Interval

I shall be missing for a few days as I'm off to Northumberland early tomorrow morning to spend three days exploring Hadrian's Wall though sadly I shall not be driving there in this lovely old Alvis car. I daresay that my little red Golf is both faster and more reliable though! The Alvis was part of a display of vintage cars at Chatsworth Country Fair which is where I've spent today with my daughter and some of her friends.

I only took a few photos but couldn't resist this lovely horse and her foal - Shetlands I think but I could be wrong as I wasn't listening to what the commentator was saying!edited to say that Penny is absolutely right! I intended to say Shire! There were some little Shetland ponies in the Scurry racing and they must have been on my mind:)

The highlight of the day for me was the fabulous display by The Red Arrows. This formation is called' feathered arrow'.

Somehow they made the shape of a heart with an arrow through it in the sky - I think the mum of one of the pilots was among the visitors:)

The Red Arrows flew in various formations and did all sorts of manoeuvres including flying upside down. Getting photos wasn't all that easy as they were flying so fast .

Love this aerobatic manoeuvre when they all zoom down and then peel off in different directions. These pilots are incredibly skilled  and are a credit to both the RAF and Great Britain.

PS I'll catch up on commenting when I get back.

The Luttrell Psalter

I had some ironing to do this afternoon and I decided to watch a DVD that I bought a couple of years ago - just a short film based on the Luttrell Psalter. It shows scenes of everyday medieval village life through the four seasons of the year based on the beautiful illuminated illustrations from this wonderful medieval manuscript.

A Psalter is a book of the 150 Psalms from the Bible preceded by a calendar of the church's feast days and followed by various types of prayers.The Luttrell Psalter was commissioned by Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, lord of the manor of Irnham in Lincolnshire, sometime between 1320 and 1340. The original is now in the British Library.

Here we have men ploughing with a team of oxen which were much more commonly used than horses in medieval times

This shows a man harrowing the field after the seeds have been sown and he's followed by a chap with a sling that he's using to stone the crows who have their eye on a nice tasty meal!

Here we have two women hard at work one spinning using what looks to me like a walking wheel and the other carding the fleeces ready for spinning.

Not all the illustrations are serious - these two chaps are having a bit of a set to after a spot of heavy drinking I suspect!

This is a trailer for the film which was made by a community group called WAG Screen who specialize in making films about Lincolnshire heritage and history. This clip is short but you can watch the whole thing on Youtube if you click here It's well worth it if you have 20 minutes to spare as it's visually very beautiful - it isn't a documentary, it simply brings scenes to life and you will recognize all the illustrations I've posted. I think I shall make a cup of coffee and go and watch it again:)

A Suffolk Lane

As I mentioned in my last post Neil and Francesca's home is surrounded by farmland, this is Surprise who lives on the farm next door.

Here is the lane they live on, their house is up the lane beyond the trees.

The field in the previous photo is growing wheat but barley is also grown along with maize,rapeseed and sugar beet. I think it's possible that the barley goes to Adnams the local brewery as it's in Southwold which is only about 40 minutes drive from Neil's house.

There were  lots of wildflowers along the lane and the many public footpaths that lead off it including the beautiful wild blue scabious.

One of my favourites is the beautiful pink convolvulus arvensis which grows everywhere. As it's common name is field bindweed I suspect that it isn't as popular with the local farmers as it is with me:)

I think that this is the prickly sow thistle - whatever it is it's very popular with the local insects, hoverflies, wasps etc The large hoverfly at the top is Heliphilus affinis and I think it's rather beautiful. The smaller one is I think Episyrphus balteatus or the marmalade hoverfly. If you click on the photo you'll be able to see the markings on both of them more clearly.

Equally popular was a stand of purple (spear?)thistles which was absolutely alive with bees, hoverflies and butterflies. The photo shows (yet another of my 'I thinks!) two white tailed bees and a small white butterfly on a single flower. I am as always open to correction on any of my attempts at identification :)

Edited to add that this is actually a female Large White butterfly - thanks Roy:)

All the hedgerows were thick with berries and fruits of all kinds - elder, blackberries,sloes and these which look to me like the fruit of the bird cherry in various stages of ripeness.

The highlight of my early morning walks though was seeing the hares, something which has always eluded me on previous visits in spite of Cesca saying that they're everywhere. Now I know which field track to find them on!

This particular morning provided me with a very special experience but this is the last photo I took as from this point on I was standing absolutely stock still. The hare looked as though he was going to cross the track and disappear into the maize but as I stood there he turned, looked  at me and then came lolloping straight towards me stopping a couple of times to gaze at me and eventually going slowly past about four feet to my right. I felt very privileged to be trusted that much by a wild creature.

The following day there were two of them and I saw them several times after that but never as close as the first time. There are lots of muntjac deer around too, mostly when I saw them I was driving and they crossed the lane in front of me - happily always at a good enough distance for me to slow down and stop. The lanes are narrow and twisty, only wide enough for one car in many places so driving at any speed isn't a wise option. The only one I saw when walking came out of the wood,  crossed the track and had disappeared into the maize before I had chance to take a photo so I've borrowed the image below from the internet.

A New Twig on the Tree

It's been a long time since I last posted but I'm back again now. A lot of this summer has been spent in Suffolk helping my lovely daughter-in-law Francesca before and after the birth of her third baby - and here he is:) Jude Samuel was born on July 30th and weighed in at 6lb 9oz.

Here he is with big brother Gabriel and Granny. George was too busy with his drawing to join us:)

He's on this one though playing with Daddy and Gabriel in a nearby field. The lane they live on is surrounded by farmland.

A couple of days before Jude was born we spent the afternoon at Bressingham Steam Museum which we all enjoyed.

There was an interesting little museum as well as the train rides, this is one of the network of travelling mail coaches which collected mail,sorted it as the train travelled and delivered it to local stations along the line for the postman to deliver the next morning - I really love this piece of nostalgia. The Travelling Post Offices ceased in 2004.

This commemorative print was given to all TPO staff when the service ceased and shows them at work as the train speeds through the night. There is a wonderful poem by W H Auden called Night Mail and of course it's referring to the days of the wonderful old steam trains of my childhood. These are the first few lines:

This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.

Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
 Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
 In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

 There is also a great film called 'Night Mail' produced in 1936 by the GPO film unit which includes the whole of  poem. Needless to say I have  it on DVD:)  It's also available on Youtube and shows exactly how the TPOs worked. The little portion showing men working on the line shows the job my dad did, he was a platelayer on the railways for most of his working life. Do watch it - it's a fascinating glimpse of a world now long gone.

This shows the interior of the mail coach.

Another part of the museum also holds an exhibit full of nostalgia for all devotees of Dad's Army. Here is Frazer's Funeral Parlour....

........and Corporal Jones' butcher's shop.

Jonesy's iconic blue delivery van is there too.

Last but not least Swallow Bank where Captain Mainwaring was manager and Sergeant Wilson and Pte Pike also worked. I'm afraid all the museum photos are poor because of all the artificial lighting. We really enjoyed our outing and would have gone in the museum sooner if we'd realised how interesting it was, we had to rush round a bit as it was near to closing time when we went in. I plan another Suffolk post later this week and shall also be catching up on reading and commenting on other blogs - something I haven't had time to do over the last couple of months.

Flower Fairies

 The Flower Fairy books by Cicely Mary Barker are among my favourite children's books because of their delicate paintings of flowers and trees. They are a lovely way to help children learn about the natural world although the poems that accompany the paintings aren't exactly great literature:) I still have Flower Fairies of the Summer, Flower Fairies of the Wayside and A Flower Fairy Alphabet from my daughter's childhood so I thought I would complete the set gradually. Flower Fairies of the Spring seemed the appropriate one to begin with and it seems to have done the trick as the day it arrived the weather began to warm up:) The painting on the cover is of The Crocus Fairies.



The Windflower Fairy is one of my favourites from the Spring book partly because it's a lovely painting and partly because I love seeing the wood anenomes appear, they are always among the earliest of the woodland flowers along with the celandine. Windflower is the country name for the wood anenome. In the last couple of days there are suddenly sheets of them in Ecclesall Woods where at the beginning of the week there was no sign of them at all.



The other book I've just acquired is Flower Fairies of the Trees which is my favourite of all the Flower Fairy books I think, it's only rival would be Flower Fairies of the Autumn which I have still to buy. This is the latest edition, all the original eight Flower Fairy books have recently been re-issued. The cover shows the Willow Fairy which I really love.



Another of my favourites is the Blackthorn Fairy - she should shortly be appearing in our hedgerows bringing with her the blackthorn winter. The blackthorn blossom comes before the leaves and makes it look as though the shrubs are covered in snow. The old countrymen believed that it also brought with it a spell of cold weather - I hope that isn't the case this year as I think we've had sufficient cold weather during this Spring!




My final offering looks forward to the hot, sunny (hopefully )days of summer when we shall be seeing the Poppy Fairy in the fields - not a favourite with the farmers perhaps but definitely a favourite of mine.

Sudden Spring

Spring is sudden: it is her quality,
However carefully we watch for her,
However long delayed
The green in the winter'd hedge
The almond blossom
The piercing daffodil,
Like a lovely woman late for her appointment
She's suddenly here, taking us unawares,
So beautifully annihilating expectation
That we applaud her punctual arrival.

 Gerald Bullett (1893-1958)




Spring certainly is long delayed this year,by the end of March last year the blackthorn was in full bloom and there were wood anenomes, celandines and the first of the bluebells in flower. It's a completely different story this year, the buds on the blackthorn on Blackamoor are still tightly shut and in Ecclesall Woods although the green spikes of bluebell leaves are pushing through there's no sign whatever of the windflowers and celandine. However I can offer you the first of the 'piercing daffodil' I have just two or three groups of the smaller daffodils flowering giving some hope that Spring might not be far away. The crocus' are still flowering well but the light is poor today so they have declined to open up fully.




Another tiny splash of colour comes from a little group of chionodoxia, the blue is much more intense than it appears in the photo.




My ordinary yellow primroses are just starting to flower but the named varieties are further on, this one os a white double called 'Dawn Ansell'.




My garden is a complete shambles though not quite such a shambles as it was a couple of weeks ago. Due to being in Suffolk until early October and then a very wet autumn I did very little indeed at the end of last year, normally I'd expect to be able to work in my garden until well into December. The photo shows a scene of before and after, I work from the bottom up towards the house so the worst part is most obvious from the french windows and doesn't allow me to pretend it isn't there! Of course all the dead leaves will be falling off the beech hedges any time now so there will be no resting on my laurels even when I do finally cross the finishing line!




Up on Blackamoor the scene is even more dead looking than my garden but finally yesterday I spotted two brave little plants peeping through, this is golden saxifrage which grows in damp areas and has pretty yellow flowers when the buds eventually open and.....




..... further up the path I was delighted to see the first of the coltsfoot pushing through though they too remain tightly furled.




This is why they are so reluctant to flower -  it's still very cold up on Blackamoor! B Baggins and I walked up to Piper House Gate and across the top path to Devil's Elbow yesterday morning and there are still some patches of snow here and there.




So here I am, out of hibernation again:) Thank you for the kind enquiries as to my well being, there's been nothing wrong, just a general lethargy and lack of inspiration due to the grey skies and freezing temperatures.
I've been busy in other directions though, the village walk leaflet that my friend P and I have written has been published and proved to be very popular indeed - we wish we'd had more printed now!




I suspect I'm going to be even busier in the months to come! Apart from various outings and a new local history project that P and I have begun and the transcription I'm going to do of our local school's admission registers I'm also going to be doing quite a lot of knitting. I've just bought some yarn ready to knit another one of these......





.....those of you who have been with me for some time may recognize this. I've knitted four of them so far, one for each grandchild.I'm about to begin on a fifth one as Gabriel and George will be having a new brother or sister in the summer. Although I'm already sure which the baby will be I've backed the horse both ways with the new yarn as it has both pink and blue flecks in it:)

Snow Again

"If Candlemas Day be fair and bright
 Winter will have another flight."

 The old saying has proved to be true! Saturday February 2nd was a beautiful sunny day with clear blue skies but this morning I woke up to a white world and B Baggins and I came back from our walk looking like stand-ins for The Abominable Snowman:) We went up through Poynton Woods which looked very pretty but was treacherous underfoot as the mud hidden beneath the thin layer of snow was very slippery. I was very glad I'd taken my trusty hazel staff with me.