Hastings Battleaxe

Yes, it's a horrible word, but in the 'Blogosphere', celebrating the anniversary of your blog's start date seems to be what you do.  Maybe because so many quickly fall by the wayside .  
     What are you supposed to do on the big day? have a cake with candles? Crack open a bottle of
champagne?  There are websites offering 'widgets' to put on your blog that count down the days until your blogoversary, but that sounds seriously naff.
     Hastings Battleaxe will have been going for two years as at 21.03 on 31 December. What on earth was I doing, hunched over the computer teaching myself how to use Blogger on New Years' Eve?
     I do know it took much fiddling about before I managed to generate my first post, which got precisely 18 page views. With currently around 2000 views per month, this blog is still small time, but traffic is still steadily increasing month on month, which is good for a 'hobby' blog.
     In December 2011 we were at the st…

Well, we survived the pre-Christmas Eve storm relatively OK - the wind kept us awake most of the night - at its peak, gusts bashed and bludgeoned the house so violently it was quite frightening. I gather the winds were hurricane force just off the coast.
     In the morning we had lost a fence panel and our Christmas lights were all over the place - the singing
Santas scattered. More storms were expected so we put them all away.  Neighbours had lost lots of fencing, roof tiles and telly aerials so we were quite lucky.
     At least we had power round here - looking at the map of power cuts Hastings was one of the only places to survive in this area, even though we had some of the strongest winds, so lucky again. We have had a few power cuts since we came to Hastings - more than in Birmingham, not surprisingly.  I said to Philosopher that perhaps we should keep a box with candles, camping stove etc, somewhere handy.
    The storm seemed to be much worse than the one a couple of months…

Just back from the Midlands. Grim drive in pouring rain. 
     Have had punishing, but very pleasant, few days of catching up with friends and family.
     On Wednesday we drove up to my sister's near Bedford and stopped the night.  As well as Pat and David, it was nice to see my niece Sara and her youngest son Joe.      Next day we went on to Brum, and from then until Saturday lunchtime was a continuous round of catching up and eating - we are talking coffee, lunch, tea and supper with different people each day, including fetching Eve from her last day at school. She had won a prize draw with £50 worth of vouchers!  Not that she would tell us anything about it, of course. You ask her what she has been doing at school and she says 'I don't know...'. Still, I remember how boring it was to be asked such questions by grandparents or even parents.
     I feel incredibly fat and it is not even Christmas - on Tuesday, I had an enormous meal down here with the WI Committee l…

Thought I'd include a bit of glorious sun at Beachy Head to brighten up the grey, wet weather we have mostly had this week.
     Hard to believe this was only Wednesday.... Having said that, this morning we were sitting outside drinking coffee in the sun at the West Hill Cafe.
     We combined a pre-Christmas trip to Waitrose in Eastbourne with a walk. It was absolutely sublime. The
sky was really as blue as in the first picture, the air was fresh and clear and the sun was glittering on the sea so brightly you could scarcely look at it. There were lots of paragliders floating about - the breeze was obviously just right for them to drift over the edge of the cliffs, and then, astonishingly, to glide back up to land safely on the top again. It must have been wonderful for them, but very scary. No way would I go gliding off the edge of Beachy Head on anything....
     I've mentioned before on this blog how being up on the top of those cliffs raises my spirits - it's hard to …

I think I can safely say I have never seen anything as bad as the Christmas Crooners show at the White Rock Theatre.
    Went on a WI outing. The person who had booked the tickets had legged it up north and didn't attend. Hopefully she didn't know what we were letting ourselves in for.
    It was supposed to be a jolly Rat Pack tribute singalong with Frank and Bing thing, but instead it reminded me of one those films/plays/novels (sorry, I can't think of a single title) about sad, ageing variety artists on tours of low-rent provincial theatres. They sit in their stained vests in their dingy dressing rooms, toupee in one hand, fag  in the other, bottle of scotch on the side, and bitch on about everything and everyone.
    The curtain lifted to a discouraging screech of electronic feedback, to reveal a tatty set with a plastic Christmas tree and a seedy, bored-looking backing band, who turned out to be Bulgarian (you could not make this up...). Then on
came 'Frank',…

Well, we've had Black Friday and today, apparently, it is Cyber Monday when we are all supposed to be buying off the Internet. That Black Friday thing is new to us Brits - just another way of getting us to dig into our rapidly emptying pockets.
     Battleaxe is sorry to sound like a curmudgeon (no, I lie, I am not sorry at all, I love it) but I am fed up of
turning on the telly and seeing endless Christmas adverts - generally for supermarkets, with gormless-looking people stuffing themselves with revolting-looking food - yum yum lovin' that Iceland three-bird roast.... Then if it's not food, it is beautiful young things prancing about snowy streets dressed in Christmas party clothing - or lingerie.
     I am fortunate enough not to have to face Christmas without much money. The pressure to buy and buy, and fill your house with tat, is appalling.
     Talking of insane consumerism, yesterday we drove up to Dulwich College for the Mid Century Modern show and fair - Anna ha…