600 Mile Trip Almost Ends In Disaster

If you are a regular visitor to this blog you'll know that one of my hobbies is searching for lost artefacts with my metal detector. I've blogged about some reasonable successes with the machine over the last few years including finding this piece of Roman gold jewellery in September 2011. After going through the British Museum's lengthy procedure the item was recently declared as Treasure and valued at £500. The farmer and I agreed to donate the find to the museum in Penrith, the town nearest to the find spot.

The museum officials wanted a proper presentation of the find and invited me to attend. At over three hundred miles from our new home it was a bit of a trek but I'm keen to promote the hobby whenever I can and, sharing the driving, we set out yesterday morning and arrived  at the museum in plenty of time. 

I was very pleased to see the way that the find had been displayed in a case and enjoyed a quick tour of the museum with the curator Dr Sydney Chapman who told me a fascinating tale of how a coin he was once displaying slipped from his fingers, rolled across the floor and slipped down a crack in the floorboards. 

The photographer duly arrived and asked Dr Chapman to remove my find from its case as he needed it in more light.

Sydney reluctantly agreed to the photographer's request and I gingerly carried the find on its plastic display plinth to the required spot. I don't need to tell you what happened next. The photographer asked me to hold the plinth higher and tilt it towards the camera. As I tilted the find, it slid from the plinth and fell to the floor to gasps from the watching crowd of local museum supporters. To my great relief I didn't tread on it and it didn't slip beneath a floorboard but if you ever see the official photo you will no doubt notice my beetroot complexion. With three hundred miles to drive back I couldn't even steady my nerves with some of the wine on offer after handing the gold back to a mightily relieved curator.

We were back on the road at six thirty and made it back home before midnight. I reckon that we drove about 320 miles each over the day.

While on the subject of detecting displays, I ordered a couple of cases for the new garden office and managed to put some of my nicer finds into them today.

  

I think they look pretty good.

Local Show Was A Real Winner

With the weather turning fine at the weekend we were finally able to do something outdoors. I went for a walk on Friday evening while Marion was at her Zumba class and snapped this photo of the Framlingham Country Show ground.

I thought I could see a face in the sky blowing the clouds away from the fair and perhaps signifying fine days ahead. Can you see it or is it just me?

We waited until Sunday to visit the show and were hugely impressed. There was a great variety of live singers and bands, a tremendous food festival, top quality stalls selling a wide selection of country related products as well as clothing and jewellery; on top of all this there were helicopter rides, a climbing wall and a number of fairground rides as well as a gun dog demonstration and a bloke being chased by a bunch of sheep - not forgetting an exhibition of local art works - some of them extremely good.

It's a good job we went to the cash machine on the way to the show  as there was so much good stuff on offer. We came away with this local produce plus cards from Africa and a case of wine. We were particularly impressed by some of the young entrepreneurs at the show - Scarlett & Mustards' excellent dressings, The Gamekeeper's Daughter's exceptional pies and Hedgerow Cordials' delicious drinks to name but a few - all made and marketed to a very high standard by young people. 

With the castle in the background there can't be another country show anywhere with such a striking backdrop.

Sheep racing

When we got home it was fine enough for us to open the bi-folding doors for the very first time and get a feeling for how things will be in the long summer days to come.

And as the day grew to a close we had one of those skies that was the reason behind buying this particular house. 

I'll leave you with a trailer photo for BBC1's  The Village - starring Maxine Peake as the Gorgon.  

And Now For Something Completely Different

One of my favourite author's just published a new book. You really should try it. Here's what I said on Amazon.

The most original writer around at the moment has done it again. When you thought that Caroline Smailes had gone as far as she could in developing new ideas with "99 Reasons Why", we now have a unique novel that is partly gritty drama, partly screenplay and wholly compelling.

In a run down seaside resort on the North Wales coast a couple of decades ago 14 year old Laurel gets an after school job in the decaying local Victorian swimming baths recently reopened as "The Oracle" by an odd trio of spiritual healers. She's a bright kid and the job is a welcome distraction from looking after her mum's ever expanding brood of kids from an ever expanding number of feckless fathers. 

In the present, sixteen year old Arthur Braxton, finds himself drawn to the same,now derelict, building as he escapes Facebook humiliation by his peers.

I don't want to spoil things for you by saying too much about what happens at The Oracle but there's a clue in the name and the novel develops into a magical mixture of myth and tragedy which I am sure is based on Greek mythology (but I have to hold my hands up to not being well read enough to know the source). In these passages the author takes us away from the grimness of the Welsh coast into a fantasy world fuelled by teen angst and filled with ghosts, spectres, ethereal music and ghastly experiences. And water - so much water.

I thought  of Meg Rosoff's surreal teenage deity in "There Is No Dog" when trying to think of a parallel to this book but Caroline Smailes' young characters inhabit a far darker, bleaker world and the novel is a powerful and chilling view of the difficulties of growing up and seeking love in deprived circumstances. 

Our local book club is reading "Gone Girl" this month. I can't think of much to say about that. Had we chosen "The Drowning Of Arthur Braxton", the discussions would go on into the small hours. It's that sort of book. Love it or hate it you won't have read anything like it.

Greetings From The Garden

It's many months behind schedule but I'm finally using the garden office as I write. I should be looking out onto the beautifully planted new garden which was scheduled to be completed this week. 

But you didn't expect things to run to schedule did you? No, the landscape designer is currently in quarantine in case he is carrying the Norovirus so we won't see him or the huge quantity of plants we've ordered until next week and I have to look out onto the mud that we've lived with since January. I know that the snow has set things back by weeks but it's really becoming a drag now.

Tony completed the steps to the office today but his plasterer didn't turn up to look at the plastering needed before the landscaping is finished.

And without the plasterer the steps can't be finished. I've experienced nothing like this before on any of the home improvement projects we've done. It almost feels as if we're in the manana culture of Spain instead of the go ahead county of Suffolk.

At least Marion and I have been able to get our bit of the job done (on time please note).

Marion did all the months of filing yesterday and then we added the finishing touches to the office by hanging a few paintings, getting all the books onto the shelves and taking all the boxes to the recycling centre.

 

I think it's looking pretty good. And it's quite warm in here too, the heating has not been on and it's 6.30pm as I write.

I'll close today with the excellent news that Sky's A League Of Their Own,  the format created by our son Paul, has been nominated for a BAFTA in the entertainment category. I'm sure that it's just the first of many nominations that he will get in a glittering career. Hope we get to see him on the telly wearing a dinner jacket. 

A Busy Few Days In The Office

The sun shone on us here in Framlingham over the weekend and the castle looked stunning against a backdrop of powder blue sky and fluffy white clouds as we headed to the market on Saturday to stock up on provisions.

Sadly we weren't able to spend much time lazing in The Crown, the Lemon Tree or The Dancing Goat as we were finally able to get into the garage and start to move the furniture and boxes that have been stored there since early January and carry them out into the garden office. We were also able to empty the small bedroom and start preparations to make it a room for the grandchildren.

By Sunday afternoon we had managed to carry all of these boxes and all of this furniture into the garden room. It was hard work lugging all this - we are not as young as we were and we spent much of the time cursing the suppliers of the original office. If they had done a proper job our removal people could have carried this lot out into the garden for us in January. 

On Monday we spent the day in Rochester looking after our granddaughter Catherine while Paul and Josephine went to the filming of Josephine's latest 12 Yard Show for ITV. Catherine was an angel. We took her to her swimming lesson and had a fabulous day with her. 

Today it was back to the hard graft as we moved around all the the furniture we had carried and set it into position. We had to rebuild some of it and also empty all the boxes of books.

We've not quite finished but It's a lot straighter than it was and, when we've sorted out the iPod dock and ten months' worth of filing tomorrow, the office should finally be ready to be used.

If we're lucky Tony will finish the decking outside the office soon. He's made a very good start on it.

Welcome Visitors

We had hoped that we would have finished the house before we started to entertain visitors here but at this rate (snow cancelled the gardener again yesterday) it could be Christmas before that happens. So we were really pleased to see our old friends Janet and David Wareing who stopped over here in Framlingham en route (sort of) to a wedding in Hampshire. I used to sit next to Dave at school and we've been firm friends ever since. Although they didn't manage to make it here until well after five we still managed to fit in a quick tour of the town and a beer in The Crown before heading home for a good meal which was made pretty merry by Dave and Janet's housewarming contribution of a vintage bottle of Dom Perignon.

We had a brief look around our fabulous church this morning before heading to Southwold where the conditions could be described as "bracing". We had planned to walk down to the ferry and cross to Walberswick but, despite reports in the Suffolk magazine that the ferry was open today, it was closed and we had to drive to Walberswick where we had an excellent lunch at The Anchor. It was quite an eye opener to make us realise how useful that ferry is. A crossing of no more than perhaps twenty yards was replaced by a drive of maybe six or seven miles.

Dave and Janet had to get back on the road by three but, although they were with is for less than twenty four hours, we crammed a heck of a lot into the time and it was a very enjoyable stay.

In my last blog I was fairly optimistic about the landscape gardening progress - before it started to snow again. The fences are finished and the borders and lawn are being prepared. But the decking is not quite complete and I think that Tony's estimate of everything being done by the end of the month still looks wildly optimistic. He started on January 7th so that means that by Monday he will have been working on the garden for three months and by the time that the front is done it will be four months. 

Light At The End Of The Tunnel

I suppose that I'm really tempting fate with a headline like that but the sun shone today and that meant that Tony, our near live-in landscape gardener, was able to make some progress with the never ending garden job. We went for a walk to keep out from under his feet and the town looked lovely in the sunlight (even if the wind was cutting through us like a knife).

Here's how things looked when we got back.

There's a lot more decking in place although it's not all screwed down yet.

And things look a lot tidier now that much of the heavy equipment has been moved out of the way.

The idea is for the garden to blend in with the lounge and you can just about see the effect starting to take place in this photo. Tony thinks he'll be finished with the back garden this week and the planned planting can start on Monday and he can get cracking on the front but I still think that he's being unduly optimistic.

We had a lovely Easter weekend with family visiting us in Framlingham for the first time when Paul, Josephine and Catherine came to stay. It was fantastic to see them and we enjoyed a great lunch at The Lemon Tree on Saturday as well as an excellent roast dinner at home on Sunday. Sadly the stay was over all too quickly but it was wonderful to have them and fantastic to see little Catherine developing so quickly - she's a gorgeous little thing.