The Last Saturday in July

 Thank you to everyone for comments on the post about Persephone Books that I didn't see until the next day as I must have turned off the lap top very early. It always seems too late to reply by then. Do people go back to day old posts to see if the blogger has replied to comments? 

What a different week of weather. The huge heat went and instead humidity and rain moved in, there was  rain nearly every day at some time except yesterday and Thursday was a real dismal drizzley day.

It didn't matter as I was in the kitchen using up 3 courgettes that had become long thin marrows which made six jars of marrow, apricot and ginger jam and was glad I'd brought in the marrows from the garden and the jars from the storeroom the day before while it was still fine.

I'm very fed up with the mini plum tomatoes this year, they look lovely but the skins are so tough that eating them means being left with a mouthful of tomato skin- which is really horrible. If they were bigger it would be best to skin them but being less than an inch long that would be a very fiddly job. The giant 'Big Mama' plum tomatoes that I want to use for my red hot chutney are still stubbornly green. I remembered to get red wine vinegar so that's ready for later.

The wasps that ate my 4 pears are now on the figs, I'm having to pick the figs just as they soften before fully brown. So annoying. Just hope they don't move into the greenhouse after the tomatoes.

Also fed up that I got to a run of sixty in the NYT wordle then had a fail yesterday, there were just too many five letter words with  ? O ? E R. I tried LOVER, SOBER, JOKER and even ROWER but not the word that it was - a weird one - GOFER . Ho Hum, still on 98% wins over 868 played so not so bad. Now need to start a new run. 

Another weekend with no plans, there doesn't seem to be much happening in any villages around about. Family are busy or away so guess I'll have to amuse myself again! You really do need to get used to doing things alone when widowed. 

Back Monday with the July Library Book Photo     

Two Saints Remembered on Their Day

 You know I'm short of ideas for blog posts if I get out the Saints Days book!

St Christopher and St James were both celebrated today 25th July.

Not much is known about St Christopher, he was probably first called Reprobus and was martyred in the third century. The  well known story is of him transporting travellers across a river and finding a child getting heavier and the river faster until the child said" I am Jesus Christ, the king who you serve in this work and on my shoulders I bear the burdens of the world" So Reprobus took the name Christopher which means 'Christ- bearer'.  He became the patron saint of  wayfarers and his image with child was often painted on the walls of churches in the middle ages.

From the book A Calendar of Saints this is part of a triptych by Dieric Bouts in a Munich museum.

Way back in history in London this would have been heard today, St James Day.............

Please to Remember the grotto,

It's only once a year.

Father's gone to sea,

Mother's gone to fetch him home,

So please remember me.

Children would make little grottoes, mainly using shells, pieces of broken glass and pottery and anything decorative they could find. Sitting by these they would chant the rhyme. The shells were used because the Scallop shell was the emblem of St James - one of the Disciples who later took Christianity to Spain.. Legend says when he was put to death by Herod Agrippa his remains were taken to Spain for burial. The site, Santiago de Compostela became the most important place of pilgrimage for Christians after Jerusalem and in the Middle Ages they would return wearing a scallop- shell emblem. 

It is just as popular today

The Camino de Santiago (Latin: Peregrinatio Compostellana, lit. 'Pilgrimage of Compostela'; Galician: O Camiño de Santiago),^[1] or the Way of St. James in English, is a network of pilgrims' ways or pilgrimages leading to the shrine of the apostle James in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition holds that the remains of the apostle are buried. Pilgrims follow its routes as a form of spiritual path or retreat for their spiritual growth. It is also popular with hikers, cyclists, and organized tour groups.

On the latest series, which has just finished,  of the  Radio 4 programme Clare Balding presents, called "Ramblings" , she has been  walking and talking to people with connections to the pilgrimage walk. There is a link HERE if you are in this country. I'm not sure if it works elsewhere. I often listen if I'm awake early on Saturday mornings.

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It's Just Another Book Post

 I popped up to Diss to the computer shop so they could update my virus protection, I'd planned to do a tour of the charity shops while there but it started to rain five minutes after I parked - wasn't expecting that so no brolly with me. I dashed into the nearest two charity shops and had a lucky find with a Persephone book I'd never seen before, and only £1.

Love the cover of this.......... 'Girl Reading' by Harold Knight 1932

It's a very short book, won't take much reading.

Persephone Books  are few and far between second-hand, my last one found was in October at the Westleton Charity Book sale. They only seem to be publishing two new books each year now, often reprinting books from their back catalogue with new covers instead. Now way more expensive than a few years ago. I get an email newsletter from them a couple of times a year but since brexit they've got a bit political which is a shame, but I still scan the shelves  of charity shops for their grey cover books.

While waiting for  mobile library day,  with another 12 books coming for me, I looked on the library website to see which of Val McDermid's   Karen Pirie series were on library shelves anywhere around and found a copy of 'Out of Bounds', the 4th in the series, was on the shelves at Needham Market so called in there after the church visit last weekend. It was a good story which I enjoyed and as they seem to be filming a new TV series of only one book in three years it might be 2031 before this book gets made, I'm sure I'll have forgotten the story by then!

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St Mary and St Lawrence, Great Bricett

Despite living in Suffolk for 70 years there are many parts of the County that I don't know so well and I'd no idea there was once a priory in this village. 

What is left is now the church of St Mary and St Lawrence in the village of Great Bricett. Looking very different to other Suffolk Churches.

The notice board has some information

The Priory of St Leonard was established around 1110 - 1114.It was a daughter house to the Church of St Leonard at Noblat in Limoges, France. The clergy were Canons who came here from France (that's why they were know as Alien).

 

There were guidebooks in the church so I bought one for a better look at the history, which is complicated but the Wiki page is HERE

The front cover of the information book has an old painting from 1850 - the porch must have been added later.

Inside there are many signs of the age of the building. The font dates from the Norman period.

Looking down the nave, the plastic is protecting things from bats!

The bottom part of the window also had stained glass until it was damaged in WWII. Great Bricett is another village on the edge of Wattisham Airfield, which was RAF Wattisham at that time.

The stairs up to the long gone Rood Loft that would have separated nave from chancel

This window below is made up of sections from other windows.

Information boards about the Priory and it's history

The house on the left is attached to the church and is more of the remains of the priory

The Chancel end from outside once had side chapel attached

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It Really Did Rain

 There was plenty of rain yesterday morning to make up for the weeks without any. It came down hard early morning and the guttering was overflowing, maybe it was full of the moss washed off the roof. I'll need to get out with the step-ladder and gloves sometime to scoop out what I can reach.

It was a really good day for getting things done indoors and I turned cucumbers and onion into 3 jars of Bread and Butter pickle. A bit different to the Sweet and Sour Cucumber pickle already made. The first has sliced cucumber and onions and the Sweet and Sour has chunked cucumber and celery.

Then I blanched and froze a big bundle of French green beans and meanwhile the bread-maker was chugging away making a 50/50 wholemeal/white bread.

I like the Met Office website where you can see the rain clouds coming in from the west and then moving away.

I didn't get to see part one of the new Karen Pirie series on Sunday night as I was watching the golf highlights (suffering sport withdrawal symptoms from the end of tennis so watching The Tour and The Open Golf to make up!) So yesterday afternoon I watched the first part of K.P.. It only needed a quick look at part one of series one to remind me about it. I picked up one of the books from Needham Mkt library when I was out Sunday to see how I get on with it.

 Why do  we have such short series over here? A series run of crime drama in the States could be 22 or more - here it's 6 if we're lucky. ITV have several other crime dramas returning this Autumn - seen the trails but can't remember what they were

In the evening the other third of quizzy Mondays was back which is good. Only Connect is my favourite of the three.

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A Surprisingly Good Book Find

 This is a book I picked up at the Sibton church book sale back in May. At first glance I thought it was fiction as the front cover is very similar to many of the recently written wartime fiction books, but on reading the back cover I found it was a proper wartime diary, covering the years 1935 - 1947, so it came home with me.

It's actually quite a treasure and different to any other WWII diaries I have. There are plenty of wartime diaries by people living and working in towns and cities, through the blitz etc or by people in the forces but I've not come across another one by the wife of a soldier.

Evelyn Shillington was an army wife, married to Rex who was a career soldier, working in Army Ordnance (now called Logistics) and retiring as a Brigadier. They had no children and all her married life she had moved wherever Rex was posted, either living in rented accommodation, married quarters, hotels or with friends.

The diary starts in 1935 when Eve (then aged 42) and Rex are just returning, by boat, from Hong Kong where Rex had had a 3 year posting. During their time there Eve's mother Emlie Clifford (a well known playwright of the time) in England had died and Eve is dreading the return home without her mother being there. Evelyn is one of those people who is able to make friends anywhere she is and will keep in touch with all she befriends forever. Consequently many entries in the diary are about friends made from many parts of the country and overseas, relations and friends of her mother but luckily there's a list at the front of 'Evelyn's People'.

As well as the book being interesting with a well informed view of life during those years -from the abdication of Edward VIII to the end of the war, it also has an complicated and equally interesting story of how it came to be published.

After Evelyn's death in 1981 a trunk of papers and the diaries were left to a much younger cousin - Elizabeth and after Elizabeth's death in 1997 they were inherited by her daughter Jacy Wall.  Jacy remembers meeting her mother's cousin just a couple of times in the 1970's.

In  the early 2,000's Jacy was contacted out of the blue by someone researching the history of Roger Quilter who had written the music for Emlie's (Evelyn's mother) best known play Where The Rainbow Ends and had tracked down Jacy as a relative of Emlie. This makes Jacy rummage through the trunk of papers that had been stored in an attic for many years but she didn't take any notice of the diaries. 

A few years later Jacy is moving house after the death of her husband and decides to send the trunk of papers off to auction.

Luckily at auction the papers were bought by Shaun Sewell, an author who had an interest in old diaries and he realised what a treasure they were. He managed to track Jacy Wall and an editor - Barbara Fox, who had also published books about wartime and together they were able to edit and publish the diaries in book form in 2017.There is also a page at the end of the book telling what happened to Evelyn and Rex after they returned to England and Rex retired.

A really good story.

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Thistledown and Ice Cream

 Schools are finished for the long summer holiday so I expected the weather to turn wet and horrible this weekend. And sure enough,  thunderstorms are forecast for Monday and showers all next week - I'll get those cards made that were on yesterdays post! Thank you for the comments about them and to the many comments on my post about the Commonwealth war graves. Please go back and read them from around the world if you didn't see them all.

So what's been happening this week (After tennis) promised not to mention it again so it's whispered in small letters.

Last Monday was quite breezy and all day the garden was filled with thistledown and as it was hot doors and windows were open so very  soon there was nearly as many inside. The hedges, shrubs and cobwebs  caught so many and indoors they also found all the cobwebs that I miss - like under the wood-burner!

Here are a few caught on the cobwebs on the whirly washing line

On Tuesday a butterfly that hadn't visited so far this summer popped in. A lovely Comma and then  there was rain in the evening - not a lot but every little helps.

 

Great British Sewing Bee is back on TV. I watch in envy at what they can whip up in 30 minutes - it would take me that long to set up the thread!

On Wednesday I had the last of six in the arthritis management and exercise course. My knee is definitely feeling less painful - especially at night - but stairs will still be a problem - if I had any to use here. Starting in six weeks time I'm going to do another more general exercise thing for another six week course called something like 'move and thrive?' Free again and run by the same young physio fella and same exercises as the eight we've been doing but with a few extras thrown in - cycle and treadmill. I forgot to ask how long it lasts each time - much less than an hour I hope - not sure how I'll get on either. 

Friends from Essex visited on Thursday for a couple of hours. I don't see them as often as when Col was alive and we were at the smallholding- we had a good catch up as they hadn't been up since November.

Friday I decided on a trip down to the sea before the weather changes- hadn't been this year at all. I underestimated just how hot it was so after a walk along the prom - the big wheel was shut - I'm still waiting to go on it sometime, and  a whippy ice cream  I went into town where it was even hotter and popped into the huge second-hand bookshop where I found an old Nevil Shute book.

Then home again through the horrible roadworks over the Orwell Bridge - which have been holding people up for weeks.

No plans to go to Felixstowe again this year - it's not worth the hassle. The A14 has become a real problem - as busy as any motorway but only two lanes and numerous junctions, frequent accidents and incidents.

At home the garden was once again full of thistledown - I reckon it's coming from the huge field down the road that's going to be a building site sometime next year - unless the company that own it sell it on again. I know of two new new housing estates nearby where building work has stopped -money problems with both is supposedly the reason. The government say how many houses are needed and have to be built but when 100s are built at the same time there's not enough people to buy them! 

Whoop Whoop, new series of Karen Pirie starts on ITV Sunday evening!  based on a book by Val McDermid (I've never been able to get into her books for some reason) . Better re-watch the first series as it was on in 2022 which seems an age ago now.

Back Next Week

I Wasn't Supposed To Be Buying.................

 ....................card making bits.

 

Most of my card crafting stuff went to charity shops or was sold at car boot sales. I've kept my cross stitching threads, aida, some small kits and card blanks, sticky fixers and a few other bits - just in case.

But this, seen at last Sundays boot sale, just appealed and has everything included to make a black, silver and gold owl card.

And then the lady said "there's another nice pack to make more bird cards in the pile too" as she looked through and handed me this pack that has everything to make 8 cards.

and I found myself buying the lot for £2.50.

Bother!

Then I went home before I could be talked into anything else and made a note-to-self  NO MORE CARDS NEEDED!.

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Commonwealth War Graves

 Something I don't think I've mentioned before is that many Suffolk Churches that I visit have signs on their fences or gates telling everyone there are Commonwealth War  Graves there. The grave stones are always the same design and most date from WWII. Airmen were often buried in the villages where their planes crashed or where they were based rather than going back to their home country, city, town or village.

At Ringshall, with it's proximity to Wattisham Airfield there are many military graves. This row below are all from WWII , and it's always sad to see how young the men were, and how far they came to fly here during the war.

There are also a long line of more recent military graves from after the war, with well tended garden.

There must be more of a story for this one below as it says A. A. Bushell was a senior aircraftman -which means ground crew -  but was only 17 when he died in February 1961. 

There are no plane crashes or on site accidents listed for early 1961 so it's a mystery. 
But while looking online I found an horrific list of accidents and fatal crashes of Wattisham aircraft during the early 1950's. Including two pilots  who were killed when they were rehearsing for the Queens Coronation Flypast in 1953.

Ringshall was also the village where my Grandad and the Grandma I never knew had their small farm before the war ( I believe they lost some land to the airfield). It was the place my Dad grew up , but there are no family burials in the churchyard.

This photo has been on the blog before but it shows my Grandparents - on the binder and holding the horse. With my step dad, real dad and aunt on horseback on the Ringshall farm. About 1930.

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St. Catherine's Church, Ringshall

 Ringshall was a small village among fields like so many other villages until a large area of land there was taken for RAF Wattisham at the beginning of the war. RAF Wattisham changed to an Army Air Corps Apache Helicopter force base in 1993 and occupies a large area of land with the villages of Wattisham, Ringshall and Gt Bricett on it's boundaries.

Ringshall church is about two miles from the village centre off the road up a short track on a rise. The tower is unusual as it hasn't had much alteration since it was built in late Norman times.

Stepping in is like stepping into a Suffolk barn with it's rough cut oak beams and rafters, probably reused when the church, like so many others was restored by the Victorians.

Outside you can see the beams and  massive pegs securing the rafters to the walls

and also on the tower you can see where the roof was lowered when it would have been changed from thatch to tiles in the C19

More recently work has been done replacing stone around some of the windows.

It was a gloomy day and a bit dark inside with the only colour being two Victorian stained glass windows in the sanctuary

More about Ringshall tomorrow

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St Swithin's Day

A well known weather saying that has - thankfully - never  proved correct.

St Swithin's Day, if thou dost rain

For forty days it will remain.

St Swithin's Day, if thou be fair

For forty days, twill rain no more.

It was especially wrong in 1976 when there were lots of violent thunderstorms with rain over night on the 15th and then for the next 40 days there was virtually no rain, leading to the hottest summer and worst drought in living memory.

[I was working on the mobile library which was before any sort of air conditioning, so we sweltered in a 'tin box' - day after day].

St Swithin was an English  monk who became Bishop of Winchester in 852 and died 10 years later. At his request he was buried in the churchyard rather than inside. On 15th July 971 his remains were moved to an appropriate resting place inside the Cathedral. This coincided with a period of heavy rain that lasted for 40 days - and that's how the prediction started. 

Another old rhyme, found in one of my folklore books - written in the 18th century

Now if on St Swithin's Feast the welkin lours,

And every pent house streams with hasty showers.

Twice twenty day shall clouds their fleeces drain,

And wash the pavements with incessant rain.

('welkin' is the sky and 'lours' means glowers or  threatens)

The picture comes from The Farmers Almanac website

Back soon.

PS Hooray to the BBC for Quizzy Mondays being ⅔ back - a small crumb after the weeks of tennis watching! and I promise no more mentions of tennis until next year!

All Over for Another Year and Just One Book

 I'm bereft!! The weeks of tennis watching are over for another year. It was sad to see Alfie Hewitt and Gordon Reid lose their wheelchair doubles final on Saturday and then AH must have been exhausted as he lost his singles on Sunday. Good to see wheelchair tennis becoming more important at Wimbledon, playing on main courts with big crowds.

Then it was the men's final, just like the final at the French Open five weeks earlier it was a really good game and this time Jannik Sinner came out on top. The first Italian to win the Wimbledon men's championship.  I think this is how it's going to be for many years ahead - two brilliant young players battling it out at every tournament.

 I went to the Saturday boot-sale early and it was already huge and crowded, it started cloudy but then the sun came through and it was suddenly Very Hot.

Many of the people selling are there every week, so by now I've seen most of the junk about twenty times before.

But I hadn't seen this book before so just spent 50p, nothing else and by the time I'd been three quarters of the way round I'd had enough - it was getting hotter so home for breakfast.

I'd not come across this book anywhere and it turns out to be a collection of short stories "inspired by remarkable trees" written by students of the University of Suffolk Creative Writing course.

Might be interesting or it might not! It's been added to the shelves with my other Suffolk books to read sometime.

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Saturday 12th

 More tennis watching all week. Yesterday's semi's were very different, in the first there was a good fight between Carlos Alcaraz and Taylor Fritz but then Djokovic was knocked out easily by Jannik Sinner, the number 1 seed and so Wimbledon is over 😢 bar the finals but there are the two British guys in the men's doubles final, which is on before the ladies singles finals today and Alfie Hewett and Gordon Reid defending their title in the men's wheelchair doubles final, also today. It's unusual for the Ladies and Men's singles finals to be scheduled later on Centre Court today and tomorrow (not before 4pm it says). Usually they are up first.

There was more heat this week although not too bad Tuesday so there were 10 of us at our Keep Moving group. The temperatures here  weren't as hot as a couple of weeks ago and not as hot as other parts of the country - high 20s ℃ (mid 80s) ℉  rather than low 30s  and  cooler at night so not too bad for sleeping with freezer icepacks wrapped in tea-towels and  gel cool pads working well

Apart from all the normal house work jobs I don't seem to have done much or achieved much this week, although I did make another batch of the Sweet and Sour Cucumber pickle. Strimming round the veg bed edges was quickly done but haven't needed to cut the grass this week. Getting some of the weeds out of the driveway shingle out the front was on the list again - but it was too hot for that job.

Shopping was only a quick very early trip to Aldi - don't need many veg now with courgettes and beans doing well here and beetroot from BiL's garden. I found milk had gone up in price again. From £1.45 just a few months ago to £1.55 and this week £1.65 for 4 pints semi-skimmed. That means cheese and butter prices will also rise soon.

Obligatory photo of the first (almost) ripe tomato! Mini Plum variety

and the size of Giant plum variety Big Mama - still green - when they are ripe they'll be made into Red Hot Relish.

I've now done 5 out of the 6 weeks of the arthritis exercise and management course. I shall be glad to finish as going to something that starts at 1 o'clock  -  neither morning or afternoon  -  seems to spoil the whole day! (and THAT surely is a sign of getting old). Next I can either see a physio again, carry on just doing the exercises at home or do another 6 week  general exercise thing. That starts at 11am so a better time.

In between everything else there has been reading of course, two library books were abandoned, so now reading from my shelves until mobile van visit toward the end of the month - there are already nine ready for me to collect.

And that was the week  finished again.

Have a good weekend, not sure what's happening apart from staying out of the heat and watching the last of the tennis. It doesn't seem long ago that I would be sitting out and enjoying the sun but they say skin gets thinner as you age and I certainly feel burnt even with Factor 50, so best to stay in.

Back Monday

Short of Ideas - Have a look at July 2015

 HERE'S a post from smallholding days 10 years ago .July 2015 

For context - this was a year or so after Colin had heart problems and stents done, when we had decided to sell the smallholding and do some travelling while we could. We never got to do that because the smallholding took months to sell and  by November 2015 the first symptoms of  Non Hodgkins Lymphoma had started to appear and it was  diagnosed properly in March 2016.

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Found One!

 I knew I would find one at a car-boot sale eventually. A very small plate stand for that very small  Brambly Hedge spring display plate. Now I'm ready for March  next year.

 

It cost me all of 20p. 

Well, there might have been many seeds going out in the Men's singles early on at this years Wimbledon but three out of the  four men left in the semis could have been predicted from the start.

Just have to hope Carlos Alcaraz can go on to win .

There are still two Brits in the Men's Doubles and Gordon Reid and Alfie Hewitt are through to the semis in the wheelchair doubles, hoping to defend their title.

Both those matches are today.

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Wasps

 Who invented wasps? and why? What nasty trick was God playing that day!?

There were three pears on my young pear tree ...................

............................now there are none.

And this is why. A friend said they sting the pears which gives them a way in to the flesh, but they don't. - they just nibble their way in, especially when the weather is dry and they are looking for moisture as well as food.

Actually on closer inspection the critter on the pear above could be a young hornet, it flew away anyway so didn't get killed. I'm sure it's not one of the invasive Yellow Legged or Asian hornets - thankfully.

Definitely smaller common wasps below on a blurry photo as I didn't get too close for this photo of dozens of them on the pear that had fallen off.

I'd already killed dozens more the day before that were on the ground drunk and dazed after they'd had their fill of the first pear.

I've not been stung yet this year - thankfully, but there must be a nest not too far away for there to be this many all at once, so it may yet happen. 

Yes,  they are good for pollination and some feed on aphids and carrion. But I'm still not a fan.

And isn't it odd that if a cat, dog or human gets stung in the mouth by a wasp it can be a nasty business, but birds eat wasps with no problem. A young Thrush was picking up the wasps that had fallen drunk from pear juice onto the grass, giving them a good shake and eating with no ill effects.

The wasps will be needing moisture over the next few days - as will the humans- the temps are set to rise for another mini heatwave ....that's an English heatwave not a Hot Country heatwave!  

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