindly looked after by our friend Jen with whom I stayed and who helped make the few days as pleasant as they could be in the circumstances.

It is Durban’s winter, and the days were very pleasant, more like a fresh summer’s day when one is still glad to have a light cardigan on and in fact when I returned to a moderately sunny and warm Parwich in ‘mid-summer’ I found no change at all in the climate. Everything seemed bustling and prosperous, the roads extremely busy, the gardens lush and the birds strident! Watching the news on the television one day with my brother-in-law I was amused to hear the (lady) Minister for Education being berated for what apparently is a serious text book crisis in the South African schools. ‘Why do you ask me about text books?’ she asked indignantly. ‘I know nothing about text books – I am in the Minister for Education, and a good one. Don’t ask me about text books!’. The same message I felt one might get from some ministers in this country, but rather more bluntly put…

Meanwhile, John had done a stirling job coping in my absence, including hosting a party which we had arranged and didn’t want to cancel. However, neither he nor Janet touch my computer (John has his own which is pretty much just for emails and his photographs and Janet is computer phobic) so I returned on Sunday to literally hundreds and hundreds of emails etc which i am gradually wading my way through. Soon everything will be back to normal (shouldn’t say that, I feel tempted to revert to the old-fashioned ‘DV’ or the even older-fashioned ‘If I am spared’!) and hopefully the posts will appear more regularly.

Sea Views from the Kitchen Windows

Please forgive the unforgivable silence. We have just returned from a ten-day trip away; I had fondly promised myself that every day I would find the opportunity to relax briefly in a leisurely fashion in front of my iPad and write stimulating posts from our various destinations.
A hectic schedule laid on by the two separate friends we stayed with in Ireland, coupled with a very poor (and expensive) Internet connection completely put paid to that idea. However, very worryingly my sister is seriously ill in Durban, South Africa, so it may well be that I have to fly out there for a few days; if so, silences may persist for while longer. This time John will be here, always when we are away Janet moves in to hold the fort, which she does so well, looking after the guests so well one almost suspects they get a better deal when we are not around.

While we were away we missed all sorts of excitements like the Olympic Torch which came through Ashbourne last Friday June 29th, the Parwich Open Gardens and Parwich Wakes. Our trip was not short of delights, fortunately. We first of all went to a very nostalgic and enjoyable reunion dinner of Bramcote School Scarborough Old Bramcotians, pupils and staff to mark the end of the Bramcote school of the past and the birth of the new ‘Bramcote Junior School’ of the future as it merges with Scarborough College.

After a shortish night in a brilliant B&Bwe set off for ireland, crossing from Liverpool to Dublin on the overnight ferry. We then drove straight to Portsalon, in Donegal where we spent three very happy days with some very good friends that go back a long way. We then drive down the west coast to Durrus, near Bantry Bay, to stay with yet more good friends. The sea was very much a feature, especially Donegal’s golden (glowingly golden) beaches.

The sea was a feature, much talk and laughter and reminiscing featured strongly too, as did some wonderful meals with particularly lovely fresh fish (back to the sea again…). And yes, it rained there too, almost all of the time though we did see some watery sun from time to time.

Great Gardeners’ Gathering at Haddon Hall

With one of my many other hats I am quite (actually VERY) involved with the DRCS (Derwent Rural Counselling Service,) a charity based in Bakewell, that I managed for ten years and am now a trustee of and also a proud member of the very active Friends of DRCS fundraising team. The DRCS was set up over 20 years ago, to provide accessible professional counselling for the local farming and rural communities struggling on their own to cope with often debilitatingly stressful situations affecting their world.

Things have changed a lot since then, but the constant need for funding has not. Thanks to the generosity of Lord Edward Manners of Haddon Hall, one of the patrons of DRCS, we were enormously privileged to be invited to hold a fundraising event there in aid of the service.

Lord Edward is very keen on gardens and gardening, and as last year he commissioned Arne Maynard, Gold Medal winner for the Laurent-Perrier Garden at Cheslea Flower Show 2012 to replant the Fountain Terrace, he was glad to think that our guests could enjoy seeing it this year, as it matures and fills the garden with all shades of pink and purple.

We held our long-awaited Great Gardeners’ Gathering at Haddon last Thursday. We couldn’t call it anything like Gardeners’ Question Time, but that was the format, with the creme de la creme of Derbyshire’s gardeners (and one notable one from Yorkshire) on the panel: Jo Walker from Haddon, Steve Porter the head gardener at Chatsworth, Dr Sue Kohler from the Sheffield Botanical Gardens, Robin Allan, now a consultant but who used to be the Head Gardener at Hardwick Hall and last but not least, Jeff Bates, the chairman, who is well known throughout the area as a landscape and garden design expert, lecturer and examiner.

After a delicious dinner, provided by Sue and Chris Cooke of the Haddon Restaurant (what a joy not to had to worry about that side of things!) we settled down to savour every word from the gardening gurus the in the wonderful mediaeval Banqueting Hall, with from time to time the wind whistling mournfully down from the Long Hall. There was nothing mournful about the gardeners as they cheerfully and enthusiastically dealt with all the questions from anxious gardeners, from rampant ‘Rhodies’ to Wilting Wisteria, with many a mottled berry and wizened specimen to examine, discuss and pronounce on.

We could have gone on twice as long, but carriages awaited – we had all to be out by 10 – and reluctantly the evening was called to a close.

How much we have made for the DRCS remains to be seen, but whatever the sum it will be gratefully received and will all go to enabling more people to receive counselling who might not otherwise have been able to. And we, the committee and guests had had a wonderfully enjoyable evening helping to raise the money (a real ‘Win win’ situation that we are so often wistfully promised these days).

TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence for Tom’s & Douglas’s Barns

You’ll have to excuse the far from excellent iPhone photograph of the TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence’ we are very proud to receive (taken rather hastily by me and certainly not JF-S in case you were wondering).

As a traveller, like more and more others we rely on TripAdvisor to check out any holiday plans before finally booking, and have been saved in the nick of time from many a disastrous choice. And if we have had a good experience, I am very happy to write a review – although I would hesitate to write a bad one unless the experience was so bad one felt obliged to warn others in time, and probably thanks to TripAdvisor that has never happened yet.

As an accommodation owner, you either love or hate TripAdvisor, and it certainly can be abused. We have at least one good friend, with terrific holiday cottages, who got a dreadful review from someone who had never even stayed but was annoyed because she wasn’t able to book the dates she wanted and thought would be free. Although as the one and only damning review sitting amongst glowing reports it looks suspiciously out of place to any discerning reader, it is still there, rather spoiling the atmosphere.

So far we have been lucky enough to escape any malicious reports from non-visitors, and we hope that if any of our genuine visitors had any queries and complaints they would without hesitation come to us immediately, and we would always do all we could to sort the matter out immediately and satisfactorily. Things can go wrong (Douglas’s Barn boiler – are you listening?) but we always do all we can to get them sorted immediately and we are lucky enough, living in a small and very supportive community, to have local tradesman who will come at a moment’s notice to sort things out for us.

So we were truly delighted to receive this Certificate of Excellence ‘that honours business that consistently earn top ratings from TripAdvsor travellers’ and only given to ‘exceptional performers in TripAdvisor’s global business community’… Forgive the moment of ear-shattering (second hand) trumpet blowing but once in a while it does feel rather nice! However, on sober reflection, it is a two way process. We provide the kind of cottages we hope you and all our guests will enjoy, but it is you, the guests, who make them the happy success that they are. For some lucky reason we seem to have the loveliest, most appreciative people staying, who love their accommodation and love to make the most of the beautiful area surrounding us and all the wonderful local opportunities to enjoy themselves while they are here. No wonder they write good reviews…

Keep Calm and Carry on Eating Cake

In spite of the fact we get very few people actually commenting on the blog friends, guests and often complete strangers will email us, or tell me on Facebook or at parties how much they actually enjoy reading our blog. They do say they enjoy John’s photos too which doesn’t surprise me. I really enjoy writing the posts, just wish I had more time to indulge my weakness! It feels just like keeping in touch with friends, and is a wonderful pastime and stress reliever.

Some nice soul emailed this today: I regularly keep up to date with your blogs; they are a joy to read and much more cheerful than the news, national or international.

Potentially much more cheerful than the news or indeed our blogs, tonight I have a newish recipe which i have tried out twice now and which has received the thumbs up from guests, family and friends. It is a variation on the permanent favourite Fake Bakewell. Perhaps we ought to call it a Cherry Fakewell?

I asked John to take a photo, but he wasn’t quite quick enough before most of the last batch had disappeared, hence the rather sparse display on the plate.

Tom’s & Douglas’s Barns
Cherry Special Bakewell Tart

If you think of the basic recipe as being for every egg 4 oz of ground rice/ground almonds, sugar and butter you can make the size you want. I always make this in a large Aga baking tray so it is the basic recipe times four. For normal family use one would probably do half, i.e. 2 eggs etc.

Recipe:
1lb good (Stork) soft margarine (or butter if you’re feeling expansive)
I lb sugar
*1/2lb ground rice
*1/2lb ground almonds
4 eggs, lightly beaten
Almond extract
Flaked almonds
Fresh stoned cherries, or one tin of cherries, well drained
Short crust pastry (either a bought block or made with 1lb flour)
About half jar jam (sharpish like raspberry, blackcurrant or homemade plum) For the Cherry Bakewell I used cherry jam and some raspberry, as the latter seems a bit softer and possibly moister.

Method:
Roll out the pastry and line the tin you are using. Spread the jam over, and cherries if using. Ideally put the tin (layered with cherries and jam) into the fridge but I can’t say I always – or actually ever – do!

Melt the butter/marge and sugar in a saucepan on a lowish heat, stirring occasionally to ensure the sugar completely dissolves into the melted butter. Add the ground rice/almonds and leaving it on the heat, stir for a minute or two until it is all well mixed and smooth. Take off the heat, and when it is a bit cooler, stir in the beaten eggs and a generous teaspoon and a bit (to size and taste) of almond extract.

Pour the mixture onto the pastry. Sprinkle generously with flaked almonds and pop it into the oven. In the Aga (2-door) I put it on the bottom grid of the top oven with the cold plain sheet over, for about 25-30 minutes+ until it is firm, looks golden and the almonds nicely coloured.

*It is perfectly delicious – and I rather think better – made with just ground rice and no ground almonds at all, but I often do half and half. I’ve never (yet) done it with all ground almonds.

Funny First Impressions

I was reminiscing recently about the coronation and how somehow its importance had been signified to a young girl by being given a bottle of CocaCola at school.

Idly playing with my iPad this morning I decided to see what TripAdvisor had to say about a local hostelry in nearby Biggin. (We are very often asked to recommend suitable places to stay near here if we are already booked or even for people who don’t want self-catering at all, believe it or not…).

Having already noticed how easily influenced a “traveller” can be – one had rated this particular speciality lodging 2/5 because her glass of red wine appeared chilled, I was informed at the bottom of the page that the person reading this review (me) had funnily enough also visited a nearby speciality lodging, Tom’s Barn and Douglas’s Barn… So back I popped, to our page, but fortunately for us, our lovely and warmly grateful guests are not so easily put off – and fortunately for us too, of course, we don’t serve wine at all, chilly red or not, so no risk of a problem there.

At a workshop the other day we were all told that apparently it takes everyone – is it three seconds, or five – to gain a lasting impression about other people or a place, which is a seriously scary thought. But facing me now is an even scarier thought: impressions gleaned by some mechanical algorithmic process, in this case a TripAdvisor robot scanning our reviews.

Under the section: What TripAdvisor travellers say about this ‘Speciality Lodging’ it picks out as the main points:
“Fresh flowers” (9)
“Short drive” (4)
“Personal touch” (3)
“Very warm welcome” (3)
“Lovely place” (3)

All lovely observations, if short on detail – and I am quite surprised it hasn’t picked up all the appreciative cake comments which keep cropping up – but that is beside the point. What intrigues me, is the “short drive” which comes second from the top. Is the Orchard Farm drive embarrassingly brief or in fact is this seen as a good thing? Or perhaps it’s only a short drive to Chatsworth? Or from home, be it Lincoln, Taunton, Aberdeen or even Derby (yes, we’ve several guests from as short a drive away as Derby, Chesterfield and Sheffield). I don’t suppose we’ll ever know, but that’s another example of a possibly quite unhelpful if not completely misleading first impression.

Still, there’s no use agonising over this. We’ll continue to care for you/all our guests as well as we possibly can, in spite of the short drive. It is such a pleasure to welcome here so many truly nice, interesting, different, fun people. We try hard to make our barns as lovely for you as we possibly can and we can be pretty sure you will love them. The rest we can take no credit for: it’s down to our great good fortune to be in a quiet, friendly village in such a beautiful setting with wonderful walking and in fact only a short drive to so many interesting places.

It’s the Diamond Jubilee!

I should have added the recession as well, but did not want to let that cloud the atmosphere; however, in fact it almost helps us appreciate all the more what we do have to celebrate.

As I post this we are watching the pageant on the river, on the television. What a wonderful sight, and what a fantastic experience for those actually there. The sense of excitement, rejoicing and – dare I say it? – patriotism is a welcome contrast to all the public gloom and doom which daily surrounds us and about which, as individuals, there is little overall that we can do to improve the bigger picture.

Sneaking a little personal confession in here, don’t tell anyone but I remember the coronation, all of 60 years ago!!! I know as a child then, in 1953, if I had heard that someone had even been alive 60 years previously I would have been horror struck at how incredibly ancient they must be, and wonder that anyone so old could still be alive. But 60 years later I don’t actually feel any older inside although perhaps the looks have aged a bit…

As a (very!) young girl at boarding school in Bulawayo (now Zimbabwe, then Southern Rhodesia) we were filled with the excitement of the coronation itself but also the wonder of such a young woman having to take on such a demanding role, for life.The acknowledgement that it was a major event was further reinforced by an amazing wonder: the nuns at our school (not known for their indulgent attitude to their pupils) provided us each with a bottle of CocaCola at lunch time! We had no television to marvel at, I presume we all listened to the service on the school wireless; to us youngsters, the coke represented the significance of it all.

I do remember a great sense of loyalty and excitement, and protectiveness even – she was such a young woman, she’d been in Africa, our continent, when she had heard of the death of her father the previous year; I remember a lot of excited talk, in the country so many thousand of miles away from Britain, about the ushering in of a new Elizabethan era.

Looking back it has been in many ways a troubled era but the queen has weathered it with us and I think we all in this country owe the queen such a lot for what we normally all take for granted: like a parent she is always there, doing her best tirelessly and forever, with no cheerful prospect of retiring to egg her on – just her own sense of duty and commitment. Can you imagine if instead of her we had a president, fighting to get elected, then looking always to be re-elected, worrying about the polls and trying to please the current ‘Murdochs’ and other media and financial influencers? It would not be the same.

Anyway, enough of the ‘politics’ (not that for me it seems like that). Having not quite followed the wise advice of my father-in-law to his son upon going to university to avoid public statements about religion, politics or women we now move firmly onto the firmer ground of Parwich. Parwich is doing the weekend with its usual village style. The best thing I can do is give you this link to the Parwich Blog rather than churn out all the dates and times.

Derbyshire Open Arts weekend

Until Monday night when we have the lighting of the flares on Parwich Hill the weekend is a fairly normal one except that it is also the Derbyshire Open Arts weekend.

There will be artists opening their studios all over Derbyshire but this year we only have two open here; however, there will be lots of pictures to look at and we can most sincerely recommend going to both if you are anywhere near Parwich. For more information about opening hours and addresses see this link to our village blog – the fount of all information!

There are some other local artists who will also have a few pictures hanging in Gill’s studio.

While I have been at the computer, writing, John has actually been out and visited both studios and returned with – no, not a painting this time – the two photos here, just to give you a taster.

Enjoying the Fun of Facebook

Half the time I really don’t quite know what I’m doing and certainly not what Facebook is doing when I post a photo and it flies off and then back without so much as a by-your-leave John’s recent dragonfly picture which in fact I shall pin up here where I know it won’t fly away) rather appropriately kept flitting off and back onto the page!)

So rather wisely, I arranged for some one-to-one coaching on the art of Facebook – you may remember my mentioning the fact. This I had very recently, from an excellent teacher, Martin Broadhurst, from Status Social, who incidentally, I am more than happy to recommend to anyone who needs professional help to enjoy making the best use of ‘Social Media’ at the right level for one’s own purpose.

Our purpose for our Tom’s Barn and Douglas’s Barn Facebook page first and foremost is a fairly innocuous one – to create a fun, informative, easily accessible meeting place for friends, guests and possible future guests to ‘meet’ and see what is happening, keep up with the news, enjoy John’s photos (mine are pretty workaday but useful sometimes!) and make the odd contribution themselves. We love our web site, and try to keep that up to date and lively; and i really enjoy our blog. To a large extent we have the same aims for that, but inevitably the website and blog is much larger and more cumbersome and people seem strangely unprepared to add comments to blog posts (although the number of times I get emails or remarks in person from people commenting on them are too many to be counted, frustratingly!).

Anyway, back to business…. For business purposes, I learn that one needs even in Facebook to spread the word, although in our case we are not looking for immediate bookings as we are pretty well booked up. And in order to spread the word we need to generate more ‘Likes’. At this point I have said to Martin on more than one occasion, that we are quite content with people liking us only/if they really do but this is being rather precious and very short sighted (my words, Martin is far too polite to put it like that).

How does one get more Likes? Goodness knows without paying for them!! (Which I am told can be done but needless to say we wouldn’t consider that.) Martin has suggested that I post a general statement that we are hoping for more Likes (a bit like begging one’s school friends to be your best friend which is so long ago I can’t remember if I ever did). It will be equally mortifying as for any rejected child to have no takers but we’re adult and won’t the it too personally.

A real case of not practising what we preach.- have you noticed that there is no invitation at the end of a blog post to ‘Like it on Facebook’? I have now sent on SOS to Jeremy-our-wonderful-webman so all being well that will be rectified soon.

Keeping up with Facebook

That is a very pretentious title, as we can hardly claim to be anywhere near even understanding what it’s all about, let alone keeping up, despite the fact we (as in I and our barns) have been Facebook users for about four years, passive users for at least 31/2 of those four years, with the dawning realisation that this is the way things are going, fast, for the time being, until the next development comes along.

It is amazing how things have changed in such a reactively short time, especially now with so many people using smart phones which are more or less portable mini computers providing instant personal access to the internet and social networking sites.

Many companies employ several people to do nothing else but ‘work’ their Social Networking connections as a marketing tool but of course, one-off small businesses, like us and so many other holiday cottage owners, have no one to fall back on and it is one more thing to add to the daily agenda. However, as someone who loves people, talking and writing, I am finding i really rather enjoy it and the danger is the risk of spending too much enjoyable but entirely unproductive time as far as social marketing goes. I like the communication, am much less happy abut the marketing/selling which actually, with only two cottages already with a big loyal following, hardly seems an urgent priority. Also, quite significantly, there is for John and me the now rather old-fashioned but nevertheless deep mistrust boasting, bragging, swanking, showing off, call it what you will.

However, we are always aware of the danger of getting left behind, admiring what laurels one can muster or being hindered by outmoded inhibition, so in an attempt to smarten up the act I have enrolled for some Social Media training and through unfortunate management have two sessions this coming week, one day after the other. In the preliminary chat with one trainer, he expressed shock that our Tom’s and Douglas’s Barn page only had 73 ‘Likes’ and was unimpressed when I said that they were practically all genuine ‘Likes’ from guests and friends. The point is that if one’s page is too tiny one can get completely lost in the rankings, and nobody much gets the chance to read one’s news, or to see John’s photos as we sink into social oblivion.

So that is the first challenge, to extend our network by getting more people to like us… You can see why one cringes! But in case you genuinely would like to like us, and are on Facebook yourself, please do so and preferably before Wednesday so I can hold my head a little higher when I meet this trainer on Wednesday.

Thank you!