The life and adventures of a mildly dotty old bird.
Thursday 30 September 2021
Spot of silliness
Wednesday 29 September 2021
Sweet surprise.
I went to a belated Mabon celebration with my friends S & A last Friday...what I didn't anticipate was being presented with a massive birthday cake A had made me the day before🎂😊
Tuesday 28 September 2021
Milling about.
Much as I loved my old job the one thing that always irked me was the shortage of time. Every weekend was a mad dash just to try and keep all the plates spinning [even worse if I was working on a Saturday morning]. When I was made redundant I went part time and promised myself that I would ensure that we would try to do something non work related at some point over every weekend even if it was something very small. During the past ten years I have pretty much achieved that.
This weekend was a short jaunt up the road to visit the mill at Ifield which opens for a few hours once a month over the summer months and is free to see, so we decided to nip in for its last one this year. This one is a water mill and that pond was completely dug by hand!
Shamelessly parroting from the info provided the records of a mill on this site go back to 1274, but between 1500-1700 the mill that stood here [an earlier incarnation] was actually a finery forge and part of the iron industry. I was getting a bit confused by this point, but apparently "mill" means a machine with gears and wheels and the miller is the one who operates it. The water power would have been used for the bellows and to move the hammers. By 1660 it had become a corn mill and was again rebuilt in 1683 by the then resident miller family Thomas and Mary Middleton [plaque below]. By the 1920s it had become financially unviable and closed until a group of dedicated volunteers took on its restoration some years ago.
Not being one who is all that interested in the physical workings of the machinery side of it, I was however, surprised to find that a millstone has named parts and there was me thinking that all those ruts on it would just be called grooves. Naturally I am delighted to have found that I was provided with an accompanying sign to photograph so that I can always check back. It's included in case there are any other fellow geeks like me reading who might enjoy this type of detail [or perhaps not😂]
Monday 27 September 2021
Meanwhile in other news....
.....new life goes on despite what others might want us to believe. A lovely Egyptian goose and its goslings. It was good to see these little souls dibbling about at the water's edge on our walk yesterday.
Friday 24 September 2021
Flat Cap Required
If you fancy a coffee from this particular gaff it looks like you're going to need to don your flat cap to get served😉
Sorry about the ghastly picture quality...we were waiting at the junction to turn right onto Kensington High Street....never an easy thing to achieve at the best of times and certainly not during the rush hour....I had plenty of time to snap this whilst we waited our turn [I wasn't the one driving]. Have a great weekend.
Arilx
Thursday 23 September 2021
Project Alleycat
Wednesday 22 September 2021
A green oasis.
Last Friday I finally got to see my dear friend Arty L...it's been two years and although we've spoken regularly in the intervening period it's just not the same as physically being with someone. I knew I needed to stay close to where we were working, so after a bit of head scratching I suggested that we meet here...the free Kyoto Garden.
It was a beautifully warm day and turned out to be the perfect choice. One thing London does exceptionally well is splendid green public spaces. L lives in the capital, but she'd never visited either so it was a truly shared experience. It might be small, but it has a calming zen like quality the minute you go in. We smiled at each other as we realised that we had automatically dropped our voices to a whisper to not avoid disturbing others. People were quietly walking around or sitting on benches watching the world go by. The garden was built in 1991and features Japanese Maple trees and a pond full of the most enormous Koi carp.
We did chuckle though when I got photobombed by one of the feathered locals seconds after taking the last photo🦚🦚 He wanted a drink and was frankly having none of this human zen nonsense!
It was the perfect antidote to the busy morning we'd had.
Arilx
Tuesday 21 September 2021
A Tale of Two Villages
Mr GBT and I do our best to do something if we find we have a day without any commitments at the weekend. What we do varies according to time of year, weather, budget etc, but walking is always a favourite. The Fancy Free site of straightforward walks has already come up trumps on a myriad of occasions and has become my go-to if I'm lacking inspiration/ideas. On our last most recent free Sunday we opted for one of the Surrey walks around two villages. We live very close to the border so it was no distance for us to get to the starting point and to the best of my knowledge I've never been to either!
Newdigate and Capel. Within spitting distance of one another, but both with a completely different feel.
Monday 20 September 2021
Underneath the arches.
There are many worse places I could think of spending my lunchbreak last Friday😉...
Pleased to report that the show went well and that from my personal perspective I greatly enjoyed seeing Sir Tony Robinson [he of Baldrick and Timeteam fame] from afar. He was there in the capacity of a visitor, so people were respectful and didn't trouble him.
Arilx
Friday 17 September 2021
Thursday 16 September 2021
Yew better not believe it!
Wednesday 15 September 2021
Noticing the notices.
Yesterday I touched upon my penchant for investigating notices....some really do turn out to be as dull as ditchwater as was this one in Henfield.
Tuesday 14 September 2021
Highlights from Henfield
Henfield is by rights a large village midway betwixt here and the coast. To my mind it's more of a small bustling market town with an excellent high street full of independent shops and good community facilities. Please allow me to offer up a selection of photos and accompanying snippets and perhaps you'll get a flavour of why I was rather taken with it.
These two mosaics were made by Creative Waves and installed as part of the 2019 Horsham Year of Culture [it's within the Horsham District]. The first one recalls the violets which were grown locally and the link they had to the suffragette movement which I wrote about here http://gnatbottomedtowers.blogspot.com/search?q=henfield+violets. Since then I have learnt about a local actor and another suffragist called Elizabeth Robins who's shown in the panel below. She used her 15th century farmhouse to shelter the women who had been on hunger strike after the 1913 Cat and Mouse act. She offered them not only refuge, but a change to recover from the ordeal they had suffered in prison. Unfortunately they would then be returned for the whole terrible cycle to begin again. They fought so hard to get the right to vote for women.
"Rainy days and Mondays don't always get me down".
Am going for a slight twist on that famous Carpenters' song with today's twitterings. Yesterday's client was away so an addition...
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The Flat Earth Society is real with real people holding such views. Everyone's entitled to their opinions and let's just leave it a...
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Certainly a new twist on the usual blue plaque. It made us laugh and had us scratching our heads. It just seemed rather odd, but even th...
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No not literally...just an attention grabbing sort of blog title! Litter picking is what has going round my bonce today. There have been a c...