A small tale to tell.

 For a couple of years now I have been aware that the church in one of the villages where I work has a single carving high up on its tower. All I could make out with the naked eye was that it was some type of figure that was rather rudely sticking its tongue out. I had to inwardly smile at all the villagers going to the services with this rather vulgar fellow directly above them and noone having the faintest idea! Last summer I attempted to take a photo to find out what it looked like, but it was just too far away for my little press and point, so I remained none the wiser.

At long last the perfect opportunity presented itself as Mr GBT had chosen one of the fancy free walks for us to do [photos tomorrow] and it just so happened to pass through Rudgwick. I specially requested that he bring his all singing all dancing camera with a view to taking a photo once. He's nothing if not an obliging chap and with much excitement I was able to finally see the detail of the piece.

As it turned out, it was rather more exciting than I had imagined it was because it's a mouth puller and there are hardly any in this area of West Sussex [I've seen them in other parts of the country] and I only know of one other near here. This one may well be 13th century and they are always a little controversial in some quarters because they are supposed to indicate sexual carnality. I have tried to find out more about this one, but there seems to no record let alone any close up images. With this in mind I emailed a Sussex historian whose has an abiding interest in all things quirky and unusual. She confirmed that she had no knowledge of it either and was very excited by my discovery. The upshot of our conversation is that she's going to travel across when she's permitted to do so to see it for herself and then write up an article about it for the Sussex Archaeological Collections. I'm so glad I decided to share it!

Arilx 

Shrinking Violets

It's always a welcome sight to be greeted by the first Sweet Violets [the scented ones as opposed to the scentless Dog Violet] of Spring. Some may call them Shrinking Violets because of their close growth to the ground, but I would argue that they are anything but this. Their colour was chosen as one of the ones to symbolise the Suffragettes...green [Give], white [Women] and violet [Votes]

We have a local connection to wild violets here in Sussex. From 1905 to 1953 a Miss Ada Brown and a Miss Decima Allen ran their own wild violet nursery in the small town of Henfield. They exported their plants all over the world to places as far away as India and Egypt and had some very notable members of society [Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII] amongst their customers. Below you can see some examples of the products they made too.

 In many respects they were way ahead of their time. Most unusually the majority of their workforce was female and both were ardent supporters of the Suffrage movement. Alongside others they boycotted the 1911 census as a form of protest about women not being able to vote, so their names don't appear. Further down the line they became involved with the W.I and to this day the town's branch is named the "Wild Violets" in their memory.

Arilx

After the rain.

 There are days at the moment when I find the tumultuous times we find ourselves in mentally draining and a need to pull up the drawbridge for a chance to recalibrate. Now is one of those periods so I am just going to take a breather from the blog until next week when I am refreshed and the words flow again. In the meantime you might like this that took my fancy is a window I passed last Friday.

Speak soon.

Arilx

Palletable

You hear stories of how useful pallets are and how many ways there are of repurposing them. I spotted this planter as one example.

Then there was this....a home made log store.

But it got even better because the owners have named it😆

Love it....another thing to make me chuckle on one of my doorstep walks!

Arilx

Knotty

 I read last week that in Germany it was believed that the pine tree gave birth to wood spirits and that they would emerge from every hole and knot in the trunk. It's a charming idea, but having encountered this fellow recently, I'm not quite so sure that it could be applied to every tree....this one looks decidedly grumpy. More akin to the Grinch and likely to tell you to "get knotted" than a spirit bearing soul I think!

However, I was pleased to make its acquaintance in our local park.

Arilx

Friday Smile

Have a most splendid weekend.

Arilx 

Nutty

 Occasionally when I see the Whole Earth peanut butter on a budget friendly offer I'll treat Mr GBT to a jar of the stuff. He's the only one who eats it [I like peanuts and satay, it's just the butter bit that I'm not keen on] and once he gets going it doesn't last long.

I mentioned in passing that I'd made my own years ago when he was first made redundant which started a whole conversation about the cost of decent quality shop bought versus home-made. Well we did the sums and the DIY version came out considerably lower and with no palm oil lurking in the list of ingredients. A few days later he returned from a secret mission brandishing a bag of salted peanuts and the rest is history as they say! 

Blitzing the nuts in the food processor he found he needed to add just a tsp of vegetable oil to loosen it off a bit. As he prefers the crunchy peanut butter he had deliberately kept a couple of handful of the nuts in bigger pieces which he then stirred back in at the end. One jar made this time.

It was apparently just a tad too salty, but I've bought him the basic Tesco ones this time around and they've got much less salt on them to start with so he can see how it compares.

Being a practical sort of chap he's happy to turn his hand to all sorts. Having mastered the peanut butter he's now busy designing a hedgehog house using up stuff we've already got here. He's a busy bee!

Arilx