Rattling On...

Oliver Cromwell had a point...

I went to the theatre last Friday with some tickets a friend couldn't use as he was otherwise engaged. I took My mate K with me, she runs a creative writing class and is a teacher of English, so she likes a good play.

So do I, this wasn't one of them. I'm not saying it didn't have good bits, but by (what I desperately hoped was) the last act I was literally squirming in my seat as I couldn't wait for it to be over. I don't think this has happened to me ever before, and I've sat through some crap in my time. Unless of course you count the Elton John concert some years ago, in his addled phase, when I was so unimpressed that I left at half time. I had a cold, which didn't help.

Anyway, back to the play; the social conscience/political ranting turned me off big time, and this from someone who studied politics and likes a good debate on any subject you care to toss in the ring. For me the characters lacked chemistry and the set was boring as it never changed except for some flowers appearing at one point.

Obviously my advancing years are leaving me unable to appreciate anything with a subtext or requiring deep thought. Maybe I should stick to operetta and farce from now on. Start wading through Mills and Boon. Listen to Ken Bruce without irony. Or just learn to walk out of things when I've had a bellyfull.

K agreed with me on almost all the points, I may add. She also found the storyline confusing and lacking direction. But then she's a few years older than me so one can forgive her a little befuddlement.

We did, though, enjoy the people watching opportunities presented by the audience. K being fascinated by the dynamics of the group-of-three sitting directly in front of us. One hesitates to use the word 'threesome' but if the cap fits and all that. Funnily enough I'd had my eye on a similar group just further along our row. Which strikes me now as being unusual, even for round here. Maybe we stumbled into a Speciality night out without realising it? You know, a bit like singalong-a-Sound of Music. But more of a Friday Night is Threesomes how d'you do. Maybe the play was just a front??

Dogs you'd like to meet...

Or...Top Names for Books. Yes, Rowland Johns really did write a whole book on that. I know this after a browse round the fantastic bookshop/bookbinders in town yesterday.

I had a good hour in there ferreting about and find it incredible that there actually are so many different titles for books, though I'm sure some have been duplicated over the years.

I also love the way an innocent (presumably) title of yesteryear has a totally different take these days. What about 'Invisible Dick', 'Queer Doings at Quantham', 'Very Private Secretary' or the magnificent 'How to make Pastry Attractive' from 1958.

On the second floor of the shop there's a little area with brewing up facilities, on an honesty basis. You can sit and read or chat. There was a couple there and I couldn't help listening in as I browsed the Enid Blyton. They were from Cambridge, he was contemplating a move to Reading but since coming here for a holiday has decided that he must live here. You see, it's not two dimensional. When you get up in the morning you feel you could write poetry or walk. He will, of course, work in a book shop (while he explores the space time continuum on his daily stroll) presumably the one he's sitting in or WH Smith's. Which really doesn't have the same atmosphere.

I imagine Academia in Cambridge will be groaning at the knowledge that they lack dimension and walking is a no-go. I used to live in Reading. It was harmless enough.

Written in stone...

Hard to believe that almost 350 years ago these lovely little cottages were the scene for so much suffering.

Several of the cottages have plaques outside detailing the losses in 1665/66, they're lived in now of course and it seems intrusive to stand and take pictures, though I'm sure it just comes with the territory.

During the time the plague struck Eyam was isolated and food etc was left outside the village at a boundary stone. The graves are also outside the village, rather than in the churchyard. Interestingly the gravedigger survived despite being in close and prolonged contact with the bacterium. Roughly a quarter of the residents were left standing, and amongst these there was found to be a significant incidence of a specific gene resistant to the plague.

St Lawrence church , with its natty blue clock face, has a fascinating graveyard. If, that is, like me you are fascinated by that kind of thing.

I like a bit of freestyling in a graveyard, adds character and style (the large cross is 8th century Celtic). Here in town you have to have a uniform size and colour, no statues, angels, books or crosses, just a plain grey rectangle. It's very disappointing to find this out when you want to have something else, as I know from personal experience.

I agree things should be subtle, but really why should there be such draconian rules? No need for church yards to be gloomy places, hopefully people go there to celebrate and remember good things as well as mourn. Maybe you have different views?

It's a beautiful day here, which is incredible luck as there's a Spring Fair on all over town. There will be stalls in the streets for heavens' sakes, what is the world coming to? We are almost modern. I'm hoping someone will be selling plants as I feel the need to plant things in some bare spots. 

I've been gardening like a mad woman, partly on the basis that I can consider it a free gym workout, partly as the garden was over-run with the usual weedy culprits. Three wheelie bins of butter burr roots have gone to composting heaven, consider that amount. They took some sweat to remove, and still the damn things rear their nasty little heads by the pond.

Such takes the form of my own personal pergutory.

A 17th Century day out...

I have been busy, very busy this past week. Which is the reason (excuse?) for the dearth of blogging. I also dropped and broke my phone. The one where everything from phone numbers and passwords to appointments is carefully stored. A right royal, fur lined, ocean going pain in the unmentionables. Oh and I went on a course, to Rotherham.

But first... Last weekend (I told you I'd been busy) we went to Eyam Hall, not far from home and somewhere we've been several times before. But now it's being run by the National Trust and entry is free to members, so we thought we'd go and see if anything had changed.

The house was lived in until very recently and it's a strange conglomeration of very old and very new, you can sit in the fitted kitchen the family used!

The floors are sloping and incredibly creaky upstairs.

Thw walls are hung with tapestries and the wood is dark without being gloomy

I love windows in old houses, and this was built in 1671- the windows don't disappoint, they even have 18th century graffiti scratched on them

 

The National Trust have started work on the garden, it looks like it may be a cross between formal and cottage, bits of each. The espaliered apple trees against the old, old walls were possibly my favourite things there. I can't get enough of old walls and I love the way nature can be trained a little to give pleasing form to a garden. The French have this down to a fine art in public spaces as well as gardens.

Tomorrow I'll show you the plague cottages and the graveyard. I know how to live it up...

The unbearable lightness of being... a scone

Visitors and last minute baking. The usual Nigella recipe which, as always, was lovely. Cherry jam and whipped cream.

Yesterday morning was fine enough (though not a patch on Saturday which was glorious) and I thought I'd let the grass have another day drying out while the washing blew on the line, then I'd mow it in the afternoon. Or not. To put it mathematically:

A ≫ 0

Where A is the the chance of rain before the last bit of washing hit the line. Oh well.

Stately homes and sculpture...

On Tuesday a friend and I went off to Chatsworth to visit the William Turnbull exhibition. I say exhibition, but that's using the word in its broadest sense, the sculptures were placed around the garden. We had a little map and a key to what was what.

We got there before the garden had opened, but in true enterprising spirit all the tea rooms were open. A cynic might say this was a ploy. We forced down some shortbread and then went off to explore.The weather was fine if a little hazy, the sun popped out occasionally and the dreaded rain stayed away. Perfect for traipsing around...

Large Horse 1990

Through the Horse's Eye, 2013

Large spade Venus, 1986

Large Blade Venus, 1990

Gravel Heart, 2013 (Artist unknown)

Lots of phallic type offerings, mother figures and a bit of industrial (girders and ducting) thrown in. All very tactile and occasionally colourful. Speaking of colourful, the house has had a part face lift and is sporting the new paint job on around half its windows, see the contrast in the last picture between the old white egalitarian and the nouveau riche gold which now also adorns many an urn at the front of the place. The £14milion spent on it must surely be a bargain...

So, sculptures. I was rather taken with many of them, probably mainly as they were outside; I'm not sure seeing them in a gallery setting would do it for me. But surrounded by nature they had a different appeal and I imagine are chameleon like as the seasons pass, though Spring suits them very well I think.

Did you watch it?

How much fun it must be to work behind the scenes on a programme like this; choosing the contestants and, best of all, editing the footage. There's the usual mix we've come to expect from reality-comp shows. Ditsy, older, camp, uber competitive, unexpected one tagged on. Expert male, expert female, amusing presenter to offset.

Watching them wander round the racks of fabric and trimmings as they chose what to use for their first challenge was like spying on addicts in a crack den. Or at least what I imagine it must be like. A fairer fight, I thought, would have been to give them all identical kit to start with and just see what the skirts turned out like in comparison.

I noticed also that not much home-made was being worn on the day, despite protestations from a few that they always clothed themselves. Mark really should have come as the Steampunk Baron we saw him as in his little vignette.

Ann's a top lass, and I suspect an iron will to win lurks behind that mild manner. Other than that the main impact on me of the whole programme was Patrick Grant's suaveness. His grooming is second to none and I love the way he still referred to chests and seats on the lady models. I believe trousers are on the agenda next week, plenty of scope for embarrassment and innuendo there. I suspect most women have never fitted trews to a gentleman's anatomy. Nail biting stuff.

My great grandma was a seamstress, my maternal Grandma and my Mother both excellent needlewomen. Myself... not. Strictly emergencies only and the odd curtain, though I have got small project half planned. It will probably never make the blog, I do have some pride. I would certainly never subject myself to nationwide scrutiny on the telly, being of the competitive type myself it would probably all get ugly quite quickly. It has taken me a long time to lose the motto 'I'm not playing if I can't win', always unspoken but there all the same. Working in a school setting has toned it down. A bit.

One last thought. CW's fringe DRIVES ME MAD. Can she not afford a trim, or is she hiding something under there?

Walking with dinosaurs...

In the Conservatory at the Pavilion Gardens there's been a bit of an exhibition cum display called Ferrassic Park. The Conservatory is a hot house, the old Victorian Winter Garden, that's attached to the side of the Opera House, when I was young there were large aviaries with finches but these are long gone, though the goldfish pond remains.

Now, for a short time only, it has other inhabitants...

There were more than this dotted around, some with red noses from Comic Relief fundraising, and all provoking much conversation. One man very against the one reclining by the pond for some reason.

Not usually a fan of installation art myself, I quite like these!

From the mouths of gift horses...

Last week I was given some tickets to a play, a farce, the Saturday matinee performance. I was initially very ungrateful and didn't fancy it, but the donor said 'Why not give it a go?'. Why not, indeed?

Coincidentally a friend texted to say was I free for a brew Saturday afternoon? I can do better than that, I replied. So we went. It was Boeing Boeing, and was hilarious, fab 60s retro set as well, all lava lamps and black vinyl. (A reveiw can be seen here, but from a different venue)

Philip Stewart as Robert was particularly good, a bit of the set refused to co-operate at one point and he had the audience in stitches, hamming it up.

Friend is a very interesting person, just contemplating giving it all up and living with her partner on a houseboat in Holland. They have also just read a certain book together and have been giving that a go as well. Oh, and she's joined a book club. Makes me feel incredibly dull.

Anyway, the Opera House is a gorgeous place to sit and have a laugh...

The Apprentice, Victorian style.

Following on from yesterday comes the Apprentice House. This is up a steep hill from the mill itself, which seems like a cruel turn of fate, having to haul yourself up there at the end of a hard day, clogs scraping on the road.

There's a working garden and outbuildings that house the produce, this is pretty much how the garden has always been.

You go into the house via the schoolroom, which was cosy and warm on our visit, I'm not sure a real Victorian tutor would be so welcoming and smiley.

Then you go upstairs straight into what was the boys' dormitory...

Sixty boys slept in here, which to my reckoning is at least three to a bed. Spartan is the only word that springs to mind.

Back down the other set of stairs into the small and cosy kitchen...

It was difficult to get in this part as there were loads of people crowded round the coal fire warming themselves. It was a roarer and very welcome.

Out side the back door were the less cosy aspects of a Victorian kitchen...

And no farm kitchen is complete without the mouser...

Take a look at that ear. This one takes no prisoners!

The miller's tale...

Today we went on a sort of festive National Trust day out. Quarry Bank Mill was having its Victorian Christmas day and the weather was absolutely beautiful when we got there.

This mill is a perfect example of what the Industrial Revolution was all about. getting this...

To this...

But before you get to the heavy machinery there's a little gentle introduction to cotton spinning the 1700s way.

Bearing in mind what my own spun wool looked like the other week, look how fine this thread is. The woman was turning the wheel with one hand and pulling the roll of cotton and everything else with the other. Oh, and giving an explanation as well. She made it look unbelievably easy. Then she moved on to the loom...

She explained that old cloth was narrow as the shuttles have to be thrown across by hand, thus determining how wide the loom could be- arms' reach. If you wanted broad cloth then two people had to operate a wider loom.

This was, of course, until We invented the spinning jenny and that led to all manner of things like this...

There are also mock-ups of mill workers' cottages.

And at the end there's the mule room. This was the notorious loom that so many children were maimed or killed servicing. It looks so innocent.

There's also lots of interesting machinery for those of us who like industrial stuff, and a magnificent water wheel that powered the whole mill.

I know mills were dirty, dangerous and exploititive places (have you watched this excellent drama?), so noisy everyone went deaf, so dusty everyone's lungs gave up eventually.

But today the rhythm and throb of the odd machines that are on for visitors to see is very soothing (cloth is still spun on these at a rate of five metres an hour), or at least I found it so. Because of modern extraction and lighting it didn't seem so threatening, or maybe we just don't want to imagine the horror of being a small child scrabbling round under a loom fast enough to get out before we were crushed in the rollers.

Tomorrow I'll show you the other part of the visit, the Apprentice House, where the small boys who were destined to work the mill lived.

What are those?

These are the only remaining example of down draught potters' ovens remaining, in Burslem, Staffordshire. Also known as bottle kilns. They are going to ruin and it's such a shame.

I went to the Potteries on Sunday for a ceramic fix, and these are on the road to Burleigh in the middle of what is now just wasteland, but used to be a thriving industrial area. Burleigh, since the buy-out, has changed a little (lost just a touch of its charm) but I still love the pots.

Of course I also went to the Emma Bridgewater factory shop and made a modest (ahem) purchase which will add to the festivities. For me in any case.

Both potteries are thriving at the moment and get a lot of domestic and foreign visitors. Anyone not familiar with the area and the decline in the industry must wonder, as they arrive, where the hell they are going to. If you decide on a visit (and both are so worth it, the cafe at EB is just great) please don't be put off by appearances. If nothing else Staffordshire people are some of the friendliest you'll meet.

My cousin was married to a steeplejack and one of his original jobs was to repair chimneys and kilns, hanging from a small swing affair. Nowadays it's more than likely to be demolishing them. Surely, even if they can't be used for anything practical, they're worth preserving just for the sheer scale and interest value. I love a nice bit of brickwork.

Last of the summer outings...

Yesterday saw us off to Bronte country and the Parsonage museum in Haworth. we've been before some years ago but the girls wanted to go again and I'd seen that at the moment the costumes from the latest Jane Eyre film are on display. Unfortunately indoor pictures aren't allowed.

It was putting down a deluge when we left home, the roads were flooding and it was really cold. We found it better when we arrived but it's obviously been bad there as the church was closed due to the roof leaking and the graveyard was very muddy as a lot of the soil had washed onto the paths. Which is not a problem compared to what has happened in the past...

'Pollution' caused the water in Howarth to be undrinkable. Just think... or don't!

The place is, of course, a pilgrimage for Bronte fans and there is a fair bit to see that actually belonged to them. Most of it rather poignant and some of it creepy even.

We walked down to the village and had some lunch, then went into Rose and Co to soak in the vintage fittings, lovely smells and sample some potions.

Then the thunder started, the rain followed and our peace was shattered as every Japanese tourist there also came into the shop, and there were lots. The only word we understood was 'kawaii', which was squealed often and loudly as all the teenage girls spied the cupcake soaps, lipbalms in tins and dinky boxes of Yorkshire tea. Really, they buy tea as a souvenir... they were charming. The girls, not the boxes of tea.

A horrible, traffic-jammed drive back saw it drier at home for a while. However, our old Victorian skylight has given up the ghost and needs to be replaced as water has run in. Over a hundred years of service, but this 'summer' has proved too much. Man coming next Saturday.

Later a knock at the door. Next door neighbour to say they have pigeons nesting in the loft, which means... Man coming on Monday.

Take cover...

Yesterday we went off to Stockport to see the Air Raid Shelters. They're right in the centre of town, behind Primark! I wasn't sure what to expect.

They are a series of tunnels dug into the sandstone in 1938. The temperature is a damp 10^oC all year round and water deeps slowly through the rock, causing rather attractive moss to grow on the ceilings of the many tunnels. It's also caused the original wooden benches, which would have run the length of each wall, to rot. There are modern replacements in some areas. It's all 40ft underground...

There were lots of dug outs, small side tunnels that formed ARP posts, a lock-up, nursing mothers' room and tool sheds with spades for use if there were a direct hit. And there were facilities...

Toilets...what can I say? They are massive clay pipes, cunningly re-purposed with wooden seats added over the couplings to make a series of rather cosy latrines. A perfect example of make-do. Squares of newspaper hang nearby. I think originally there were hessian curtains at the sides and front of each stall for a really minimum amount of (dark) privacy. The big thing here though is that these were flushing toilets, a cistern filled and emptied automatically every few minutes. It flushes along the whole length in a rushing torrent. Luxury.

Towards the end there's a mock up of an Anderson shelter that civilians could install in gardens and such, there were some at my senior school that had been converted into storerooms.

Obviously it's quite dingy in parts in terms of taking photos, but this adds atmosphere. What it was like with between 4000 and 6000 people in here I really can't imagine. If you were much over 5'8" or so you could only walk right in the middle of the tunnels as they are quite sparingly styled and you'd have to be on good terms with whoever you ended up next to, there can't have been many secrets in there.

Roger and Richard in the front of house were brilliant for information and entertainment. Roger sand Lily Marlene, in German, for me when we got discussing things in general. As you do. In all, well worth a visit if you happen to be in Stockport.

In other news: I decided to go to the doctor's as my face wasn't improving really. I'm still red and puffy, but now with bloodshot eyes as well. He asked lots of questions, we talked about allergy (he talked about anaphylaxis...), he issued some stronger antihistamines and booked me in for blood tests. This shouldn't have lasted a week. Specialists were mentioned. Great. It's not looking like it was the face cream, stopping using it should have stopped the reaction, it's now a matter of trying to find out exactly what is... could be a long job.

In which case, does anyone have a good knitting pattern for a balaclava/ski-mask?

 

Walsingham...

Walsingham is known as the Nazareth of England, and on that basis I thought it was worth a visit. I went round the shrine and to the cafe they have there. I will say that pilgrims are well catered for and the grounds are amazing.

The village is also very picturesque and the golden weather vane of the shrine is visible at all times.

I also went to the Abbey, which is now a ruin following Henry VIII's rampages. You enter through what looks like a village shop, go into the Shirehall courthouse, now a museum, then go into the Abbey grounds. It looks ordinary enough until you round a bend and through the trees see this...

I just can't describe how massive and impressive it is, sitting on the velvet lawn with the sun beating down. And it's just a tiny part of what it once was. More photos, with even more on Flickr...

The grounds are beautiful, with a mown walk alongside the river. There were birds, bees, squirrels and damselflies dancing like fairies over the water. It was a very hot day but the trees provide lovely shade and people were discreetly picnicking on the lawns. I was actually surprised at how very quiet it was for the middle of the summer holidays.

If you're ever near Walsingham I can honestly say this place is more than well worth a visit.