Sunday June 30th 2019

She's an old girl now, but I loves her. Our third car, spare car if you wish, is Julie's old Renault Clio. Bought at three years of age in Hungerford, it was Julie's long term gardening car. Given its small size it was completely impracticable, but a lovely comfortable car and served her faithfully for 10 years. Then in 2017 when the Clio was around 12 years old, Julie upgraded to a bigger Hyundai. With over 150,000 miles on the odometer, Clio was worthless as a trade in (I could see the disinterest in the salesman's face). So we kept her - or at least I did. Now used on high days and fine days she clocks up 2-3,000 miles a year. Sailing through the MOT in May this year, Justin who looks after our cars is astonished that at nearly 15 years old, she's in such good condition. Not immaculate but very presentable. And that's why I'm keeping it. It's like a family pet, a comfortable pair of slippers, or a long lost much loved uncle returning from swashbuckling adventures.  Yes a bit smelly at times, yes the odd bit drops off if roughly handled and yes showing her age, but passing her 172,000 miles mark as I pulled onto the drive, is I feel something to celebrate. I said to Justin back in May I'm ultimately aiming for 250,000 miles at some point. He looked skeptical. I know however, she can do it.

Saturday June 22nd 2019

Very nice surprise today receiving a bouquet of wild and in season flowers from my friend for our 3rd Wedding Anniversary. What is more astonishing in this, that these flowers came from a flower farm less than 2 miles away. Yet we didn't know of its existence. My friend did 300 miles further north. Very kind and we love them.

Friday June 28th 2019

My new 18 month diary, which begins on July 1st. Such a lovely present from Julie yesterday as my gift for the Wedding Anniversary (along with a book). I've never been a good diary keeper, which is a shame. I begin strongly, but then fade off. It's why I like this on-line version, I feel I have to do it, even though very few people read it. 

Diaries are what historians long for as they provide insight and nuance to a life. None of us know really, not deep down, what makes a person who they are. A private diary, or journal often allows self expression, which otherwise would be lost. I may have lost the impetus to write a diary when my mum found mine as a young 10 or 11 year old. I'd written how much I 'liked' Gillian Gilks, a formidable badminton player in her time. We'd been to an exhibition match as my father had been offered seats. I was mesmerized, both by the play, and, yes as a boy with those stirrings, Gillian Gilks. My mother had found my diary while cleaning my bedroom and read it. My father wasn't impressed she'd done that, as he believed diaries are private. Words were said. I got embarrassed and destroyed my diary. I can't really remember what was in there now, lots of tosh about being in love with Alison Suggett (and Gillian Gilks) and probably lots of tedious facts I thought amazing and important at the time. Gone now of course. My diary from yesterday is more a practical functioning piece of leather bound foolscap. It's lovely.

Thursday June 27th 2019

My third Wedding Anniversary today. Actually that should be our third WA. Yes indeed, June 27th 2016 saw myself and Julie hitch the romance in Alnwick Registry Office. In attendance, Mum and Dad, my best friend Andrew and his partner Siobhan and my other good friends Dave and Margaret. A very quiet affair at the Registry office overseen by Sue Hurst, who I knew slightly but didn't know she would be officiating. Tears over (the groom) it was a short walk to the Swan Hotel and a really really lovely post marriage luncheon - which we'd booked only a few days before but the hotel did us proud. I thought at the time, archivists in 200 years time will say - why did this couple from Somerset get married in Northumberland. For exactly the same reasons searching family trees in 2019 can draw a blank or an unexpected outcome. Because we wanted to. In the evening it was off to Newton by the Sea and a walk along the near deserted beach before a pint in the pub there listening to folk music. 

This morning however I left this bag in Julie's car, after feigning I'd forgotten. Luckily she liked it !

Wednesday June 26th 2019

To anyone else reading this (apart from my wife and myself) it will not make the slightest sense. The map is a result of a telephone conversation earlier today. Self explanatory, it excels in my ability to draw a car to exact scale and with a driver too. Slow day indeed, a very slow day.

It's funny some days writing this year long blog, the words flow easily, topics tumble out of the woodwork like trees in the forest. Yet some days, dry riverbeds of inactivity force a photo to be created that does sum up a day, but not really. The image of me driving to work say. Parking in a multi-story car park. Sitting at a computer all day working. Paying my £10 to park for the day. Driving home. Siting chatting to my wife, maybe a spot of gardening, and then to bed. I know I've done this. No-one else does, well until now. That's what makes this different to a personal diary. It's raw, public facing and lacks opaque comment. Maybe the words are dry sometimes, as I need to provide insight, off the internet's page.

Less that 100 days to go. A lot can happen. Or in my world, not a lot!

Tuesday June 25th 2019

One day down by the Bar, a little fern grew. Poking his head out from the other ferns he grew and grew, a royal touch of red in an otherwise green sea of fronds.  I'd better stop now, this is slightly surreal. Save to say as I sat having a 5 minute break this newly emerged frond caught my eye. Isn't nature just fantastic.

What the image fails to show is that the three tubs that were placed outside the Bar last month containing crab apple trees and associated perennials are now full of water. No drainage holes have been put into the containers. Comments on a postcard please!

Monday June 24th 2019

First day back after my week of confine to the great outdoors and among the 150+ emails to go through a plethora of cost cutting measures. I began this year long blog with a feeling that 2018-2019 is a year of change. Change for whatever reason is what makes life what it is. Evolving, lively, worth the slog through. Change means something new. But as my work pass is now 26 years old near enough, how many more years has it left to exist I wonder? 

Sunday June 23rd 2019

...and still the rain commeth!  After yesterdays blue skies from horizon to horizon, dawn broke once again dull and cool. Just managed to get the grass cut before around 11am the first raindrops pitter patted on the table umbrella and by noon, we'd abandoned all hope. Though we didn't go inside for a long time. Julie and I sat listening to the rain, looking at this view. It was glorious. That was until Julie said this was all very romantic. For a plain speaking northern lad, this was too much. I went indoors to read my book. Can't be having talk like that on the Sabbath.

Saturday 22nd June 2019

What happened?

I'm writing this entry on September 25th 2019 - after spinning through my archive and realising June had a day missing.  June the 22nd. I remember I was on holiday, infact I'd been on holiday all that week, but absolutely no recollection of what piqued my interest on Saturday June 22nd. And that is why diaries need writing soon after the event, otherwise we forget. Or at least I do.

So, what image can I use?  I've looked through my phone and the only image from the 22nd June is one of Julie standing up watching the racing on Television. Why? I've no idea. There are also some odd videos on my phone presumably taken when my phone decided to do something odd, which it often does. And it looks hot and sunny.

So two images then.... one of Julie standing up, and another that states that W.G.Grace the cricketer made his first class cricket debut in 1865 - now there was an interesting sportsman. Brought man into manipulation. 

Friday June 21st 2019

It’s the longest day. The Summer Solstice. Midsummers day. After weeks of heavy rain today has been bright and sunny. Quite hot too. Lovely photographs on social media from Stonehenge, Glastonbury Tor and Avebury of the sunrise just before 5am. F,or the first time in years I didn’t celebrate it. I was up watching dawn break, but quietly indoors, then went back to sleep. This evening though it was this image of a pale crab spider, on a dark dahlia leaf undercrossed by the blue of catmint that sums up this special day. The natural world is relaxed. Growth is strong, sunshine hot, soil warm. It’s easy. It is also easy to forget that in 6 months it will be dark at 4pm. Cold and the natural world in dormancy. Everything we see here will have ceased to be, though of course it is just waiting for the days to lengthen. Tonight though, a time of joy, promised flowers, bountiful and strong in the June sunshine.

Thursday June 20th 2019

Image : West Bay Facebook Page

Dorset was shut today. Not all of it you understand, but the bit we wanted to go onto  - the beach at West Bay. We had no idea, that after a lovely drive down to Washingpool Farm near Bridport for lunch followed by a plan to sit on the beach, we'd end up in the car for a lot longer than anticipated.  Which just goes to show, in this age of internet blizzards of information, myself and the lady failed to read that from March to July, both beaches at West Bay were closed to allow for urgent coastal deence work to be undertaken. 44,000 tonnes of rock from Scotland have been buried in the beach. The beach is now being rolled back onto the rocks, in the hope that winter storms no longer pound the buildings behind. Only time will tell. But it was nice being back in Dorset, nonetheless as  this was our first trip since October. Given that for nearly a decade I almost lived down here, time is a strange master.

Wednesday June 19th 2019

Another dull and grey day but I was determined to get out and about. I also wanted to give the Clio a bit of a run as it hadn't been driven in 2 months. Started first time as normal and with the wind in my hair I pootled off to the Somerset Levels. A hearty breakfast in Sweets Cafe and then a quick stop to a plant nursery nearby. But still no walk. On the way home I stopped in the village of Winscome and set off up the Strawberry Line walking into unknown territory. After a near mile I came across the infamous Shute Shelve Tunnel. This was the first thing created when the Cheddar Valley Railway was built around 1850. Today it is part of a cycle and footpath network and very dark. Normally it is lit by solar powered lights - however with the poor dark weather they were not working. We need more sunshine that's for sure. That said it was quite exciting walking into a black void which despite being able to see the far end, felt quite lonely and isolated when in the middle. 212 echoing foot steps, entrance to entrance.

Tuesday June 18th 2019

Well Well Well. Having returned my computer back to factory settings successfully in 2014, I tried to do exactly the same today. And for reasons which I'm trying to avoid I've stuffed my computer. It works, but is slower than ever and will not reinstall the WiFi driver. I can hear my father saying "if it's not broken dont take it to a mechanic" I'll keep working on it in the coming weeks but having begun at 10am by 6pm I was still fiddling while watching the racing from Ascot. Oh well could be worse, it was pouring most of the day, so I didn't miss much. Think I may need a new computer. Marvelous.

Monday June 17th 2019

Exquisite though this 6 spot burnet moth is, the real star of my day spent on the Mendips was watching a skylark ascend from the ground. It was towards the end of three hours on a bug safari with my friend Higgy. We were on Dracott Sleights reserve, a place I first visited in May when this calcareous grassland was alive with blue butterflies. Today, after a week of torrential rain, although it was dry, the day was cool and blustery. Not great for butterfly watching. Sporadic bursts of sunshine worked their magic and lifted many meadow brown and a few common blue butterflies onto the wing, only for their disappearance as the cloud came over again. A good day though enriched by the skylark as it flew higher and higher in full song. So high in fact it was almost out of sight. Its song however remained strong and clear despite its distance from me and the blustery wind. After three minutes or more rising and rising, he began the slow parachute fall back to earth until when the right moment arrived, down he came at speed and out of sight. Silence. We'd been rooted to the spot for over 5 minutes, hardly daring to breath and transfixed. The natural world is very good at doing that to you.

Sunday June 16th 2019

June. Cheddar Strawberries. Dorset made double cream. What more is there to say!

Saturday June 15th 2019

I'm on holiday for a week, and this morning managed to do absolutely nothing. However Julie was on an all day soap making course which she loved. Arriving home around 5pm in she walked carrying something swaddled in a towel. What that was we, or should I say I, were not allowed to see until 48 hours later, as the alchemy product solidified. This photograph then was taken 48 hours later as Julie proudly shows off her soap-wares. She is a clever woman. Though I suppose this means I'll need to have a bath now!!

Friday June 14th 2019

It is a day of absolute deluge and dullness, therefore today's posting is about two women from the last centuries who at the start of this year, I knew nothing of. Anne Lister, and Eleanora Duse, but looking into their lives, both intrigue me for reasons I find puzzling. Lets begin with the latter an acclaimed actress who is now mostly forgotten.

I did some research this week on Eleanor Duse for a programme. And it was fascinating.  Rather than me writing about her life, I'll paraphrase an extract from the Encyclopedia Britannica entry.

Eleonora Duse, (born Oct. 3, 1858, near or in Vigevano, Lombardy, Austrian Empire [now in Italy]—died April 21, 1924, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S.), Italian actress who found her great interpretive roles in the heroines of the Italian playwright Gabriele D’Annunzio and of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.

Most of Duse’s family were actors who played in the same touring troupe, and she made her first stage appearance at the age of four in a dramatization of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. By the age of 14, when she played Juliet at Verona, her talents were already being recognized by critics; but not until her appearance at Naples in 1878 did this mark the turning point of her career. Her performance there of the title role in Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin won great acclaim, with audiences and critics united in the opinion that a woman’s anguish had never before been played with such truth.

In 1882 Duse took an opportunity to watch Sarah Bernhardt perform. With Cesare Rossi, a prominent actor-manager, she toured South America in 1885, but after her return to Italy she formed her own company, the Drama Company of the City of Rome, and with it toured throughout Europe as well as the United States.

In 1894 she met and fell in love with a rising young poet, Gabriele D’Annunzio; she financed his career, and he wrote for her a number of plays. D’Annunzio told the story of their love in his novel Il fuoco (1900; The Flame of Life). Aside from D’Annunzio’s plays, Duse found an inexhaustible source of self-expression in the dramas of Ibsen. To the title role in Hedda Gabler she brought a demonic quality, a touch of the fantastic—deeply troubling to Ibsen when he saw her perform it—as though she had gone beyond the frontiers of realism.

The British playwright George Bernard Shaw was one of the many critics fascinated by Duse’s ability to produce an illusion “of being infinite in variety of beautiful pose and motion.” He confessed that “in an apparent million of changes and inflexions” he had never seen her at an “awkward angle” (Dramatic Opinions and Essays, 1907). 

In 1909 Duse quit the stage, mainly for reasons of health. Financial losses incurred during World War I, however, obliged her to emerge from retirement in 1921. Her acting powers were undiminished, but her health was still not good and interfered with her late career. In 1923 she appeared in London and Vienna before she embarked upon her last tour of the United States. The tour ended in Pittsburgh, where she collapsed. Her body was taken back to Italy, and, in compliance with her request, she was buried there in the small cemetery of Asolo.

The other woman on my radar is Anne Lister.Before the BBC 1 series Gentleman Jack was announced, I'd not heard of Anne. Yet this week,  and after loving the series so far, I bought the book and currently reading it. A restless highly intelligent soul. Again, rather than blathering on, an exerpt from the Calderdale Museums website.

Anne Lister was born in Halifax on the 3rd April 1791 and was brought up in Skelfler House, Market Weighton. She made frequent visits to her Aunt Anne and Uncle James who lived at Shibden Hall. In 1815 Anne moved in permanently with her Aunt and Uncle, and when her Uncle James died in 1826 Anne started to manage the estate. In 1836 when her Aunt and Father died Anne fully inherited Shibden Hall and Estate.

Anne wrote a detailed diary of her daily life and left behind twenty-six volumes of 7,722 pages, of an estimated five million words. The diaries give a great insight into Anne’s life as a landowner, business woman, intrepid traveller, mountaineer and lesbian. Anne was only interested in women and had ‘marriage’ ceremonies with Mariana Lawton and later Ann Walker, who would eventually move in with her at Shibden Hall. It is also clear that Anne was different from society’s expectations of a woman at the time. Anne not only did not wish to marry, but she also did not want to conform. She decided to only wear black, spent a great deal of time studying, managed her own estates and sought business opportunities, travelled widely and even climbed mountains. Anne was an avid walker and climber and undertook the first ascents of Mount Perdu in the Pyrenees in 1830 and Mount Vignemale in France in 1838.

In addition to her diaries, Anne also left behind fourteen volumes of travel notes. The volumes of travel notes cover her overseas trips and travel within the United Kingdom to the Lake District, Scotland and North Wales, including a trip on the newly opened railway from Manchester to Liverpool in 1831. Anne had first travelled to Paris for three weeks with her Aunt in 1819 and over the coming years she made journeys to Switzerland and Italy in 1827, Belgium and the Netherlands in 1829, and lived in France and the Pyrenees from 1829 to 1830. In 1831 she travelled to Holland, visited friends in Hampshire and went to the Isle of Wight and Sussex. After the deaths of her Aunt and Father in 1836 she focussed on managing and improving Shibden Hall and Estate, leaving behind a great number of changes and developments which can still be seen by visitors today.

In 1839 Anne once again had the time and resources to travel. This time Ann travelled with her partner Ann Walker, a neighbouring heiress who had moved in with her at Shibden in 1834. The couple set off in June 1839 on a two-year expedition. Anne and Ann travelled via Dunkerque, Belgium, Germany, Copenhagen, through Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia into Astrakhan (now Georgia). However, Anne Lister tragically died in Koutais, Georgia on 22 September 1840. Ann Walker was left to travel back to Shibden accompanying Anne's body which was interred at Halifax Parish Church, now Halifax Minster on 29 April 1841. Ann Walker was left Shibden Hall and Estate but was focribly removed by her brother-in-law and taken to an asylum in York. She died at her family home of Cliffe Hill in 1854.

Thursday June 13th 2019

It was the Food and Farming Awards in Bristol last night, and this morning at work, it resembled the night after the party. I've never seen so much ginger beer or detritus from an event. It was a good evening had by all, according to who was there. 

Wednesday June 12th 2019

This was planned to be my posting for yesterday June 11th, but a light bout of puffin flinging took precedent. Therefore today as I passed the sign, a moment to take today's image befell me. Why yesterday?  Casually pootling along in the automobile I arrived at the Clifton Suspension Bridge around 30 seconds after it closed for the day. All week, it is closed from 0930-1530 for building work. I've mentioned before in this year long blog how the tollboths had been demolished to make way for new modern structures. They're almost complete and this week the bridge is closed to vehicles to facilitate 'bits and bobs' in this process. Walkers footfall is allowed, yesterday I did just that, although it made me 25 minutes late for work. Today I planned this walk with precision and by 0925 I passed this sign on the Clifton side. But what struck me both days was the silence. The Suspension Bridge is a vital conduit into Bristol from North Somerset. Closing it means that this area fell silent. I heard birdsong, I heard the wind, I heard conversational voices across the street, I heard the slush of cyclist tyres on tarmac. Above all I heard nothing. It made for a most uplifting start to my day. Silence is golden.

Tuesday June 11th 2019

There are days when the image sparking a comment, is unrelated to my world. Today the image which drifted dreamlike into my part of the world, came via the might of the internet. Actually it came from Tom, who sits beside me. Currently proliferating the airwaves is a series called Planet Puffin. Following the exploits of the Isle of May clowns of the sea as they arrived, went into breeding frenzy and eventually will depart off into the North Sea. Becky and Emily are the reporters on the island and Tom is producing the podcast. Today Tom received these photographs. The above one on the Warden's door. The latter of Emily hurling a newly bird-ringed puffin into the air. I last visited the Isle of May almost eight years to the day in 2011. Great place, and one which I'd love to visit again. But I doubt it. 

Monday June 10th 2019

Early summer rain has to be one of my favourite weathers. The countryside and nature needs rain, yet in the last decade or so wet summers seem a distant memory. My own memory may be playing tricks but childhood summers always seemed wet. Sure the summers of 1975 & 1976 were hot, dry and endless but that aside, long days in wellingtons and waterproofs seemed to proliferate my school holidays. The summer of 1977 we bought a puppy, it rained, it rained and it rained. That Bedlington terrier never again enjoyed wet days. But I do. Memories make the the man and my recollections bring me joy. Walking through long wet grass. Sitting by rivers swollen with brown foaming water. Raindrops falling deep inside a broadleaved woodland. Cool days with mist skirting the tops of hills. Lying on the caravan sofa listening to rainfall on the tin roof. Most of all the aromas. Grass, soil, moisture, freshness, all aromas that in recent years have escaped me. And the greens. A dull summer day like today highlights as many greens in the landscape as days in the year. As I type this, the rain continues to fall heavily. I love it, may it continue all summer.

Sunday June 9th 2019

It was about 9pm and the sun beamed into the dining room. On the table a photograph of Julie and some flowers. Light, shadows and composition struck me. I had to take a photograph. Firstly in colour but then in sepia, a form of hue I love. The end result, for me at least, is a timeless study of a moment captures forever.

Saturday June 8th 2019

A very poor photograph to explain All Things Wick (My phone doesn't like shooting towards light, or anything these days, it does need replacing). 

I still think of myself as very much a northern boy. When in reality if I'm being honest, I've now lived in Somerset almost as long as I lived up north. And given it is 26 years, certainly I've lived a lot longer down south as an adult. Aside from a few glorious years on the Somerset Levels, since September 1998 I've lived in Wick St Lawrence. A Jekyll and Hyde parish. I live in the modern estate built on what were known as Trinity Fields. A continuum of the Weston super Mare sprawl.  The rest of the parish is a collection of farms and the hamlet clustered around the church, total population of around 150. It is an un-spoilt, quite desolate land, yet sliced in two by the traffic gridlocked M5 motorway. 

Today I went along to help with the All Things Wick weekend, whose poster had a fatal flaw, in that it  failed to say where this was happening - it all took place in the village hall not the church. I'll say no more about me heading to the empty church having passed the village hall on the way. My role was to join David on the door, taking monies for the day. Entrance (to the very good history of Wick exhibition) £2. Once inside, the fare on offer was, tea with biscuits £1, tea with cake £2.50, ploughman's lunch £5 and a raffle, £1 for a strip of 5 tickets. All in aid of the church funds. Despite having little religious feelings, I like the events the church put on and have a soft spot for the Parish. Today was no exception. I was made very welcome, and as David said, it is nice to have someone new helping keep these events going, as it's usually the same people helping every time". 

A couple sat next to us with a £1 tea and biscuits. She lived in the village until the age of 14 and simply described living here as being enveloped in a Darling Buds of May landscape. She wasn't that old, maybe 60, not long ago. Her uncle and aunt lived by the church in a tied agricultural cottage and she came to live with them, he's still in the village and that was where they were off to next.

I thought about this later as I read the many many news clippings of Wick St Lawrence before I was born, and from years when I lived up north. The article at the top of this page was from 1980, describing how the area is a rural backwater, yet only 20 minutes drive from Weston super Mare. Despite all the house building since then, it still feels isolated, close knit and I love it. The cling filmed ploughman's wasn't half good too, consumed while sitting outside looking over fields to the Mendip Hills, where Julie was on a 6 mile walk with the Mendip Society. Shhhh don't tell anyone, but I like Somerset.

Friday June 7th 2019

I'm married to a very gifted artist. I can paint and draw, but Julie has an exceptional talent to recreate accuracy and life in animal drawings. Some of her recent bird drawings are superb. I've not seen her draw a butterfly, until tonight. A few weeks ago we huffed and puffed up the Mendips in search of blue butterflies (other hues are of course available). I recall Julie saying as we watched a lot of common blue butterflies wheeling about, this has given me an idea for a painting. Tonight then that seed of inspiration began forming an embryo on paper. Picture the scene. The conservatory. Lord and master watching Monty Don on Gardeners World whilst her Ladyship sat at the table scribbling away on her idea. This is the result. Nowhere near finished but an idea born on a walk, now developing into an artwork. I could never be that good. My aim now is to get Julie to learn how to use acrylic paints, I think she'd be exceptional. I'm not biased, just astonished.

Thursday June 6th 2019

Image : BBC Copyright / Press Association

I had a notion to record the 75th Anniversary of the D Day landings on June 6th 1944. And then I looked back 5 years in my blog and realised in 2014 I'd written a very long piece on the D Day 70th Anniversary Ceremonies.  Today in 2019 a huge ceremony took place in Normady, with many of the 300 veterans attending, frail, but resolute in being there to remember long fallen friends and comrades. Time is passing swiftly for them and their numbers dwindle at the same pace. In ten years time very few servicemen and women of WW2 will be alive. That aural history will fade with them. Lest We forget.

Tonight too saw the final of three programmes in the UP series. Beginning in 1964, this longform documentary has followed the lives of who were then 7 year old school children. Their parents would have been of the generation who fought in WW2, the generation which now are coming to the ends of their own lives. The current series 63 UP revisits the children of 1964 as they now enter late middle age and old age will be with them soon. One participant Lynn, has already died after a short illness, and another Nick, is seriously ill. Now these children are all aged 63 years, what drifted across the airwaves without exception was that life is short, make the most of it every day.

It is why we remember the 4000 soldiers and seamen who died on those beaches on June 4th 1944. They no longer can make the most of every day, their life was short.

Wednesday June 5th 2019

I've spent today messing about with a MixPre3 sound recorder. There is a long and very tedious story bout these recorders. Back in the chaos what was 2018, when the three managers of the department were on long term leave for personal reasons, 25 of these sound recorders were purchased. They are excellent machines in terms or recording quality, but more complex than performing spaghetti origami. So for a year these behemoths have sat gathering dust as we didn't know how to get them operational in field situations. Not being waterproof, normal AA batteries lasting 15 minutes, and a very complex set up all put paid to that. And I just didn't have time to get these working. Fast forward a year and finally I've had a few day to sit down and work out how to operate these simply. It was simple in the end. These machines have two settings, Advanced (complex and best avoided) and Basic... switch on and record. Now why didn't I think of that in 2018......

Tuesday 4th June 2019

It has been a slow day in the office. Tuesdays are my Nemesis days as we have a team meeting. That should be easy, however it always seems to go wrong. Technology wise at least.  Our meeting room is no longer staffed. People hold meeting, trash the equipment then just before the next meeting, it is some poor sod like me who looks at the discordant black spaghetti cascading out the back and thinks "Why Me?". Scraping through the meeting with minutes to spare the heavens opened and we were all entombed indoors. But then while facilitating a studio booking for Camellia, I stumbled this word. Halation. In all my years spinning on this rock through the Universe, I've not come across this word. Although I have seen it's effect. Happenstance  - it reflects my mood today, perfectly.

Monday 3rd June 2019

We don't often get squirrels in the garden. But this one today made it home for a long time, munching on the birds fat balls. I know grey squirrels are the scourge of their red cousins, but there's something lovely about their arrival unannounced into the land of humans. He (or she) can come back any time they like. It's not this chaps fault he was introduced into the British countryside, so for me, he's a wonderful addition. 

Sunday June 2nd 2019

Another day of rain but I've enjoyed being indoors. To be honest I was a little tired after my day at Tyntesfield. Actually I was shattered, so it was good to be home and relaxing. Some black and white movies first thing. Some gardening, but generally a slow day lounging about and relaxing, before a romping good watch of Gentleman Jack on BBC 1 - which is just splendid. All too soon it seemed, Bed and sleep loomed over the horizon. I noticed a dark patch on the bedroom wall. A blemish on the magnolia painted wastelands. A blemish illuminated by the bedside light. It is a moth - to be precise a Treble Brown Spot..... my bedside companion tonight then!

Saturday June 1st 2019

A hot 1st day of  June today - and my world. 

I rarely work at Tyntesfield on a Saturday, but this week, here I am. The ticket office has a nice rhythm to it - first thing it is quiet, and we all set too in preparation for the impending visitors. Then around 0945 the daily briefing. We circle the supervisor in rapt attention, which today was run by Sue, who informed us that one of the paid staff was off sick, and there would be no bus driver after 1.30pm. Eek, that's just 5 of us to man the Ticket Office, cover lunch and man the coursesy bus all day, and two of us were volunteers. Seasoned volunteers, but volunteers nonetheless. 

To the barricades then, Dave and Myself on the tills, Amy and Beth on the membership stand outside. And in they came like swarming bees to the honey pot. Outside the temperature rose to the low 20oC's, inside the queues were kept almost to single figures by the use of fast track scanners as in the image above. We worked like a well oiled clockwork machine. Teas, water, biscuits and sweets kept us going. By 2pm the rhythm always changes. Numbers of visitors begin to drop and the morning house tickets return as shifts change in the house team. Time to count out timed tickets in bundles of 50 ready to do it all again tomorrow. Visitor numbers drop quickly after 3pm and by 4pm when the house closes, it's the merest, but steady, trickle. Still two hours to go but a calm begins to descend. There's even time to laugh and chat while toiling away. Dave had been on the courtesy bus since 2pm, and Beth went home to write an essay, leaving just me, Amy and Sue to mop up the day and reflect. I finished at 5.15pm and headed to the shop to buy Julie some soap. I like the rhythm of my days at Tyntesfield very much.