Operation Birthday Month

May is a very busy time for me birthday wise.....I've got two family members plus a friend with birthdays who I like to buy a small something for and friends getting married....add in the big upcoming London show and with the Morris season now in full swing it was all starting to feel slightly manic. I shouldn't have been, but I'll freely admit that I was quite relieved that yesterday's house sparkling client has gone on holiday which left me with a day off work. All of a sudden I could see my way through to catching up and getting everything done on time. Mission accomplished. Of course in between searching out some locally made goodies I wove in a little bit of adventuring to keep me amused😀

My first stop of the day was to drop off some bits with my friend E and whilst there I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to drop into the nearby microbrewery. It's rather charmingly called the Kissingate Brewery and does a good range of ales....I have a Dad and a son who both enjoy craft beers so I was always going to be on a winner there wasn't I. The owner kindly let me have a quick look around and showed me this rather fantastic model of a kissing gate and a crow on it which her son had made for her.

I started to notice crows all over the place without there being any obvious explanation. Well me being me I couldn't resist asking her what the significance of this particular bird was. She originally hails from nearby Crawley and she explained that its original name was Crow Leah . Leah was an old English word meaning clearing so it literally was a clearing of crows. To mark the association they brew a "Murder of Crows" and "Six Crows." Makes much more sense now.

On my way again I decided it was high time to take a little detour to revisit a church in the nearby village of Slaugham [pronounced Sloffum] http://gnatbottomedtowers.blogspot.com/2015/04/to-slaugham.html As is always the way I discovered that I had completely missed the very thing the church is most famous for on that first visit [I do a little more research these days] so thought today was the day to make amends. This rather grandiose affair is the family vault of the Matcham family. Catherine Matcham was the youngest sister of one Sir Horatio Nelson no less. The other grave shown is interesting because it's so old....most rare to come across anything decipherable from before 1700. Nothing seems to be recorded about this Thomas Norud de Sesed who died on 14 March 1615.

Wanting to mix it up even more [racy old devil that I am] I decided to come back another way....so glad I did as I spotted one of the Milennium history boards that were put up around the district back in 2000. Never seen this one before so had to park up and go back to see what it was all about didn't I...I have driven past this pond [now a private fishing lake] countless times over the years. Today I learnt it's called Hawkins Pond. With it being very overcast it's not perhaps looking at its best, but the nearby woods are still glorious with all the bluebells out.

My final port of call was a local farmshop as by then I'd decided to buy some foodie bits for the couple with their upcoming nuptials. They're both West Sussex born and bred and I know they're rather partial to cheese and biscuits and a drop of cider. It doesn't take a great leap of imagination then to work out what I bought and all made within a five mile radius of here. The great mystery is though how did those three enormous sausage rolls which I found in my basket when I went to pay get there?😋 That was supper sorted right there and then!! 

Arilx