MorningAJ

Every Inchie Monday: Glow

2012-02-13T02:25:00.000Z

Another inchie challenge. This week's word is 'Glow'.

It's a chocolate wrapper (again!) with black ink creating the shape.
Don't forget to check out the others at the Every Inchie Monday blog

Back to the dentist

2012-02-09T12:38:00.000Z

I had a major appointment in my dental saga this morning. I was booked in for three hours to have five teeth prepared for my new gnashers. As it happens we managed to get seven done because I was such a good girl and didn't ask for too many breaks. (extra anaesthetic, yes, but not too many breaks.....) So, rather than having a set of temporary crowns that look like my old teeth, I now have a set of extremely temporary (for a week, in fact) ones that look sort of like my final new set will be.

They're kind of a solid block of over-white cementy stuff, so they have none of the subtlety that the final set will have, but it gives me an idea of how I'm going to look. Eating's currently a challenge though.

The clothes off your back.....

2012-02-08T13:48:00.002Z

Someone who doesn't need to worry about clothes!

Well you all seem to be having such fun with these bits of folklore that I thought I'd go for the next stage.

I've been reading through the long article I found in my files and there's a few beliefs about clothes that I've picked up along the way. These aren't all from our family, although a lot are, because my mother's side were all in the wool trade in Bradford. My grandma was a weaver and my grandad was a warp twister.*

If you put something on inside out by mistake you should either leave it that way all day or take it off. NEVER take if off, turn it right way in then put it back on. If you do, you'll 'change your luck' usually for the worse.

Of course, in some parts of the country there's a belief that if you're having a run of very bad luck you can make it change by deliberately wearing something inside out.

It's also extremely unlucky to sew something while you're wearing it. My mother always said you were 'sewing poverty to your back'. You should always take off an item to be mended, even if it only needs a couple of stitches.

Never wash on new year's day. This wasn't one of our family's beliefs, but 'collected' from a Northants family I knew. The warning was that you'd 'wash one out and wash one in' during the coming year. In other words, you were inviting a death and a birth in the family. I can't imagine there were that many families in the past who didn't experience that, whether they washed on new year's day or not!

*The person who threads the loom with the long strands (or warp) and ensures the tension is correct for the weaver to put the cross threads (the weft) into the cloth.

A cup of cha

2012-02-07T10:06:00.001Z

Over on my other blog I've been publishing some things I discovered in an old computer file, most of which were written several years ago. In among a lot of other stuff I also found a document I prepared about 15 years back, all about my family's folklore. I'd forgotten I'd gathered it together for someone (from York) so we could compare notes. The great thing is, I've got his replies too. So there will be more to come.

Since I am still relishing my afternoon tea at the weekend, let's start with a look at some tea rituals. Given that tea wasn't introduced into this country until the 1660s, these things can hardly be said to have their roots in the mists of time. Some of them might have grown from earlier drinking habits though.

The big one in our family was that, whoever poured first from the pot must continue to serve until the next brew was made.
Tea serving was always preceded by someone saying 'who's going to be mother?' but I don't think that was anything to do with luck, more a family habit. But - once it was established who'd pour, woe betide anyone else who picked up the pot because they'd 'have ginger twins'. This was a belief from my Mother's side and there must have been a lot of teapot swapping in the past because I'm the only one of that line who doesn't have naturally red hair and there are a few twins in the family!

Two teaspoons in the same saucer brought bad luck. I don't remember it meaning anything specific, just general ill-fortune. It was absolutely forbidden to stir someone else's tea because it would 'stir up trouble for them'. The same rule never applied to coffee though.

And possibly the weirdest one was, if your tea had lots of bubbles on the surface when it was poured, you were encouraged to 'drink the money' before they disappeared. That involved a fair bit of slurping to gather every last bubble, so it never happened when we were in polite company, but if it was family-only you'd be in trouble if you didn't gather as much as you could.

Every Inchie Monday: Flier

2012-02-06T06:29:00.003Z

It's inchie time again. Here's Flier. It's pen and ink and crayons.

Don't forget to take a look at the other inchies on the blog page.

Afternoon tea

2012-02-04T21:08:00.000Z

We decided to treat ourselves to afternoon tea today. It's become very trendy these days. Apparently people have stopped using teapots at home but they are prepared to spend a fortune on a fancy tea in a café somewhere.
We thought we'd save on the cost and have it at home. I did smoked salmon, egg mayonnaise and coronation chicken sandwiches, and there was fruit bread and stem ginger cookies (K's favourite). We finished it off with a couple of custard slices.

To make it a 'proper' tea we used the teapot. The tea really did taste better for it.

As promised - more strange words

2012-02-03T14:51:00.000Z

Palimpsest; Pall-mall; Panjandrum; Panorama; Pantechnicon; Paraphernalia; Petard;
Pettifogging; Phenology; Pinchbeck; Popinjay; Poppycock; Pound; Preposterous;
Rhinotillexomania; Rigmarole; Saggar; Salmagundi; Sarcophagus; Scalene;
Scallywag or Scalawag; Scrimshaw; Seersucker; Serendipity;
Shenanigan; Skedaddle; Skulduggery; Snickersnee;
Solar sail; Spondulicks; Stotting; Syzygy; Tantivy; Tatterdemalion;
Tawdry; Termagant; Thaumaturgy; Tiffin; Tintinnabulation; Tontine;
Trebuchet; Triskaidekaphobia; Truckle; Ullage; Umami; Velocipedist; Volitation;
Wassail; Wayzgoose; Welkin; Will-o’-the-wisp; Willy-nilly; Yaffle; Zany;

CHRESTOMATHY - A selection or anthology.

2012-02-03T14:17:00.001Z

Some years ago I was a regular Reader's Digest consumer and I always loved the 'It Pays to Increase Your Word Power' section. These aren't mine. I found them in an old email. I hope all these links work. Let me know if you find one that leads to the wrong place.

Adipocere; Alegar and beeregar; Autohagiography; (I know that person!) Bezoar; Blatherskite; Bodger; Bowdlerise; Brobdingnagian; Brummagem; (it was called lots of other things too....); Bruxer; Cadge;(and you thought you knew that one, didn't you?); Caltrop; Cataract; what a load of old Codswallop; Contumely; Costard; Costus; Cruciverbalist; Deasil; Digamy; (There's a word for that?) Droogish; Dumbledore; Dwile flonking; Ell; Emmet and grockle; Ergophobia; Etaoin shrdlu; Folderol; Frigorific; (our current weather); Furbelow; Gadzooks; (Really? Do we?); Gallimaufry; (lovely word); Gazebo; Ginglyform; Gongoozler; Gurning; Ha-ha; Haberdasher(two countries separated by a common language); Haggard; Handfasting;; Hobbledehoy; Hornswoggle; Ice house; Ichthyophagous;(that's me!); Inglenook; Jackanapes; Janus-faced; Logan stone; Lollygag; Lycanthropy; Maundy; Merrythought; Mudlark; Nepenthes; Oche (180!); Onomatopoeia; Oojah; Orrery (Joseph Wright of Derby painted one); Oyez (recently... 2001?).

More will follow - but those links are hellish to complete!

Beware of piskies in eggshell boats!

2012-02-02T12:08:00.001Z

Everyone seems to be enjoying my memories of Dad's folklore so I've been trying to dredge up some more from the dark recesses of the past. It's tricky, because they seem to come to me haphazardly when they would be relevant, rather than being a set of 'rules' that I can call to mind as and when I choose.

One that I can remember was his insistence, every time he ate a boiled egg, on turning over the empty shell and bashing it hard with his spoon to make a hole at both ends. This has nothing to do with his garden lore, of course, although he did use smashed eggshell for a number of things around the garden. This one dates from his Navy days.

HMS WIZARD - my Dad's ship (W class destroyer) © IWM (FL 21726) (Photo used under licence)

I asked him once why he did it and his reply was: "To stop the piskies using them as boats, so they can't sink the ships." When I repeated it, but used the word 'pixies' I was roundly scolded. "Piskies, not pixies. They're an altogether different thing."

Piskies, it turned out, were a malevolent species, given to harming humans at every opportunity.^* Pixies, on the other hand, while a little mischievous, were basically kind and helped to look after the plants. Dad had a healthy regard for the Little People. It wasn't a religion, as such. It was more of a respect. We never called them by name, for example: the 'F' word ^**was strictly forbidden. They were the Fair Folk or the Fey, but mostly the Little People.

We never exchanged knives or other sharp, metal objects, without cash changing hands. Sometimes the taboo stretched to anything remotely knife-like. I once asked if he had a spare metal ruler (after carving huge chunks out of my wooden school one while trying to cut straight lines in paper). His reply? "You'll have to pay me for it."

The price was never expensive - a couple of pence would do - but coins had to be handed over. I still have that ruler today, even though I don't have my Dad any more!

So what was it about the Piskies and the eggshells? Well, Dad served in the RN during WWII on a destroyer and the crew spent a lot of time avoiding U Boats. It was vital not to throw anything overboard that could float and give the subs an opportunity to follow the current back to its source. It was also vital to get rid of rubbish somehow or the ship would soon be full of rotting refuse. Empty eggshells were always smashed thoroughly so they'd disappear below when they were jettisoned and not give the 'piskies' chance to sink the ship!

++++++++++

^* Apologies to any Cornish people who take offence at their 'piskies' being defamed in this way. I'm sure Cornish piskies are yet another (benevolent) species!
^**You know - F***y

The new moon - specially for snafu (and anyone else who wondered)

2012-02-01T18:25:00.009Z

After my last (weather lore) post snafu commented that Dad's gem about the new moon bringing rain would mean that we got rain showers every 28 days. But it doesn't.

The key fact about the moon was that it had to be 'on its back' when it first appeared. Next time there's a new moon (which is technically Feb 21 in the Northern hemisphere but it won't be visible until about 23 or 24 Feb) go out and take a look.

REMEMBER. Don't look at it through glass the first time you see it, or you'll have an expensive month. And turn your money over in your pocket/purse/handbag to ensure it keeps growing for you.

You will see that the first sliver of moon will be at any position from vertical

to horizontal or anywhere in between -

Now then.... That top moon won't hold any water - because it can't. It's already upright. That bottom one is almost on its back. So THAT month would have been rainy.

See the difference?

White Rabbits (It's too cold to snow)

2012-02-01T08:56:00.001Z

Dad hard at work in the garden
in Scarborough

Regular readers will already know that when my Dad left school (at the ripe old age of 14 like you could back then) he went to work for a market gardener to learn to grow things.

He was good at his job; he understood the earth and was sympathetic to its moods and habits. It helped that we're descended (through his mother's line) from traveller folk, who needed to understand the countryside and its natural rules if they were to survive. As a result he was full of folk tales and weather lore and I was thinking about him and his sayings this morning. It began when I woke up.

Today is February 1 and on the first of every month Dad would greet the day by saying 'white rabbits'. I have no idea why. He had no idea why. You just did it. For luck.

Then the discussions from yesterday's post about village names brought out a lot of Fenland places (they do seem to have some very silly ones round there) and Dad was a Fenman. He was always proud to say that he came from the same kind of stock as Oliver Cromwell and, while he would respect the Royal Family's position he wouldn't accept them individually as anything better than himself. 'And if they start getting out of hand again we can always chop off another head to remind them.'

But to get to the point. I've had an email conversation this morning with a fellow blogger about the weather and it reminded me of something that Dad used to say. 'It's too cold to snow.' I was amazed this morning that I didn't have to scrape ice off my car even though the temperature gauge said it was below freezing. Yesterday, when it was plus one degree I had a fight on my hands to clear the screen.

The roads are also clear (although there's a slippery patch in the car park where someone spilled water) and the weather reports are threatening killer temperatures, but no snow. This worries me - because Dad's follow up phrase was: 'just wait till it warms up a bit.'

Of course I could have told you it was going to turn cold. Only a few days ago I noticed a lot of molehills by the side of the road and heard Dad's voice clearly in my head: 'The moles are digging in. Best wrap the plants up.' I went home and checked the fleece coat around my srawberries!

As Spring progressed he was full of other little gems. How strong will the March winds be? Watch how high up the crows are nest building. The higher they are, the calmer the month.

And then there's his other little gem. If the new moon is lying on its back it'll be full of water - and as it stands up it'll tip it all on us. In other words - as the moon turns to full it'll rain. This month's new moon was about as far back as it could be. So if the weather warms up a couple of degrees, we could be in for a bad time.

Did you know there's a Leek in Staffordshire?

2012-01-31T13:48:00.002Z

Did you know there's a Leek in Staffordshire?
That's why there's a Poole in Dorset.

*********

Aren't English placenames wonderful? Sorry to all you Welsh and Scots. I'm sure you have great placenames too, but I don't know them so well. English names have developed over the years as different cultures were in charge of the country. We've not been successfully invaded since the Normans arrived in 1066, but the various ruling nations before that have left their marks in many ways.

The study of the origin of placenames is called toponymy, and I've been interested in it since I was very young; in fact since I learned back in 1966 that the name of my home town, Scarborough, was derived from Skardeburgh, or Skardi's Town. Skardi was the Viking adventurer who settled by the natural harbour, in the lee of the headland, in 966 AD.

You can tell a lot from a placename in England. Most people think, for example, that the Yorkshire Dales are so-called because they're a range of hills. Not so. Dale is actually a derivation of an Old English word meaning valley: hence Airedale, valley of the River Aire, Swaledale, valley of the River Swale, and so on.
There are upland places with 'dale' or similar syllables in their name, but they are derived from another Old English word, don, meaning hill. So you can be misled. One of them is Pendle Hill, famous for being the homeland of the Lancashire Witches. That name comes from Pendon Hill, 'pen' meaning hill in the old Celtic languages (now mostly confined to Wales and Cornwall). So Pendle Hill actually means hill hill hill.

Some names are just plain silly, like Marsh Gibbon, in Buckinghamshire, or the cluster of Snorings in Norfolk, which contains the wonderful Great Snoring. Leicestershire has Sheepy Parva (guess what they keep there?) and neighbouring Sheepy Magna. The 'parva' and 'magna' show how long the local abbeys had control of the land, since they're taken from the church language Latin.

Most people know that the suffixes 'caster' and 'cester', as in Brancaster, Gloucester et. al. mean the Romans built a fortification there. There are others, like 'chipping' meaning market, 'force' meaning waterfall, and 'garth' meaning enclosure. This is a complex field of study.

Then there's the list of people who are really places:
The lovely couple, Mavis Enderby and Scott Willoughby of Lincolnshire; Edith Weston, who 'lives' on the shores of Rutland Water; the very friendly North Yorkshire policeman Constable Burton; Ashley Heath, from near Telford.

Feel sorry for the poor people who are always at Loggerheads in Staffordshire, although the residents of the Country Durham town Pity Me make their own plea. What would you call someone who came from Idle, near Bradford? Or Ugley in Essex? Did you know there's a Bell End near Birmingham? (Careful - people actually LIVE there you know!)

Go grab yourself a road atlas and find a few of your own!

Every Inchie Monday: Smile

2012-01-30T06:02:00.007Z

This week's inchie theme is Smile.

I used to work for the British Dental Health Foundation, the people who organise National Smile Week, and the badge on the left is a Smile Week logo pin, which just happens to have been hanging around in my jewellery box for several years.

But then I figured that was too easy - so I did the other two. I like the sunny one in the middle.

This inchie thing is really getting to me. The letter stencils are a new thing I've treated myself to - just for my inchie art!

A question (mainly) for my US and ex-pat Brit readers

2012-01-27T11:25:00.000Z

What symbolises England to you?

I'm working on an art project at the moment and I need to know what icons someone overseas (particularly the States and actually someone from Michigan) would consider to be quintessentially English.

I've got the cup of tea (and cake) and I'm working with an old postage stamp that has the Queen's head on it (and the three lions). There's a map of country lanes too. But beyond that I'm sort of stumped.

Now, I would think cricket and Stonehenge and roses, but would that mean England to a foreigner?

All suggestions would be welcome.

Return of rickets

2012-01-24T16:08:00.000Z

According to the news this morning, young children are suffering from rickets again - because parents and healthcare workers don't know that growing bones need vitamnin D. And presumably they don't know that you make vitamin D by being in the sun.

Perhaps it's my age, but I've known for years that lack of sunlight affects the skeleton. I don't think I knew that vitamin D was necessary to absorb calcium (and hence get strong bones) but I knew that kids in smoky cities often ended up with bent legs because the sunlight couldn't get through the smog.

It's been a while since rickets was a problem, because a healthy diet will supply a small amount of the vitamin (oily fish and eggs mainly), but two years ago the press were reporting that rickets was on the increase as a result of scares about over-exposure to sunlight.

So can someone explain why healthcare professionals (the term used on the news) are still ignorant about the need for dietary supplements in pregnant women and young children?

When I was a kid we were taught that lack of vitamin C gave you scurvy and affected your skin (and your gums), vitamin B was essential for nerve health (among other things) and all the rest. (Eat oranges, take your brewer's yeast tablet and get out in the sunshine for at least a few minutes every day.) So why aren't 'healthcare professionals' taught it today? And midwives in particular?

Every Inchie Monday: Universe

2012-01-23T08:42:00.000Z

Both of these are done with pastels. It was pretty tricky to do because I'm not exactly accurate with the powdery little sticks, but I couldn't see any other way to get the effect I wanted.

The purpley one was my first attempt, but it didn't seem to have enough 'light' in it so I had another go and was quite pleased with the bluer one. Believe it or not, the blue is the colour of the paper I drew them on.

My next big problem was making sure they didn't smudge when they were finished. I tried fixing spray (like very expensive hairspray) but it just swamped Purple so Blue was subjected to a coat of sellotape. (Sticky tape/Scotch tape/dunno what you call it in other countries!) So now it has a shiny surface.

I had to go over it with a blunt stick to make sure all the air was driven out from the back because it looked sort of grey until I did. If you look here you can see that I didn't quite get the tape straight!

*********

Every Inchie Monday is a weekly challenge to create one square inch of art. Take a look here to see what it's all about and view other people's talented miniature works.

More inchies

2012-01-21T17:36:00.004Z

I've been inchie-ing again.

The tree is based on something I see on the M42 when I head south.

Mean Streets is one that grabbed me after I did the city challenge a couple of weeks ago. This is a very different way of looking at a city.

GB is an idea I came up with while considering an 'English' set for a friend in the US. I might work on some variants of it.

And finally is a silly photo showing my wonderful discovery. Inchies fit perfectly in the boxes inside Kinder eggs!

Update

2012-01-19T17:43:00.000Z

Thank you to everyone who wished me well this morning. I survived! (I don't think there was any doubt really) I'm still dosed up on ibuprofen because I don't want to think what it'll feel like when the pain killers wear off. But I'm going to cope.

Apprehension

2012-01-19T07:13:00.000Z

I have to go to the dentist today. I'm starting a long course of restorative work and the foundation stage involves actual surgery. I won't go into details. It's a bit gory and besides, I really don't want to think about it.

Today's appointment (one of a series over the next three months) is an hour long. At one point in the course I shall have four consecutive days of drilling and rebuilding. Things are going to be uncomfortable because my jaw alignment is going to change considerably as a result of all this. (My jaw line is the reason for most of my dental problems)

On the other hand I shall have a smile again. My current teeth (I would say my own teeth but several of them are fake already) are ugly and crooked and so I have got out of the habit of smiling. Subconsciously I keep my lips pressed together and so, even when I'm happy, it doesn't show.

As part of all this we've already had a mock-up to illustrate what we're hoping to achieve. You can get a clue what my natural teeth look like from what's visible of the bottom ones. I just have to keep this image in my mind as I sit in the chair today.

Peaceful inchie

2012-01-18T01:30:00.001Z

Made this for someone at work to show quite how small an inchie is. It was made with stuff I had access to at work, so it's not exactly great - but I quite like it.

Sunset at Stourbridge

2012-01-17T21:15:00.000Z

We went for a walk on Sunday. We had to be in Dudley (don't ask why) and so we went to Stourbridge for a cup of tea and a cake at the Edwardian Crystal Tea Room at Red House glass cone, then went for a walk up the canal. It's a lovely spot, and the evening light adds to its charm.

Stourbridge was once the centre of the glass industry in the uk. It was reputedly begun in the 17th century by French glassmakers who settled in the area because of its rich local coal supplies and freely available fireclay for making furnaces, plus sand for the actual glass manufacture.

Red House Cone is the last remaining working glass cone in the country (allegedly) and one of only a handful left standing. It now houses a museum of glass and there are regular demonstrations by glassmakers, as well as a shop selling art glass pieces.

Unlike ceramic cones, glass cones housed both the furnace and the workers. In the Potteries the cone-shaped chimneys were the whole furnace and were worked from outside.

The long building you can see in front of the cone is called Dadford's Shed, one of the last remaining timber-built warehouses on the canal system, and was once the headquarters of Webb's seed company.

Every Inchie Monday: Shadow

2012-01-16T00:26:00.007Z

Not sure this week's topic really grabbed me. I enjoyed playing with the blue tones but I don't know if it really says 'shadow'. So then I had a go at making something out of the shape aspect, rather than the colour, and I got this:

It's all paper (even though this photo makes it look like cloth) and I really need to learn to glue better! (The spotty bit is background, by the way. Maybe it shouldn't have been........)

See more at the Inchie Blog

A bit more artwork

2012-01-14T18:34:00.002Z

We went out for drinks and nibbles at the neighbours' last night. So this morning I made a thank you card.

All the sixes

2012-01-12T16:46:00.002Z

Six years ago today K and I met for the first time.
Eighty six years ago today my Dad was born.
I wish they'd had the chance to meet.

I love you both.

I miss you Dad.

That'll be me then......

2012-01-12T12:32:00.000Z

(It's in Birmingham)

.........

2012-01-12T10:15:00.000Z

That's it really. Didn't want to say anything else.

Planning a holiday

2012-01-11T13:25:00.001Z

I don't know about you guys but whenever I choose a holiday destination I do a lot of research about the place before I set off. We've just stuck a deposit on a cottage by the sea in Lancashire for a week in April and I'm already browsing the net for ideas of what to do, where to eat, local delicacies etc.

Another thing is the journey. I hate just driving to a place and settling in. Getting there is half the fun, as they say, and I'm trying to work out where we can stop off en route. Last time we headed in that direction we stopped in Lancaster. Wonderful place and I loved it, but we're only going to be about 10 miles down the road from it all week, so I'm hunting for a place to go in between.

Anyone got any suggestions for a suitable place to potter round, have a bite to eat and maybe do a bit of yummy food shopping? I'm looking for something 10 miles either side of the M6 between Stoke and Lancaster.

I don't want to do anywhere too big and towny. What's Preston like?

Every Inchie Monday: City

2012-01-09T04:30:00.002Z

I think I might have cheated a bit this week. I drew a 3x2 inch rectangle then drew a cityscape on it. It's all imagination, I didn't have any particular city in mind - although it looks fairly northern and English to me. Then I cut it into six pieces. The result? Six inchies that can stand by themselves or fit together as a set. I rather like the industrial one in the top right hand corner.

Don't forget to visit the Inchie blog to see what it's all about.

Inchie Mania

2012-01-08T17:53:00.001Z

I've got myself a bit fixated on this inchies thing.

In case you don't know what it means - you produce square inches of art using any media you choose. This set is for a friend and represents the seven chakras.

Chakras are part of an ancient Eastern view of medicine. They represent seven energy centres within the body, each one a different colour (defined in the west by the rainbow colours) and maintaining different aspects of physical and mental health.

Among the materials I've used are: chocolate wrapper, sequin waste, metal brads, stickers, gift wrapping paper, coloured card, gel pens, pencil.

If you can't see the whole photo, click on it and it will open my Flickr page to show you it all.

How time flies

2012-01-06T08:53:00.000Z

Last night I watched a documentary about Icehotel in Sweden. It described how the place is rebuilt every year, in the space of six weeks, using only ice from the nearby Torne river. I sat mesmerised, because I stayed at the hotel in what seems like a previous existence. It's extremely expensive. It's a once-in-a-lifetime kind of place for most people.

I have souvenirs. As well as my photos there's a piece of artwork by a Sami painter hanging on my staircase wall. It shows the front door of the hotel, which always takes that distictive shape shown above for structural reasons, and the Northern Lights.

I saw the Northern Lights. 'the lights that sing', while I stood outside those doors gazing, stunned, into the black sky. It felt like another world; like another planet, rather than just a few hundred miles north of home.

The hotel stands 120 miles north of the Arctic Circle and, during its short season, sees very little daylight. I am currently reading a book called The Blood Spilt by Åsa Larsson, which is set in the village of Jukkasjärvi, the hotel's location. I had already experienced some vivid recall as a result, but the TV programme enhanced my unearthly feeling. Then I called up some of my photos from the visit and realised exactly a decade had passed since then. In fact, I flew back to the UK from Icehotel 10 years ago today.

It's hard to believe.

Weather 'changeable'

2012-01-05T13:51:00.000Z

One of the reasons the weather is a common topic for conversation in the UK is because it changes so much. There's an old saying from somewhere in the country: if you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes. Well, that's certainly true today. .

During the night a particularly vile gust of wind blew open my 'ventilation' window, billowing my curtains and making a tremendous din as it catapulted my wind chime to the floor - I sat bolt upright, convinced the window had been smashed by a lump of one of the neighbouring churchyard trees! When I got up this morning it was chucking down rain and, in fact, tiny hailstones appeared in it as I set off in the car

At the gym, as I breast-stroked my way up and down the pool, I noticed a distinctly piebald effect in the sky and fervently hoped the weather front would move bright to dark, rather than bring the very black cloud over the (different) church in our direction. Fortunately, the lighter sky won the battle and, by the time I got out of the pool, showered, dried and dressed, there was sunshine. Yes, sunshine. Actual golden rays cast shadows of the skeletal trees alongside the gym car park.

So off I set to the dentist, about 15 minutes drive away. By the time I arrived the heavens had opened and I needed to put my jacket over my head to stay dry as I walked across the car park (50 feet?). I'd only just dried my hair from the pool, remember, I didn't want another drenching!

An hour later (no, I had no idea I'd be in the dentist that long either) the sun shone again and the sky showed much lighter (like my purse). And it was still only 10.45.............

Every Inchie Monday: Golden

2012-01-02T04:36:00.002Z

This is my first attempt at inchies - a single square inch of art. Why not hop over to the Inchie 2012 blog to learn more?

The theme this week is 'golden' and that led me to think of fields of ripe grain. So I designed this:

That led on to this:

It's golden-yellow paper with the design in gold ink. Not very adventurous though, is it?

So then I did this:

That's the wrapper from a liqueur chocolate, wrapped around the inch of card and then 'engraved' with a pencil. It doesn't photograph too well though.

Next I tried embroidery:

I quite liked that, but I wanted more detail. So I found some smaller beads and came up with this:

After all that I decided to ditch my grain idea and did this:

I hope I'll improve with practice.

New Year has well and truly been seen in

2012-01-01T01:20:00.000Z

After a dinner that was rounded off by my triumphant chocolate roulade (a work of extreme skill, though I say it myself) we decided to stay up till after midnight to see in the new year.

We strung up some lights on the washing line

Lit a small fire on the barbecue

and drank a considerable amount of mulled cider.

Happy 2012!

Happy New Year's Honours List

2011-12-31T15:10:00.006Z

I've always been a bit wary of the UK Honours system. It seems to me that the truly deserving are passed over and the ones who receive the gongs are the ones who already get praise and recognition. It's not so much what you do, as how many people know about it. People with influence and friends in high places always seem to make up a hefty portion of the lists. New Year 2012 doesn't seem to be an exception.

Oh sure, a couple of well-known names have been given CBEs. Ronnie Corbett for instance - but surely he's worth more than that? Clive James is another, and Helena Bonham-Carter (who probably earned it for her sympathetic portrayal of the Queen Mum in The King's Speech), but the rest of the list is rather shameful.

For example, top honour of a Knighthood has gone to an interesting collection. Three of them are for: services to the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics; Chair, Olympic Delivery Authority; and services to Regeneration, Charity and the City of London. Now wait a minute. It's not so long ago that they were warning us how the Olympics are going to cost a lot more than we thought. So how do three of the people involved in bringing them to us deserve honours. And shouldn't we wait until they HAVE delivered before we give them knighthoods for it?

Then there's the chap who got one "For services to Charity, Community and the Financial Services Industry. (London, W1K)" A London Banker??????? Another has gone to Music director, Royal Opera House. Well - that's a bit obvious, isn't it? And what about the next bunch: Chairman, Smith & Nephew plc.; an MP; former chairman, Tesco plc and chairman, Kwik-Fit Group; and Chief Executive Officer, GlaxoSmithKline. What exactly have they done to deserve Knighthoods? Other than make large amounts of money out of people.

Then there's the Order of the Bath. Now, the Queen's the boss of the order but it's open to military and civilians. So let's check the latest bunch of members at various levels shall we? They include: Former chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and head of Intelligence Assessment; Permanent secretary, No.10 Downing Street; Principal private secretary, No. 10 Downing Street; members of HM Treasury, Ministry of Justice, Department of Health, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Old boys' club? Sounds that way to me.

And what about the Royal Victorian Order, where membership is at the personal behest of Her Maj. Which explains why this bunch are now in: Personal Solicitor to The Queen; Lord-Lieutenant of Worcestershire; Lord-Lieutenant of Wiltshire; Council Member, Duchy of Cornwall (Prince Charles is the Duke of Cornwall); Lady in Waiting to The Duchess of Gloucester; Assistant Master of the Household to The Prince of Wales (that's Charley-boy again); Lady in Waiting to The Princess Royal (that's 'naff orf' Anne); Surgeon Oculist to The Queen; Apothecary to the Royal Household; and private secretary to the Lieutenant-Governor of Jersey.

I'm sure there are many deserving people who have received honours in this latest list, but there seem to be many more who have done very little to earn their new titles.

So I'd like to award all of you with membership of the Order of MAJ and wish you all a Happy New Year!

*********

PS- My dad always said we were descended from Cromwell. I've never been accused of being a Royalist. :)

Being creative

2011-12-29T16:41:00.000Z

Apologies to those of you who've seen this already, but I'm submitting it to the Being Creative Project where the theme for December was 'winter'.

Post-christmas Rutland ramble

2011-12-27T17:38:00.000Z

We can't have been the only people wandering around Oakham looking for a cup of tea and a bit of cake today. Well I know we weren't. All over town you could hear increasingly exasperated voices saying: "Well is THIS one open?" as they checked out another locked and uninviting doorway. We were all out of luck though.

It's a pretty enough place, with a fascinating collection of buildings. This one's the butter cross and marks the spot where dairy produce was sold on market days. There's mention of a butter cross on a 1611 map by John Speed. I once knew his great-great-great-I-don't-know-how-many-greats grandson, who was delighted to find a Saxton and Speed map of North Yorkshire on my wall.

Under the butter cross roof is this rather strange five-holed stocks. It makes you wonder whether there was some one-legged miscreant who appeared regularly there. I'd hate to think that one victim was expected to put both arms, both legs and his neck in there.

This is Oakham Castle Hall. Oakham's the county town of Rutland, England's smallest county, The hall's 12th century and is described as 'one of the finest examples of secular architecture of the period in England'. It is rather fine.

We had lovely weather, chilly, but bright and fair. We had a pleasant walk in nice surroundings and blew away the christmas cobwebs. And, to be honest, some shops were open. We could have bought plenty of clothes, all kinds of stuff from a selection of rather upmarket charity shops, or some yummy looking bottles from the winery. But tea and cake were conspicuous by their absence. Pity.

Christmas lunch

2011-12-25T16:34:00.001Z

We went for Christmas dinner with a difference this year. Our local Indian restaurant decided to offer a special meal.

This is Christmas pudding, Indian style. I have no idea what it was called but it tasted like heaven!

And this is the team who brought it to us.....

Yule dinner

2011-12-22T16:12:00.000Z

Here's the table from last night's dinner before we started to demolish everything. We began with smoked salmon...

Then we went on to beef and all the works. Look at the size of those Yorkies! I wish I could take the credit for them, but they came from our favourite farm shop and all I did was warm them up.

Roast spuds and parsnips, honey-glazed carrots, and brussels with bacon and walnuts. The gravy was made from the juices around the meat - including a large glug of red wine and some braised onions.

We finished off with trifle, and I wish I'd taken a photo, but we were half way down the wine by then, not to mention a couple of hefty sherries before we started, and I completely forgot to record our dessert for posterity!

Yuletide preparations

2011-12-21T13:07:00.000Z

K's at work this morning, which is a good thing, because I've been dashing round like a mad thing getting the house ready for Yule dinner (and a bit of lunch first, if he gets home early enough)

I made mince pies (and cheese straws with the leftover pastry)

The table's set........

And this is K's Yule card. I don't buy him a card - I paint him one every year. I quite like this year's effort.

Happy Yule everyone!

Just a thought

2011-12-20T15:08:00.000Z

Dave Allen 1936 - 2005

Years ago there was a comedian called Dave Allen who ended all of his shows with the words:
"Good night, and may your god go with you."

I always liked that, being less than mainstream in everything including religion. It was good that he didn't make assumptions about who my god(s) might be.

So it's worth remembering at this time that 'they' insist on calling Christ-mas, that the currently dominant religion has only been around for a couple of thousand years. There's more than one way to celebrate the (northern hemisphere) winter solstice. And the majority have been around for very much longer than this Christ-mas thing.

Next time you're about to wish someone a Merry Something - may Dave Allen go with you. (Because if you genuinely want someone to be happy, you don't force someone else's religion on them.)

For everyone who's finding it a long time till Christmas..........

2011-12-19T07:51:00.002Z

Click on the pic and enjoy!

The decorations are up

2011-12-17T20:50:00.000Z

I put my decorations up today. I've gone for a greenery theme this year. Usually I go bright and sparkly and gold and red, but this year feels more natural.

We have mistletoe.

And the garland over the fireplace is made from cuttings from the garden. The spiky bits at the ends are rosemary. It smells gorgeous.

The tree's fake though. But it still looks good.

Yule's nearly here!

Were Neanderthals really Yorkshiremen?

2011-12-15T01:07:00.003Z

You might not know (unless you studied archaeology) that Neanderthals are named after the place that their most definitive fossil remains were found - the Neander Valley in Germany. They lived all over Europe though.

There's a new book out called How to Think Like a Neanderthal, by Thomas Wynn and Frederick L Coolidge. (Oxford University Press. 2011. £16.99) and it was recently reviewed in the scientific journal Nature by Clive Gamble. (If you did study archaeology you will know that Gamble's one of the big names in human evolution in UK academia - along with Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum.)

I'm interested in the topic - did a degree in it, in fact - and so I read the review with interest. Now I'm convinced that Neanderthal Man should actually have been called Swaledale Man or even Bradford man, because this doesn't half sound like some members of my family!

"Wynn and Coolidge show that Neanderthals had a family focus and almost certainly laughed when someone accidentally trod in the fire.
"They list nine Neanderthal personality traits. On the negative side, they read the archaeological and fossil evidence as indicating that Neanderthals were xenophobic, resistant to change and dogmatic - direct, but also laconic and unimaginative. The lack of imagination is shown, for instance, in their unchanging tool designs; wariness and xenophobia are indicated by their high mortality rate and interpersonal violence; and their laconic approach is suggested by the fact that they rarely travelled out of their home territory.
"On the plus side, the evidence points to Neanderthals as supremely pragmatic, stoic, risk-tolerant when it came to getting food, and both sympathetic and empathetic, caring for disabled individuals in their communities."

A bit of a laugh

2011-12-14T08:30:00.000Z

Over at Akelamalu's blog she's featuring a selection of complaints from local housing offices. It put me in mind of this. Jasper's always good for a laugh - even if it's only because his accent reminds me of K. It's amazing how a Yorkshireman can turn into a Brummie if he just lives in the West Midlands long enough............

A short whinge

2011-12-13T16:21:00.001Z

Sir David Attenborough:
"If you had tried to put a camera
in the wild in a polar bear den,
she would either have killed the cub
or she would have killed the cameraman."

OK it might be a long whinge. It's been that kind of day.

Has anyone else heard about the fuss over the BBC footage of polar bears in the Frozen Planet series, which was shot in a zoo in the Netherlands rather than within sniffing distance of Santa?

Am I alone in thinking that anyone who assumed they'd filmed a polar bear mum with a young cub, in the wild, in her den, is a bit ....erm....... well, thick? Don't they realise that polar bears are some of the most vicious animals on the planet - frozen or not?

I thought everyone knew that wildlife films are often mocked up to get a good, clean, close view of something magnificent.

And is it any less wonderful, just because it was in a zoo environment?

I mean. Grow up everyone!

(Short-ish whinge, then.)

Dead wood

2011-12-11T14:29:00.001Z

I've been gardening this morning. Those of you in snowy parts of the country might wonder why. I admit it rained the whole time, but layering is the answer. Two t-shirts and two jumpers, topped off with a woolly hat, saw me warm and dry enough to do what I had to.

I trimmed back some of the overgrown evergreens and finally got round to retiring the growbags that had the tomatoes in (I did only finish harvesting tomatoes about 10 days back. I made some brown sauce with the tail ends. There were too many green ones left for ketchup!)

Then I got in under the weeping willow and gave it a serious pruning. The poor thing got very overgrown and top-heavy this summer because I planted it about six years ago when I first moved in and it hasn't really been treated properly since. It's done a fine job of hiding my recycling boxes but it was time for a major sort-out.

So I went at it with a vengeance. Anything growing in the wrong direction: gone. Anything obviously dead: gone. Anything duplicating a job being done by another, better branch: gone.

Now I can see straight through it and I'm going to need to put up a screen to cover up the recycling boxes, but the tree looks happier. Can a tree look happier?

So is this a metaphor for my life? Am I carrying too much dead wood, duplicating effort and heading in too many different directions? Probably. I just wish I understood life pruning as well as I understand garden pruning.

Starting to emerge

2011-12-09T08:03:00.001Z

I finally feel as if I'm coming out from under the weight of 'stuff' I've had to do recently. I shouldn't really have signed up for NaNoWriMo this year, but I did, and I completed it (though I'm far from happy with about a fifth of it). I've had lots of other distractions lately as well. You don't need to know what. The details aren't important. Just enough to say that I've felt under a lot of pressure to 'achieve' things; tick them off my list. Well I've ticked off quite a few, including two visits by my builder to do the gutters and fix the roof.

There are still some on the list. Car's in for MOT and service today. I still have to arrange for the cats to have their annual check-up. I still haven't bought K's present yet and I've got some wrapping to finish. Decorations are going up next weekend.

I've got another doctor's appointment to fit in before Christmas too. It's all routine stuff. I'm not any sicker than I was a year ago, but I have to have annual checks for three different things, as well as a 'flu jab because those three things put me in a high-risk group. Why can't I go and do them all at once? I don't know. By the time I get this last appointment in I shall have seen two doctors, two nurses and a ~~vampire~~ phlebotomist.

All this is around the demands of commuting and a full-time job. I know I'm not unique. In fact some people are probably doing a lot more than me at this time of year. But it's been tough. And I'm glad that I have only another eight working days before I break up for the holidays.

Anyone else out there with a long to-do list? You have my sympathy. Take the time to treat yourself in between the chores.

UPDATE. The MOT's going to cost me £870. There goes any plan to splurge on the holiday season then...

It's a green kinda day

2011-12-07T13:55:00.001Z

It's not that easy being green
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves
When I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow or gold
Or something much more colorful like that

It's not easy being green
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
And people tend to pass you over 'cause you're
Not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water
Or stars in the sky

But green's the color of Spring
And green can be cool and friendly-like
And green can be big like an ocean, or important
Like a mountain, or tall like a treeWhen green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why
Wonder, I am green and it'll do fine, it's beautiful
And I think it's what I want to be

It's a *NSS moment.

2011-12-06T10:17:00.000Z

So the Olympics are going to cost us loads more than the anticipated £9.3 billion are they? Well *NSS! Have we ever been able to bring in anything on time and within budget? Have we all forgotten the Millennium Dome? Oh yeah - that was in London as well wasn't it?

And hang on a minute.... did I just say £9.3 BILLION? Yes I did.

And they're going to want me to make a contribution? Yes they are.

So who's going to repay me for the fact that I'd like to leave the country while it's on and go somewhere that they don't have television? I didn't want the Olympics. I don't live anywhere near London. I think it will just cause a lot of hassle and expense for everyone. And I really think we shouldn't have bid for it in the first place.

Can I opt out of the whole thing, including the cost, please?

*NSS: No Sh*t Sherlock

Apologies and updates

2011-12-05T16:05:00.000Z

I appear to be neglecting you my friends, for which I apologise in the profusest manner. I have been busy. There's this thing called Christmas approaching, you might have heard of it. Well, four days earlier than that there's a thing called Yule, at which me and mine will do much the same as people do at Christmas (eat, drink, be merry, exchange presents, you know...) and for which I am still COMPLETELY UNPREPARED!
(Imagine that kid in that movie, you know the one, with the hands by the side of his face and a very strange expression. Or if you're into that kind of thing - think Munch. And I don't mean the character from Law and Order. Or maybe I do.......he has a funny face too.)

So, life has been hectic with a capital heck. I have been cleaning and sorting and moving furniture and getting my roof mended. Yes, I called in my pet builder. (Graham - lovely bloke. Reliable and reasonable. No - you CAN'T have his phone number.) I needed him to clear out my gutters because we have a long row of trees in front of our house and the leaves block us up at this time of year. Graham went up the ladder, bucket in hand, and came back down again with a load of almost-ready compost and a message that I had a couple of cracked slates. So he had to come back a week later. The only problem is, unlike many of his kind, he's a bit busy right now so he could only manage Sundays. There goes my lie in for two weeks. Still. I know now what was causing the damp patch in the back bedroom and my roof doesn't leak any more.

What else? Oh yes. Minding my own business on the drive home a week or so ago there was a loud crack and a perfectly round hole in my windscreen. There was no traffic in front of me (Slip road approaching the M1 so I know exactly what wasn't there) so it couldn't have been a stone. It went with a serious bang and I'm convinced I picked up a stray bit of gun shot. There's a field next to that bit of motorway and I suspect someone was out either with an air rifle or taking pot-shots at bunnies. Home time at this time of year is dusk and slightly later so it wouldn't be surprising. I had a headlamp bulb go as well, but compared with being shot at that's not half as exciting. Just tedious and almost as expensive!

I've wrapped lots of presents and written lots of cards and bought lots of treats to stash in the cupboard/fridge/freezer for the festive season. I've cooked some stuff for easy meals when I can't be bothered over the holidays and - oh yes - we have booked to go out for Christmas dinner. For the first time in my life I shall be eating commercial Christmas lunch. (I'll push the boat out for Yule so I don't really care if no-one else does.) Don't be shocked. We're having........
Curry!

Naughty or nice? It's never too late.

2011-11-29T14:11:00.000Z

It's coming you know - whether we like it or not. And there's cards to write and presents to buy and turkey to order and mince pies to bake and all kinds of other stuff.

Give yourself a minute to take things easy every day in December.... you know you'll need it!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my US readers

2011-11-24T03:58:00.000Z

This is the only photo I can find in my collection that has a stars and stripes on it. (The poster is home-made and in my sea-themed bathroom)

Happy Thanksgiving one and all!

Autumnal walk

2011-11-20T18:05:00.002Z

K drives a long way to work, (well, we both do - our monthly petrol bill for getting to work and back is about £1300. One of us might as well quit if the price goes up much further.) and he recently noticed a new landmark about 10 miles from home. It's this:

It's right next to the M42, close by Polesworth. If you drive the road in that area you probably recognise this tree:

It marks a new(ish)country park called Pooley, which stands on reclaimed mining land, adjoining the Coventry Canal.
The pole is made from cast aluminium and takes the form of a pile of birch leaves, which are the local flora.

There were also loads of fungus of all sorts. Particularly fly agaric.

There's also a poetry trail that describes the mining history of the area and sme of the wildlife to be found around it. And the tea room does excellent cornish pasties!
We had a great walk, a pleasant afternoon out and some fresh air and daylight. We both needed it.

Ghosts, and the magic of television

2011-11-18T08:29:00.004Z

A couple of nights ago we recorded a TV programme for later watching. It was part of the Imagine series on BBC 1 and was about the playwirght Alan Ayckbourn and was called Greetings from Scarborough. Last night we put it on, hoping for a few glimpses of my old home, and we weren't disappointed: lots of lapping waves, strings of donkeys, ice cream, fish and chips, glimpses of old buildings long since demolished, and some fantastic reminders of the shows he used to stage at the Theatre in the Round over the old library in Vernon Road. It was great.

About 35 minutes in there was some archive footage from 1976 and the play Just Between Ourselves, and I was immediately transported back to the days when my family were regulars at the theatre. I had never actually seen that one (I went off to college in 1975) but I'd been there for many others and the setting and the actors were so familiar.

Then suddenly, like a brick to the back of the head, my father was on screen. My daddy, in the audience, wiping his eyes because he was crying with laughter at the antics on stage. For a few, short seconds he was alive and happy and just like he always was: smartly dressed in white shirt and striped tie, grey slacks, blue blazer and keeping his arms folded so he wouldn't encroach on the people either side of him (even though one of them was my mother). The wonderful, loving, lively man that I've missed every single day for the last twelve years, was back.

You know that scene at the end of The Railway Children, when Bobbie is at the station, the train pulls out, and as the steam clears she realises who's standing at the end of the platform?

I am still in tears today.

From Hull, Hell and Halifax......

2011-11-16T00:31:00.002Z

.....Good Lord preserve us.

Especially for Rare Lesser Spotted, the explanation of why I remember Hull. You first need to visit a previous post of mine by clicking HERE and read the section headed Blue. (You don't need to read the rest)

That post mentions years of medical treatment and four operations. At the time there were very few places where you could get the specialist treatment I needed, and Hull was one of them. There are probably still only a limited number but there might be a few more than there used to be.

I was lucky. We lived only 60 miles away from Hull. Back in the late 1950s, when I was diagnosed, it was a major task to travel that far though. Even with a car (I remember a blue Ford Popular that didn't go very fast) it took about three hours. Don't ask about the train, thanks to Mr Beeching!)

When I had to go to see my surgeon (at the old children's hospital and later at Anlaby Road) we used to make it worth the trip. Initially they just kept an eye on me, but after a couple of years they decided I needed medical intervention and we made the journey about once a month for the next few years. We always went shopping in the city centre when we were done.

As a treat I was taken to Hammond's (I think it was Hammond's) department store to ride on the old wooden escalators, all the way up to the toy department, where I was allowed to choose one of the plastic farm animals from the Brittain's display. Back on the ground floor we went to their cake shop and always brought back a 'mushroom cake'* for tea.

I continued visiting Hull until just before my 21st birthday, although the trips became less frequent as they decided that I was as 'cured' as I could be with the state of surgery at the time.

Of course I have since met K, who was born in Hull, and we go back from time to time for family commitments. But I found him in Birmingham, much, much later.

*Sponge cake, encased in marzipan and the top piped in chocolate butter cream to look like the ribs of a mushroom. There was a marzipan 'stem' in the middle.

Teddy Bears and People in Cord Trousers

2011-11-14T10:05:00.002Z

One of the things I hate most in life is prejudice - of whatever type. Treating someone badly, just because they are not exactly like some picture in your head, is wrong. The thing is, some people don't help themselves.

I took a day off from NaNoing yesterday to catch up on blog reading and I read a couple of posts by people who might be considered by some to be 'abnormal' and I'm sure both of them have come in for victimisation at several points in their lives. But their posts yesterday left me wanting to scream. It's hard to criticise without being accused of bullying or hatred of their 'difference'. I want to make it clear that both of them are people I love and respect, but yesterday I wanted to 'bang their heads together' as my Dad used to say.

I'm not going to name either of them or say why they are 'different' because it allows prejudices (conscious and unconscious) to come through. So let's use analogies.

BLUE
And we'll start with me. I was born with something that I shall call 'blue'. The rest of society sees people with blue as a subject for ridicule. Blue makes you stand out from the crowd, physically, not to mention having some pretty serious health risks associated with it. (Not to anyone else - it isn't catching. Although lots of kids weren't allowed to play with me because their parents thought it was.) It took 16 years of medical treatment and four operations to get me as close to 'right' as possible, given the severity of my blue.

During that time I was bullied, ostracised, beaten up, ridiculed, tormented and generally treated as something less than human by a significant portion of non-blue society. (And pitied - maybe the worst response of all!) I learned a lot. Changing the name of my blue didn't make it any less painful. Being azure didn't help. The cruel people still called me mouldy. Associating with other blue people wasn't a cure for the bullies either. It just isolated us into a little blue pool. Besides I just wanted to be ME.

Teddy bears and cord trousers
So that brings me to my two bloggy pals. One of them is a teddy bear. Let's call her Nim. The other wears cord trousers. We'll call him Mus. Now Nim is wound up because she watched a documentary about teddy bears and it didn't cover the subject the way she wanted. For one thing it concentrated on an aspect of teddy bear life that she chooses not to get involved with. Let's say porridge eating. She eats enough porridge to stay healthy but doesn't obsess over it. So she's angry about the fact that the documentary shows a lot of porridge eating going on. Because that's what the rest of society thinks of when they hear teddy bear. Porridge and picnics. 'But teddy bears are just like ordinary folk. They do other stuff too.' she says.

She's also got her knickers in a twist because they are using a certain word. Let's call it plush. Now plush is a generic term that includes all kinds of people, not just teddy bears. And it gets used offensively by some nasty people. Nim doesn't like it. And she says other members of the teddy bear community don't like it either.

Mus is currently on holiday with a group of other cord trouser wearers. He's at a holiday camp with lots of people, including non-cord trouser wearers, but they are keeping themselves to themselves. One person in ordinary pants asked to join one of the parties (because it sounded like more fun than the jeans people were having) but it wasn't allowed. Cord trouser wearer parties are restricted to the cord trouser wearing community .

My question is..... if the cord trouser wearers and teddy bears want to be accepted as just another part of society why are they separating themselves out from the rest of us and pointing out their differences? Why do they feel the need to have a 'community' of their own and run back to it every time the world says 'boo'? What's wrong with joining ours? OK - our society has idiots and b*st*rds in it. I'm blue, remember. I KNOW! But I don't spend my whole time pointing to my blueness and saying that the world doesn't understand me.

Come out of your communities for crying out loud - and let us meet you as individuals. Then maybe you would be YOU rather than a teddy bear or a cord trouser wearer.

You asked!

2011-11-13T10:05:00.000Z

My tattoo.

I want this book! (Big hint for Christmas)

2011-11-10T14:46:00.000Z

I think this book will be fascinating to read - and to look at the photos. I've read a couple of reviews and I WANT A COPY!

Busy busy busy

2011-11-09T08:11:00.000Z

I've been neglecting you all and I'm sorry. Thing is, I'm up to my eyes in writing my next novel (yes - I already self published one last year) as part of a thing called National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo to those of us who are daft enough to do this every year).

The idea is to write 50,000 words in 30 days so that you have the basis of something that might be worth publishing. Very few people get proper publishing contracts out of it, but lots of us self publish and the feeling of having created something in a month is quite fulfilling.

See here for more information or regular updates.

And if you want to know what I produced last year: click here.

It's all in the details.

2011-11-04T11:57:00.002Z

To cut a long story short I was in London for a meeting yesterday and had a little time to kill before I had to be somewhere specific - so I visited the Tate gallery. (Tate Britain, as they call it now)

I looked at several paintings that I'd seen lots of times before and took in some details that I'd previously missed. I bet you don't know where the little chap above is from. You almost certainly WILL have seen the picture.

It's this.(click the link)

Fire

2011-11-01T16:35:00.000Z

A while back I found a challenge in Julia Crossland's blog and I have to admit I had a go at it then forgot all about it.

They are both done in Paint (the computer program) because I wanted to have a go at using it for something other than fixing photos. And yes, they ARE sort of based on the baptistry window at Coventry Cathedral.

This was my first go.

And this:

...was my 'improved' version. They were both done quite quickly and I think I'd actually like to have a go at a real one, using actual paint and paper.

Gold weekend

2011-11-01T00:52:00.008Z

We've been away this weekend to London.* As you probably saw on an earlier post we went to the British Museum. Here's a few more of the treasures we saw.

Let's start with the Sutton Hoo helmet. There's really not very much of it left and the reconstructions that they show you are quite fanciful, given the amount of actual evidence we have. But it's still an emotive object and the guy who wore it must have been a very imposing man.

I'm trying something new with my photos. I hope it works. **
This is a detail from his round shield. I think it's officially a bird, in Anglo-Saxon style. You can get an idea of the scale from the fact that the lumpy round bit at the top of the photo is the boss where the hand fitted to carry the shield. I love this.

Moving on we come to the Mold cape. Found in North Wales in a grave. They aren't sure whether this was ever made to be worn during life, because it's exceptionally heavy (it's gold after all) and it severely restricts the arms. Of course that could be a symbol of status (I don't need to move my arms because I'm rich enough to have people do things for me) or simply wealth (just look at all this gold!).

Part of the Snettisham hoard. Lots of gold torcs (this is a torc) which appear to have been a way to carry your spare cash around with you. (round your neck) The winding wires on some of the torcs show signs of having been 'broken' and repaired on several occasions. It's believed they would have been a convenient way to trade (I'll give you three turns of wire in exchange for that horse and a jug of wine) before coinage existed.

More grave goods. The one on the left is the Rillaton cup. Conspicuous use of gold in graves is a way to show the world that you're so rich you can afford to bury your money.

* Every year around this time we have a huge funfair move into our village. Well, it's probably fun for the hordes who flock in to ride on the waltzers and the dodgems and the big wheels and the rest of the noisy stuff, but for those of us who have to live with it, it's hell.

The streets around our village are narrow, so in order to fit the rides in, they close roads, block off car parks and generally create havoc. We are unfortunate enough to live on the road where they park the generator. So we have Wednesday to Saturday night with a dull roar in our ears.

So we go away.

** Blogger has decided that I have used up my photo allowance and has said I can't have more space unless I pay for it. So I've started a MorningAJ Flickr account. It's only good for 500 pictures unless I pay for more space - but it's a start. Bear with me while I move some things and take out unnecessary illustrations from old posts!

For Samhain

2011-10-31T09:47:00.000Z

The veils between the worlds grow thin.
A time to remember what has gone before and contemplate that which is to come.
A time to remember those we have lost and to wish bright blessings on those we still have.
Light a candle to the past. Raise a glass to the future.
Prepare to step forward into the unknown adventure ahead, strengthened with the learning and knowledge we have already gained.

Long life, love and happiness be yours.

Isn't that wonderful?

2011-10-30T21:02:00.005Z

One of my favourite ancient British artefacts. The magnificent gold belt buckle from the Anglo Saxon boat burial at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk.

In memoriam

2011-10-27T08:44:00.002Z

Twelve years ago today I had a father. Twelve years ago tomorrow my Daddy was gone. Just like that. A moment in time and his heart stopped beating. He went upstairs to take a shower but didn’t make it that far. He was found on the bathroom floor. He had apparently hit his forehead on the basin edge as he fell and so there was a post mortem to determine the exact cause of death. They said it was undoubtedly his heart and that he would already have been unconscious by the time of the head injury. It’s probably one of the best ways to go. But it’s deeply unkind to the people left.

Bear with me if I'm not around much for the next few days.

Found in the junk pile

2011-10-25T19:31:00.000Z

A year ago, or thereabouts, we went to South Wales for the weekend and while we were there my camera gave up the ghost. The view panel went blank, although everything else appeared to be working. During a walk through town (Newport) I carried it ahead of me and clicked the button a few times. I then promptly forgot about it.

This week we've been clearing out some stuff and I came across the old camera, with its datacard still in situ. So I've downloaded the contents and here are a few of the results. I'm quite pleased with them, actually, but I've thrown out the camera in spite of that.

Limited learning

2011-10-24T06:08:00.002Z

Am I the only one who thinks that going to university shouldn't be an automatic step after school? There's a lot of fuss at the moment because one in 10 of today's sixth formers are saying that they might not go to uni because they can't afford it. Fees of up to £9,000 a year are putting them off applying and they are considering an apprenticeship.

Well hooray!

Now, I'm not saying that sorting people by income is a good thing. I think that students should be given grants and have their fees paid to go to university. But only the ones who are likely to benefit from it. And definitely only the ones who bother to turn up to lectures and hand in their work on time.

If everyone goes to university and gets a degree it devalues them. We get a situation like we had a few years ago where graduates were complaining that, unless they had a first class or good second class degree, it was worthless. Well, precisely!

For my 'proper' job I did an apprenticeship. In fact I was indentured to a company for three years, on low wages, while I learned my trade.

I went to uni at the ripe old age of 37 and was horrified by the number of kids who were there because it had been presented to them as their only option. They didn't bother turning up. They talked all the way through lectures when they DID turn up. They didn't do essays. They expected other people to do their thinking for them. They were clearly in an inappropriate place. It was a waste of state and local government money and their parents' efforts to support them.

University shouldn't be just an extension of sixth form. It should mean something.

Ten things... I did it My Way

2011-10-21T10:59:00.002Z

Over on Chris J’s Flamblogger blog she’s come up with a list of 10 things she’s never done and I’m stealing the idea because I found her list so interesting. I have a slightly different take on it though – because I don’t want this to be a total rip-off.

As I said in the comments on her post, I’ve never been the shy type and I have taken the opportunity to do most things when offered. (What’s that quote about ‘try anything once except buggery and suicide’?) So my lists (yes – lists, plural) are slightly more specific.

10 things I’ve done that most people probably haven’t
1 Slept at the Ice Hotel. It’s cold, but not as bad as you’d think. And the experience is wonderful.
2 Seen the Northern Lights. Follows from No.1. It was on the same trip.
3 Stayed in Portmeirion. For anyone who doesn’t remember the iconic 60s TV series The Prisoner that might not be too impressive.
4 Been a passenger in an aerobatic display. Aaaaaaargh!
5 Visited every Anglican cathedral in England and Wales. (And a couple of Catholic ones)
6 Met Princess Anne, former Prime Minister John Major, Princess Diana’s dad (but not her, sadly,) Graham Taylor (it was important at the time – he was England football manager then).
7 Got a tattoo. (Rite of passage at the age of 40.) It’s my body and I’ll do what I want with it.
8 Spent Christmas in Iceland. They incorporate several different religions into their celebrations. There are lots of candles and greenery and hot chocolate! It was magical.
9 Eaten reindeer, puffin, kangaroo, ostrich, alligator. No, they don’t all taste like chicken. Most of them taste more like pigeon.
10 Run a pub.

10 things I finally got round to/achieved
1 Learning to swim (three years ago). For years I was terrified to death of being in water. I’ve overcome it at last.
2 Going to University. I graduated shortly after my 40th birthday
3 Giving up smoking. Yes, I know I should never have started but there you go. Been smoke free for about 12 years now.
4 Riding pillion on a motor bike.
5 Seeing avocets. (Ditto hoopoes) Might not be everyone’s idea of an ambition, but it was mine. I’ve been a semi-enthusiastic birdwatcher most of my life and they were on my want list. I was in my 40s before I could ‘tick’ them.
6 Seeing the Pantheon in Rome. Most people want to see the Vatican, but not me. (Though St Peter’s Square does have the wow factor.) I could fill the rest of this list with places in Rome. Wonderful city.
7 Writing my first novel. I did NaNoWriMo for the last two years and actually reached the word limit last year. Well done me!
8 Having some of my art works professionally framed. They look so much better that way.
9 Accepting that I can’t do everything and no-one but me has ever expected me to. (If you discount my mother – but that’s a whole other story.)
10 Trying to use my dad’s old pastels. I kept them for years without having a go. But I quite enjoyed it, and have done a few pastel pictures since then.

10 things I still want to do/achieve
1 Visit Orkney. I want to see Skara Brae and the Ring of Brodgar.
2 Ride on the Orient Express. Expensive. But UK mini steam trains just don’t cut it.
3 Learn to ride a bike. It’s ridiculous that I can’t and I’m sure I’m missing out on a lot.
4 Speak Welsh. I can be polite (hello, goodbye, please, thank you, order meals etc) in just about every language of a country I’ve ever visited – except Wales. This could have been in the previous list because I am currently working to put this right.
5 Drive something huge like a JCB. (Does that translate across the pond? Earth mover/digger/Mack truck/you get the idea)
6 Eat a plat au fruits de mer by the sea in France. I’ve only done it in the UK and never actually with the sea in view. (Once within earshot though)
7 Be paid for something fictional that I’ve written. Been writing for years and am paid to write technical stuff but my glorious, imaginative prose still remains unappreciated.
8 Find out the truth about some of my ancestors. There was an awful lot of secrecy about one branch of the family when I was young, and my father actively discouraged me from investigating. I really want to know why.
9 Throw a pot. In the sense of working at a potter’s wheel.
10 Pluck up the courage to throw out a lot of ‘stuff’ that I’ve been hanging onto for years and I really don’t need. 10a. Pluck up the courage to go up into the attic so I could make a start on no.10.

10 things I’m glad I’ve avoided
1 Changing a nappy (diaper).
2 In fact I’m glad I’ve never done parenthood. I’m not maternal and have no desire to deal with babies or children in any way.
3 I’ve never (yet) broken a bone. (Touch wood) I got damn close a couple of years ago when I fell over on the ice, but it was just a very nasty strain. And I had some serious bruising to a toe when I walked into the bed leg by accident but I never had confirmation that it was broken.
4 Drugs. A long time ago I discovered that I’m allergic to cannabis (don’t ask how) and it’s been a VERY handy excuse to avoid peer pressure since my late teens. If you say ‘no’ the users think you’re being a prat. If you say you’re allergic you immediately get sympathy – but you don’t have to join in. Perfect get-out clause!
5 Bungee jumping/parachuting/abseiling. I mean, why would you want to?
6 Homelessness – although I was within a few hours of it once, many years ago. It’s a lot easier than you think to slip through the cracks in our ‘caring’ society. Someone took pity on me at the last minute. She said she heard desperation in my voice. I hope she’s still enjoying a long and happy life (though she’d be in her 90s by now)
7 Points on my driving licence. Other than a couple of fixed penalty notices for parking I’ve been either very lucky or very well behaved. I know which it is. And the parking has all been since I moved to a village with completely insufficient parking spaces for its residents. I was four inches over the end of a yellow line. FOUR INCHES!
8 Being stuck with a man who likes football. I hate football, and I don’t know what I’d do if I had to watch it or listen to conversations about it. I’ve been lucky. K loves F1 and I quite enjoy watching that with him.
9 Hunger. Anyone who’s met me will see immediately that I’ve never had to do without food. I’ve been very short of money on many occasions but I’ve always been able to create tasty and nutritious meals with very few ingredients and my cupboards have never been bare. Lots of people today would starve if they couldn’t afford to buy ready-meals.
10 Regrets. If you played the video of Frank up there you'll realise he sings 'Regrets, I've had a few' - but I'm not sure that's entirely right. I’ve done a lot of stuff in my life (as the above lists show) but I can honestly say there’s not much that I regret. There’s plenty of stuff that I’d do differently – but I wouldn’t be me if I hadn’t done them in the first place. And I’ve learned from the bad things. Je ne regrette rien.

What is it with Christians?

2011-10-18T10:48:00.003Z

WARNING! This post will offend some people. If you think you might be one of them PLEASE don't read on.

It's happened again. Yesterday I was talking to someone I never met before. The circumstances aren't important but we ended up chatting over a cup of tea. About 10 minutes into the conversation I heard:
"Of course, I'm a Christian."

OK. Two questions.
1) What do you mean 'of course'?
2) Why do you think I give a rat's armpit what your religion is?

It's only Christians who do that. You never hear: "Of course, I'm Zoroastrian", or whatever.

I admit that I have discussed my religion in the past (it's not a secret) but only in response to a question. (Usually something like, 'what are you doing for Christmas?' to which the reply is usually 'recovering from Yule'. Or the even more assumptive: 'if you're a witch do you dance naked in the woods, then?' Erm - no. I think you watch too much imported television.)

To be honest, a person's religion is about as much interest to me as their sexual preferences (which, unless I'm sleeping with them, is no interest whatsoever) and about as welcome a topic for discussion.

So what is it about Christianity that makes its followers so determined to brag? I know that a lot of them feel it makes them happy, but hey - my religion makes me happy too. I believe that I can look directly at my god (small g) in every tree or waterfall or yesterday's glorious sunrise. How can that NOT make me happy?

I think their holy book says somewhere that they are expected to 'go out and teach' or something like that. Maybe someone who's practising who hasn't left in disgust by now will know the bit I mean. Probably in one of the letters-to-somebody that come after Acts. (It's been a while since I read anything other than Old Testament. I like Song of Solomon. And yes - I HAVE read a large proportion of it.)

Is it acceptable for me to announce in the middle of a conversation: "Of course, I'm not a Christian"? Those of us who belong to a religion that used to get us hanged by those same of-course-I'm-a-christians tend to be a bit nervous about that sort of thing. (Contrary to popular belief England didn't burn witches. That was reserved for heretics and homosexuals. Hence the term 'faggot', which originally meant a bundle of fire wood.)

Only last year I saw someone walk out of a coffee shop because she saw a pentagram on the wall. You'd have thought she'd been burned (at the stake - ha ha) from the speed she moved. Her poor husband clearly had no idea what the problem was and had just chosen a yummy cream tea from the menu, when she dragged him away. (He probably didn't get one, poor thing. Shame, because they were some of the best scones I've tasted in years!)

So I tend to be a bit reserved about announcing my religion, in case the person I'm talking to thinks I have horns and a forked tail and should be stabbed through the heart with a wooden spike (I told you - too much imported TV).

I just wish other people were more reserved, too.

Note added later: I'm not having a go at Christians. Like I say, I really don't care what someone's religion is. It's just this need they seem to have to TELL everyone!

Just an idea...

2011-10-17T17:51:00.000Z

It was on a menu while we were away last weekend. Good idea, I reckon.

Toothache

2011-10-15T10:56:00.002Z

I spent yesterday afternoon at the dentist. And when I say 'afternoon' I'm not really exaggerating. My appointment was at two and I finally got out at ten to four. I've been having trouble with the tooth for a while. It keeps getting infected and it was replaced some years ago with a tooth-on-a-stick, which has fallen out and been glued back three times now.

It finally gave up the ghost the weekend I went to see the Staffordshire Hoard and since then I've had a temporary filling and a big gap. It was infected again and they gave me some pretty hefty antimicrobials to kill off any kind of bug that might have been lurking in the gums.

So it had actually stopped hurting by yesterday morning. But it's quite a big tooth (was). Upper left four, to anyone who understands that kind of thing. And it has two root channels, which both had to be drilled out, cleaned with bleach (BLEACH? Yes - the stuff you put down your loo), then filled up again with tiny rods of something weird. Hence the almost two-hour appointment.

This morning I feel like I lost a boxing match by being punched in the face. I've been awake most of the night wth it. I'm sure it WILL get better. But at the moment it hurts.

*********

Picture credit. Not actually my teeth. Yorkshre Sculpture Park again. Part of the David Nash exhibition staged earlier this year.

Ha ha ha happy

2011-10-13T18:34:00.000Z

It's official. I have currently beaten the black dog. It doesn't mean it's gone forever - but for now I'm free of its draining influence. I was signed off from my treatment regime this afternoon. Thans to all of you who have supported me.

I'm laughing. Laugh with me.

*********

Photo info: Ha Ha Bridge at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Monday morning grump

2011-10-10T07:16:00.001Z

Why do people who moderate comments on their blogs still expect me to fill in a word verification thingy?
I'm just sayin.......

Caernarfon. Photo heavy!

2011-10-09T18:05:00.001Z

Croeso!

We've been back to Wales for the weekend. To Caernarfon.

It's a very historic place and is a World Heritage site but some bits of it are extremely run down.

Other bits are gorgeous.

There are arty bits.

And maritime bits.

There are also confused bits, like the Black Boy Inn which is trying to decide whether or not its name is politically incorrect. Black Boy/Black Buoy.

It has some great restaurants, like this Greek one.

Which served a pretty impressive stifado.

The view from the castle is amazing.

That's our hotel in the distance. With the grey roof.

I promise that it was some other AJ that carved their initials into the castle wall!

Did I mention the great restaurants? The Chinese one was good too!

You learn something new every day

2011-10-05T17:26:00.000Z

I learned a new word today. As someone who earns my living with words, it's a treat when I come across a new one.

It was creel.

Now you're probably all thinking "She doesn't know what a creel is?". No. I didn't. In spite of the fact that I took this photo at the weekend.

I know they're not exactly creels. But they're close.

This is why I learned the word. And this is what she did with it. Please check out Sandra's work. She's good.

(Because of Stew) Time and tide

2011-10-04T10:01:00.007Z

Time and tide wait for no man.

Traditional proverb

In response to my recent post about Scarborough, Stew said something that simply hadn't occurred to me, and that triggered this post. He said:
"Having grown up around the Great Lakes, we don't deal with tides at all. The "lakes" can look like an ocean when viewed but there is no tide. So to see the picture with the boats all sitting out in the mud just leaves me wondering, how do you take the boat out? Do you just have to wait? That would never fly around here."

Well, er, yes. Or get up earlier...........

Sally Port, Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK

Britain is an island. In fact it's a group of islands, so its success or otherwise depends very much on the sea. That, in turn, means that we depend heavily on what the sea does, and if we want to be successful we have to play by the sea's rules.

All bodies of water are affected by the gravitational pull of the moon, even a saucerful put out for your dog. That's physics and you know what Scottie used to tell Captain Kirk. So all bodies of water have tides, it's just that the local conditions make it more obvious in some places than others.

Britain is a rocky lump, stuck just off the side of a large continent. As a result it has narrow channels around one side of it, which create potentially higher tides than it would have if it sloped gently into the sea.

Rampside, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, UK

This creates an interesting situation in the band of country that runs alongside the coast. (The kind of country I grew up in.) In effect, the people who live at the coast and work with or on the sea must organise their days around the tides. If you want to catch fish you have to take your boat out with the tide, even if it happens at 3am and it's pitch dark!

A couple of miles inland, where the farmers live, days are governed by sunrise and sunset. A farmer rises earlier in summer than in winter, because (s)he has to maximise use of the daylight. But back to the coast....

Most places in the UK have two tides a day approximately 12½ hours apart. The prevailing tide approaches from the north and is divided by the landmass in the same way that any rock in a stream would do. This means that the tide rolls southwards down the coast, arriving slightly later at each town as it moves. One branch travels down the west coast and another travels down the east.

By the time it reaches the south coast the two branches are out of synch with each other. When it is high tide at Dover, it is low tide at Lands End. Coupled with other effects that are a bit technical (and to be honest I don't really understand) this creates four tides at Southampton.

Tides can be affected by a lot of things - not just the moon. Barometric (weather) pressure also change them, as do high winds. At times of low pressure over the coast and high onshore winds, the tide can effectively be much higher than the predictions, which are based on the moon's effects. (That's when we get floods.)

Tidal range (the difference between low and high tide) varies around the country, with the largest averages being in the south west, along the Bristol Channel. In Whitby on Monday (October 10) predicted low tide will be 1.35 m and high tide is 5.31 m, chart datum. (For those of you still using Imperial - a metre is about 3ft 3in.) That's just under 4 metres, or getting on for 13 feet.
Sea level (however high the sea is at any given time) is measured from two reference points called ordnance datum and chart datum. Ordnance datum (OD) is an absolute zero point in Newlyn in Cornwall. Chart datum is the approximate lowest level due to the astronomical and weather effects and is measured relative to OD. So to return to Whitby again (I wish!) the chart datum level is around 3metres lower than OD. So the tide goes out in both places, but when it's out in Whitby, the sea is actually lower than when it's low tide in Newlyn.

Want to know more?
I got a lot of this information from the very useful pages on the Bristol Nomads Windsurfing Club website.
Or this is a wonderful scientific paper, delivered in 1882 by Lord Kelvin, but relatively easy to understand.

Fixated with the seaside? Me?

2011-10-03T19:06:00.000Z

You might have noticed that I have a thing about the seaside. I grew up with it. It's in my blood. But I live about as far away from the sea as you can get in England. And so I have a few reminders in my house. This shelving unit is in my bathroom. It's not exactly to scale - but what the heck.

If this is summer we're going to make the most of it...

2011-10-01T20:00:00.002Z

In spite of the fact that today is October first it has probably been the hottest day of the year. It has certainly been the hottest October day on record. Like lots of other people we headed for the coast.

We weren't daft. We knew it would be busy, so we treated today like a normal working day and were on the road for 7am. That meant that we were in Scarborough for just after 10. The beach was already filling up a bit. Although the season officially ended yesterday, everything was open. You can trust canny Yorkshire tykes to take advantage of people wanting to spend money!

The day was glorious and the place looked every bit as beautiful as it ever does (of course I love it even when it's cold and grey!). There were all the regular delights on offer.

Like rock novelties.

And ice creams. I got my oyster with green goo, just like I wanted. Fish and chips happened too - but we ate them so fast I forgot to take a photo! They don't make fish and chips anywhere in the world like they do on the Yorkshire coast.

It was a very hot day and by about 3pm we had just about had enough. We were facing a three hour drive home so we set off early to miss the traffic. After all..........

...all of THESE people had to get home at some point today too.

We stopped off just outside Beverley for a cream tea. Great end to a great day out.

Return to Breedon

2011-10-01T00:52:00.001Z

Here's a few more photos from my early morning walk yesterday. I loved this sundial, which incidentally proves how early I was there. Look closely. It says just after seven am! The place is called Breedon on the Hill and if you want to know how it got its name just check out the next photo.

That silhouette in the background is the eponymous Hill and the squarish-looking thing on the summit is Breedon Priory Church. Here's a closer look:

Isn't that light just perfect?
The thing you can't see in any of these photos is the fact that it's a sheer drop from the church to the lower level. There's a quarry behind you as you look at the end wall of the church.

This is the view the opposite way from yesterday's photo. There's a (very steep) path just to the left in this pic. There's also a park bench so you can sit and admire the view. I've done that a few times!

Breedon Church is a lovely place. Quite apart from the views up there it's a historic building with many interesting architectural features. There are also some interesting gravestones, like this little darling.

Misty mornings

2011-09-30T07:11:00.000Z

While everyone is making such a fuss over the great sunshine we're having, lots of people are missing something else glorious that goes with it. Have you looked at the lovely, misty mornings this warm weather is generating? This was actually yesterday morning but today was very much the same.

I set off to the gym, as usual, yesterday and realised that I was going to be stuck in an office all day. So I played hooky and went for a walk instead. I spent as long as I would have done at the gym so I didn't miss out on the exercise, and I was surrounded by wonderful views like this.

I live in a lovely part of the world!

Eh?

2011-09-29T08:40:00.000Z

Found on a friend's FB page. Feel free to share it.

What do they call it when the Indian summer is THIS Late?

2011-09-28T18:52:00.000Z

Just as the year is heading towards its final days, the UK weather has decided to turn warm. Not sure how long it'll stay, though they say it'll still be around at the weekend. So I'm dreaming of the seaside. (I always dream of the seaside anyway, but a sunny weekend intensifies the feeling.......)

Fish and chips will be involved and there will almost certainly be ice cream. a nice, yummy oyster full of whippy ice cream, with green goo. (Don't know what an oyster is? It's a wafer shell, hinged with chewy nougat, and half-dipped in chocolate.)

Is it the weekend yet?

Ouch. Ouch ouch ouch ouch!

2011-09-26T14:34:00.000Z

Tomorrow afternoon I was supposed to have my six-monthly check-up at the dentist but events got in the way and I had to go this morning. About a week ago I started having headaches on the left side of my face, then on Thursday I noticed that one of my crowns was loose. And yesterday during lunch (in public - OMG!) it fell out completely.

I didn't sleep too well because it's sore and so I took myself off to the dentist this morning and spent the best part of an hour in the chair while we talked about options, took X-rays, consolidated the gaping hole where my crown used to be and generally messed around inside my mouth.

Now I'm taking antibiotics for a week while the infection clears up and then I'll have to have root canal work done a couple of weeks later to sort out the potential damage and prepare it for a new crown at some point in the future (at least three months so it can settle down). Today's little lot cost me £75 ($120) and there's another 250 ($380) due in three weeks when the root canal's done.

Feeling very sorry for myself today. And I can't even have a glass of wine tonight because of the antibiotics. Grump.

The Staffordshire Hoard

2011-09-25T19:42:00.000Z

I've been meaning to take a trip to Stoke for months to see the Staffordshire Hoard - the most significant find of Anglo-Saxon treasure ever unearthed in the UK. It consists of more than 4,000 bits of gold (and a few other precious metals) that were discovered by a metal detectorist two years ago in a field near Lichfield.

The pieces were all battered and almost exclusively parts of war accoutrements. The suggestion is that they were collected after a battle; taken from the bodies of the slain, then stashed away to be smelted down at a later time. It must have been quite a treasure - together the pieces weigh more than the total known Anglo-Saxon gold anywhere else in the UK. Many of the pieces are inset with garnets and other semi-precious stones.

You aren't allowed to take photos in the exhibition so I can't show you any of the pieces but they are amazing. I ony saw a section of the hoard because much of it is still being studied by the experts. The bit that is available has been divided in three and is being exhibited at Stoke, Birmingham and in a touring display.

I want to see the other two thirds now. I was mesmerised by it. They're trying to raise money to make sure it stays together at some point in the future, in a permanent home in the Midlands. It would be a tragedy if it ended up going to London - or even worse, abroad.

Village life

2011-09-21T13:51:00.000Z

Watch out for the tumbleweed!

There has been a bit of discussion lately about aspects of village life, not least about the number of rural services that are being cut as the economic situation starts to bite. It got me thinking.

I've lived in a village for the last six years. Calls itself a town sometimes but really it's not that big. When I first arrived it had a number of local shops, a couple of restaurants, post office, a handful of pubs offering beer and a bite. (It's on an old coaching route so it has a plethora by modern standards.)

I do my best to support the local traders but they really are doing very little to help themselves. I drive to work each day, leaving at 7am and getting home around 6pm, maybe a little earlier on a good day. Naturally there is nothing open when I leave in the morning, and very little open when I get home. So if you want anything you have to shop on Saturdays. And you have to be prompt about it because the place shuts at around noon. The shop signs say 12.30 but lord help you if you arrive at 12.05 because, even if the door is still unlocked, you'll get very short shrift from our traders.

Oh - and if you choose to take a half day from work today and visit them? Half day closing.

Flexi time means I can sometimes leave at 9.10 ish in the morning (don't get home till 7ish then. It takes a little less time because the traffic's lighter) but, in spite of signs stating they all open at 9am, I have waited in vain for any movement outside several of ouor local shops.

And what else is there? Enough hairdressers to stage a Broadway show, two beauty salons and a relaxation therapy centre; three fancy goods shops; a computer repair centre; a deli that doesn't actually stock any food (well, only takeaways); a £1 shop and a hardware store. Don't get me started on how the hardware store thinks a six-week delivery date is OK for a re-ordered item.....The first three weeks are because the rep hasn't been and my requirements don't merit phoning him. And if you want pub grub any time except Saturday night you're out of luck these days. No demand apparently.

If you do get to see the inside of any of these Aladdin's caves you will hear how miserable trade is and how no-one is spending any money and the village is dying. Yes shop owners. Because you're killing it!

There is a small Co-op that stays open late and does pretty well. And there's a curry house who never seem to close. In fact they're having restorations done at the moment, the front half of the restaurant is still being rebuilt, but they were open for takeaway from 5.30 last night and cleaned up enough to serve meals in the back room from 6.30. (And very tasty it was too!)

The traders resent them of course (and some are downright racist about it) because they are succeeding.

Last weekend we went to Broseley near Ironbridge. Lovely little high street that looks a lot like ours, with shops and cafes and teeming with people at 5pm on a Saturday afternoon because it was OPEN! So it can be done.

Village life is changing. Gone are the days when everyone who lived in a place worked there too. If the old-school residents want to keep local businesses alive they need to offer services that people want and at times when they can access them. You can't expect to turn up when you like, snarl at your customers and close up early, then expect people to beat a path to your door.

It's Jamara's fault......

2011-09-20T12:16:00.002Z

On her blog today Jarmara Falconer has a post about spreading a little happiness. And it has two of my favourite songs on it. And now I've started looking for happy songs......

OK - a small amount of explanation. You see, she admits in her post that she has Nights in White Satin as a ring tone. I have the Oompa Loompa song.

Been painting

2011-09-19T00:48:00.000Z

Based on a photo I took at Portmeirion on holiday.

As my paintings of buildings go it's not falling down too much. And I'm quite happy with how the colour's come out. The buildings have that kind of Mediterranean 'washed out' thing going on. The actual building is redder than this looks - but so's the painting.

I'm pleased with it - not least because I actually got around to painting something for the first time in months!

Broseley Pipeworks

2011-09-18T09:52:00.003Z

We had a trip out yesterday to Broseley Pipeworks. It's part of the Ironbridge Gorge group of museums but possibly low down on most people's list of things to see in the area, which is a shame because it's a fascinating time capsule, little changed since it was established in the nineteenth century.

The village was famous for its clay pipes, a "broseley" being the standard by which others were measured. In particular it was renowned for its extremely long aldermen and churchwardens, which could be several feet from bowl to tip. The pipes were moulded and then fired in boxes called saggars, and a special kind of saggar was invented for the churchwardens, with a curved base to support the fragile stems during the kilning process.

The factory was in production until the 1960s, when the owners simply locked it and walked away, leaving all the gear in place. When the Ironbridge museums took it over it was untouched, and so they have kept much of that atmosphere as part of the display. I don't THINK these are Victorian cobwebs, but I shouldn't be at all surprised!

As well as an exhibition of pipes, the museum has other smoking paraphernalia, including various old cigarette packs. This brought back memories because Woodbines were my dad's favourite smoke. And Player's Capstan, as seen on the right.

As well as pipes, the factory made clay arms and legs for china dolls. (They were stitched to cloth bodies.) This little agglomeration consists of kiln wasters - items that didn't turn out right when they were fired for whatever reason - and they were discovered being used as hardcore in a path in the village.

Fascinating place. Well worth a visit. But the works closes next weekend for the winter and will be open again next Easter.

The black fog

2011-09-15T09:02:00.001Z

While we were away on holiday I read Shoot the Damn Dog by Sally Brampton. It’s an honest and deeply disturbing account of her descent into depression and alcoholism and of her long, hard struggle back to ‘normality’. It struck so many chords with me, both in the way that the disease took over her life without her taking it seriously and in how successive doctors, therapists and others who were supposed to help her, failed her badly. The book has been a great help to me and I have come back from my holiday feeling much more positive.

As most of you know, I have been fighting off a bout of depression recently (am still fighting) and I have a long history of it. I have never had to tackle alcoholism (Well not mine anyway. There was a time back in the day when I was married to an alcoholic and thought that life would make more sense if I joined in with the drinking. I just got physically sick and ended up leaving him because it was quicker than waiting for him to kill himself with booze.)

Every time I drag myself out of the pit I promise myself that I’m not going to let depression get me again. So far, every time I have allowed it to slide back, like some kind of slime mould. It is not the ‘black dog’ that it is so often called, and which gave Sally Brampton’s book its title. It is much more insidious than that; something creeping or oozing that’s almost impossible to keep out. Think how mist curls into the house if you open the door on a foggy night, bringing in a shiver of cold, damp air. Or imagine how you become cold to the bones if you walk too long in rain and your clothes are soaked through.

There are ways to keep out the mist, or to dispel it quickly if it enters. There are ways to protect yourself from a rain storm. And there are techniques that can be learned to fend off the black fog (not dog) of depression.

Thank you all for being part of the way I’m dealing with my black fog.

Fresh outlook

2011-09-14T08:08:00.000Z

The world is full of idiots and morons. Think that's a negative attitude? Well just check out Monkey Man's blog every Wednesday when he does the "What the hell....?" feature and you'll see what I mean.

Thing is, we have to deal with people like that on a daily basis. The ones who don't look before they step into the road; the ones who aren't going to give way for anyone even when the roadsigns say they should; the ones at work who leave their dirty dishes in the sink for someone else to clean; the ones in the supermarket who don't understand the concept of queuing¹; the others who let a door slam back in your face because they're too ignorant to hold it open; the ones who never say thank you or please; the whole sad, stupid bunch of losers who think the world revolves around them.

Now I used to get mad about it. I used to take it personally. I used to seethe and fret and get myself into a state about it. But I'm not going to do that any more. Why? Because it doesn't change a thing. Except my blood pressure and state of mind. I get hurt. They're still selfish.

The world isn't out to get me personally. These people treat everyone with total disdain. And the key thing is: Nothing I do will make them better. So I'm not going to let it bother me.

Oh sure, I might rant from time to time because I'll still feel angry. That's a natural reaction. But it's better to rant and forget than to keep anger in.

Notes:
1. Queuing. US - waiting in line

Blogger Award

2011-09-13T12:11:00.003Z

Over at my other blog (Jobbing Writer) I have been given the Versatile Blogger Award and I am extremely grateful to Ruth Hartman Berge for the honour. However, since I keep that blog specifically for writerly things and this one for more personal stuff, I have moved it here.
In accepting the award I am expected to do three things:

1.    Thank the person who gave me the award and link back to them in the post.
2.    Share 7 things about me.
3.    Pass the Award on to 15 recently discovered blogs and let them know about it!
(Actually that's quite a lot to demand from people so I'm not going to do all of that. See below. )

So here we go.
Thank you Ruth for choosing me and I hope you are not too disappointed that I transferred the award here. This is a much more fitting place for the associated task of sharing things about me.

Seven things - where do I start?
It's always hard to know which seven things anyone would be interested in. For a previous award I once had to include something made up about myself and readers had to guess which was the lie. Oddly, I can now remember that lie better than the truths I told! OK, let me see.
1. I keep three cats. (You never own cats - they allow you to look after them.)
2. I have always wanted to visit Orkney but have never got round to it yet. I want to
see Skara Brae, and the Ring of Brodgar.
3. I was 52 before I learned to swim (How OLD am I then??????) because I was absolutely terrified of water and whenever my parents took me to the baths as a kid I would sit on the edge and scream. I still feel like I want to some days when I go swimming.
4. I have been a professional writer for most of my working life but always non- fiction. I would love to be paid (just once!) for a work of fiction.
5. I have at least five online identities, not counting my work persona who has a completely different name to keep her separate from my private life. They all represent different aspects of me.
6. I don't have any kids. I don't like them. That doesn't make me a bad person. It makes me an honest one.
7. I can't make Yorkshire puddings. I've tried. They always come out like clay pigeons.

Then the other bit. Dear readers, the following blogs are interesting and worth a visit.
1 Stew at A brighter side of the grave. Not newly discovered but such a great guy that he deserves more followers.
2 Millie at A goat's view of Eden Hills.  I've always had a soft spot for goats
3 Martin at Bradford, my town which I like because I had ancestors there.
4 Diane at Heart shaped because she does lots of interesting stuff.
5 Marvellous Mable. Because it is.
6 Pink Bunny Because I just love her!
7 And I think that's it. Because 15 is a lot and the demands of this award are quite heavy and I'm not going to force anyone else to do it!
8 If any of my regular readers would LIKE the award, help yourself, because I think you're all wonderful.
9 Check out the list of blogs I follow on the left.

Little Moreton Hall (picture heavy)

2011-09-11T13:26:00.001Z

On the way home from Wales we stopped off at Little Moreton Hall. It's a National Trust property near Congleton in Cheshire. It's somewhere I've wanted to go for years and if I'd realised quite how close to home it was I'd have been before this weekend!

It's a glorious, muddled, chaotic, timber-framed building that doesn't have a straight line or a right angle anywhere in its construction. It had when it was built, but last-minute changes of design and an almost stupid desire to show off by its owners gave it some inherent flaws that have led to its slow warping over the years.

It is full of gorgeous details like this leafy garland over one of the windows.

It also has an inordinate amount of glass for a Tudor building. According to the guide, back in Tudor times if you went on holiday, you took your glass window with you to prevent it being stolen. Either the Moreton family never went on holiday or they were rich enough to pay house sitters to protect their glass!

This is one end of the magnificent long gallery, which was added to the house in the 1570s and is the cause of much of the warping that can be seen today. It was built from green timber and was designed to rest on the roof beams of the floor below. They couldn't handle the strain and the building began to sag within a few years. The ceiling pattern (made from oak) and the plaster work on the end panels, were chosen simply because they were the most expensive available. This was a pretentious display of money (think modern football players and their WAGs)

When the building started to collapse under its own weight the family was forced to add support beams (the lighter coloured ones) which were made from re-used timber. They hated the new look so much that they had a false ceiling added to cover up the whole construction - including the ridiculously expensive carved woodwork and the plaster panels!

There have been vandals since early times and it appears that even the seventeeth century was not immune. Contrary to popular opinion you don't have to use a diamond to mark glass (Anything over about 6 on Moh's hardness scale will do it. Quartz, for example.) but the offender who inscribed this probably used an expensive gemstone.

The Moretons were rich enough to have indoor facilities too - on two floors - but they were the simplest available (a hole in the seat that allowed waste to fall outside the house) and they were sited one above the other. So heaven help you if you were using the lower one when someone upstairs needed to 'go'!

This little detail near the door to the chapel shows there's nothing new in construction. The house was a 'flat-pack', cut and manufactured on another site then transported to the land to be erected jigsaw-fashion. These numbers were carved onto the beams to tell the builders where they needed to be joined. The whole thing is held together with wooden trenails (literally tree-nails). It's amazing it lasted as long as it has!

Welsh wildlife

2011-09-10T20:25:00.000Z

Just a few of the photos I took while we were in Wales.

One ginormous spider!

For Calling Ravens ..... more pics of Snowdon & Llanberis

2011-09-09T21:48:00.001Z

More photos of Snowdon and the Llanberis pass for Ravens. There are probably sheep in this photo, to give you a scale.

You really need to look at this one on large (Click on it and click on it again). The line near the bottom is a road and there's a bus driving on it. Honest!

That's Snowdon in cloud again.

And here is the view from the car as we're driving through. It was stunning.

Holiday nearly over

2011-09-09T20:49:00.000Z

Bit of a roundup from yesterday. We headed north and went through Beddgelert where we stopped off to try one of these:

Turkish Delight flavour! Mmmmm.

Then we went through the Llanberis pass to take a look at Snowdon (we are in Snowdonia, after all)

Snowdon was hard to see because of low cloud. But the surrounding area is very dramatic.

Then we went to take a look at Caernarvon because neither of us had ever been. We think we would like to go again and take a more leisurely visit.

Day at the seaside

2011-09-08T18:13:00.004Z

Yesterday we had a day out by the seaside in a lovely little coastal town called Criccieth. The town is dominated by its castle and of course we climbed up to the top of the hill to visit it. The wind was blowing fit to burst and it was hard work keeping your footing at the top there, but the views were amazing.

Half way down the hill is a cafe called Cadwalader's, which also serves gorgeous ice creams (there are six shops around here and we've visited three of them so far this week!) There's a great view out of the back room while you drink your tea.

Criccieth has two beaches. It's on the south coast of the Lleyn peninsula and so there's an east and a west beach. The west side is slightly quieter, although the whole town is very quiet. There are no amusements or loud rides. It's a proper old-fashioned seaside town.

We spotted these poor stranded jellyfish on the beach. That's usually a sign that there's been some rough tides and the wind has been pretty strong here this week.

There are a number of lovely floral displays and a number of them are in old boats like this one. The red ans white structure in the middle is a 'spirit house' and is based on an eastern belief in providing a safe haven for the souls of those lost in disasters. This one has a plaque to say it is dedicated to the people lost in the 2004 tsunami.

This view gave me a bit of a shock. We'd stopped for a cuppa (yes, another one) in an art deco cafe at the far east end of the beach and I looked up to see the castle on the headland in front of me. You see this is what I grew up with, and what you can't see in the linked photo is the fact that there used to be an art deco cafe in exactly the equivalent position at home with a scarily similar view.

While we were there, in spite of the high winds, a farmer decided to burn off some gorse on the far hill.

I can remember what a disaster was caused when I was young and a farmer did the same to the heather on an area of the Whitby Moors. The wind caught his fire and spread the blaze to an area that has peat underlying it. The peat caught light and the resulting fires took out most of the Moor over the next few weeks.It was impossible to put out and it had to be left to burn itself out. It was a waste of time, money and effort for a lot of firemen who could have been more usefully employed elsewhere.

I can't believe that anyone would be so stupid as to start a fire yesterday for any reason. Thank goodness it started to rain shortly after I took this photo.

Grey. Slate. (and weather)

2011-09-07T19:32:00.001Z

Those of you who read my other blog know that we went to a slate mine yesterday. It rained. In fact it rained so much that they had to pump out the mine before they could let anyone in. However, I thought I'd show you some photos of what we saw.

This is Llechwedd Slate Caverns at Blaenau Ffestiniog and I can recommend it as a day out, even if it is raining fit to launch an Ark. The beer and the grub at the Miners Arms were excellent. We had a bottle of Purple Moose Snowdonia Ale (something we've started calling Moose Piss because of its name in Welsh, which is Mŵs Piws) and a bowl of home made lobscows, a rather tasty concoction of beef and vegetables that is a cross between soup and a stew and clearly where the Liverpudlians got the term 'scouse' from.

Undergound on the miners' tramway ride (there's a choice of two trips but I didn't fancy the deep mine tour....) you get to see the working conditions in a series of reconstructions like this one, where the men are taking their half-hour dinner break at the mid point of a 12-hour day.

And here you see one of the safety men at the top of a very tall ladder, secured only by a series of ropes, who went in after the miners brought down a load of slates by blasting. It was this guy's job to check that there was no loose rock to drop onto the workers below. Of course he'd have been in almost total darkness because the back of the chamber would have been solid rock in the 1860s. These days they are stripping away the slate from the top down in opencast workings, so the light is getting in from modern mining. (and yes - that is rainwater falling in the background!)

I am not a number! I'm Portmeirion. (Photo heavy)

2011-09-06T07:59:00.001Z

Portmeirion is a fanciful, Italianate village at Minffordd, near Penrhyndeudraeth, on the Welsh coast. It was the work of architect Clough Williams-Ellis who built it to prove that development of an area need not lead to its desecration. It is a gallimaufrey of designs, with strange and unexpected details in every nook and around every corner.

On a sunny day it can genuinely feel like a Mediterranean town, with odd little shops, cafes, plazas and terraces; sculptures, fountains, arches, stairs and gardens.

It is perhaps best known in the UK as the location for the cult 1960s TV series The Prisoner, in which Patrick McGoohan played the former secret agent known only as Number 6.

Let the photos speak for themselves:

A Welsh legend

2011-09-05T03:51:00.000Z

The village of Beddgelert in North Wales takes its name from Bedd Gelert, or Gelert's grave. Gelert was a hound who belonged to the prince Llywelyn Fawr.

One day the prince returned from hunting and found an appalling scene: he saw his son's empty crib and beside it was Gelert, covered in blood. The horrified prince, believing the dog had killed his child, ran it through with his sword.

Just then he heard a baby's cry and found the child, safe and well behind the crib. Beside him was the dead body of a wolf. Then Llywelyn realised his mistake: that the faithful Gelert had defended the child and been slain for its pains.

Overcome with grief and guilt, the prince had the dog buried with full honours and renamed his village in remembrance of Gelert's courage.

Welsh lamb

2011-09-04T10:07:00.002Z

You might have worked out that I'm currently blogging from Wales. Here's a bison sculpture that we found at Rhug Farm Shop (and café) where we stopped to buy provisions and have some lunch.

And here is dinner, later that evening, with some absolutely yummy Welsh salt marsh lamb chops (don't ask what we paid for them - cheaper than a meal in a restaurant but not much!) new potatoes, romanescu cauliflower and tomatoes. all wonderfully cooked by K because I'd done all the driving to get here. Don't ask what we paid for the mint sauce either (just because it's Welsh and has a dragon on it!)
Wine kindly donated by the owners of the holiday cottage.