Eccentric Amblings and Ramblings From Gnat Bottomed Towers

I love a corny pun.....   This is the hairdressers which now trades from the old granary building in our park. Here's the original....take it away John Paul Young Have a good weekend. Arilx

 Stations are places for rushing around in by and large I think. Occasionally I have paid attention to some of the Victorian grandeur on full blown display in some of the London ones, but our one is just a squat and unremarkable affair. I read a comment about its completion in 1938 and its Art Deco details. Art Deco? What Art Deco? I had literally never noticed before! Now I know that it was built by the Southern Railway in the International Modern Style to coincide with the electrification of the line. It was designed by James Robb Scott and is now Grade II listed. The perfect focus for the walk I had planned for last Friday's most recent local jaunt around the town. Up for a spot of spontaneity for a change I decided to continue to wander in whatever direction my feet took me and once again I found myself in the area of my old stomping ground from 25 years ago. This church was on one of my regular routes back then and had you asked me at that time what I thought of it I'd hav

With "evenings in" currently being the order of the day I have begun to attend a few carefully selected free talks. The Sussex Wildlife Trust offer a varied programme which I reckoned would give me an excellent chance to learn more about what's in my locality [I found out last week that blackbirds are a member of the thrush family] I couldn't resist signing up for one on wildlife dung [I know, I am your weird friend].  Without pinching the entire content of the talk I can now tell you that we have our very own UK dung beetles [thank goodness we do otherwise our country would be awash with the stuff] and that they have different ways of dealing with it. What we do lack here are the "rollers" [cue Pixabay free image above]. I hadn't appreciated that these fellows are actually going backwards when they are moving the dung balls yet they have an amazing sense of direction and can move their quarry a huge distance in relation to their body size. Every once in

 [image from Pixabay] Knowing that my Aberdonian friend, C, will be celebrating Burns Night tonight I asked him a few weeks ago where he got his haggis from as he's lived down South for years......with a twinkle in his eye I was informed that you don't buy a haggis you have to hunt them..... First you need to find a mountain and then climb to the top of it where the haggises live. Descend slowly in an anticlockwise direction for haggises nearly always come down clockwise. Knowing that their legs are longer on their portside than their starboard size, when you meet one face to face you must blow your whistle and wave your arms at it. This will frighten it and it will try to run down, but overbalance and topple over the mountain side. You can then collect your haggis at your leisure once you make it back down to the bottom. Thinking things through I foresee a couple of problems....Sussex doesn't have any mountains and once in a while you may encounter a haggis that only goes

  Have a good weekend! Arilx

Is it just me or are there others out there I wonder who share my weird fascination with the randomness of the middle aisle in Lidl....as a friend wryly commented "it must be the only shop where you can go in for something very mundane and come out with an angle grinder that you didn't even know you wanted!" I can't resist taking a sneaky peek on my rare visits over there [our one is across town and can get very busy, so I haven't been for several months]. Most of the time I have little problem resisting the delights, but back in September I fell for it hook, line and sinker.  For a four hundred and ninety nine pence investment I emerged with this in my sweaty little paw.... I justified it by working out that it would save me money by me not needing to buy weird coloured spools of thread for specific projects [I've amassed a few of them in my time I can tell you!], but really I wanted it because of all the lovely colours🌈🌈🌈. Has it been useful.....yes indee

This tunnel leads from the main road into our town park and was built by the Hurst family in 1840 who were the then landowners. Originally it was there to allow the carts to transport the vegetables from the gardens to the main house, but now it's used by the public. Frankly I haven't used it very much over the years as it always used to be very dark and gloomy down there. If it rained you got cold water dripping down your neck! Only recently has it had the lighting put in. Recently I learned that it had been used as an air raid shelter during WWII. At that time it had additional staggered partitions built out from the walls to create a zigzag path and prevent any potential bomb blast from harming those taking refuge there. If only walls could talk...very sobering really. Arilx

 My TV watching tends to comprise of selected shows from the catch-up options available on Freeview. Sometimes it might be something dark like the recent incredible "The Serpent" and other times I only fancy things that are positive and fluffy. My current favourite for this is the welcome return of  "The Great Pottery Throwdown" with the gorgeously emotional Keith Brymer Jones. I love all the different styles of ceramics that the potters can create from a lump of clay.  Now I'm spending more time in the urban landscape I am really beginning to notice what a contribution pottery/ceramic/brick/earthenware details add to the buildings. These are from my recent walkabouts round Horsham. In all honesty and looking at this little blue bird more closely I think it's enamelled metal, although I took it to be pottery when I saw it from afar. However, I'm sure you'll forgive me for sneaking it in anyway! Little gems. Arilx

As I'm not off out adventuring far at the moment, pottering around at home has been the order of the day over the weekend. Both of us have caught up on boring old chores and between showers Mr GBT managed to plant out the shallots I found in Wilkos last week. I've been having a bit of a play with some new drawing pencils that act like watercolours if you wet them and I fancied doing a spot of baking. For some reason the idea of cinnamon flapjacks popped into my head, so thought I would give them a whirl. As you can see we roadtested a piece as soon as they'd cooled and it was definitely a thumbs up. If you fancy making some I added a dessertspoon of cinnamon to my standard recipe of 6oz butter, 2 oz soft brown sugar, 5 tbsp golden syrup and 12oz porridge oats. Melt all the ingredients together in a big pan bar the oats and then stir them in. Spread out on a lightly greased tray and bake at 180C for 15 mins. I prepped them in the morning and then cooked them later when I had

In difficult times, you move forward in small steps. Do what you have to do, but little by little. Don't think about the future, or what may happen tomorrow. Wash the dishes. Remove the dust. Write a letter. Make a soup. You see? You are advancing step by step. Take a step and stop. Rest a little. Praise yourself. Take a step. Then another. You won't notice, but your steps will grow more and more. And the time will come when you can think about the future without crying. Elena Mikhalkova Advice given to the author by her grandmother. I guess it's the same as what we now call mindfulness. I saw this single rose carefully placed on the bench last week on my walk. Arilx

 Please feel free to skip this post, but I'm returning to the last blog post to update what these shields represent as a local historian has now very kindly provided me with the details. Part of the way I use the blog is to record these local details for myself. Going from left to right the first one is the flag of Sussex. The six birds are marlets which are mythical birds that are depicted without feet and never roost. The lady is the Virgin Mary depicted as the Queen of Heaven. This is the Blazon for the Worshipful Company of Mercers, of which Richard Collyer was a member. The next one is for Henry VIII who was the monarch at the time of Collyer's bequest in 1532. The flowers are white lilies that represent St Mary. Our parish church of the same name has close connections with the college and finally the lion is the coat of arms for Horsham. I will try to put up something a little less dry tomorrow! Arilx

Well while I've got every other Friday off for a few weeks [one client has temporarily stopped due to the current situation] I might as well take it as a positive and a chance to enjoy myself. Keeping it local I stepped out of my front door and walked across town to an area where I used to live up until 1996. Lots more to see than I remembered being there! This cemetery is now full and hasn't been used in a long time. It sits rather forlornly just off from the town centre with an air of neglect. The Victorian tombstones are covered in ivy and most people just walk on by oblivious that it's even there. I was one of them and had never visited it until about 15 years ago. However, its air of neglect is carefully managed as it operates as an important refuge for the local wildlife and there are many wild flowers to be seen in the warmer months. On a previous occasion there was a fox curled up in the farthest corner....I don't know which one of us was most surprised! For me

  This may not look like it, but this shot was taken on a very wet day a couple of months ago. We were truly drenched by the time we got home. The weather for the next few days is set to be far from fair in my part of the world, so the woods will be very muddy and slippy underfoot. I shall be working so going to the woods is not an option for me, but if you fancy having an arboreal experience whilst staying in the dry perhaps this might provide a good halfway house  https://mymodernmet.com/forest-sounds-tree-fm/?fbclid=IwAR1nf64Enu4Cx8KIRF6e1b5m_wOYoGsL91yYzE9kVJOEkqC-Td4GREA9G6c Arilx

It seemed a crying shame to throw away the leftover scallop shells from our NYE supper, so we pondered what we could do with them. Quickly we both decided that they could feature in a hanging wind chime thingy for the garden and I quickly volunteered my modest stash of holey stones to accompany them. Mr GBT, being a making/repairing wizard, strung them up on some brass wire, but I still didn't feel it was quite finished somehow. Overnight the missing detail came to me and by the morning I added in the red ribbon [salvaged from Christmas crackers]. When I stood back from it I had to smile....every part of it also has an apotropaic element! The scallop shell features heavily in Christianity and is the symbol of St James [it's littered along the route of the Camino de Santiago] who is the patron saint of pilgrims. If you see it on a tomb, then it signifies that the person has been on at least one pilgrimage. This example is Richard Cheltenham's and can be seen in Tewkesbury Ab

  Have a good weekend! Arilx

My old schoolfriend was down last week staying with her Mum [they're in a bubble] and so I needed to come up with a plan where we could catch up outside without needing to travel too far. Thankfully my Dad signposted a new series of local heritage walks that have been created by the town's museum staff [it hasn't reopened since March] and one of those turned out to be the perfect candidate. Now with so much off limits it's not so easy to add in the usual level of detail when all you're basically doing is walking up and down both sides of a single long road for an hour, but I don't think we did too badly under the circumstances. This place looks like it's got some age to it with it gorgeous decorative barge boards. However, looks can be deceiving for above the door is the date 1932. It's built in the Tudorbethan style which was all the rage at the time. Some of the material used though has been salvaged from earlier buildings which does help to make it lo

 Well it might not be possible to physically do much in the garden planting wise right now, but indoor scheming is afoot. We talked over ideas a few weeks ago and how we could achieve a wildlife friendly plot with our postage sized piece of turf and the solution seems to be seasonal shrubs that are attractive to the pollinators and birds with a few hardy perennials thrown in any remaining gaps....in essence we've gone for indestructible [hopefully] ones with attractive flowers and berries. It turns out Mr GBT has been quietly beavering away and so was able to present me with a list of possibilities  at the beginning of the recent break. If we can get them I think we're in for a treat and it will be nice to be able to have something to show for some money we were recently given for our little project. Meanwhile the tiles on the planters are now on [we'll continue to grow veggies in them] and he's just converted the redundant peanut feeder into a suet pellet one...they

"Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder." Rumi [1207-1273] Arilx