good morning from far sawrey. Just to update blog readers, the blog is going to be moved to our new website www.sawreystores.com (finally we have jumped into embracing technology!) its just at the construction stage but the blog will feature on the website when I work out how to do that. Thankyou all for reading this blog. Its not goodbye, its see you all soon

Annie :-)

Good Morning from Sawrey, its a rather misty morning here today, the rain keeps stopping and starting.

Sawrey is in mourning this week following the sad loss Mrs Hunt who lives just down the lane from the shop and also Mr Ian Crabtree who's lovely family live in the village. Our friend and customer Nancy who underwent heart surgery this week had her operation yesterday and we await news. Testing times for a small community....

The gift basket for the braithwaite hall bingo evening is filling up as gifts are been donated by local businesses.

I note with real interest in the local paper today that Cumbria County Council is failing to meet its social care targets, it says and I quote...."findings published this week reveal weaknesses in the way the department deals with with allegations of abuse - which are on the increase" the council responds by saying it is taking action which is outlined in the detailed action plan published today...hmmmmmm speaking as a whistleblower who was harrassed out of a job she loved due to raising concernes of abuse in a care home run by cumbria care I will read the report with interest. After I whistleblew 6times the CSCI inspection report for the home where I worked said there was no allegations made in the home. I wrote to the inspector to tell him there were indeed allegations and it was me who had made them. The inspection report for the home did however remain unchanged and I found it all very odd how that could happen...

Anyway......the shop remains quiet this week, but so too does the lake district as a whole, you can always tell how busy it is in Ambleside by the opportunity to park on the street, this week parking places are available everywhere

A friend of mine called louise is selling her little flat in ambleside, its a lovely little studio flat right in the epi centre of ambleside and I am putting a link to it on here in case any of you blog readers fancy purchasing a little gettaway in the lakes :-)
http://www.matthewsbenjamin.co.uk/property_details.aspx?p_id=601#

Thats about all for now folks

:-)

Greetings from blue sky Sawrey, its a stunning day here today despite there been absolutely no visitors around. Our meeting with the cumbria rural enterprises chappy went well. They are doing a survey of small businesses in this area to see what support they can offer to keep businesses in rural areas afloat.
It seems to have been a week of meetings, today is was a meeting with the area manager for the national trust, a Mr John Darlington, we discussed amongst other things the impact of the "Miss Potter" film upon Sawrey. He told me that Hill Top had had over 100,000 visitors this year and how next year it it predicted to fall slightly to around 70,000, thats still a lot of folks hey!

The pictures above are of a few of the visitors we get here at Sawrey Stores, Mr Robin is always the first visitor to the shop when we open. Billie and Sky the cute puppies are also regualr visitors that come and play with Benny.

We have a basket here in the shop that has been placed here by the members of Braithwaite Hall, they have asked all local businesses to donate a gift for the Bingo Night which will be held in Hawkshead in December.

Our thoughts today go out to one of our customers who has gone into hospital for a heart bypass operation at Blackpool. GOOD LUCK Nancy

Its 2pm closing today, it still feel strange but as there has not been a customer in for 2hours, I guess its the right decision until the new year. Although I think i would rather stay here than go home and face the mountain of VAT paperwork that needs wading through

Thats about all for now folks :-)

Good Morning from Sawrey, its a blue sky morning and just a perfect day for a walk. Mistake of the week has to go to the Local Paper which reports that Far Sawrey Post office is at High Risk of being closed. This never to be post mistress is sat here in the remains of the post office that was and despite being dazed and confused about many things feels confident that the post office is no longer here, I have searched everywhere and I cannot find it......

Village news this weekend is that the car ferry has new cables and is coming in to dock straight rather than sideways which it has been doing for weeks, for those of you new to the blog, the car ferry web cam can be found at http://www.fba.org.uk/webcam01.html

Today is Rememberence Sunday and many customers have been in wearing their medals. One customer will be reading a list of the names of the people from this area who died in the 1st and 2nd world wars. There are so many names in the list from the 1st world war, dreadful. I went to the cinema in Ambleside this week to watch Atonement and a scene in the film from the beaches at Dunkirk really really brings the reality of it all home. I have just observed the 2 minutes silence, an american family have just been in and we all stood together wearing our poppies with pride, brought a tear to our eyes

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them"

Love from sawrey

Greetings from Sawrey on what can only be described as a very wet and wild morning.......the car ferry is being serviced today so there is no traffic through the village, although I suspect it would be off anyway with the northerly winds which are blowing down the lake at hurricane speed!

We are having a meeting with a person from Cumbria Rural Enterprises today regarding marketing the shop etc, should be interesting, all support for village shop is gratefully received, especially at this time of year when it goes so very quiet.. Benny and I are going to go for a walk alongside the lake shore this afternoon and then home to make some Sloe Gin for presents with some of Sawrey's finest Sloe's :-)

Baby Alexander has not been up for his paper yet, perhaps the winds are delaying him some what :-)

I am posting a link to the dent meditation centre where I went on a course at the other week, it is a wonderful place of calmness and I cannot recommend it enough if meditation appeals to you

http://www.meditationcentre.co.uk/index.html

Greetings from Sawrey, its a blustery wild morning here, very quiet in the village.........fruitilicious was a success yesterday, visited two villages and a customer who is over 100 years old! Amazing! I hope by going regularly more and mroe people will buy fresh produce from the van....

Baby Alexander who is 9days old popped up to the shop or his daily paper today, got to train them young you know!!!

The pictures today are of our new range of gluten free products that we get from the village bakery at Melmerby, they are proving quite popular as more and more people seem to have dietary requirements which do not include gluten products in them.

There is a pheasant shoot in the village today, lots of men wearing their plus fours, its like a scene of out Fawlty Towers (only kidding)

Thats about all for now folks, back to the VAT paperwork :-)

Greetings from Sawrey, fruitilicious, our mobile greengrocery van is about to make its maiden voyage this afternoon. Went to market early this morning, the van is stocked up and ready to go! Excitin! Am trying to work out how to price the produce up thus not to break any rules regarding pricing, think I have done it, we sell things in Kilo's and the scales in the van go up to 5kilos, but people probably wont want many Kilo's of each thing so if I do it by the 100g thats divide it by 10 and x it by the weight of the produce, yikes typing it sounds complicated never mind selling it!!! Where is Carol Vordamen when you need her!

Mother is off singing Jerusalem as I type, today she is at her Women's Institute meeting,

It must have been very windy last night, all of the blackboards outside were all over the place this morning. The village has gone very quiet this week despite the lush blue sky days we are having! It feels strange closing at 2pm three days a week but it is so very quiet in here on an afternoon, hopefully fruitilicious service will a good replacement to the shop on the afternoons we are closed.

Thats about all for now folks, better shut up shop and get on the road with the van :-)

Greetings from Sawrey, my ears are still ringing from all of the fireworks last night! A good night was had though, first it was Hawkshead and then it was onto Elterwater, with my friends John, Pete and Andrea, where at the Britannia pub there was fireworks played to classical music. Hawkshead bonfire was really big and the fireworks were spectacular as always! There was a mini funfair for the children and hundreds of people flocked into the village to watch

I popped to Ambleside this morning for the bread form the Apple Pie bakery, its still filling the shop with a wonderful aroma. Sawrey was lost in the mist this morning, but as I drove up out of Outgate it just vanished, its quite stange when that happens! However the mist has now lifted and I think its going to be a blue sky day

Peter the ferryman has brought us lots of sloe's from his garden this morning, we are going to sell them and raise money for the village hall. Sloe Gin tastes very different to ordinary gin apparently, it takes three months to make tho, I will let you know if it was worth waiting for!

The sunday newspapers are filled with the tragedy of the 4 firefighters who have lost their lives trying to rescue migrant workers who were sleeping in a factory used for packaging vegetables for supermarkets. It seems the gas from the rotting vegetables made the fire worse. I have always had an issue regarding vegetables and packaging, its all so un-necessary, fruit and vegetables have a natural packaging and it looks so strange to me when I see root vegetables covered in film at the supermarkets....Sawrey Stores endeavours to keep packaging to a minimum! Perhaps this latest tragedy will force supermarkets to re think their packaging policies, you never know!

Thats about all for now folks, haappy Sunday from Sawrey :-)

Good Afternoon from Sawrey, its a lush blue sky day here today, hope it stays clear for the annual Hawkshead Bomfire tonight, the bonfire is lit at 6.30 and then there is a firework display, animals take cover!

I am sorting out the fruity van today as of next week I am going mobile in the afternoons, fruitilicious will be born and will be delivering fresh fruit and vegetables to the residents of Hawkshead and Ambleside, I placed a note about this new service in this months parish magazine and I have had several people ring and ask me to call at their home, if the big blue supermarket can deliver round here so can Sawrey Stores :-)

A customer who walks to the shop every day from Near Sawrey has not been in this week, he is having some trouble walking, he went for an x-ray this week and they discovered he had a needle lodged in his pelvis! Amazing hey! Only problem is, its lodged on the other side to where the pain is!?!

Cumbria County Council sent a letter to the shop this week saying that the rural bus service that does not come to our village in winter will now not even be having a timetable published for the service it does provide to Hawkshead! Quite amazing, we get no bus service and the one that we do get some 3 miles away will not have a timetable published! I imagine its due to a shortage of funds after spending hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to bully whistle-blowers who report abuse in care homes?!?

Anyway, on a lovely note, baby Alexander is now home in the village, I popped in to see him and his parents yesterday, he is absolutely adorable, I am suspecting he will have a career doing something with his hands, he seems very interested in his cute little fingers, its lovely to have a new baby in the village, its what little villages like this need

There was a parish council meeting earlier this week, traffic was the 1st issue on the agenda, both the volume of traffic and the speed of traffic through sawrey and the surrounding areas was discussed, an interesting debate was had and I sense it will continue to be had

Thats about all for now folks :-)

Greeting Bloggers! The blog is back, my case is over, its taken me a few weeks to bounce back from been dazed and confused about the whole experience but it’s a new month now and things feel very much back to normal. Representing myself against the full weight of the county councils legal services department has been testing to say the least but I do feel I have done all I could in respect of the abuse towards service users that I whistleblew about. I am hoping that the local newspaper seek to find out under the freedom of information act just indeed how many hundreds of thousands of pounds were wasting having a david and goliath battle with unrepresented me, I imagine the figure will be very very high….anyway……….back to village things….

Last night was Halloween and we had a scary pumpkin competition here, the judge (Mr Tony Dickins) decided that young Ryan from Hawkrigg had made the scariest pumpkin so he was duly given a scary prize, WELL DONE RYAN! Young katie looked absolutely fantasitc in her witches outfit too!!!

We went trick or treating around the village, the trick at one house was Benny the dog diving in un-invited and frightening the resident cats senseless! Norty Benny!
It was soooooooo lovely to see all of the children from the two villages come and take part, the Near Sawrey children left to go trick or treating in their village

Last night was fruity market night, the place was jam packed with apples galore! Every kind of English apple you could dream of! I opted for the Spartan Apples, they look so lush

Last week was as an extremely busy week with half term, lots of families out enjoying their holidays…for the 1st time ever we sold out of bread, milk and toilet rolls daily! So did Hawkshead I was told, it was like been ram raided daily! All good fun tho

The autumn leaves up here are absolutely stunning this week! Quite breath taking when you come up from the ferry and get to the brow of the hill and are greeted with the view to Coniston and all of the golden leaves bunched in-between, magical

I am however saving the best news until last, we have a brand new baby in the village this week, Alexander Edward was born on Tuesday morning weighing 7lb 2.5oz, we send Rob and Lorraine his proud parents lots of love and best wishes

That’s about all for now folks, I am sure there is lots more to blog about since my absence but my mind has just gone blank, Ohh I remember........Saturday night is the night of the Hawkshead Bonfire, even before I lived here I came to this Bonfire, it’s a great night out and always so well attended to see the spectacular fireworks in a lovely setting

Love from Sawrey