A Week Off

From blogging that is. It's hardly been a week off in other respects. Last Saturday we drove up to Ormskirk in Lancashire to celebrate the 60th birthday or our dear friend Jane Haworth (centre in this picture). 

No, we can't believe it either. Whatever it is that keeps Jane looking so young, we could do with some of it.

We had a great weekend and managed to spend an hour or two with my mum in Southport which made it a doubly nice visit. After that it was time to drive home to Suffolk where we, as always, had plenty to do.

The fabulous summer weather has continued (in the main) and Marion took advantage of it on Wednesday to take a trip down to the beautiful Dedham area with a couple of friends and spend an enjoyable hour rowing on the river Stour.

It's usually me who does the rowing but Marion appears to be a natural.

While she was away I found time to do (what else) a bit of metal detecting. The field that I searched last week under nasty stubble that left me scratched to bits has now been ploughed so, instead of suffering bleeding legs I ended up walking lopsidedly across the field like a man with a club foot. 

This is what I tipped out of the bag when I got home.

And here are some of the finds.

Two medieval cut half pennies. The top one unidentified the second William I of Scotland 

A medieval silver penny. Henry III York mint

Fragment of a medieval bronze pot rim

Another medieval penny. This one is Edward III London

A small coin weight

An unusual Victorian watch winder

Another cut medieval half penny. 

Although this may not look a great deal to the uninitiated, I was quite happy with the finds. I have had a couple more trips out with the detector including a visit to a meadow owned by someone I follow on Twitter who kindly offered to let me search. I took a friend who is interested in trying out the hobby and he found a complete crotal bell. Some detectorists go years without finding one of these so it was a good second try for him - on his first trip he found a hammered coin and a medieval buckle.

I'm still not fully engaged in the Pokemon Go craze but While Marion was chatting to a friend in Framlingham yesterday morning I sat outside the Co-Op and opened the app.

In a few minutes I had caught a Venonat, a Krabby and Weedle. Childish? Me?

One of the joys of living in a market town is shopping at the market and, yet again, we got some fabulous lobster from Darren on the market yesterday. It's a simple dish but, accompanied by a delicious white wine from Fram Wine shop it makes a perfect Saturday night treat.

I spotted this fabulous vintage car outside our friend Richard's shop In Da Cottage yesterday. It must look like a silver bullet when driving on sunny days like this

Because these really have been sunny days. I didn't check the temperature in the car today but it must have nudged thirty degrees in Framlingham. Instead of sitting on the decking soaking up the rays, I sat beneath the pergola which is starting to get a good cover of climbing plants to shelter us from the sun.

I was sitting there working on my second novel which has been beautifully copy edited by Caroline of Goldsmith Publishing. I'm very pleased with the work that Caroline has done and I'm doing my very best to trim down a few passages to reduce the novel from its current 85,000 words. Mind you, having spent ages writing those 85,000 words, it's not easy to delete some of them.

While the second novel is nearing completion I put the first book on special offer on Kindle for five days.

It would have been good if it had got to number one but I'm happy to see number two in Holiday fiction and thirty-nine in Romance. Maybe the new book will hit number one.