Sit thi deawn

      As promised, some chairs. The leather one you've already seen, when I was talking about restoring leather. This is the chair that started the whole thing off - I got the chair then decided it needed a special place of its own. That's where the study was born.

It still needs quite a bit of work, but there's no rush. 

The second chair is wicker, with a leather seat and cushion. Yet another eBay win, this time from a young man in Mellor, for the princely sum of £16.50. It was bigger that I expected (this was A Good Thing), and so it wouldn't fit in the car, so I had a quick dash down the road on a wet Sunday morning with the chair lashed into the boot with washing line and bungee cords. Once of a time such behaviour was quite normal around here, but these days Her Majesty's constabulary have started to take a dim view of such practices.

I love this chair - it's a bit lived in, but I'm leaving it the way it is. I like the scuffed, scruffy look. Here' the same chair with an old shawl thrown over the back.

One shawl, £5.95, Oxfam, Clitheroe.

So, when you've somewhere to sit, you need a fireside to pull your chair up to. The veneer is still being silly, but the Duck Tape seems to be working. Today I put the surround around the fireplace.

You wouldn't think so, but it's pillar box red - not pink. Flipping camera.

And a fireplace needs a fire. Here's one.

An electric fire that looks like a wood-burning stove. From a Factory Shop in Clitheroe, £59 - reduced from £89. Bargain.

Fire with the doors open.

Fire with the doors closed.

And finally, I hung a picture over the fire. It's a parchment facsimile of John Speed's 1610 Map of Lancashire. It's been in a drawer for about twenty years, one of those things you buy on a whim and never, (well, hardly ever), get around to doing something with. The frame came, you guessed it, from a charity shop in Oswaldtwistle and cost a fiver.

 

 

Detail of the map.

And the chimney breast from further away.

I really must take some photographs in daylight.

Sit thi deawn - this is Lancashire dialect for "Please take a seat", and alludes to the traditional hospitality of the North of England. By way of contrast, we also have a saying, "Colder than a Southerner's welcome."