23 Comments

Thanks for sharing! I had a ghost in my apartment in NYC the first 5 years I lived here. But he was more a residual memory in the building (a former piano factory) and could only be heard, not seen. Your house is AMAZING! Please post more pix of the flowers!!

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Was he saying the piano? My cousin just told me she used to hear a piano-playing ghost. And thank you so much for the nice words about the house.

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Love a good ghost (as opposed to scary.) My sister and I rented a cottage near Moreton in Marsh in the Cotswolds for some years in our youff. It was Deff haunted and we thought by a man who had lived there some time before and so we called our nameless little place Tom Stanley’s Cottage after him. He used to barge into the kitchen slamming the garden door open at about 10 o’clock at night - we thought he’d been up the field checking on his sheep or shutting up his chickens. Eventually I had to have a chat with him. I was there alone and I lit the fire and poured a glass and sat in one of the two chairs by the fire. Out loud I explained that I understood why he loved the place so much that he didn’t want to leave, but that he was freaking out our visitors with his slamming about. I said I too loved it more than I was afraid of him and so therefore we were going to have to find a way to muddle along together. Never had any more slamming after that. Xxx

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I love this! Of course he was joining the party. How absolutely wonderful.

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The right time of year for a ghost story. My childhood home was early Georgian. As a child I saw a woman in a rustling silk dress walk over to my bed and look down at me. My mother said it was such a happy home and she heard children playing (not my brother and I!) I certainly wasn’t scared. I have had a couple of other experiences one of which was definitely malevolent. Your home has so many fascinating features, it’s wonderful.

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Thank you so much Catherine. I am so glad I have only encountered benevolent spirits.

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Thank you so much for this Debora. We have been a crumble free house since husband discovered he was gluten intolerant - it hadn't occurred to me to try using buckwheat flour (maybe augmented with a bit of GF flour). I'll try something savoury like this to start with and then judge whether it could work with sweet fruit crumbles.

I have never seen a ghost (as far as I know...) but I have heard one. My dad, a very level headed and unshockable clergyman, saw at least two and spoke to one of them. But those are stories for a late evening with a bottle of wine.

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I really like buckwheat flour. I would combine it with your GF flour - I think it would work quite well. I would love to hear your dad's stories one day.

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It's a date.

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Thank you for sharing this lovely story…and also the snapshots of the flower features inside your home. The moldings are beautiful and the window/glass features are stunning.

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Thank you so much, Sue. We are very lucky that they're all still intact.

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A great tale and a great recipe. Like you I also believe in ghosts, after my father and second eldest brother died, on each occasion I had a vision of someone passing me in the hallway, not as clear as you have described, but there was something.

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What a lovely ghost story, and a comforting thought to have Joseph Voisin roaming your beautiful house in a contented state. When I was a child, a friend of my mum’s who was visiting us said she saw an old man at the top of our stairs. At the time, there were no men living in our house, so my mum asked her friend to describe him. When she said he had white, wispy hair, a kind smile, and one tooth, we knew immediately that she must have seen the ghost of my granddad, my mum's father. Given we only knew one man with one tooth - a source of great amusement to us when he told us he had opened the door one day to a woman canvassing toothpaste - we felt he was watching over us, which was a great comfort to my Mum.

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Love all of this but particularly your Freudian slip in the picture caption …

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And the one in step two of the recipe - I shall never think of cauliflower florets the same way again...

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Ha, great spot! Had to read it twice ..

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Love this recipe! I always forget about savoury crumbles. I think yours will go perfectly with the stuffed parsnip that I saw on TV yesterday.

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I love them! So adaptable.

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How interesting! I was rather hoping you had been able to find a photo of Joseph Voisin. I have a picture of a very colourful waistcoat in my mind’s eye.

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I am on the hunt for one!

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Excellent!

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Ah. French geometry. We'd say that that is an elliptical dish, not an oval one. Not that I'm one to split hairs.

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I would, but if I asked for an elliptical dish in John Lewis honewares they might think I was mad.

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