A Sunday in September

September has been sunny so far! It teased us with a couple of chilly days and then boom, the sun came back! You can feel the autumnal chill in the mornings, dew on the grass, cold smell in the air, and the evenings are getting seriously nippy. There are michealmas daisies in the borders and crunchy leaves on the pavements, but there has also been glorious sunshine, big blowy washing days, genuine warmth of late summer. 

All in all, perfect conditions for a carboot sale and a walk, which is exactly what we did a couple of weekends ago. 

Early on Sunday morning, we hopped in the car and drove down to Hayes Street Farm, which is only about 20 mins drive from Hither Green. We had been to this car boot once before and bought lots of very cheap lovely things, and it didn't disappoint this time either. 

It starts at 6am but we only got there at about 10am (it was a Sunday!) and there were still bargains to be had. In fact, sometimes getting there late can be good, because people start selling off cheap.

I love stalls with boxes of books at leaflets like these - sometimes I wish we didn't have the internet, and if you wanted to learn about the Houses of Parliament, you just read a little pamphlet and that was that!

This was another of our favourite stalls - rows of beautiful old tools, each telling their own story, handles worn smooth, ready for their next owner. 

After a cup of tea and a muffin stop, we got back in the car and headed to Dulwich Woods which we had been meaning to visit for a long time. I was craving countryside!

The woods were very pretty and dapply, and we had a nice wander although there were rather alot of other people who had obviously had the same idea. 

We took a picnic and inadvertently attracted a lot of very interested doggies out on their walks!

We came across this old disused railway bridge deep and I had a good old peer into the darkness (couldn't see much).

The leaves and the trees and the branches were so beautiful - I felt inspired to take lots of pictures!

I liked the woods alot - it felt special to be surrounded by trees and leaves in the heart of Dulwich (!) but I was expecting them to be a bit wilder and it wasn't really possible to get lost in them which was a bit disappointing. There was some sort of loud drumming taking place nearby which sort of shattered the peace!

On one side of the woods there was an amazing view of the City in the distance. 

After a good stretch of the legs, we headed home for scones and a cup of tea in the last of the sunshine.

I had a nice time looking at all of our purchases.

Old drawer £3

Vintage bottles and jars £1.50

Enamel basins £1.50

Books £1

Trowel, secateurs and oilstone £15

1970s West German plant pot £3

 Olive necklace £4



Vintage suitcase £15

We also bought two folding garden/camping chairs pictured here for £5 for the two. This was my best purchase as I'd wanted some for ages and these babies sell for about £35 on ebay! Bruce made sure to give them a good sniffing. 

Cat with a penchant for scones £10.50 (we valued him on webuyanycat) - contact me if you're interested. 

We sat on our new chairs, drank our tea, munched our scones and enjoyed the last rays of sun on our faces. Sunday fun-day x

Goodbyes

After a mammoth moving session at the weekend, we are out of our house and ready for a new start. Mum, Dad, my sister and R’s dad helped us pack our lives into (a shameful amount of) boxes and transport them to the new house. We hired probably the worst removal company in London to move our furniture. They turned up late, arrived in a filthy van and demanded that we provide them with a broom to clean it out and were generally rude and unhelpful. The also arbitrarily decided that certain bits of furniture they didn’t fancy moving “weren’t included in the quote”. Turns out, you get what you pay for (they were cheap). I ended up having a heated argument with them (which I lost). We were very happy to see the back of them! In case you’re wondering, they were UK Easy Removals – don’t use them!

Our new house is now packed to the rafters with all our stuff and we have moved in with R’s dad in North London for the next couple of months while we get our house ship shape (by which I mean habitable). And just in case we didn’t have enough on our plates, I am also starting a new job next week (eek!) so it will be good to have some stability for the next few weeks while I’m settling in. I’m anticipating it is going to be quite all-consuming to begin with!

It was very sad saying goodbye to our lovely little house where we have been so happy for the last few years. We remembered all the special times we had had there – our engagement party, my hen party, our first few nights as a married couple, countless dinner parties and birthdays and paddling pool parties. As a little homage to our house, here are some photos of it over the last couple of years.

And we mustn't forget our scruffy patch of garden that we cleared and dug and hoed and planted to our hearts' content. And where we made our first foray into vegetable growing (with fairly limited results) and where we idled away many a sunny afternoon. 

We had to say goodbye to our sometime-cat too. He has moved with our next door neighbour to West London where apparently he is settling in well. I bet he misses the mean streets of South-East London though, and all his little local kitty friends. Here are some of his best moments!

Luckily it’s not goodbye forever to our house – we will be able to visit! By coincidence two of our friends who currently live in Telegraph Hill needed a new place and we offered them our house, which they gladly accepted! So they will be moving in in the next week, and we will be able to come back and see our house and say hello once in a while. I’m so glad that they are moving in just as the bulbs that we planted are coming up in the garden, little sunny pops of yellow daffs and pink tulips, poking their heads tentatively out of the earth. I hope they enjoy our house and garden as much as we have.

I loved looking back at these pictures. We really are so excited to be moving on, and about the prospect of having our own place at last, but we will definitely be leaving a tiny weeny piece of our hearts in this little corner of London.

p.s. happy pancake day! We are postponing ours to tomorrow as we got home too late to make them:)