A Follow up to my August 2017 post: An Ironing Board could be useful: The Trials and Tribulations of blogging on holiday
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This year we are holidaying in West Wales. In the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic this seemed like the safest and most sensible option. We’d love to travel abroad again, in particular to visit our dear friend Liz in France, and also to catch up on that Florida/New York holiday that never happened in 2020! However, staying in the UK seemed to be a wise decision this year, and it also gives us the opportunity to catch up with Charlie and Aimee (Paul’s son and daughter-in-law) whose marriage we were lucky enough to attend last August. They live in South Wales, so visits on the way to Carmarthen and on the way back have been worked into the holiday plans.
I booked our cottage through https://www.walescottageholidays.co.uk/ and picked a small, remote cottage in Llangain. There is one other letting property which is also being let at present, and our hosts live here too. This is great, as makes arrival, departure and asking questions so much easier. Readers of my blog will know that I always seem to need to ask how things work or to ask for extra supplies of household items. In Sardinia this turned out to be a bitter experience, not to be repeated! Writing my blog in Sardinia, I discovered the usefulness of an ironing board being supplied. No, I don’t do much ironing, but when you need an extra table for your laptop it is ideal! Actually this cottage has a lovely dining table, and Paul is using this as his base for business and e-mails (yes he does work on holiday but we spend much time travelling and having fun too!) Because we like to eat at an uncluttered table, I decided to bring the ironing board into play, simply because it would save constantly having to shift my laptop at mealtimes. Also I was hoping to sit in the glorious entrance area of the cottage with a big picture window for admiring the views of the hills and estuary. See the picture below:
Below you can see the outside of the cottage just by the picture window:
In fact I had to abandon the idea of blogging in the entrance area, as the wifi signal there is just not quite strong enough and keeps dropping. No matter, it all works fine in the main reception room and I can still admire the views from my seat!
To me it is perfectly normal to set up my writing station on an ironing board, but to others it may seem a little eccentric. Sharon (our host) came round to see if all was well and thought it was very amusing how I was making use of the facilities. She offered to find an alternative table for me, but in fact thought that, on reflection, my set-up was ideal! Maybe it could be added to the cottage property details as a useful extra!
So here I am once again writing my ironing board blog. I wonder if I might start a new trend. Some of my friends in my facebook group Archers Chit-Chat, say that they never do any ironing, so here is a use for redundant ironing boards! The additional perk is that you can always revert to using it for its intended purpose. Also the fact that it has adjustable height settings must surely be a huge advantage. I would normally stand to iron my clothes (there are some which just have to be ironed before wearing! But you won’t catch me ironing the bedding!) but for writing a blog, I sit down.
As I generally include some food and cooking news in my posts, I just have to say that Jamie Oliver’s recipe for Tomato soup with grilled mussels is absolutely divine! I cannot find a useful link to the recipe; it is in the Save with Jamie book, which has some great recipes in using ingredients that not everyone would think of as economical. Mussels must be one of the few types of seafood/shellfish that are genuinely cheap to buy. Squid is the only other seafood I can think of in this category. Anyway, I am sure that the recipe is easily findable. After a long afternoon out, visiting Laugharne and Tenby, I cooked this fabulous dish for our dinner. We had bought the mussels in Tesco in the morning and put them straight into the fridge. It was not an early dinner, ready at about 8:45pm, but luckily on holiday we feel a bit more relaxed about late eating. Here are some pictures for you to drool over, if you like mussels!
https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/cookery-books-i-love
I like to support local bookshops, so the link above is to my section of https://uk.bookshop.org/ and you will see there the details of the Save with Jamie book!