in at the deep end....ing up in A&E

Well my oh my! So last year a group of us, including Benji the dog, had great fun wild swimming in the Brecon Beacons at a place called 'The Warren', we even found the embers of a fire on the riverbank to stoke to make it roar (ish) again and dry us off.

So Rhoda and I agreed to meet last Sunday as part of my 'ooh I'm in Wales lets become an adventurer' and Rhoda's love of open swimming. She swims in the Albert Dock in Liverpool regularly.

"It's called the Blue Lagoon" I'd enthused and it's on top of the horse shoe pass, it's a disused slate quarry....so last Sunday we set off with more baggage than you'd take for a 2 week holiday, each, and said to the biker at the Ponderosa cafe on our arrival "Is that there Blue Lagoon over there mr bikerman, thankyou please?" pointing to a big huge mountain of slatey hill!

Now having broken my rucksack I must confess I didn't look overly Bear Grylls with my wetsuit and other post swimming things poking out of an ASDA bag for life! nevertheless after passing several tonnes of slate and several 'DEEP WATER, KEEP OUT' etc signs and after trying several entry routes (most of which were just sheer edges down to the quarry), we located a descent of sorts. I chose to slide it on my ass and my leggings now live in the dustbin.

Looking back at what we had descended, with not a soul around and a sky turning grey we both confessed we were a tad apprehensive and thought maybe a day at the lobotomy clinic might have been a more appropriate day outing.

HOWEVER, having spent the previous week stuck in my lounge in an ebay wetsuit (not the whole week though you understand) that was too small for me and as I had (on finally removing myself from it) had to buy yet another one...no way was I not going in now! 

So we tentatively made our way in and I then freaked out as I saw a tyre underneath me - clearly less lethal than a great white but strangely off-putting nevertheless, though I'm not sure anyone died from ever just seeing a tyre. And then I reminded myself there was a actually a van at the bottom of it anyway which I'd seen on a youtube video of the Llangollen blue lagoon and so I figured I should 'man up'.

So we swam about. feeling like two avid explorers and we gasped at the cold (I was mainly gasping as my wetsuit was choking me but I couldn't admit even the next size up was no match for the amount of cake -homemade and palm oil-free by the way- I had recently been consuming!). The Lagoon is very clear and it's circa 40ft deep I think it is (thats about 12 metres right??).

We'd done it! So we sat on rocks underwater and chatted, we peeked underwater with Rhoda's goggles and then i put my left hand underwater....and pulled it up with a rather grim wound to the side of my wrist! It looked like a little smiling, little chatting mouth with little teeth. Convinced I was going to bleed to death as it was near my artery we scrambled in our wetsuits up the sheer slate climb, me with a sock tied around my wrist to stem the blood, Rhoda carrying my 'bag for life' or death as I feared!

We had to change out of our wetsuits at the top quickly before we could get to the Ponderosa cafe where we had parked; whilst changing and with bleeding wrist, my towel blew away leaving me in the rain, on top of a disused slate quarry on a hill in wales with no clothes on! Hugely amusing. Benny Hill meets Holby City!

The chaps at the Ponderosa cafe patched me up, I didn't pass out, Rhoda played Mum and made me tea with sugar and I got to A&E where I spent a lovely evening eating the contents of the hospital shop and with what looked like the cast of my big fat gypsy wedding who came in after me. I chatted to a few people and reflected that A&E is one of the only places you don't ever want to be first in the queue and should be happy to wait.

So a rather adventurous start in perhaps a less than easy wild swim spot, but I had great fun, my wrist is healing and I've a list of rivers and waterfalls to visit when it's sunny - all this on our little island.

Sometimes we travel so far and yet great little gems and things we are looking for are right in front of our eyes.. often they cost nothing to do and are source of adventure, risk, excitement & laughter.

Next on the list is the Blue Lagoon on the coast of Wales, which is where the sea has breached an old quarry wall, looks great and has conga eels at the bottom...yes they look mean, but I'm just going to envison them all shimmying around the seabed "Lets all do the conga" and my fear will be abated.

Evening all x

The road less travelled....not taking the easy route



South Morocco at a deserted beach.

So well what’s new? Erm….the question really would be better phrased to ask what’s not!

I have relocated to a beautiful Village in North Wales full of nature , wildlife, forests, herbalists, holistic therapists, a place where lay lines cross and magic happens!

In my endeavours to constantly evolve and learn I felt the time was right to move to the next stage of my life that brings me closer to my loves: plants, animals and nature, and to leave behind some things I had felt were beginning to drain my energy (which is usually boundless!)

So I took myself off to Morocco travelling, meeting monkeys, swimming with frogs and turtles, offroad moppedding, holding goats, eating homemade food and things straight off trees and out of udders! And then, sat by the shores of the Atlantic at my friend’s beach house hotel everything kind of shook itself out in my little brain. And I knew a few things lately had been so evidently pointing me to what I was supposed to do next.

So I did it! I drove to Wales the day after I got home and I found a house to move to.

I have bought a canoe to explore my planet earth free from the constraints of when the hire shop is open, to see my planet earth from a different perspective & to be free to be around nature whenever I choose (canoe licence permitting that is!)

When I come home on rainy nights or dark nights there are chimneys smoking and it smells amazing, when I come home on light nights I walk by the river, canoe or eat the fresh organic veg that my neighbour passes me (after I’ve rescued all the slugs and little fellows in it!)

The rabbits love their new house and I have renamed them the welsh rarebits! My only sadness is that Darcy didn’t make it through to move with us and I had always envisioned her with us in any move. Darcy was my 3rd rabbit I inherited in December, I tried everything and hundreds of pounds but just couldn’t save her. She is buried in the vicarage garden and we have a little grey rabbit statue to remind us of her. I knew the day she would day die as (I’ve no told anyone this ) I sat and cried my heart out late at night the day before she died, as she licked me whilst she was clearly very ill and so I licked her back to comfort her. It might sound mental but I wanted to show her in rabbit language that I loved her immensely and had tried my best. My housemate, Kurt, was really good about it as she had had renal disease she’d weed on the carpet from inside and out of the cardboard fortress I bought her! And he turned out to have taken some great photos of her which I really loved and which brought a smile to my face.

“I am the wind that blows, I am the grass that grows, I am every living thing”.

That applies as much to me and you as it does to my Darcy. And that comes back to Little Satsuma and what it’s all about. Damage you to the environment, our planet and animals is damage to yourself. Once you begin to understand that we are merely separated in forms by the presence of electrons and so forth then you begin to realise this and also, amazingly, lose your fear of lots of things.

So what next…expanding the range, supporting more charities, carrying on supporting Kalaweit radio & sanctuary, moving somewhere bigger to get goats and rescue chickens. I have read a book on Goats now and am rather excited – my how my Friday evenings have changed!

Sometimes we get where we want to be not by taking the easy route, it’s tough to make big change, but no great change ever happened without upheaval, no country changed in history significantly without a revolution. These last few months have been my own personal mini revolution, a rollercoaster of emotions and choices and I’m beginning to enjoy the view on the other side as I move into the life I always wanted. I’m full of motivation for Little Satsuma, I have an interview to be a volunteer regional speaker for the Dr Hadwen Trust, I’m off to Warsaw in November and am off travelling for a month next March/ April to India and Indonesia and so it’s full steam ahead here now.

Every day whilst you are free and safe from harm you must live it to the full and always say thankyou for what you see before you and around you.

Visiting or just moved to Liverpool? Secret things and not so secret things to do! We're more than football and Beatles :)

This list is something I wrote for someone new to town, I really like this list as it's places I'm passionate about or I want to visit:

• Harp Inn @ Burton – Wirral. Sea has gone – now RSPB Bird Sanctuary. The pub looks like something from another century – ooh actually come to think of it – it is! SILLY ME!


• Meols Shore – just off New Brighton, my fave beach. No chavs, no litter, gold sand 

• Thurstaston – Wirral – Thor’s hammer, red rocks, ace views. Good for horse riding

• Wirral Way – cycling – starts Hooton, finishes West Kirby – it’s the route of the old train line and it’s even got an old station on it!

• Parkgate – Ice Cream from the old art deco ice cream shop. Handel sailed from here. Turner supposedly painted here too. The river has gone but the dock walls are good for sitting on and eating ice cream whilst looking out to Wales.

• The Thatch pub at Raby Mere – Wirral. (real name is the Wheatsheaf):

http://www.wheatsheaf-cowshed.co.uk/

• Woolton Village – Lpool. www.wooltonpicturehouse.co.uk for cinema. Nice little village with a good cheese shop

• Port Sunlight – Wirral. Home of Unilever. The village he built for his workers. I was christened here and my grandparents are buried there. My dad is captain of the veteran’s bowling team here!!

• Sheldrakes restaurant in Heswall – on the shore. Quite expensive though. Heswall is v nice though
• Croxteth Hall Jungle Parc! http://www.jungleparc.co.uk//
I only just found out that this existed! It looks amazing. You can go in the hall itself - It’s seen better days but there is a big oak panelled room with a massive fireplace – I like that one.

• Monkey Forest (this is in Stafford tho) but the monkeys roam free and sit by you! Someone said they can be a bit vicious at times if they’ve got babies

http://www.trentham-monkey-forest.com/

• Alwen Reservoir – in Wales –a guy at the RSPCA recommended this to me. Only looked at web briefly but it must be good for your cycling. Pick a day when it’s not raining – this is very hard to do in Wales – everytime I cross the border it starts raining!

• Llangollen – well cute village in Wales, but like only 45 mins away. Steam train, waterfalls and river and little quirky arts places, good walks, ace ice cream and fudge is immense. Good pub/ resto in old watermill that overlooks the river (as it would being as it had to be by water to be a water mill hehe!). mega busy in Summer full on American tourists. You can drive to it by main roads or go via horse shoe pass – ace views and sheep everywhere on roads at times so you have to stop, I love that bit.

• Formby Squirrels – Red Squirrel reserve by the sand dunes

• St Georges Hall – loads of ‘firsts’, where the saying ‘send him down’ comes from, first law courts, first central heating system, beautiful ornate floor and organ and statues. My fave Scouse Heroine is getting a statue her soon - ladies fighting back as all statues pretty much male so far! Rock on Kitty Wilkinson..

• Yellow Duck Tour – touristy but you learn loads and the guides are usually hilarious!

• Speke Hall – it’s near me, everyone loves it, I know nothing about it at all, well, other than that it’s black and white!

• St Georges Hall winter market too, run by Open Culture (Christina and Charlotte who I know) every year (end of Nov/ start December)
• Lark lane farmers market is on every 4th Saturday of the month – it’s the biggest one.  And then veggie breakfast at the Greendays cafe afterwards. Hidden gem and a half that cafe is. ooh and you must go to Larks on lark lane and browse the vintage furniture - we have great fun in there on a regular basis

• Ghost Tour – starts at Peter Kavannaghs Pub (this place is great) and they do it for freshfields animal rescue centre and it finishes in Cathedral gardens and you go ghost hunting!

• Peter Kavanaghs Pub (aka Peter Kays) its one of the most mental pubs ever – full of characters and weird stuff on the ceiling. Live music on a Tuesday, we’ve been there at 1am singing around the piano before. Landlady, Rita, is terrifying during the pub quiz – which incidentally is a bloody hard quiz

• The Williamson tunnels - www.williamsontunnels.com In any other city these would be funded as proper tourist attraction. They are immense. It’s just volunteers who work on it. It’s believed that Williamson built them basically as a philanthropic act to give men work when they had none after returning from Napoleonic wars.

• Dingle disused railway station, the terminus of the old Overhead railway (aka the Dockers Umbrella) – we went on a ghost hunt down here. Totally and utterly fascinating. There are loads of vintage cars down there just left to rot, old corporation van, there is rope everywhere (some made and some not) this would all have been used on the docks – the roper maker died and all his stuff was just left there. The actual station platform is now a car mechanics garage. There was a fire here in early 1900s when a train caught fire and as it entered tunnel it met with lots of flammable stuff – 8 people died so it’s abit eerie being down there thinking of that

• Now I mentioned the ghost tour – it ends in the gardens of Anglican Cathedral….one of my heroines has her grave here (well her headstone) I sometimes take flowers to her….Kitty Wilkinson – she pioneered wash houses in UK, was first warden of a UK wash house and she saved all her poorer neighbours (unknowingly) from Cholera etc by allowing them to wash their clothes in boiling water etc in her house. She was Irish and she lost her baby sister and her dad in a storm out in Irish Sea). Huskisson is also buried here – the first man killed by a train in UK, it was by Louis Stephenson’s rocket on the day it was launched. He lost his leg and subsequently died, his ghost has been seen by loads of people, limping around the gardens at night. Sometime they open the original Oratory building which is where they used to hold funeral services and blimey it’s like stepping into Rome or Greece! www.stjamescemetery.co.uk/

• Steve’s Binns talks and walks etc – he’s the blind historian I was telling you about. Amazing. He holds a lot of his talks at St Georges Hall. He is a national treasure, hear his talks here: Steve Binn's audio talks

• The Philharmonic. Loads of good classical stuff, the head conductor is a Russian dude at the mo, Vassily Petrenko. They also show old films on the super duper old cinema screen that rises out of the floor!

• The Philharmonic pub – old gin palace type affair, loads of little cosy, wood panelled rooms, haunted and the men’s toilets are so spectacular they are Grade listed and people go see them as part of a tour!!!!!!!!!!!mental!

• LAST BUT NOT LEAST the Kazimier. http://www.thekazimier.co.uk/listing.php

• http://www.mellomello.co.uk// kind of a sister bar to the Kazimier’s club. They do allsorts of crazy stuff there. All the furniture is shabby and vintage, it was born out of the market and space they used to have (where I used to have a market stall) closing down and being demolished to make…a car park! I was gutted when it happened. It closed at Christmas and it made me cry. Liverpool missed a trick with it as it was really starting to grow and the location would have been ideal to ‘grow out’ a Camden type Sunday thing.  Try Mello Mello's Sunday Roast - they do a vegan version too. Oh my god it was so nice I even at the parsnips!

• Dr Duncans – ok so it’s just a pub – but there is one room in there that is amazing – takes you back in time. I pinched this off a website about Dr Duncan: The name commemorates Doctor Duncan, a relentless campaigner against poor living conditions in the Liverpool of the Victorian era, and the first Chief Medical Officer of Health to be appointed in the UK.

• The Egg café - http://www.eggcafe.co.uk/ tbh their websitedoesnt do it justice. Take your own wine. Full of art and characters and Stan sometime plays his harp in there and it’s fab. Summer's evening with windows open - lush!

• Note on Stan and his harp – Stan is omnipresent – at most of the above places you will see him. He goes to the Kazimier and everyone loves him. He’s like 80 or so. We booked him for an event we did last year at he was great – telling tales and poems and singing songs his dad taught him from the wars etc. Every city should have a Stan.

There is also a book which a taxi driver recommended to me and for life of me I cant remember. I know they have it in Waterstones as I called to ask them, but can I find the note of his name – nope!

I better stop now as I’ll end up writing a book here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! XX

Wise words from Ghandi..

I stumbled across two more quotes I really like early on this morning whilst I couldn't sleep...

“You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result”


" It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver."

Happy Chinese New Year - Year of the Dragon :)



The new studio, "Studio Six"

 Well since we posted, we've had a few changes, a nice Christmas and New Year and a good start to 2012.

New Year greeted me (whilst dressed a Marie Antoinette in a flowing curly white wig) to a car crashed into the gates of the vicarage where I live, with a massive police cordon and ambulances - quite a way to see in the New Year - they were unscathed (unbelievably) though sadly the grade 2 wall and gates weren't.

And we got a 3rd bunny rabbit into the satsuma house as she couldn't go to her intended destination we had her.

Oh and yes we moved studio last week to a lovely bright and airy studio, sharing with the fabulous Artist, Sophie Green, so we are lucky enough to see her new creations as they come to life and then Jan who does ceramics based on photos (amazing) has joined us too. The view of the sunset over the Liverpool skyline is breathtaking and very inspiring and I feel more creative than I have done for months...

What else we are starting a new site called myvintagebritain.com very soon and also another one will be up and running shortly selling food for wildlife in your garden to keep them fed and happy during all seasons. More details to follow.

The mail order catalogue is my focus for next two week's in the evening and we will be looking for agents to sell our goodies if you fancy getting involved drop me an email to jane@littlesatsuma.com

Best wishes for a safe, healthy, fun and prosperous 2012 one and all.

Jane, Little Satsuma xx

Mello Mello’s New Year plans could be best - Ropewalks Liverpool

Mello Mello’s New Year plans could be best - Ropewalks Liverpool

And that is why we are goingggggggggggg! yey!

It's nearly here!

We've been busy busy busy! Trade orders and web orders are now all packed and gone. We've had festive fun in munich, two great days at the St Georges hall winter arts Market and now just Lark Lane Christmas eve market then it's time for rest and wait for Santa and his reindeers. We've had also festive winter picnic at camp and furnace, the best venue in Liverpool, sat drinking mulled wine on hay sofas by a campfire with brass bands and fake snow. Camp and furnace rocks! More proper blogs on last few weeks along with some festive pics to follow. We are also moving premises in mid jan which has worked out well timewise after the Christmas rush. Hopefully moving along with our favourite artist, Sophie green, so we still get to admire her Beatles superlambanana art! Merry Christmas one and all. Little satsuma xx