Eccentric Amblings and Ramblings From Gnat Bottomed Towers

 Imagine my surprise when I spotted this on one of my recent pavement stomps.....hidden in plain sight, but clear for all those "in the know" to see..... Our town's very own Whomping Willow. I gingerly tiptoed past for I had now wish to invoke its ire....from memory things didn't turn out terribly well for the little Ford Anglia in HP and the Chamber of Secrets...... Have a good weekend! Arilx

 Sometimes lyrics seem very timely and of the moment. Arilx

  These two disturbing figures are Raving and Melancholy Madness and were created by the sculptor Caius Gabriel Cibber in 1676. For most of their lives they were on display near the gates of the Bedlam [now Bethlem] Hospital as some sort of grim advertisement for a place where those who had lost their mind could be hidden away from society and a terrifying warning of what might befall you if you became of one of those lost souls.  Although Bethlem still exists these days, it's very much at the forefront of the treatment of mental health conditions and we can only hope that an enlightened/empathetic attitude continues to grow so that the help people need is available to them. The statues now sit in the foyer of the Bethlem museum which is sited within the grounds of the hospital. Walking last week I photographed this rather grand looking property and the brick detailing on the back wall. I knew nothing of its history prior to this, but have subsequently read that this house was once

 It's not every Saturday morning that the doorbell goes and my parents are on the doorstep...smiling they hand me an unexpected parcel and then head off without explanation. A very beautiful hare pewter mirror no less made by Archive Crafts. I am absolutely delighted and it's already been found a special place to be displayed on the walls of GBT. Arilx

With the little signs of Spring starting to show themselves I am gearing myself up to using my new moth trap [birthday present from last year] and in anticipation I have invested in one of these. I have just put it out there that, as a completely rank beginner, I would like something easy for starters please....an Elephant Hawkmoth would be perfect. However, I think 50 shades of brown is more likely and it might take me while to correctly identify any that I catch.....perhaps Confused, Suspected and Unknown ones might flutter my way [they are indeed all British moth species]. From a recent illuminating virtual talk I recently attended I now know that there is no difference between butterflies and moths and if you want to attract them into your garden in a low budget fashion then a ripe banana slit along the sides and placed somewhere like a birdtable should bring them in to feast [particularly effective in the Autumn. One of my favourite things I learnt was that many types owe their na

 I did inwardly chuckle when I recently met a lady with her spaniel who was carrying the most enormous stick in his mouth. I can only think it would be akin to me carrying a caber parallel to the path and sideways up our high street on a busy Saturday afternoon. I smiled and merely commented "Blimey" as the determined pooch approached with his quarry....his owner smiled back at me wryly and said "well he's nothing if not ambitious!". It has put me in mind of Julia Donaldson's amusing poem " Stickman" that I saw a few months ago in our poetry corner in the park. Hope you all have a good weekend. We have our first ever flu jabs to look forwards to! Arilx

 Am paying a final visit to my weekend walk with E as we packed a lot into our few hours out [plus it means I can write more blog posts.....if I reach drivel point I will shut up until something decent comes along again I promise!]. It wasn't all WWII and beer you know...... E has found great solace in watching kingfishers over the last year and we were hoping that we might catch a glimpse of orange and turquoise dart past us. Alas it wasn't to be....we even checked in the reeds where they often hang out, but common sense tells me they must have been up the other end of the pond fishing because they weren't going to catch anything where we were standing. Those "bubbles" you see are trapped in sheets of ice [it had thawed at the other end]. The pond itself is one of so called hammer ponds and is left over from the Wealden iron industry. Once there would have been a clay dam known as a bay there and as the water stacked up behind it [the levels were operated by slui

 E and I may not have played a round of golf at the weekend, but I can gleefully reveal that we kept up the tradition of the 19th hole [I only found out about this euphemism very recently and have been dying to find an excuse to weave it into a post at some point!]. Whilst we didn't go in the clubhouse bar, we did manage to squeeze a trip in to a local micro brewery on our walk round. Until 20 years ago our town had a biggish sized brewery, but then the familiar story....it was taken over by one of the bigger boys and the whole operation was moved elsewhere. It seemed that Horsham's brewing history was at an end, but out of the fire the phoenix rose again and several successful microbreweries have followed on in its wake. Local beer festivals are now ticketed events and sell out rapidly so there's a real passion for beer in the district. Nobody knew how these small businesses would fare when it all had to shut down last year, but the outcome has been healthy. They have adap

 As it's well documented, the golf courses are shut for now. With this in mind E and I had a snout round her local one hoping to spot some wildlife. What we didn't expect to find was so many remnants and reminders of WWII there.  Not one, but two pillboxes in close proximity. The square brick one is bulletproof and is a type 26. It was deliberately built into the river bank to partly camouflage it and to build an anti tank ditch. There were no visible signs of people having been inside it and I've since learnt that it's only been emptied of soil within the last few weeks. The hexagonal one is a type 22 and came with five openings through which rifles or light machine guns could be fired. There was plenty of graffiti scrawled on the walls inside, but E did well to spot this contemporary piece in amongst it all. This was written just a few weeks after the war had ended and I wonder if Gordon Bullock from Carsdale, Manitoba, Canada was one of the soldiers from the Canadian

 I would so love to see the Aurora Borealis for myself one day...not necessarily from Scandanavia but more probably from Northern Scotland which is on the same latitude as parts of both Alaska and Norway and would cost a lot less. I love the name of the "Mirrie Dancers" that they have up there for them. The reminder for this came from a recent hearing of "Northern Lights" by Renaissance. I hadn't heard it in years. Have a fabulous weekend. Arilx

Seeing as Mr GBT works from home all week he does like to cross the drawbridge every once in a while and have a change of scene. As exploring is confined to "under your nose" I floated the idea of another of the local heritage walks. This time we chose one in nearby Southwater. I often wondered what this sign represented. Seeing it again spurred me on to find out. This is the winner of a competition in 2005 to create a design that represented the village's past. The big wheel represents the wheelwright business that closed in 1950, the smaller one the railway that closed in 1966 [the old line is now part of the Downs Link which is a public footpath network]  and the chimney is from the brickworks that stopped in 1981.   These two lovely cottages are some of the oldest buildings and are from 1500. The one on the left is where the wheelwright lived [you can't really miss that massive pair of bellows standing in the front porch can you!!] and the family still live in it