Muck And Bullets

I had a day metal detecting yesterday. I went with a fellow detectorist up to the Yorkshire Dales and searched some fields that my brother and I have covered with our detectors a number of times over the past twenty years. It is always a pleasant trip out to this part of the Dales (especially when the sun shines on us like it did yesterday) and even if we have searched the fields before, they are big enough to guarantee that we can't have covered every inch.

Which certainly proved to be the case as you can see from the top photo. These are just my finds. My detecting partner found a similar amount. In the morning I searched a bank that the farmer told me had been used as a target for firing practice by the Home Guard during WWII which explains the number of bullets found. Sadly we could not discriminate against these bullets as they produce a extremely positive signal.It can't have been just the Home Guard who  practiced there as, as well as bullets, I found small musket balls and cartridge cases from an earlier period and, keeping with the firearm theme, a child's toy gun.

The afternoon brought a more varied selection of finds. The better ones are those shown above. These are a coin weight marked 18 which dates from the 18th century and was used for verifying Portuguese coins, a bent circular disc which was possibly a coin at one time but is now worn and bent into an S shaped profile (known as a love token) and probably dating from the same period, three lead seals, two with decoration (probably 19th century) and a good silver plated livery button. I also found a few recent coins, some more buttons and some unidentified bits and pieces one of which is shown in the next photo. Not the best day's results in terms of quality items but approaching a hundred signals and one or two interesting finds from fields that have been searched plenty of times in the past.

I don't know what this lead knob or handle might be. Any ideas?

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I headlined today's blog "Muck and Bullets" firstly as a reference to yesterday's firearms related detecting finds but secondly because I wanted to show you the nappies that Sarah has bought for her baby. As you can see, they look nothing like the terry towelling nappies that you could find in a stinking bucket at our house when the kids were tiny. No, Sarah's baby will be sporting the ultimate in swish nappies. She's being green and saving money by using these beautiful nappies which can be changed over and over again without filling the local landfill sites with disposables.

I said on here last week that we had read good reviews of "Bridesmaids" but we weren't very enthusiastic about the trailer. We should have trusted the critics as the film is as funny as anything we have seen in the past twelve months. Kristen Wiig plays Annie, a thirty something woman whose best friend announces her engagement and asks her to be her maid of honour at the wedding. The film goes on to examine Annie's reaction to the wedding plans, jealousy of her best friend's new 'best friend' Helen's commandeering of the festivities and her own failures in business and love. There's a great performance from the IT Crowd's Chris O'Dowd as Annie's love interest and some brilliant comedic scenes as the bridesmaids get together to plan for the big day. The only low point in the film is the strange inclusion of Matt Lucas and Rebel Wilson as a weird Engish brother and sister who share Annie's home with her and seem completely out of place with the tone of the film. That's a minor criticism and there are plenty of very funny scenes to make up for it.