The Humans At The Book Club, Some More Detecting Finds And A Boring Mike Leigh Offering

We've been cramming another week into five days and have managed to keep ourselves very busy again. We've been doing our spinning and circuit training up at the college, our weekly stint of shopping for the Framlingham Hour Community and we had a great evening at Framsoc's book club when we discussed Matt Haig's The Humans .

The story involves an alien who arrives on earth on a mission to prevent a mathematician's brilliant solution to a mathematical problem becoming public knowledge. That solution holds the potential for the human race to become a threat to the aliens' world. The alien's initial hatred of all things human gradually mellows as he forms relationships with the family into which he has become embedded and the book is a fairly gentle study on life and love and humanity. For once, all the book club members enjoyed the novel and we had a very enjoyable discussion over a glass of wine and some nibbles.

Despite some heavy overnight rain, the weather was kind on Thursday so I had a couple of hours out with the detector.

This was what I tipped out of the bag when I got back. It's a very small field that I've searched five or six times already but, with adjustments to the settings, I'm still managing to find things. The best this time were :-

This jetton made in Nuremberg in around 1580-1600 by Wolf Laufner.

A Post Medieval Lead Seal With Initials C I S

A Spur Terminal Fitting Post Medieval

A Clog Clasp From Around the 18th Century

A Tiny Pistol Ball And Possibly A Medieval Annular Brooch Fragment

I was happy with these finds in a fairly short time and will probably give the field another couple of visits before I decide that I'm unlikely to uncover anything else.

Yesterday we travelled to Ipswich for a matinee showing of Mike Leigh's much acclaimed Mr Turner. I was expecting great things of this film after five star reviews from almost every critic. Marion loved it and I can see why audiences have raved about Tim Spall's portrayal of a curmudgeonly, grunting, Victorian artist. Indeed it's a great performance from Spall, and the cinematic landscapes are breathtaking as the director creates on film near perfect reproductions of the scenes Turner painted - most successfully in a rowing boat trip to see the Temeraire being towed into port on its final journey - a masterpiece of atmospheric lighting. But in a film that is almost three hours long, those pluses are far outweighed by the simple lack of an interesting narrative. The film is, in my opinion, boring and I found myself trying (unsuccessfully) to stop nodding off. I don't think I was alone in my boredom as three other viewers left after a couple of hours and didn't come back. I typed "Mr Turner boring" into Google to see if I was alone in my view. It seems not and I find that I am, for once, in agreement with the film critic of none other than The Daily Star (oh dear).

We awoke to fog this morning with visibility down to a couple of yards. It wasn't important as we were off to The Lemon Tree for our regular Saturday Suffolk Breakfast (a real feast) and The Times2 Jumbo Crossword. Breakfast was excellent as always and, for once, we completed the crossword in full - hooray.

When we got home the fog had cleared and the spiders had created a very pretty network on our super seagull sculpture.

We're in Rochester for four days from Monday so we'll be cramming ever more into our time in Framlingham next week.