Ales & Bales Music Festival 2009

Yesterday I had an absolutely fantastic time at Ales & Bales music festival down at my local pub The Plough Inn. Brilliant selection of local musical talent and ales. I did lose count of how many ales I consumed but I remember the names of a couple of them: Dognobbler and Pressed Rat & Warthog. Amazingly, I didn't have a hangover and wasn't ill after staggering home at 1.30am! Roll on Ales & Bales 2010.

The excellent Ragtime Ewan


Hilarious folky drinking songs supplied by The Compost Heap


One of the organisers of the event, Lou Richardson

I left my Herefordshire bubble yesterday...

...but I didn't stray far. I only went to Coleford in neighbouring Gloucestershire where my parents live. We all went to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at Coleford's little Studio cinema. A nice small old fashioned cinema that still has a cinema organ down at the front and an intermission complete with ushers with ice cream/sweet trays! And they didn't bombard us with half an hour of adverts. Excellent.

Posh supermarket in Ross on Wye!

We regularly do our weekly shop in Ross on Wye. It's a lovely little town with a brilliant butchers and green grocers (you know, proper food shops like in the olden days). While we prefer to get most of our food from individual shops, we still need to pop to a supermarket sometimes for things like cat food and baked beans. Ross on Wye had a handy Somerfield right in the town centre but for some reason it closed. Ross also lost it's Woolies this year! This was a bit of a worry as, when the big shops go, off go the punters and the smaller shops often end up going out of business. So I am very happy to learn that Sainsburys have opened up in the old Somerfield store. I had been expecting a Co-op (I heard rumours) but a Sainsburys will do just nicely. I always feel quite posh in Sainsburys. It's not quite as posh as Waitrose but we aren't as fancy as Monmouth.

Dear potential blog readers, welcome to My Herefordshire Bubble

This may be my one and only post or I may carry on for years and years. Who knows?

I have called this blog 'My Herefordshire Bubble' because the longer I have lived here, the less inclined I am to leave it. I moved here from Surrey in 2002. I moved from a flat in walking distance of everything you could possibly need to a house in a small village with no conveniences at all. It was a huge shock to the system. I didn't know anyone and everything good/fun seemed to be miles away. What made matters worse was that my husband worked away during the week so I felt very alone with only my 3 year old son and cats for company. I cried quite a lot.

Seven years later (including the addition of a daughter and a rabbit), I am extremely settled. I hope to be back to blog again soon, possibly with the help of my new Nikon D90 camera!