It's snowing again!

The snow is falling in the valley, the wind is howling and the temperature is dropping rapidly. So I'm staying in to do some catching up on blogs, websites and volunteer jobs.


First I want to ask all of you to do me a favour. If you have time, please check out the Church Stretton Arts Festival Web Site at:

http://www.strettonfestival.org.uk/

I want you to imagine that you're visiting Church Stretton and you want to know what's on. Tell me what you think of the web pages. Do they make you want to visit us? Do you find them exiting or interesting? Can you find all the information you need? Is there anything else I should include?


Please send me e-mail with your comments. Thanks.


So far it's been quite a cold winter. I'm not really complaining because it's really nowhere near as cold as it was in North America, and we need a cold spell to kill off the bugs and convince the plants that summer is coming. However, it's sad to see that some of the plants had already started to put out leaves. We're expecting it to be a very cold wind with cold air flowing into Britain from Siberia, so there will be freezing temperatures every night for the next few days.

In addition there are dire warnings of more (and possibly heavy) snow to come. Now over here that means anything over a few centimeters of snow so we may not be able to get our cross-country skis out!

Our snowdrops are out already. In fact, they've been out for over a week. Unfortunately, we managed to trample a few of them when we were working in the garden last week. There are big works going on in our garden. We're working with a real live garden designer to give it a makeover and make it more wildlife friendly. I've started a new blog for this, with pictures and descriptions of the work as it goes on. You can find that at the following address:

http://peelwyke.wordpress.com/

We've been working on the garden for the last three weeks, in spite of the low temperatures. I guess it's been between 2 and 8 C while we've been working (in the 30s for the Americans!), and some of the time it's been windy or drizzling. But we Brits don't let that stop us. If we did we'd never do anything outside!!!! Last week you would have been amused to see us serenely drinking coffee and eating cookies outside. We've even set up a table and comfy chairs so we can relax during our coffee breaks!



The picture shows us piling up the old fence sections to make a habitat pile. The thing that looks like a dead dog is in fact a soggy mess of old newsprint paper that we found behind the garage. We moved it out there after it got wet when the upper garage roof leaked on it. I had been keeping the paper to make into paper mache - yet another brilliant craft idea that never went anywhere! That's me behind the fence and in front is Mike Russell who is our designer. Mike specialises in Nature Gardens, so he's the perfect person to work with. He's not only designing the new garden, he's helping us to do the work.



One of the benefits of staying out all day is that we've seen some new wildlife in the garden. We've spotted a goldcrest several times (it's a close relative of the Golden Crowned Kinglet of the US) and we saw a tree-creeper one day too.

We've been a bit worried that we would disturb our badgers, but two of them showed up on the patio a couple of nights ago and today we saw our diurnal badger for the first time since before Christmas. He still seems to be doing well, even though he continues to make forays during the afternoon. Here's a nice picture of him that I took in December. You can really see those strong claws in this picture. No wonder they do so much digging about the place. Now that we've taken down our fence we'll be able to watch the badgers as they walk about on the bank to the south of us. Hopefully, we'll be able to see the babies playing when they first come up from underground.

Oh well ... I suppose I'd better get back to work .....

The Mom Song

Jane sent me this wonderful video and I'm going to try to post it here. Enjoy!

New Year, New Colours!

Hi all!

Messing about with blogs, webpages, templates, stylesheets and the like and decided to change the way my blog looks! It's the same old material, in a new wrapper - I suppose I should put the price up to match. Isn't that what they do in the shops?

Bah humbug!!!!!

Happy New Year!

Well, we're well into the New Year already! I expected to spend New Year's day doing this post, but I had a bit of a hangover and John was in bed with a feverish cold, so I loafed around the house doing absolutely nothing all day!

On New Year's eve John was well in the morning and we spent it with Mike Russell, going around the garden and doing some planning. There will be more about that in my next posting. In the afternoon John's temperature started to climb and he went off to bed. Dave and Pam came down the drive for their dinner and the three of us saw the New Year in, while I ferried small amounts of food and drink up to the invalid in bed!

Yesterday was John's birthday and he insisted on a bit of birdwatching. That was a mistake as he is now coughing and feeling quite poorly again. Tomorrow is our Ruby (40th) wedding anniversary and we have plans to go to a local carvery for a big Sunday lunch. We'll see if he's up to it.

John did quite a good review of the year for his Christmas letter, so I'm going to include it here [with comments, of course!]:

"In February we spent a few days on the "Jurassic Coast" (http://www.jurassiccoast.com/) in Dorset and Devon, in the Lyme Regis area. An artist friend (Karel Hughes) was having an opening of her work in a Devon gallery and another artist friend (Pam Jordan) was contributing to the show, so we decided to make an appearance. Not totally irrelevant to this decision was the fact that many of the people there were old Swansea University cronies and that a party of significant proportions and intensity has been promised. The show and the party were excellent (we bought paintings by both artists), the scenery and bird watching were very good and the walking along the coast invigorating.

In April, I went to Norfolk for some birding and a meeting that requires a bit of explanation. Every 10-15 years, the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology), http://www.bto.org/, in conjunction with other bird watching organisations, seeks to produce an atlas of bird distributions and abundance for the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland (http://www.bto.org/birdatlas/). This involves organising a vast number of volunteers to survey bird populations in 10 km x 10 km grid squares over the two countries, both in winter and the breeding season. At the same time, the Shropshire Ornithological Society (SOS) is "piggybacking" on this effort to produce a county wintering and breeding bird atlas, with sampling at 2 km x 2 km (http://www.shropshirebirds.com/Atlas%20Intro%20Page.htm). These data are invaluable in studying the changes in the fortunes of different bird species and to inform conservation and biodiversity efforts by government departments and other nature-oriented groups. Well, I am the organiser of this effort for the south-central area of Shropshire and it falls to me to find volunteers, assign sampling areas, provide support and assistance etc. In addition, I am "Data Manager" for the Shropshire atlas project and am responsible for statistical analysis and mapping of the data collected in the surveys. The Norfolk meeting (at the BTO headquarters in Thetford) was for local atlas workers to be briefed by the BTO and to exchange ideas etc. I took the opportunity to go two days early and explore the very birdy north Norfolk coast.

In late May, it was again off to the east coast, to Suffolk this time. Joan and I had been invited to a wedding of the son of an old school friend of hers [actually older than that - friends from the womb!]. The wedding was made notable by the fact that we met there a woman who we had last seen in Columbus, Ohio, as a postgraduate student in Geography, and with whom we had had no contact since. It turned out that she had been to university with the bride. Weird coincidence (but then aren't all coincidences weird by definition). Unable to forego the ornithological attractions of Suffolk, we spent some time at the RSPB reserve at Minsmere before returning home. [John's emphasis on birding means he forgot the mention the wonderful day at Sutton Hoo!]

June took us further afield - to Cucugnan in Languedoc-Roussillon in southern France. Our friends Dolly and Chris have a house there are were driving down for a few weeks so we accompanied them for the first part of their stay. The weather was quite stunning while we were there and we spent time touring around taking in the sights, especially the Cathar castles perched impossibly in the rugged terrain. Naturally, there was good bird watching to be done, so trips to inland hills and coastal lagoons were part of the plan and some superb species unfamiliar to northern Europe were seen. Naturally, eating good French country food and assisting the natives in disposing of recent wine grape harvests were major foci of the trip too. Following just over a week in Cucugnan, we took the train back to Church Stretton (TGV to Lille where we spent the night and most of the next day, Eurostar to London, and from there back home).

In July were almost became boat owners. You may be aware that we love boating on the British canals and have been looking to buy a part share in a narrowboat for some time. So has my sister Joy and her husband. Two shares in a boat of the type we were interested in came up for sale in July, so we went to look at it with the possibility of both couples taking a share each. Unfortunately, the craft was not quite as well looked after as we thought (it was quite old), so we decided against the purchase. However, looking at that one has helped to crystallise our ideas about what we want so we are still looking.

Later in July was the Church Stretton and South Shropshire Arts Festival (http://www.strettonfestival.org.uk/). Joan is heavily involved with the visual arts part of this event (painting, sculpture, photography, fabrics etc). That show runs for two weeks but there are many other performances during that period, mostly of a musical nature. I have no official role to play in the arts festival but do get involved as manual labour, setting up and tearing down displays, and was also conned into taking photographs at all of the events. An additional duty is putting up and feeding some of the guests to keep festival costs down. This year we had two members of the Wihan Quartet (http://www.wihanquartet.com/) and also three singers and one orchestra member from the Opera East performance of "The Marriage of Figaro". Joan takes over running the visual arts part of the festival this year and is also their web designer and maintainer.

August brought bathroom renovations. The previous owner of this house took out all of the baths and replaced them with showers. Joan wanted a bath back so we had the downstairs bathroom knocked through to include the adjacent toilet and put in a whirlpool bath, along with a complete renovation of the room (which was looking a bit "tired"). The job was done very professionally and we are very happy with it. Joan now spends time submerged in foam bubbles in there, "thinking through the problems that face her"! [One of the problems being that we havn't painted the ceiling yet, or fixed up the hallway where the old door was blocked up. Oh well, there's more important things in life than working on the house!]

Also in August was the Church Stretton Food Fayre (yes, I know the quaint spelling is appalling but it's not my fault). Joan and I were both involved with this event, which has been a successful promotion for the town and source of money for local charities for several years, ever since foot and mouth disease closed the countryside to walkers and devastated the economy of Church Stretton, which is very much oriented towards walking tourism. This year we almost had a disaster due to the weather, which would have meant that the large balance we had accumulated over the years would have been dissipated. As it happened, the rains let up for the two days of the fair (mostly) and the event was a great success, despite a soggy site and no proper car parking because of the state of the ground. Nevertheless, the committee decided that this was to be the last Food Fayre in this form and we disbanded, which meant about £37,000 went to local good causes, including our new Leisure Centre being built at the school (but for the general public). I had responsibility for the Food Fayre website as well as general labouring during the fair (including seven hours of directing traffic this year due to poor parking conditions). It is a relief to be done with the website but I have now been dragooned into continuing to do the web pages for the Church Stretton Walking Festival, which was part of the food event due to an accident of history but which will now continue independently (www.churchstrettonwalkingfestival.co.uk/).

August and September brought overseas visitors. HaPe Schmid (http://imk-ifu.fzk.de/21_900.php), a fellow climatologist (erstwhile of Indiana University and now in Germany) and his family stayed with us overnight on their Father Cadfael (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadfael) odyssey.

Shortly thereafter we received a longer visit from various polymer clay artist friends of Joan's from Columbus. They spent a few days in London, Bath and Stonehenge with Joan before coming on to Shropshire. [Our three days in London were crammed - went straight to Windsor Castle from the airport on the first day. Then the other two days included Tower of London, St. Paul's, Greenwich, a ride on the Thames and lots of rubber necking walking around town. Our journey back to C.S. was beset by rain and flood, but we managed to see Stonehenge and Bath so we did OK!]

In September I was conned into giving a talk to the Ludlow branch of the Probus organisation on "Global Warming: a Review of the Science and its Critics", which seemed to go pretty well although there were a few rather vocal sceptics in the audience raising the usual criticisms. (This is not to say there might not be some valid arguments against a human origin for recent warming but these weren't those arguments!)

Immediately after that we drove up for a few days in Skipton, Yorkshire, where Joan was representing Church Stretton at a meeting on the revitalisation of market towns, along with a local councillor and friend. [Not a very productive meeting, but we made a few contacts which may serve well one day - who knows?] Needless to say, I avoided that and spent the time walking in the Yorkshire Dales (http://www.yorkshiredales.org.uk/) and (what a surprise!) birding. The weather was not great but we did all have a superb walk in the Malham Tarn and Cove area on the one sunny but very windy day after the meeting was over.

Nov 4th saw us staying up very late, with a bottle of wine and a few snacks, watching the US election results come in. It was an exciting election that attracted quite a bit of interest this side of the Atlantic, not least because of the impact that the health of the American economy has here in Europe. There was also quite a bit of interest in Barack Obama and a type of uncomprehending perplexity about Sarah Palin. The outcome was as WE had hoped but it still astounds me that so many ordinary Americans find it possible to vote for candidates whose interests diverge so markedly from their own, whose agenda are so transparently self-serving, who are associated with an administration that has been characterised by corruption and constitutional jiggery-pokery, and are imbeciles into the bargain. I did have a great deal of respect for John McCain as an individual (although I was not sure his particular strengths were quite those needed by the US right now) but his choice of Sarah Palin as his running-mate raised in me issues about his grip on reality. The most benevolent interpretation I can come up with is that she was forced on him by the Republican Right. Apart from the fact that she possessed no qualifications to be president (and given McCain's age, that is what she stood a good chance of becoming), she was a very scary woman (maybe even scarier than Dick Cheney). How is it possible that a goodly fraction of the voters of a civilised, developed, forward-looking country like the US could bring themselves to endorse a person like Ms Palin? On this line, I very much like <http://www.feministpeacenetwork.org/2008/10/29/dont-cry-for-me-sarah-palin>.

Joan and I continue to volunteer at the Shrewsbury Museum (http://www.shrewsburymuseums.com/). After completing the identification and cataloguing of Victorian bird taxidermy specimens, we are now identifying, cleaning, cataloguing and conserving birds eggs. The eggs are largely from amateur collections established in the late 1800s and early 1900s. (It is, of course, now illegal to collect wild birds's eggs in the UK.) Many of these collections have been poorly looked after over the years and take quite an effort to conserve. Since the museum is moving in the next few years to new facilities, there is something of an incentive to get the job done before the move. Also, next year is a big one for Shrewsbury as it is the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, and he is a son of the town. All sorts of celebratory events are planned, some of which will involve the Museum and our bird Victorian taxidermy and egg specimens.

Much of my other activities are bird-related, as you might guess. I write regular articles for the "Buzzard", the SOS magazine, [his Buzzard articles are also published on a web site] do assorted bird surveys and help run the Church Stretton branch of the SOS.

We have recently decided that we need more help with our garden, which is quite large and not that easy to maintain. We have employed a garden designer to suggest limited modifications to make it easier to look after but to enhance its wildlife potential. It already is pretty good for nature but we would like to extend this by introducing some different types of habitats (e.g. meadow) without losing the environments we already have. Additionally, we will work with him in person doing most of the work required. I am paranoid about losing cover and nesting habitat for birds but he seems to understand my perspective as he specialises in nature gardening and has a background in conservation. Keep your eyes on Joan's blog for developments in this area.

Joan's health check-ups have been good with no recurrence of cancer. We are hoping that in a couple of years she will be able to finish with the drugs she was prescribed for five years, which have lots of nasty side-effects. She is making something of a name for herself as a local wheeler-dealer, working on the sustainable tourism initiative and insinuating herself into various aspects of local politics. She also takes a major role both in the Church Stretton and South Shropshire Arts Festival and in Scrappies - a local charity "scrap for arts and crafts" store, for which she is again web person (http://www.scrappies.org/). She has not yet agreed to run for the local council but I see it in the future! [Forget it - there is NO WAY!!!!!] She is a one-woman non-governmental organisation!

The downturn in the economy is, of course, very evident here as this area depends quite heavily on tourism and folk have less disposable cash to spend of travelling. However, as most of the tourist focus here is on hill walking and mountain biking, I don't think we have been affected as much as areas depending on more expensive leisure pursuits. From a personal point of view, the drop in the value of the pound relative to the dollar has been a great boon to us as our pensions are paid in US dollars and are, hence, buying more pounds here.

We have just returned from a week in Montreal [where I took the picture at the top of this post!]. I am on the oversight board of the EPiCC (Environmental Prediction in Canadian Cities) project, which is concerned with urban climates in Canada (http://www.epicc.uwo.ca/). The board meets annually and the Montreal trip was for this purpose, although we stayed on for a few more days of city life, museums, concerts etc. We had a great time although it was pretty cold (-19 deg C was the coldest while we were there) with lots of snow.

Christmas will be with my sister Joy in Nuneaton, a pattern we have followed since our return to the UK. We will, of course, overeat, over-drink and lie about like bloated walruses before being consumed by guilt and shame, prompting plans to look after ourselves in 2009 (which we will be unable to do, thus leading to depression and low self-esteem). Tidings of comfort and joy to you too! [We've been and done that - It was lovely!]

What else? I continue my involvement with photography, especially nature photography [me too, but I mostly take snaps! This is one of the waxwings we saw on New Year's Eve]. We have frequent trips to Symphony Hall Birmingham for concerts by the CBSO and other orchestras and also take in a few plays each year. I have become increasingly interested in cookery and have improved considerably, having shaken off the tendency to panic when things don't go quite as I had planned, although I still have a long way to go. I do virtually all of the day-to-day cooking now and, as long as I have my glass of wine and some music on, I find it very relaxing. [So do I as I'm off the hook! And he is making the most delicious meals - YUM!]

Next year will be our ruby wedding anniversary (!!!!!!) so we are planning a few special occasions. One will be a trip to Costa Rica in March for a bird watching trip. The tour is a small group one organised by some friends from Columbus Audubon, who asked whether we would be interested in joining them. We have never been anywhere like Costa Rica and it should be very interesting, with lots of new (and spectacular) bird species to see."

Well, that's all for now. I hope to be posting a lot of stuff about the garden this year as the renovations go ahead. This is going to be the place where we document what we did and how it's all working out.

Stay tuned ... and write when you can.

Virtual Tour of Columbus

John just forwarded this article to me from OSU today. Some of you will have seen this already, but for others it will be new. If you have Google Earth, take the tour - it's really interesting. If you don't have it, this may be just the incentive you need to download it. Google Earth is really amazing - I love it!

"Geography students create virtual field trip of Columbus"

"A group of undergraduates in Geography professor Ola Ahlqvist's computer based mapping class have developed a digital version of emeritus professor Henry Hunker's "Time and Change" tour of Columbus. Places and events described in Hunker's original 1956 narrative and later updates come alive in this interactive mapping environment. Hunker's text serves as the primary guide, but students have added themes and resources, videos and 3-D graphics for an interesting result. <http://www.geography.osu.edu/get-connected/hunker>..."

Diurnal Badger

We've been seeing a badger in the daytime. This is extremely unusual, and we're not sure why it's happening. Is he a young male that has been made unwelcome in the sett? Is he/she unwell? In the States we would immediately worry about rabies, but that isn't at all likely over here.


This behaviour has been going on for several weeks, so if the badger is ill, it isn't very ill, and it certainly doesn't look ill at all. Maybe this is just a response to a safe environment.


Once or twice we spotted the badger crossing the driveway on his way between two wooded areas, and a neighbour saw him trotting up the driveway and along the road to someone else's house, but today he was out feeding on the lawn for several minutes and I was able to take a few pictures looking down on him from my study window.

It may happen after a rainy night. We're not sure about this, but perhaps some part of the sett is getting wet for some reason. We're going to have to look into this in more detail.

Musings on town websites

Hi there friends! I know it's been a long time since I last posted. The post below this explains why!

Right now, I'm involved in helping our Mayor - Bob Welch - understand our town website and answer the various criticisms that have been levelled against it. I need to post some links for various people on various committees, too, and I've decided to do it here. Some of you won't be very interested in this but others might, so feel free to read on if you want!

There has been quite a bit of discussion about the Church Stretton town website. Is it doing the job? What job is it supposed to be doing anyway?

Most towns now have some sort of presence on the web. Here are some links to other towns’ websites. I've been browsing around to see what I like and don’t like about them.

Shropshire Town sites include Ludlow, Bishop’s Castle, Clun, Wem, Ellesmere, Market Drayton.
There’s a large range here. Some towns have town council sites. These in turn may include tourist information or may just list council facilities or events or may not even be complete. Ludlow has lots of information and looks quite upbeat, but it’s still a bit “busy” for my taste.

Yorkshire Towns: Why Yorkshire? I’ve just spent time in Skipton at the Action for Market Towns Conference and was impressed that North Yorkshire is doing a lot to promote its towns and tourism. Skipton, for instance, has two sites: one from the council and one from a local web design firm, whereas Ilkley has a comprehensive but amateurish-looking site. Here’s Hebden Bridge’s site.

Lots of towns have sites run by the borough council. Here’s Tamworth’s. It’s quite typical. In fact, as I look at town sites on the web, I find many of them have very similar structures. I wonder if they are following some template that I could find out there somewhere. Nuneaton and Bedworth follow the same typical pattern.

The thing about many of these sites is that they have to do everything for the town/borough council. Tourism is just a tiny part of it. These sites are dealing with everything from benefits to transport, from dead animal removal to adult education. It’s no wonder that the tourism stuff gets buried in all the other stuff.

On the other hand, you can just chuck a lot of stuff on a page and get a bit of a mess. Looe in Cornwall has a website like that!

Here’s a newly re-vamped web site that looks promising - Telscombe in East Sussex. It looks as though it isn’t completely ready for prime time, but the design is fresh and exiting.

Some other good sites that I have come across:

• Alcester in Warwickshire - a bit busy, but something about the site hums with activity and draws you in.
• Seaford in East Sussex - a clean, fresh looking website
• Hythe in Hampshire - this is the place that did the snow machine thing last Christmas.

I’ve just come across a web design firm that can make a cheap website from a template. They are Spider solutions. They have designed websites for several towns including Diss, Wymondham and Thetford. All the websites are similar - obviously put together as one template and then just the colours and copy changed from town to town. At the bottom of any one of the sites, you can find links to all the others.

Having seen all these sites, I’m underimpressed. I think our site is on the right track and covers most of the salient points. There are problems, however. One is the home page, which is dull and busy. Another is difficulty of navigation. For some reason I can’t find my way to the pages I want, when I want them. A third problem is copy. Unfortunately, that is a universal problem and not limited to the Church Stretton Web Site. How do we get people to contribute information? How do we make it easy for them to submit it on-line? How do we get it up and displayed in a timely manner?

Does anyone have any ideas?

We are still alive!

The rumour that we have disappeared off the face of the earth is grossly exaggerated! We are still here!



But we've been horribly busy:

• I somehow volunteered to prepare the brochure for the Food Fayre. You can download a pdf of it here. The colours are not my choice - we were constrained by the Co-op who use those colours to "brand" their eco-friendly, healthy eating campaign. Brochure prep. somehow led to flyer design, power-point display construction and all sorts of other design work!
• May was spent preparing for the opening of Scraptastic, the new craft shop at Scrappies. Click here to see photos of the preparation and the opening.
• Early June and all of July were spent preparing for and working at the 2008 Church Stretton Arts Festival. In particular I helped with the Art Exhibition, which is a big one - 160 exhibitors, 600 art works, over 1000 visitors and over £5000 in sales. I will be the Exhibition organiser next year.
• Late June was spent in Cucugnan with Dolly and Chris. It was a lovely restful time and we enjoyed every minute of it. I hope to post pictures and further information later.
• Now I'm developing a new web site for the Arts Festival. This is a work in progress, but feel free to check it out.
• John is preparing a talk on Climate Change for the Ludlow Probus group.
• He is also still coordinating Bird Surveys for his area and is now starting on the big task of mapping the results of various surveys for the new version of the Shropshire Bird Atlas.
• I'm now the Deputy Chair of the Steering group of the Church Stretton Partnership, I'm not sure what it means, but I have a lot of reading to do and several meetings and a conference to attend.

I've been so busy, I'm really, really tired. But I've never felt so ALIVE in all my life!

Write when you can!

My Diary

April 1.

11:00 am. It's April Fool's day and I've foolishly decided to keep a diary for a while so that I can post it on my blog and show everyone what our lives look like right now. I'm not much of a diarist, so who knows how long I can keep it up. Anyway, here's the first week:

Today started off windy and cloudy, but there's no rain forecast and we're hoping it will get sunnier as the day goes on. Up at 8 to the sounds of Simon Bates on Classic FM. After a leisurely breakfast of cereal and tea we've been pottering around for the morning. I've been looking into travel stuff on the web. First I was intrigued by an ad for the Orient Express to Venice so I went to look. It looks lovely, but it's frightfully expensive. Then I started looking at the possibilities for going up to London for the marathon as my cousin Jaques is running. I'm not going to be able to do it. John is going off to Thetford for a birding meeting and I don't fancy going on the train and then fighting the crowds in the city. Now that that decision is over I also have to decide whether to go to Thetford with John. It's a nice area with lots of interesting history, but he wants to go to the coast and that means hours of standing around peering through a telescope, so I think I'll give it a miss.

Now I'm getting down to business - phone calls to get an appointment for the sleep apnea clinic and to get another firm in to make an estimate on renovating the bathroom, then database stuff.

This afternoon I went down to Scrappies. Spent the first hour or so making a mess with all the new stock that has come in. This was all in the name of photography. I was trying to get a nice photo of all the crafty things to go with an article I am writing for the Stretton Focus. This is our town monthly magazine. It's sponsored by the local churches so there's always a few religious articles in it, but it also has all the other news - club meetings, parish council decisions and stories about the school - as well as articles about local walks, gardening, cooking and other miscellanea. I'm doing an article about the new Craft Shop. Anyway, I digress. I didn't realise how difficult it is to make sequins, rhinestones, card makings and other stuff look good in a picture and after I got home I realised that I had been totally unsuccessful.

When I finished picture taking and cleared up my mess I sat down and did a bit of pricing. All the new stock has to have prices written on it in preparation for the opening. Lots of thought has gone into this. We need to be similar to the other stockists, but cheaper to get people into the store but not so cheap that our members discounts will put us in the red! It's all very tricky! Irene and Sheila worked it out when we unpacked a couple of weeks ago, but since then we've been comparing prices with shops and catalogs and some of the prices have been put up a bit! We may as well make as much money from this as possible.

Home for a quick dinner and an even quicker tidy up because some friends were coming over in the evening for a drink and some badger watching. We saved the fat from our pork chops for the badgers, but it turned out that they preferred their usual diet of peanuts and didn't eat any fat till they'd polished off all the nuts. We had a jolly good evening. Wine was drunk, badgers were watched and the conversation ranged over many subjects. What more could anyone want?

The video below was actually taken some time ago, but I've only just realise that the blogger now allows video uploads! Sorry about the background buzz on the sound, but I wanted you to hear how much noise the badgers make when they are eating.

April 2

Off to the gym in the morning. I haven't been for a week because I had cellulitis in my arm last week and I didn't want to do anything "exertious" and spread the infection. It's all better now so I have no more excuses. I should have started back on Monday, but we went to a staff meeeting at the museum first and then ended up working most of the day shifting stuffed birds about the building. After that we didn't feel like working out and we came straight home! But that was Monday and this is Wednesday and we did the right thing and got on the 9:38 train and zoomed off to Shrewsbury. Into the gym by 10 and doing the rounds of the various machines. We do a combination of aerobics and weights. Today we concentrated on the legs with the weights and I used the cross-trainer to warm up and did an aerobic stint on a treadmill. Normally I do rowing when we're using the leg weights, but I didn't want to stress my silly arm too much.

Came back on our usual train: the 11:48 from Shrewsbury arriving back at about 12:30 starving for lunch!

After lunch I went off to Scrappies again. I had a date to meet Serena from Shropshire Youth Association to get my Criminal Record Check started off. I have to have a check so I can do craft workshops and work with children. Over here you have to have checks whenever you work with a vulnerable section of the population, although I believe that it sometimes takes so long to get the results that the job is over before the checks are done! Serena had to vouch that she'd seen my various forms of identification. I think she was impressed as I produced Passport, Driving Licence, Birth Cert., Marriage Cert., Council Tax bill, Gas Bill and other good stuff. They were all impressed when I said I also have birth certs for family members going back into the 1850s! At Scrappies, Laura was watching the desk as John Roberts was supposed to be having his hernia operation. I stayed around to help with more pricing and ended up staying there till 7 pm because Laura had to leave early to catch a train. In the end I helped get the workroom tidy and cleaned up ready for a kids birthday party which was scheduled for the next day. I've now sorted all the new stock into boxes of similar things and I've also sorted them according to whether they've been priced or not. Yesterday I got fed up clawing through all the boxes looking for stuff I wanted. Now I know where it is.

John had dinner when I got back and I collapsed in front of the telly after dinner. That often happens, or I go up to my room and play games on the computer. I'm nearly always too tired in the evening to do much of anything. This, I think, is a result of the beastly arimidex. I often go up early thinking that I'll get an early night and then I end up playing a stupid shoot-em-up game on MSN or Yahoo. When we go to bed, John usually reads for a while, and I used to just drop off, but now I generally do a Sudoku or two on my little electronic gizmo and sometimes I just fall asleep doing it!

April 3

Hooray! Nothing on the calendar all day! But there's plenty to do. It was a lovely morning so, for the first time since we got here, I got out Eve's old bike and rode up the Cardingmill Valley to the National Trust Office. It was quite mild so I was sweating by the time I got there. It's a heavy old bike with a 3-speed Sturmey Archer and I found it hard going. I always thought it was relatively flat up the valley, but it ain't! Peter Carty, the land manager, wasn't there which was a pity as I was really trying to see him to see if we could work out something co-operative between the NT and the Arts Festival, but I saw the education man - Chris Stratton - and we had a nice chat and he gave me the phone number and e-mail address I needed to write the Chris Doyle. She's the publicity woman for the West Midlands National Trust and I need to get to her to get the Food Fayre brochure printed up.

Riding back was easy - I free-wheeled all the way home! In fact, the hill was steep enough that I had to brake once or twice.

After lunch I went out to help John in the garden. He was putting up trellises on the front wall under and beside the guest room window. While he put up the trellises I pruned and re-arranged the climbers alongside the patio. There's a Virginia Creeper there which keeps trying to move over and swamp the other plants (climbing Hydrangea, Clematis and Honeysuckle). Around the corner where the trellises went up, we have an undisciplined jasmin there and last year we cut it back drastically meaning to train it up the trellis. Well, we didn't get it up on the wall and the jasmin grew and grew and made a great tangled mass hanging over the flower bed. After John did the hard work of screwing the trellis to the wall I spent an hour or so weaving all the vines and now it looks very tidy. Let's hope it grows, puts out leaves and flowers this year. If there are a lot of flowers the scent will waft into the guest room and it should be really delicious.

It was a lovely warm afternoon and we had our mugs of tea sitting on the patio. The sun was shining, the wind had calmed a bit (it's never really calm here) and we were able to relax and enjoy all the daffodils, forsythia and other spring flowers. When tea was over John continued in the garden - cleaning off the patio. There were last year's leaves, large lumps of moss which had fallen off the roof (helped by the magpies and crows who dig it up when looking for grubs and insects), all the vines I had pruned, pheasant poop and all the other winter detritus. It still needs a good hose down to get the moss up from the cracks between the paving stones, but it does look a hell of a lot better than it did a few days ago.

I made dinner tonight - veggie lasagna. I'm not cooking as much as I used to. John is doing it, and doing it well. I've taken over more of the other jobs like the washing and the washing up. I don't mind as they're things I can slot in around all the volunteer work I'm doing.

It was so warm today that we thought we might have some wildlife in the pond. Sure enough we found a couple of frogs when we shone the torch around the pond. Both of them were off away from the water - maybe the pebbles that surround the pond were warm and comfy for them tonight. Most evenings we can see newts in the pond, too, although they usually swim off and hide under rocks when we shine the light on them.

April 4.

Another morning at the gym. I must say I resented it this morning. I woke up tired and I didn't want to get dressed and go out. I dragged all the way there and my work out was difficult and draggy too. Needless to say I was not well pleased to find the locker room wide open and full of cleaning materials. I decided not to bother with a shower so got dressed and nipped out to buy a birthday card for Steve while John showered and dressed.

We picked up a few supplies on the way home and settled in for the rest of the day. It's turned cold and windy again so there was no gardening or sitting outside! I spent the afternoon working on my focus article and some other bits and pieces and after dinner (the rest of the lasagna) we vegged out for the evening watching telly and playing on the computer.

April 5.

It's Saturday but we don't get to sleep in. I had a quick shower and then got ready to go out. Stopped at Steve and Marjorie's to deliver a bit of cake and Steve's birthday card. He's 89! (And she just turned 91 - the cradle snatcher!!!!). Then on to Scrappies to help hold the fort. Laura was late arriving, John never did show up and Irene called in Delphine to help out. Saturday is my normal day to work at Scrappies. I usually go in and enter the membership data onto my laptop. Normally the only others there are John Roberts and Irene so they're glad of an extra body around in case of emergencies. We can't keep the shop open unless there are two people around.

After I'd entered data I was able to start more pricing. Delphine agreed to take some home to do and I was able to find it quickly because I'd sorted and labelled all the boxes. Irene and I looked over the latest draft of the focus article and discussed some other issues. The Management Committee meeting is coming up and we need to get the agenda sorted out. In fact, we need to see if we can change the date as we've already had a few apologies!

I got home at 3 and had a late lunch. Good job I did. About half past 5 David, who lives at the top of the drive, showed up at the door with a streaming nose bleed. Ella followed him down, of course. He's on his own this weekend as Pam has gone off to visit her daughters in London and Hampshire. We got him sat down with paper towels and ice packs but it just wouldn't stop. It was bleeding pretty strongly - much stronger than mine are usually - and because we were worried about his various illnesses and drugs (including warfarin) we ended up calling the squad. The standby guy was on his way into Church Stretton, fortunately, and we heard him coming down the drive before John finished the phone call! The ambulance arrived a few minutes later. It was the same team we had when Marjorie had her fall last summer so we knew them. They also knew David as they'd rushed him to hospital with heart problems at about the same time. Anyway, they decided not to drive down so they took David up in the ambulance car and transferred him to the real ambulance at the top.

I went to the hospital in Shrewsbury with David, while John took Ella home and locked up the house for David. I was able to chat to the ambulance driver the whole way. They took us straight to the head and neck department (which stays open for emergencies) so we bypassed the queues in the emergency room. In no time at all they cleaned out David's nose, numbed it and cauterised it. The bleeding stopped immediately. We hung around in the waiting room till the doctor was satisfied that the bleeding was truly stopped and then we called John who picked us up and took us home via the fish and chip shop. The three of us had a very good meal at David's house. Ella spent most of the time sitting by me watching in the hopes that I would drop a chip! We came home about 10. We left David looking pretty perky and although we told him he needed to rest, it was really me that needed to come home and chill out! We told him we'd be back to take Ella for a walk in the morning.

April 6.

We woke to see snow lying about this morning. It wasn't a complete layer and it was melting fast, but it looked very pretty for a while. The poor old daffs didn't like it very much - they were all bowed down - but I don't think it did a lot of long-term damage.

After breakfast we took Ella for a walk in Rectory Field and Woods. This is a lovely area in town which used to be the pleasure grounds of our rectory. Our rectors must have been quite wealthy as it is a large area. Now it belongs to the Civil Parish. Part of it is a big grass field. Some of that is relatively flat and that's where Church Stretton has its annual bonfire on November 5th. The rest of the field is steeply sloped, but you can climb up there for a good view and access to the Long Mynd. The rest of the area is wooded and criss-crossed by footpaths. Ella and I climbed to the top of the hill in the woods while John did some birding lower down. The Town Brook runs through, from Ella's favorite swimming hole in the reservoir at the top to another of her bathing places at Yew Tree Pool. This time we had to keep her away from the water as she's developed an itchy, flaky skin condition and the vet has advised against letting her swim. The woods were full of people and dogs walking, enjoying the light snow and looking around to see how the spring is progressing. The daffs here looked a bit sad, too, but there were the signs of bluebells in bud and in a couple of weeks the woods will be carpeted in blue. Rectory Field and Woods is John's new "Patch" where he goes regularly to bird watch. He makes counts of the birds he sees and keeps notes so he can compare from season to season. Today there weren't many birds about, perhaps because of the snow, perhaps because of all the people walking about, but we did see a buzzard, lots of jackdaws and crows and the usual chaffinches and robins.

Once we'd delivered Ella home, we headed back into town for the European market. This happens every few months in many places in the UK. They have a street market with vendors who have driven all night from various places in Europe. Our market had stalls from Portugal, France, Spain, Italy and somewhere in the middle east. It wasn't very big this time, but we found plenty of goodies to bring home for our lunch. While we were shopping it started to snow again, too! Lunch was a wonderful mixture of French cheese, middle eastern olives, pickled ginger, pickled RAW garlic, bread and Portuguese sardine fritters - all washed down with a glass of white wine. Delicious!

This afternoon I completed the focus article and sent it off before heading over to Steve and Marjorie's for a cuppa and a piece of cake. I often go over on a Sunday afternoon for an hour or so. We mull over the events of the week, catch up on the gossip and the sports and have a bit of a laugh. Today they were feeling very pleased with themselves as they had managed to get Marjorie's support hose on without any help. During the week they have carers who come to help Marjorie dress and wash and they get her stockings on. On the weekends, though, they like a little lie-in and so they don't have the carer and Steve has to help Marjorie who is rather weak and has balance problems. For the last couple of weeks I've come over in the morning and pulled on the stockings, but today Steve managed it by himself.

I decided to do some craft work when I came home from the neighbours. A couple of weeks ago I bought a couple of metal flamingos. Decided I was going to test out some interference paints on them and see how they worked. I watered the paint down a bit as I didn't want them to be too brightly coloured and I set to to sponge the paint onto their bodies. It worked out quite well on the dark brown metal. Interference paint only shows up on a dark background. The bodies now have a pinkish sheen, the wing and tail feathers are gold with bright yellow feather shafts and the heads are purplish pink. Sounds quite horrible doesn't it? However, it looks pretty good.

After a large lunch we waited a while for dinner, but when it came it was delicious. John excelled himself with roast duck accompanied by roast potatoes and parsnips. For dessert we had baklava from the market. Yum, yum.

April 7.

Monday - ugh! Well, actually it doesn't really matter since retired people don't really have weekends! Anyway, it looked a bit warmer than expected this morning so I decided to forgo the gym and take Ella for a walk instead. I'm trying to help Dave out right now. The doctor said he's not supposed to exert himself, sneeze or blow his nose. On top of that, he has breathing problems in the cold weather so it makes more sense for me to take Ella in the morning and for him to go out for a shorter walk with her in the afternoon. So, as John set off for the gym I went up the drive to pick up Ella.

We had a smashing walk, up to the entrance of the National Trust property in Cardingmill Valley and then off on the side path around the base of Stanyeld Hill. However, this time instead of carrying on to the golf course I turned up the hill and climbed a steep sheep path up the fence-line to the top of Stanyeld. This is the hill we can see out of our kitchen, study and living room windows and I've wanted to climb to the top of it since we got here. Somehow we've never done it. It was very steep and not a good path, but with one sit-down in the middle of it we managed to get to the top where we enjoyed a fabulous view over the town. In a way, this was a preliminary recce. I want to get some photos of the house and I wanted to find out where the best view points were. We wandered about all over the hill and over the golf course, exploring various paths and viewpoints.

Ella is very good. She rarely looses sight of you as she runs all over the place hunting rabbits, splashing into streams and generally doing doggy things. I did loose her once and that's because her other favourite friends were up on the hill at the same time and she heard them and decided to go and visit them. It's not likely to happen again, and if it does I'll know who to look for!

We made it to the top of Stanyeld in half an hour from home which I thought was pretty good, and we were back home in an hour and ten minutes. The nice thing about walking a neighbour's dog is that he has to clean her up afterwards! I just came home, made myself a hot drink and got on with some work. I sent off the food fayre brochure to the National Trust, who we hope are going to send it to the printers for us. I've done most of the design work on the brochure and I'm quite pleased with it. It's the first time I've done anything like this and it's come out quite well.

I took the flamingoes out and put them where the pheasants often feed. I'm waiting to see how long it is before John notices them!

He got back from Shrewsbury at lunch time and we had some more french cheese on bread. He brought home a "donker" loaf for me - delicious malted rye bread, bue he toasted the white bread we bought at the market and had that. After lunch we had a quick clean up in time for the arrival of another kitchen and bath person. Spent quite a while with him as he looked at the two bathrooms and we discussed various options. We've decided that the bottom bathroom has to be the one we put the bath in and he's made measurements and gone off to do an estimate. Whoever wins the contract to do this bathroom will also end up doing the upstairs one and the kitchen, so we want to make sure we get the right firm.

Well, we've had a couple of tiny showers today, but in general it has been quite nice. The sun is shining brightly and penetrating throughout the house now, which is such a blessing. The house is very dark in the winter, but today it's so bright all the lights are off. The solar fountain in the little pond is spraying well too - I like to watch it. In fact I can stand at the living room window for hours watching it!

Of course, you already know that I like to spend hours watching the wildlife. Mr. Magnificent has been walking around looking absolutely gorgeous. His golden feathers sometimes shine pure gold in the sunshine and sometimes they take on a purplish cast. The females have quite a bit of purplish colouring around the neck too and in a more subdued way are also lovely. We're a bit worried about Ginger Rogers our oldest female. She has some ruffled feathers on her neck and we're wondering if she has a growth. She seems fit and active, but she is probably 3 years old and that's about as old as they usually get "in the wild".

We now have a pair of rabbits that spend most of the day on the back lawn. I'm surprised a passing buzzard hasn't seen them and taken one off for dinner. The rabbits were making love the other day, so I expect we'll have more as time goes by. I'm not sure where their warren is, but they might be in the bank where the badger sett is. I'm not sure what they're eating, either, but while they stay on the lawn they're not doing too much harm. I don't think I'll bother to plant any vegetables or salad - they'll have it in no time. One thing has puzzled me, though. Every now and then one of them will get into a game of chase with a squirrel. It doesn't look like a serious fight or anything - the squirrel will chase the rabbit around the lawn for a while and then the rabbit will chase the squirrel. Cross-species play? Very peculiar!

We've been boiling up the duck bones with the remains of the gravy from yesterday and a few veggies. The whole house smells of duck soup and that's what we'll have for lunch tomorrow. Some of the broth will go for gravy tonight as we convert the remains of the roast duck into a cottage pie with carrots, mashed potatoes and peas .... yum .... can't wait!

Other Volunteer Activities

In my last post I told you about our work for the museum and the ornithological society. I'd like to tell you about my other volunteer activities, too.

Firstly, I help with the Church Stretton Arts Festival. The summer after we arrived we went to many of the Arts Festival events and enjoyed them. While we were visiting the Art Exhibition we got talking to Sue Mabbutt (the organizer) and I volunteered to help. To start off with I helped with just the Art Exhibition. I have the database of exhibitors and am responsible for contacting them each year to invite them to participate, collecting their entry forms money and producing the lists of entries. Then I ended up helping on hanging day and collection day and did a little bit of work in between!

The picture on the left is of the flyer I designed for the Art Exhibition last year. We have lots left, so I'm going to stick a label over the date and time so we can use them this year!

This year my work has expanded to the rest of the festival. I'm now a member of the committee and work on the publicity sub-committee. I try to co-ordinate the jobs I do for the Arts Festival with the ones I do for the Food Fayre. I've been contacting web sites that have events listings and have managed to list our events on several. It's good fun. I like the people who work on this committee. They are very hard working and get a heck of a lot done for the good of this area. I think I may have offended one or two because I'm a bit out spoken, but I'm hoping they'll forgive me if I work hard enough.

Because of Sue Mabbutt and her husband Clive, John and I both work for the Church Stretton Food Fayre, also. This year, the food fayre is a two day event, on August 24th and 25th. The 25th is our late August bank holiday (a lot like labour day in the States). We will be setting up marquees in the school playing field and expect over 100 food and craft vendors to show their wares. Along with that we will have food demonstrations - including a very dishy chef called Mark Earndon courtesy of our local Co-Op Society - entertainments including birds of prey, a brass band, circus skills, arts and crafts workshops, face painting and belly dancing and an evening of "golden oldies" in the music/beer tent.

Check out this web page about Mark. There's a You Tube video of his work too.

The food fayre has a large coterie of volunteers who help on the day with everything from taking money and monitoring the carpark to washing dishes in the food demo tent and cleaning the loos! However, we work year round. John is the webmaster and I am the vice-chair. It's not exactly clear what a vice-chair does as we haven't had one before, but I'm trying to fill in wherever there are gaps. I've tried to help Clive with publicity, I've designed the tri-fold leaflet that goes into pubs, tourist centres, libraries, bed and breakfasts, etc., I've been trying to put our information into the various "What's On" web sites and I help out wherever possible. During the actual fair I will probably be helping with getting the exhibitors situated, I might collect up the takings, help out on the gate or do whatever. Sue, Helen and I took a first aid training course, too, so we can be the first people to respond to any emergencies that might arise.

While we were helping at a Volunteering Recruitment day trying to find more volunteers for the Food Fayre I ran across a display about Scrappies. I got talking the Serena there and she said that Scrappies needed a new web person. I immediately volunteered to do that and from there I've ended up doing lots more. I'm still the web master and you can see my efforts by clicking here. From there it was a small step to helping out with computer problems and working to update their membership data base. That led to my volunteering to enter all the data - renewals, new memberships and address changes - and finally to sending out renewal notices and newsletters! So you can see the job has expanded and it continues to expand. I'm now on their management committee and I try to help out in the store when and if I can.