Long time no speak… and things have changed...

Well, it’s been around 4 months since I last posted anything and my apologies for that. The reason is quite simple, we have moved house!

After nearly 3 years of searching for our ideal home, we have finally found it! We’re now living on the opposite, east side of Wales, quite near to the border with England in a place called Llanfyllin (pronounced thlan – vuth – lin). To most people, it’s just a small village, but the locals get very upset if you don’t call it a town. It was granted its borough charter in 1293 by Llewelyn ap Gruffydd, Lord of Mechain and is one of only two Welsh towns to be so granted by a native Welsh ruler. The other being Welshpool, which is about 12 miles away,

You may also notice that my website has changed. This was more by accident than design, though I had been thinking about changing the theme for some time, as the old one took an absolute aaaage to load. I was dabbling with an alternative when I discovered it had gone live and I was unable to go back, since the old ‘Visual’ theme has been retired (i.e. no longer supported by WP and it may not work with future upgrades – thanks WP!)

This first post since the change is therefore a bit of an experiment to see how it all looks and feels. All comments and feedback welcome!

Anyway, it’s time to move on and we had no sooner moved into our new home (at the end of July btw) and it was ‘show’ time… The Oswestry Show was on the following weekend and that was closely followed by our local Llanfyllin Show.

She’ll hate me for mentioning this, but my wife entered 15 of the cakes and preserves classes and got 3 firsts, 5 seconds and 3 third prizes. She encouraged me to enter Tomos into 4 of the dog show events and out of my 3 attempts, we only got a 3rd (out of 3 entrants!) in the pedigree 12-18 month category. I therefore suggested that Jude might have better luck in the ‘local dog’ (which lives within 4 miles of the town) category and they got 2nd prize! I don’t have many photos of the latter event, but there’s a second gallery below.

Oswestry Show photos (from 3rd August 2024)

Llanfyllin Show photos (from 10th August 2024)

19 responses

  1. Bug Woman Avatar

    My goodness! Well done, Jude and Mike (especially Jude :-)) – that baking looks scrumptious! I know where to come for afternoon tea if I’m ever in East Wales!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar

      I can’t say that I was ‘busy’ during the move, as Jude packed all but one of the (very many) boxes. At least she then knew where everything was! And, yes, you’re more than welcome to call in if you’re ever passing by! There’s usually a cake or two available! 😋👍👍

      Like

  2. Jim Earlam Avatar

    Your wife obviously makes exceedingly good cakes Mike. The new theme looks OK to me, which one is it? I’ve been thinking about changing my site around a bit but I don’t fancy spending weeks of my life sorting it all out. Maybe one day 😀

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar

      She does indeed! The new theme is called Grammer One (their spelling not mine!) I started fiddling with it around 10am and, despite a few anxious moments when I thought I’d screwed everything up, I had it all sorted by 1 o’ clock. It’s a while since I used the WP dashboard, so there was a certain amount of trial and error. In trying to get the titles back under the Home/blog page images I ended up with a right old mess, but after deleting a few things and almost starting again on that page but, using the prompts (example screens) displayed, it all came good. The best thing was the other pages were not lost and the links all seem to work! (So a huge sigh of relief all round!) I had to enter the blog title again in the text to get it displayed and I plan to tinker a bit more to fine tune it, but the basics are there. 😊👍👍
      (Btw we’re currently on holiday in Scotland, so I have some walk posts to come! 😀)

      Liked by 1 person

  3. rabirius Avatar

    Excellent pictures!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar

      Thanks!

      Like

  4. blhphotoblog Avatar

    Good to see you back Mike, you seem to have itchy feet, always on the move! Anyway you’re nearer the border so if the natives get restless not so far to leg it!

    The new theme looks slick but thanks for the warning on the the first few photos, thought something had gone awfully wrong.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar

      Thanks Brian. I’m not sure where the time has gone, but home ownership certainly keeps you busy!
      I’m not sure what happened with the camera. I’ve no idea how to set it to ‘misty’! The one point colours were OK as were the ones I took a few days later, so it’s a complete myst(er)y!
      I’m still tweaking the site. E.g. to try and improve the headings on the ‘other’ pages, but the headers all seem to be based on the home screen. Except that is for the number of posts, which I’ve set to 9, but only 6 appear. The latest editor isn’t as intuitive (nor, perhaps, working?) as you’d expect! I also thought any emails to subscribers would be truncated (and I’ve checked the setting to do that), but all the text and images are shown. 😌 But at least I still have a site. At one point, when I found out I couldn’t return to my Visual theme, I thought I might lose the lot! If that had happened, I would have retired myself from blogging!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. blhphotoblog Avatar

        Ah wordpress is such fun! A few weeks ago I had to upgrade as I was told I had run out of storage yet I’m sure I had some left. As soon as I did if I wanted to go through my media to delete old photos it took up to two hours to load! Tried contacting wp but it took 10 days to get a reply and the problem sorted when they promise 24 hours.
        As for your camera you may have accidentally moved a setting getting it out of the case, been there, done that.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar

          Oh dear, it looks like it may be a while before I sort out my truncated email issue… I’ll try now and see how long it takes… 🤞🤞

          Like

        2. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar

          It looks like the AI reply covers all bases by saying that there could be all sorts of reasons (theme incompatible, plug-ins incompatible and CSS code) that could affect it, so I’ve added it manually to my brief post for tomorrow… We’ll see what happens.
          Also noticed that your comment (and my reply) didn’t appear below this post. Let’s hope it does now, or I could be experimenting with another, hopefully more robust, theme tomorrow! (It’s due to rain all day here tomorrow!)

          Like

  5. Bay Photos By Donna Avatar

    Great to see you back, Mike! Congrats to you both on the new home and a big congratulations to Jude on her cake wins, well done!!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar

      Thanks Donna, it’s good to be back! I’ve finally found time to catch up (while on holiday) so no ‘small’ jobs around the house to do! 😊👍👍

      Liked by 1 person

  6. M. Oniker Avatar

    Apparently you don’t have a close-the-comments-by-length-of-time set. 🙂 I can’t believe I didn’t comment on this, I meant to, then I guess I lost my mind (happening a lot lately). Congrats on the new house. The fair looks like fun, and congrats to your wife for all of the cooking wins! That 3rd photo, with the sheep? Blurry or not that’s a weird looking critter!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar

      Yes, that 3rd photo is of a Valaisan sheep – i.e. native to the canton we used to live in. They’ve become very popular due to their cute looks. Although how they see anything through all that wool is beyond me!

      Like

  7. Laura Denise Avatar

    I’m just returning from being away from WP, too. Happy to hear you’ve found the home you’ve been looking for. I like the “a little bit out of focus” photos 😄; it does add nostalgia. I zoomed in on your wife’s entries and drooled a bit. Glad to have you still here and well. 💛

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar

      Thanks Laura. It’s good to see you back too. I hope you are keeping well and feeling inspired to write! 🥰

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Laura Denise Avatar

        Thank you. I appreciate it. I got annihilated by life and went down for the count but am back up now, with a year of therapy, and always God, who just opened the door for an exciting new next chapter. I think the second half of my life story is going to be peace and happiness. ❤️ And lots of writing. 😊

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar

          Yes, life can be cruel at times, but it’s excellent news that you’re back to writing (a few more chapters of your ‘life’ book!) 😀👍👍

          Liked by 1 person

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