Mr Kipling

Whilst he makes exceedingly good cakes, he also wrote some very good books!  And yes, I know they're not one and the same person ;-)

This morning I dropped the cakes off at Chris & Tony's, and had a peek at the garden ahead of the open garden weekend - it looks fantastic!  I then went to the Nuffield for more acupuncture on my ankle.  I think Dan the Man (my physiotherapist) is getting a little concerned that there's not much improvement, and he said he'll give it another couple of weeks and then we need to re-assess what's going on, as apparently the way things are going (or are not responding to the treatment), it's not consistent with a normal diagnosis of Achilles Tendinitis - what that means, I really don't know!

This afternoon I took Norma and Barry to Bateman's which was Rudyard Kipling's home, and what a beautiful house it is!  The weather was pretty dire and we didn't get to explore the gardens due to the rain, but Norma and I walked through the gardens to the watermill, where I had a bit of an Ooops moment!  I was walking up the steps (natural steps dug into the ground, covered in bark chips, edged with a big strip of bark), and because it was raining, they were very slippy.  Imagine the scene - camera in hand, start slipping so try correcting yourself whilst holding the camera in the air!  Well I ended up, flat on my stomach with my knees in the mud, but my camera was safe!  I'm sure it looked funny, as I could feel it happening in slow motion lol! 

The house itself was really nice, and felt very homely.  My blip is from Kipling's study where everything is as it would have been when he lived there, and a lot of the things were brought back to the house by his daughter Elsie.  There was an old typewriter which I asked if it was original.  The guide said it was original from the era, but that Kipling didn't like typewriters as he said they made spelling mistakes!   So he hand wrote his manuscripts, which were then typed by his wife's secretary.  If he then made any alterations, they had to be typed all over again!

I mentioned that we live in Saltdean and that we knew Kipling used to live in Rottingdean at The Elms, and the guide said that he moved to Bateman's from Rottingdean for two reasons, mainly because his daughter Josephine died there, and also he had no privacy, as they started bringing tourists from Brighton in a Charabanc to see The Elms and people would walk up to the house and look through the windows!

My thoughts today are with JazzyB , Mr JB and Sam  as they said farewell to Pops,  Sending lots of love to you all xx

Sending love to CharlotteJ and her mummy too! xx