Wednesday 18th September 2024

 

Ten years ago I wrote about my ever youthful father celebrating his 83rd Birthday. Today, if my mathematics are good he celebrates his 93rd. Now pretty much housebound he had a lovely day I'm informed. The carers brought him a cake and some cards, and organised a video call with me at 10.30. A lot has changed in those ten years, and mostly not for the better. Looking forward and keeping positive is key.

In the evening I attended an Alliance of Literary Societies (ALS) Zoom meeting with a title Significant People, in relation to the society in question's author. It was really interesting and a good way to learn facts quickly. Ten years ago Scotland was holding it's independence referendum. What happened to that then? Ten years ago I'd not heard of the ALS. Ten years ago my father was simply my father, mum was alive too. A lot has changed in ten short years, like a blink of the eye.

Tuesday 17th September 2024

Julie is away on her mini break at Trebles Holford now. She's staying in an air B&B for the first time and it's lovely apparently, complete with a sauna in the garden. Not my cup of tea but each to their own.

Back home I tried to take a photo of the harvest moon tonight. It's rubbish. 

Monday 16th September 2024

 Even in an exotic rollercoaster life like mine it's good to suggest some days are empty. I was in the office, I'd taken beef and tomato sandwiches in but had eaten these by 11am. At 1.30pm I was hungry so went to Bakersmiths just updating the road. A hot chocolate and sausage roll later I went back to work. In the evening I took part in a Richard Jefferies sub-committee Zoom meeting, then went to bed. It's days like this which makes me giddy.

Sunday 15th September 2024

 

When we went to see Ann she provided a M&S cheese selection for lunch. It was very nice. This afternoon I spotted something very similar in Sainsbury's, virtually the same packaging but more cheese than the M&S version. At £9 I threw caution to the wind and treated myself. It was delicious, accompanied by a vintage cider, gluten free crackers and four hours watching episodes 5-8 of Bleak House on a DVD, I'd watched episodes 1-4 earlier in the week. I class that as a very relaxed afternoon.

Saturday 14th September 2024

 

We normally come to this part of the Quantocks at dusk in the summer to watch nightjars. But today we visited as Julie was a little unsure how to get to Trebles Holford near by. So it was strange to be here mid-day in bright sunshine. A different atmosphere of course, we could see further but Staple Plantation was still as peaceful. I had a book with me so enjoyed reading that for about an hour while Julie went for a walk. Bliss.

Before that though we stopped at the Rocking Horse cafe in the middle of nowhere near Stogumber. The place was packed when we arrived, which considering it's accessible only along narrow single track lanes, is remarkable. A couple of ice creams later I heard music. This turned out to be coming from Stogumber station where the West Somerset Railway was hosting a 1940's weekend. We didn't venture to the station to see what was happening, maybe we should have, as we both like the past. It all goes on around the Quantocks.

Friday 13th September 2024

 I really don't know why I physically come into work these days. I'm writing this at 2.14pm in the afternoon sitting on the ex-BBC Club terrace. My image is reflected in the glass but for all intents and purposes I'm on my own in the site. Where is everyone? Of course I know the answer, but sitting in silence over lunch is so strange. I could have stayed at home. But I had some things to do that are a lot easier in the office. But after a full morning I've only had a brief chat with Polly and said Good Morning to Karl the workplace guy as he crossed the carpark. Actually as I wrote this above Grant Bayliss rang me to ask about Ramblings and where the post should go. That's three people I've interacted with since 9.30. If it gets any busier I may go and lie down - after all, no one will notice if I'm not in the office!

Thursday 12th September 2024

After yesterday's grand tour of Cornwall today I kept a little closer to home, not too close though. After a few jobs in the morning I pootled over to Wells. I've a year pass for the Bishop's Palace gardens but with one thing and another I'd not been since June. The sun was strong as I drove over, by the time I'd arrived rain spots threatened. Those spots became full blown deluges once I'd got into the garden with my take-away hot chocolate. I had no coat.

I took shelter for a while in an archway, watching the rain cascade over the flowerbeds. It was very pleasant just the rain and I. The shower passed, the sun shone, I headed off. I like it here as it's very peaceful. The gardeners must have been very busy this morning as the lawns were striped to perfection. But the place was deserted aside from this modern art installation. I called it Raking Green. Not long after taking this image the deluge returned, this time for a good 20 minutes. I took shelter once more under a yew. Ravens grunted over head, bossing the jackdaws on the Cathedral roof. Next to me was the instrument of grasses torture. And still I had the place to myself. Signs of past activity then, but of the present toil and activity, it remains a mystery.

 

Wednesday 11th September 2024

I watched the 2022 film Fisherman's Friends One and All last night. I'd seen it before but it is a lovely feel-good film. It may have been that or just a general idea but when I woke today I really had an urge to go to Boscastle. I used to go here regularly in the first years I lived down south. It's a two hour drive each way but back then I'd do the trip half a dozen times a year without thinking. Today I hummed and arrr'd over the distance. Then took the decision to go. As it happens I'd not been for over ten years. Until today.

It was worth the drive. The sea was spectacular from the cliff edge. A choppy turquoise Atlantic crashing against black resistant rocks provided a pleasing escape from the everyday. I spent a good hour sitting on a rock just taking in the sights, sounds and aroma of the sea hundreds of feet below me. It was memorising, and very much what I needed to reset my jangled mind. I forgot everything. Despite the village being very busy with day trippers, few people ventured up here on the cliffs to disturb my reverie. I'm very fond of Boscastle.

I wasn't completely alone though. My pen-pal Gideon joined me too. He loved it.

Tuesday 10th September 2024

 

I'm reading this book at the moment, a fictional account of Cassandra Austen, it's very good. However the impetus for today's post was £10. I'd just reached the point in the book where Jane Austen is feeling dejected. She'd received £10 for her novel Susan, but the publisher has thus far failed to publish it. Jane's father had recently passed away and in chased financial states Jane felt low and worthless. Cassandra tried to console her. I'd put the book down before realising two ten pound notes, depicting Jane herself were next to it. I wonder what Jane may have made of this? Not only that her image adorned notes of the Realm, but those two £10 notes were Julie's from an hour gardening (before being stung 10 times by a wasp). In Jane's day £10 was a considerable amount of money. Jane may have reached thirty and feeling as though she'd failed in life, but two hundred years later, she is loved and revered around the World. 

Monday 9th September 2024

 It was quite strange being back at work today. After all that's gone on over the last few weeks and ten days away I returned to an empty building. No activity but everything was the same. We move ourselves through life, a process of endless change minute by minute, but a lot of what surrounds us remains static and frozen in time. This notice board in the communal kitchen is a good example. Everything hanging there, except the sieve, I've placed there, including the badly spelt instructions to not put coffee granules down the sink. At the bottom right there's a dispenser saying leave in room 18. That's my writing and it harks back to the COVID pandemic year of 2020 when this room was my office. Four years later that hand gel is still there, but does anyone actually use it now? The John Moore leaflets are more recent, placed there not long after I'd attended the John Moore AGM last month. There were three, now only two. Has one been taken by an interested colleague to join the Society? I'll probably never know. It struck me though. I've changed over these last few months, I think differently to the beginning of the year, but these objects remind me there is permanence, albeit temporary in nature.

Sunday 8th September 2024

 

I maybe should worry about what is going on, but on balance it's best not to. Went to see friends today in Thornbury. The lady of the house knitted Mr Bumblegnome on the right for my 60th Birthday but said she could see improvements were possible so could I bring him with me. I did, also taking up a Halloween gnome as a gift. We've called that Brett. I have now left Mr Bumblegnome in Gloucestershire and he already seems chummy with Brett. Meanwhile Julie is happier that Mr Bumblegnome has left our house, though I'm suffering separation anxiety. Tough times ahead.

Saturday 7th September 2024

Two images from the garden today. I wasn't having a great day, restless and tired. The torrential rain had stopped but everything was sodden. Julie went to have her hair done, so I decided to go and do some gardening, shaping the bay shrub and cutting back a honeysuckle which was rampaging. Mid session I heard the tune from Ezzy's ice cream van. Well it would be rude not to support a local business. I was going to just have a tub but the family in front of me all had sundaes' I pushed the boat out with an After Eight mint chocolate sundae. It was blooming delicious and gave me renewed energy to finish off. Which is more than can be said about my helper Treacle. She never moved off the shed the entire time I was out there.

Friday 6th September 2024

It was a trip to Salisbury today. Julie and I had a longish invite to visit my late uncle's widow Ann. She was his second wife after Lilla died in 1994. Ann and Ken were married in 1998 through to his death in 2020. It would have been his 95th birthday yesterday. We went by train, with a lovely 50 minutes connection time at Bristol Temple Meads, where the above image was taken. With our railcards the two day returns cost £40.30, a bargain of £10 each, each way. And I like train travel anyway. But a downside on a day like this is the weather. The rain was torrential, meaning the walk from Salisbury station to Ann's soaked us. Not to worry. We dried off, and had a good few hours chat, Adrian her son from her first marriage popped over to see us, and we rang dad as he'd not spoken to Ann for months. Julie and I both like Salisbury but it's very busy with traffic. A nice day though, and we do like the house Ann lives in, it's a terrace in a modern mews complex. Very relaxing and only five minutes walk from the Cathedral.

Thursday 5th September 2024

 

In a few days winter has arrived. Only at the weekend did it feel dry and warm, the ground was hard and those occasional showers didn't really do anything. Today though we've descended into full November gloom. This time last year we were having a late heat wave with temperatures nudging the high 20's. Today it was 12 o.C with a cool northerly wind. Suddenly everything was sodden, roads with localised puddles, vegetation hung drenched, birds looked dejected and people walked about in proper wet weather gear. It was dark too, it really did feel like a November day. The view above is of the moor road between Mark and Biddisham. The structure is a mobile milking bale, though this one isn't mobile. These were once common everywhere but today I only know of this example. Julie and I were on our way home from the Hub where we'd gone just to get out the house. While there I met Martin Hughes-Games who'd ridden through the deluge on his new Norton motorbike (though he'd lost his numberplate). It was good to bump into him, though he looked frozen and soaked through to be honest.

Wednesday 4th September 2024

 

Hmmm. We're heading into a spell of wet and unsettled weather for a while. Ian Ferguson on Points West said it might be so bad he could use words not allowed on the BBC. It all starts around 3am tomorrow. We are under a Yellow weather warning from 9pm tonight. It's funny watching a colleague on TV. I normally see him playing table tennis in our rest area, apparently he's quite competitive. Anyway rain is coming, which I knew anyway as Gingernut had adopted the relaxed rain drop pose ahead of the deluge. He's a funny little thing.

Tuesday 3rd September 2024

 It has been a strange 24 hours. This morning I had to ring dad to let him know his good friend and golfing partner Terry Scollan had died. The passage of life is fickle. As dad said that's the last of his golf chums gone, he's the only one left now. It must be sad to lose those connections through longevity.

Then this afternoon I had a minor routine procedure, though the appointment mentioned operation. But to get to this point from Saturday morning I'd been progressively reducing food intake and then fluids. The procedure, lasting about an hour, was to be honest brutal. People go through much worse of course but I wasn't expecting to be quite so physically "manipulated". Those surgeons and male nurses really earn their keep. I'm using this image as I was given sedation via a cannula. To be honest I have no idea what they gave me as to being honest it had zero effect. But they were very kind and very professional. It's been a strange day and an even stranger year.

Monday 2nd September 2024

 

What a miserable morning. We were to have had thunderstorms yesterday, however they never materialised, which was a shame as I miss the big rolling thunderstorms we used to get here regularly. We've not had a good one for years. Instead from mid day it simply rained, steadily, continued through the night and by the time we took Julie's car around to Justin's just before nine for some work it was still raining. Oddly though, and this is often an autumnal thing, it is warm and impressively humid.  After this we went to Sainsbury's and home by 9.30am. it's good to get out early, even if the weather is poor.

Sunday 1st September 2024

 

It is hard to believe that we've reached the first day of the metrological autumn today. Of course it has come as no surprise but for many different reasons it does feel as if the summer has just begun. The long wet spring didn't really end until the end of June. Early July was similarly hit and miss with the weather, even on the weekend of my University reunion we had torrential rain. Since then it has felt more summery, weather wise at least, though day length is rapidly diminishing now. But the real sign that summer has passed was a display of daffodil and tulip bulbs at Castle Gardens garden centre at Sherborne in Dorset. 

I've an odd few days coming up so yesterday we planned a treat for ourselves, and we can offload some surplus to requirement plant pots there too (one of the few places which still do this). While we had lunch there I worked out I've been visiting Castle Gardens for over 24 years. That first visit was in the summer of 2000 (I don't think I'd been before). I'd just met Thelma and she said shall we have a trip to Sherborne as "I think you'll like the town". I'd been here before a few times before but it's a lovely town and I welcomed the re-visit. The garden centre was different then, smaller retail buildings in old buildings, as was the cafe. The site was badly damaged a few years later due to fire and the buildings expanded during that phoenixical rebuild. But I do recall on that first visit having butterscotch cake, it was fabulous and they've never served it again.

The passage of time is relentless, nearly a quarter of a century since I first visited Castle Gardens, and no sooner did my birthday occur in April this year here we are already at the first day of the last month of this year long blog. I've a challenging few days ahead, I wonder then what I'll write about on September 30th? 2024 has been an odd year indeed.