Clarissa et al.

The garden parasol had shredded so, since the hardwood frame was perfectly good and I was brought up with the idea that if it will mend you don't throw a thing away, I decided to re-cover it. It looks very nice, but . . .

The canvas cost about £20
I worked for about three hours @ let us say £7 per hour for semi-skilled labour
Jess ironed the seams for me - let's say that's worth £4 for child labour.
And Joe also did about an hour of labouring - carrying the sewing machine, iron and ironing board down from the hot little sewing room and into the airy library, then putting them away again at the end, and crawling on the floor picking numerous bits of white cotton off the navy blue carpet - that's £5 for unskilled adult labour.

So that values re-covering the parasol at about £50!

The whole parasol cost £10 in an end of season sale about ten years ago. I note that similar parasols cost between £34 and £76 at the first three sites that came up when I googled 'garden parasol'.

By the way, while she was helping Jess reached for something I couldn't reach. She said she was taller than I, while I said she was more stretchy and had inherited her grandmother's (my mother) exceptionally long arms; we measured ourselves against the wall: she was right (although I am too), but by less than an inch. She has been borrowing my shoes and her mother's for the last year or more.

Being a fifth Sunday it was the Group Service this week, and it was the turn of Rothwell. In theory this is the service people from all the parishes in the group attend; in practice it isn't. On the way Joe and I were making a list of who would and wouldn't be there - we are pretty cynical about this and were very nearly right: one couple from Swallow we thought was still on holiday had returned, and another couple from Nettleton was either away or having a Methodist week (he is both a Methodist Lay Preacher and an Anglican Church Warden - she's an Anglican).

What is perennially true is that people from the smaller villages (which we call the three Cs as they all begin with the same letter) make no attempt to be part of the group: they attend their monthly services (BCP) in their own little churches and don't for the most part even go to Christmas and Easter services outside their own parishes - this includes the Group Lay Chairman who likes telling other people that we should be more of a group and pull together better. (By the way, in this group of parishes small village = less than 100 people, large village = more than 100 people. 7 villages add up to just under 1,000 people.)

After church somebody mentioned that the Sir Joseph Nickerson Memorial Art Gallery was having one of its occasional openings in the afternoon, so I went back after lunch to have a look expecting to see a small collection of twentieth century art.

No, whoever it was said 'Art' to me was misinformed: this was a collection of photographs of Sir Joe, his family, his employees, the famous people he met, and the animals and birds he had shot. Sir Joseph, in case you want to know, was a local land-owner whose Cherry Valley ducks have cornered the market the same way that Bernard Matthews' turkeys have; his agricultural research and innovations are of major importance, and he hit the news in 1984 when Willie Whitelaw tripped while holding a loaded gun and peppered Sir Joseph in the backside.

This was not at all what I was expecting. My interest in shooting is rather less than nothing, in agriculture I care that a balance of efficient farming and healthy wildlife is maintained, and as for the cult of celebrity . . . well we all have pictures of the time we met (or almost met) a member of the royal family, tales of how we sat next to someone famous on the number 7 bus in 1973, and a couple of names we can drop with a resounding clang; all these may be of very minor interest to our friends and family the first and even the second time of telling, but paying £2.50 to see somebody's collection of snaps is, in my considered opinion, daylight robbery!

By the way, there was a very, very small collection of modern art - some watercolours by Sir Joe's mother which were in a style so naive and crudely drawn that they appeared to be the work of a young child, and some fairly run of the mill oil portraits.

Joe and I visited Cusworth Hall for the first time today, and were quite enjoying ourselves. It's five or six out of ten for a well-presented museum with displays of local (Doncaster) historic interest, rather than rapture for an historic house, although the building is well maintained with good information boards in each room, but almost no furniture other than the museum display cases.

That is we were having a good time until it was time for lunch and we went to the café.

My nephew – a perennially hungry young man – and I wanted proper(ish) lunch: we had even started to order when the woman ahead of us in the queue asked if they took cards. "No," came the reply, "it’s cash only." I then asked whether they took cheques, but the reply was the same.

In which century do these people think are living? I know that the cafe is a separate franchise from the museum (which is council run) but they can’t be running a business without a bank account, so they must be able to accept cheques even if they haven't made arrangements for plastic. The woman ahead of me had so little cash that she ended up buying one ice-cream between her two disappointed children, while Joe and I could scrape only £4.20 between us which bought us a cup of coffee each and a slice of cake to share (all cafe prices, by the way, around 50% higher than at Gainsborough Old Hall which I visited yesterday).

How much custom is the café losing with this short-sighted cash only policy?

How much more is lost in goodwill?

Result? (July 30th)

I emailed to complain, and got a reply from the Museums and Galleries Manager.

Thank you for informing me about this. I share some of your concerns. I have asked staff at Cusworth to look into this and reply to you.

Thanks

Latest Email - Tuesday, August 7th

Dear Ms Turner

Thankyou very much for your comments about your recent visit to Cusworth Hall and Park and our tearooms. Your comments have been passed on to me as I am based on on site.

I was pleased to know that you enjoyed your visit to the hall as the house only reopened in May and we are interested in our visitors opinions of the new museum.

You are correct in supposing that the tea room is a franchise but we work in partnership on the site to try and ensure a good visit for all. I was most concerned to hear that you had problems when it came to paying for your coffee and cake. I was also puzzled, as the tearoom do take cheques but not credit cards. I have investigated your complaint.and discussed the matter with the proprietor, Kay Largent who was equally distressed that you had a problem. Both Kay and myself apologise to you and your nephew and are sorry for any embarrasment and upset caused. You were served by a new member of staff who knew that credit cards were not taken and had not realised that cheques were accepted with a relevant guarantee card. Mrs Largent has addressed this with the member of staff who also wishes to say she is sorry this mistake occured.

Credit cards are not accepted by the tearooms as there are financial implications for each transaction as well as the cost of installation etc. For small amounts this can be a problem and some places only accept cards on transactions over £10 for this reason.

The tearooms do take cheques supported by a card. This information is printed on their menu, however, it may be that you did not see this if you ordered from the board displayed behind the counter and chose your cake from the counter. I have passed your suggestion on to Mrs Largent that it would be a good idea to display a clear sign somewhere so that people are forewarned that cards are not accepted.

We are pleased to have a tearoom at Cusworth for our visitors and people usually find it provides good service. As much as possible is homemade on the premises. The ladies take a pride in what they do and so we are all so sorry about this misunderstanding. I hope that, if you enjoyed your visit, you will not be put off visiting again as we want people to enjoy Cusworth to the full. I am certain this will not happen again and was a genuine mistake by the member of staff who was herself concerned at the error.

Once again our apologies to you both.

In fact the member of staff did go 'behind the scenes' to ask somebody else whether cheques were taken, so the error was made by more than just one new member of staff.

I took Joe to Gainsborough today to go to a meeting of the newly formed committee to run the West Lindsey Churches Festival.

I spent a lovely couple of hours going round Gainsborough Old Hall very slowly with nobody to explain anything to or to demand that I hurry up and not read every label, and a less lovely half hour in Lidl grabbing the food necessities for the weekend.

In the meantime Joe had collected a huge bundle of papers reporting on the West Lindsey Churches Festival 2007 including statistics showing that Swallow had far more visitors than any other church open on the second weekend of the festival: the aptly named Greetwell had been the most visited of the first weekend. Joe had also received plaudits on the way he personally welcomed everyone who visited Holy Trinity.

I hope he doesn't get even more grandiose plans for next year!

I have just finished reading David Atenborough's "Life on Air" - I won't call it an autobiography because his family life gets only the briefest of mentions, but it is just what it says on the cover: his life on air - and a very good read it is too.

What really fascinated me was the memories it brought flooding back. Apart from the first couple of Zoo Quests, I think I must have seen every one of the programmes he made right back to "Zoo Quest for a Dragon" 1956 when I was less than two years old. The programmes weren't recorded in those days, so I must have seen it as originally shown. Unless they re-edited the filmed location bits at a later date, I can only assume that I was a wakeful baby the night that the climax was shown and that, rather than miss it, my mother brought me down, but I vividly remember those first shots as the Komodo dragon appeared and the feeling of excitement in the room.

Later when I was 5 or 6 (I believe the programme was Adventure or On Safari ) I first learned the facts of life when a gnu calf was born on screen and shortly afterwards eaten by lions. It may not have been wonderful, but it was amazing.

We were, as you will have gathered, among the lucky ones who had a television pretty early. My grandad passed his old single channel TV on to us with the advent of ITV (which is a few months younger than I am) in 1955, and for the first few years we could receive only BBC. The screen was tiny with a magnifying bubble on a stand in front of it so that the picture was distorted for anyone not sitting directly in front of the screen, and - once my parents had bought a house of their own - the television and bubble lived in a specially constructed cupboard in the corner of the front room surrounded by bookcases

I know, although I don't remember this, that before we moved my other grandad would come into my parents' room and stand in the doorway watching the television although he pretended not to be intereseted in this rival to his beloved wireless.

I think that television gave my generation a wonderfully enriched life. When I think of the marvellous programmes of my childhood Look, On Safari and Adventure for the whole family, Animal Magic and Zoo Time for the children, it seems to me that the whole world was being opened up for us in a way that no previous generation had known. To an extent I knew this at the time because, although just young enough to have taken television for granted all my life, I remember the response of the adults in my life who never ceased to be thrilled.

Of course colour and BBC2 brought more wonderful programmes - Civilisation, The Ascent of Man, Alistair Cooke's America, Life on Earth and all David Attenborough's other programmes which followed - as well as ITV's Survival and BBC's Wildlife on One.

There are parents who deliberately keep television out of their children's lives (and glancing at all the pap that fills so much of the schedule it is easy to see why) yet when so many of these superb programmes are frequently repeated and are available on video/DVD (as well as new ones such as Coast) it seems to me that a limited number of hours a week spent watching wannabe celebs and improbably plotted soaps (to be able to talk about them with the other kids at school) is a price worth paying for the wonder that a family can obtain by watching quality television together, talking about what they have seen, and upon occasion going to see in real life what they have seen on the screen.

I was putting away the shopping, and I just happened to notice how beautiful the bananans looked so I took a photo before adding the old ones to some custard.

My nephew Joe is organising a Sponsored Hymn Sing in aid of Thoresway's church organ which is in need of repair to the tune (pardon the pun) of around £3,000. How glad I am that we have a little electronic organ in Swallow - the sound may not be as good, but the trouble is a lot less.

They have great things planned for the church as well as just the organ. Thoresway is another church in the Swallow group of parishes, and is the one we attend on the fourth Sunday each month. The village is tiny with no hall, school, pub or shop, and the church is the only public building, so the idea is that as repairs to the building are carried out they will put in loos, a kitchen and modern heating as well as taking out some of the pews to provide a useable community space for meetings and social gatherings. There is of course a certain amount of opposition to this plan, and the glib answer is that Jesus may have been a carpenter, but he didn't make the pews Himself. Moreover, if every single person in Thoresway attended church they would still each be sitting in a space for two with the pews as they are. Anyway, that's all in the distant(ish) future; and the sponsored sing is the first non-controversial step on the road to getting the whole community involved.

So here is the flyer that we are putting out in Swallow . . .

SPONSORED HYMN SING
At Thoresway Church
4.00 p.m. on Sunday August 12th

We are going to sing 100 hymns to raise money 50% for Thoresway’s Organ and 50% for the church of your choice – in our case Swallow.
Please will you sponsor us? 1p a hymn lets you in for £1 total (if we survive to the end) while £10 a hymn would bring us £1,000 – the amount is up to you.
Better still, ask us for a sponsor form of your own and come and join in the music.

Just let me know if you are willing to sponsor Joe and me.

Or if you want to join us and at the same time raise some money for your own church I've attached a sponsor sheet to this blog, or I can email you one . Just in case you don't know where Thoresway is - and very few people even in Lincolnshire do - it is a few miles south of the A46 off the high road from Caistor to Horncastle, about 10 miles west of Grimsby.

Isn't it a terrible thing to hang your washing out on a Sunday, but yesterday I was very grateful for a dry day on which to get the washing dry.

This time last year I was writing about excessive heat both at home and at work, indoors and outdoors. Today my father is putting up a low energy towel rail so that we don't have to have whole house heating on to dry the towels properly between showers.

Later - Monday 2.00 p.m.

I spoke too soon - it's raining hard again now, and my last lot of washing is waiting to be hung out.

Later - Monday 9.00 p.m.

The sun was out again by 4.00, and so was the washing. I'm just going to fetch it (and the cat) in.

I just did a quick survey around my friends and acquaintances - well, actually I chatted to them about their holiday plans.

The vast majority have rented a cottage in the Lake District, Scotland, North Wales, Cornwall . . . you get the picture? . . . where they will be joined by their grown-up children and their fiances, spouses and children. At least one family had four generations in the rented cottage.

Of course, some choose to fly to other lands - USA, Portugal, Canada, India and Cyprus - where they will be staying with their grown-up children, siblings, parents or cousins.

Me? I've nothing booked. I think I shall take advntage of a late availablity bargain cottage somewhere in North Yorkshire in September to which I shall take a nephew. Note the date, and remember it doesn't rain on Lissa's holidays.

New Mum
Harrassed Mum

Joe and I went to Thornton Abbey today. This is not unusual as it is just off my route home from work and is the nearest English Heritage site. However, this month they have, after years of being open just one Sunday afternoon in the month if it the weather is Ok and the chap with they key remembers to turn up, reopened the gatehouse on a daily basis with a snazzy new display in the great chamber and an easier access route than up the spiral stairs.

Joe took a load of photos, so here are just a few.

The gatehouse and barbican.

The abbey ruins viewed from the gatehouse.

The great gate. There is a myth that is that it was burned by Henry VIII which is repeated on several websites and by the BBC Look North programme, but the truth is that time and weather wore the gate away.
John Bellew, MP for Grimsby in the 1550s and four times mayor of the borough had a life patent to act for the abbot of Thornton on the King's Bench, which didn't stop him working for Thomas Cromwell and reaping the benefits of this by, among other things, farming the new park at Thornton College (as it became after the dissolution) and fencing it for the king. He was married to Ursula Appleyard, the niece of the last abbot of Thornton, who may or may not have been the same Ursula Appleyard who appears rather tentatively on my family tree.

We took Kristan out to lunch to say 'goodbye' as she has a full-time teaching job for the next two terms covering a maternity leave; it is near to where her boyfriend lives and works and there is a reasonable chance that she may stay at that school: she's a nice lass and we will miss her. Apart from lunch when my day was just boring and very tiring in an overheated room with no natural light, making lists of all the things we have in each of the workshops we do in the museum, while other colleagues were undertaking the same pointless exercise at Normanby. We actually keep 'them in the office' very much up to date with what needs replacing, cleaning, updating etc. and are usually told that there is no money, but it is on the list. Nothing was missing, except what we knew about already.

Kristan and I did sneak an opportunity to join Dianne where she is 'enabling' (in costume as a Roman lady)in the temporary Roman exhibition which is fantastic and we played with everything. We built an arch, sat on a Roman loo, ground corn, I made a mosaic, and Kristan made a bracelet, and we both knocked down a small wall shooting at it with a ballista. We could have dressed up, but we do that most days at work, and we did have to get back to our lists. Some families have already visited and have commented favourably - including a quite severely disabled teenager and a pair of tots who were all kept amused for a long time to the relief of carers who in the first week of their school holidays were already at the ends of their respective tethers. The serious and mainly retired friends of the museum who had been in to attend a lunchtime lecture - some accompanied by visiting grandchildren - also enjoyed a good play. So well worth a visit whatever your age.

I took some photos of the new improved laundry education room yesterday.

It's not quite finished as there are proper picture boards to go up instead of the temporary photos.

Just realised that it was my cousin Shelagh's 60th birthday yesterday, the first of my generation to reach this landmark.

Here she is on the extreme left of each picture, with her next brother and sister in the first picture in about 1953, and with Nan and 7 grandchildren in 1958 (me with back to camera holding little sister's foot -the rest are Shelagh's brother's and sisters)

I received an email yesterday - I won't say from whom as she hasn't given me permission - in which she was complaining about a senior cleric whom she thought (wrongly as it happened) that I might know.

He preached in their parish church yesterday morning on the day's gospel reading - The Parable of the Good Samaritan. Ian preached on the same subject here in Swallow, a nice undemanding sermon about being nice to our neighbours whatever their race, religion or sexuality.

The senior cleric however gave his congregation to understand that only someone as clever as he with a thorough knowledge of classical Greek could possibly begin to understand this 'superficially simple' parable.

Now forgive me if I am wrong, and those who have made a proper study of theology are free to correct me, but is not the whole purpose of a parable to simplify a difficult concept into a form that the young or poorly educated can easily understand? And would Our Lord in his earthly form as a carpenter from Nazareth have understood classical Greek, and, even if he did, would it have been his language of choice to a crowd of Galilean fishermen or even the Pharisee posing the original question?

Well, my correspondent is a relative so of course she waded in and took the cleric to task, not so much about this as about some matters specific to their parish upon which he had chosen to pontificate.

Yesterday was St. Swithin's day.

It rained, including a spectacular thunderstorm just after midnight on what was technically by then July 16th.

If there is truth in the legend that means it will go on raining until August 24th.

Something very weird happened today.

Doreen, who doesn’t live in Swallow, but has just started coming to church here as part of the monthly round of services, said after the service that she had had the strongest impression of a tall priest with a long thin face, wearing a biretta and a red cape standing next to her so close that she was convinced he was going to put his hand on her shoulder.

I showed her some archive pictures, and she picked out this, adding that it was the first time she had been shown an actual picture of someone she had seen in this way, but that there was no doubt that this was the man she had seen.

The Reverend Cyril H. Jacoby was Rector here from 1935 to 1963, and I assume that he died some good long time ago. His very distinctive choice of costume was and is unusual for an Anglican priest, especially one far enough away from the extremes of the anglo-catholic movement to be married.

All this is rather disturbing for someone like myself who is firmly convinced that ghosts are superstitious nonsense based on nothing more than an excess of cheese and pickled onions late at night (or something similar).

If you like ghost stories read on, this one is also supposed to be true . . . Ethel was my grandmother's second (and favourite) sister.

Auntie Ethel's Neighbours
A true story retold

Auntie Ethel didn't stand for nonsense of any kind. She was the headmistress of a Senior Girls' Elementary School, and nonsense was most definitely not a part of the job description. She stood about four foot ten inches tall, had piercing blue eyes, and an almost uncanny knack of divining the truth of an improbable tale, and the untruth of a plausible narrative. Her girls feared, respected and adored her, and no-one ever had the temerity to doubt her veracity.
It happened more than half a century ago, and there is not a shred of corroborative evidence, but if Auntie Ethel said it was the truth, then that undoubtedly is what it was.
When she retired, she moved out of the school house and bought herself a house on a new estate which was being built on the edge of the town. The house was so new that when she moved in, the other half of the semi was unoccupied and remained so for several weeks. Auntie Ethel went about the business of settling into her new abode - arranging furniture, books and ornaments, hanging pictures, meeting the neighbours and reaching terms with the local tradesmen, until the day came when a Pickfords van drew up at the house next door and began to disgorge its contents.
Undoubtedly, Auntie Ethel was interested in her new neighbours, but she had far too much to occupy her in her own house to spend the morning staring out of her front window making a mental inventory of their belongings. However, by the middle of the morning the van had gone and she felt that it would no longer be an unpardonable intrusion to make the first friendly overtures; so she put the kettle on the gas ring to boil, folded her apron neatly away in a kitchen drawer, smoothed her hair in front of the hall looking-glass, and went to pay her first call on the people next door.
Time might eventually make them backdoor friends, but courtesy and custom demanded the formality of the front door on this first occasion. The wait after she rang the bell was of some minutes duration, and Auntie Ethel allowed herself the luxury of giving way to inquisitiveness so far as to glance through the still uncurtained expanse of the sitting room window. A few larger pieces of furniture had been placed by the removal men, but the sofa, chairs, occasional tables and rugs had been left huddled together with half-a-dozen laden tea chests in the centre of the room. On one of the chairs, unresponsive to either the sound of the doorbell or the face at the window, sat an old lady slowly unwrapping and examining the contents of the largest packing case. Auntie Ethel looked away.
The young man who answered the door was hardly dressed to receive company, but, then, it had not crossed Auntie Ethel's mind that he would be. Her perceptive eye took in every detail of his old paint-bespattered flannels and knitted waistcoat as he finished pulling on a tweed jacket to hide his rolled-up shirt sleeves.
"Yes?" he asked. "Can I help you?"
“I live next door," she replied, taking note of the hastily suppressed irritation which crossed his face. "I'm just making elevenses, and I wondered if you would like me to bring you round a cup of tea."
A young woman appeared from the direction of the kitchen, smiling, her hand held out in greeting.
"That would be lovely. I haven't unearthed the kettle yet although I'm sure that I packed it near the top, and as for the teacups . .”
"I know," said Auntie Ethel; "I've only been here a few weeks myself. Well, I mustn't detain you; I'll be about five minutes with the tea."
Back in her own kitchen, Auntie Ethel made the tea, and poured it out into three of her second best cups carefully placing the saucers on top to keep it warm, and arranged them with the milk and sugar on a tray.
This time, almost before she had rung the bell, both the young people were on the doorstep ready to receive her. As he took the tray into his hands, the young man hesitated, then asked,
"Are you coming in to have tea with us?"
"Oh, goodness no! I wouldn't dream of intruding on your first day. I know perfectly well that you've got more than enough to do without having to bother with visitors. Just pop the tray back when you've finished, and don't bother about washing up.!'
The young man glanced at the tray again, and looked puzzled.
“But there are three cups.”
"Of course. for you, your wife, and the old lady."
“What old lady?"
"The one in the sitting room. I saw her as I came by."
The young couple looked at each other, the puzzlement growing. "There is no old lady. There's nobody here but ourselves."
Auntie Ethel had always been very firm with her girls on the subject of good manners and agreeableness; on the other hand, she was not one to let a clearly erroneous statement go unchallenged.
"I assure you that she was there five minutes ago. She was unpacking a box of china ornaments."
The young man shook his head in perplexity; clearly he did not wish to contradict her directly again.
"Would you mind describing this old lady?"
Auntie Ethel had no objection to humouring the young man by answering his strange request.
"Iron grey hair done in a bun at the nape of her neck, navy blue dress with an oft-white polka-dot, long cuffs, draped neck, matching belt, small navy hat decorated with artificial cherries . ."
As she spoke the colour drained from the young woman's face, and, before Auntie Ethel had fairly begun on her description of the hat, the young woman had let out a muffled shriek and fled into the kitchen.
Auntie Ethel’s narrative stuttered to a halt.
"What's the matter? What have I said to upset her?"
"You have just described my wife's mother to the life,” replied the man. "She died six weeks ago."

It does seem a shame when we have well worked out workshops taking about one and three-quarter hours each, that schools turn up expecting us to rush through them in an hour usually because the bus company is holding them to ransom over the price. Both Dianne and I had different schools with this request today, and I thought I had suffered with mine especially the afternoon group who were silly, giggly and under-prepared (and that was just the teachers) - the boys on the whole were worse and the girls were better.

Then Dianne told me about her little ones in the laundry and I realised that my problems were as nothing compared to her miniature rabble. One of the adults had irrirtable bowel syndrome and when she went to the loo all her group went with her! It was the first time with the newly designed back room in the laundry and Dianne feels that there are quite a number of problems to resolve as it took her over an hour to sort out the muddle they had left.

An added problem is that we both need to think of a tactful way of suggesting that the dressing up clothes are simply that, and in no way resemble anything worn by children at any time during Queen Victoria's long reign. The full length velvet dress for the rich girl looks as if it comes off a cheap Christmas card of carol singers in glitter snow, while the poor girl's gypsy blouse and matching mob cap (orange) could be used as an illustration of an all purpose coarse costume for historic plays of any period from late mediaeval to early twentieth century. When, by googling for an appropriate illustration, I found the exact costume described by its makers thus "Ideal Victorian, Edwardian, Elizabethan or Renaissance peasant girl costume. Includes dress, mob hat and waist coat. 100% polyester.", while these very similar rich girls' costumes follow the same fancy dress school of thought,

The rich boy's long velvet trousers and jacket worn with a shirt and bow tie suggest to me a not very successful teddy boy rather than a young gentleman of the Victorian period. Rachel and Vicky bought these travesties (I think that the rich costumes were actually made to order), and the museum has paid out good money. But schools are paying us good money to provide specialist historical education, and offering them such costumes is just the same as telling them lies. How can Dianne and I say this to our immediate bosses without giving rise to hurt feelings? It is a real problem, and any advice would be welcome. My best solution so far is to encourage visiting teachers to mention lack of historical accuracy in these costumes as part of the feedback process, but it's a pretty sneaky way of doing things. The silly thing is that the museum has an excellent image archive which includes dozens of shool photographs like this which show real children in the area in the late Victorian/Edwardian period of the laundry.

While here we have the truly horrible excesses of the dress of rich children, although sailor suits and dresses would be more typical of what they were actually wearing in the 1890s/early 1900s

Moreover I have books and books of genuine costume pictures - some with proper patterns which just need scaling up to be used. They could have borrowed any of these.

Jean is 76 years old and she isn't my auntie. In fact I only met her today.

She came to Normanby Hall with this morning's party of five and six year olds and has been a voluntary helper at their school for four days a week for the last sixteen years, and still loves every minute of it. Everyone calls her Auntie Jean - teachers, pupils and parents alike - and I got the impression that everyone loves her. Don't get an idea of some sweet old lady - she made some rather astringent comments to me during the course of the morning - and I reckon she is a pretty strong force for stability and continuity in the school.

We are fairly busy this week. Several schools are catching up on outings cancelled during the floods. Yesterday I found myself doing the Bugs Life workshop which I haven't done in the last three years with Dianne who has seen it only once. Dianne's degree is in zoology, but apparently insects didn't form a significant part of the syllabus (and it was forty years ago). Actually Bugs Life is fairly straightforward, and it is rare for children to come up with any creatures much outside general knowledge. On the other hand, with the history workshops (especially the Victorian ones) I feel that my general knowledge will stand considerable probing, while with natural history I tend to feel that my knowledge could easily be pushed to its limit by a not particularly demanding question. As a result of this workshop I have mosquito bites all over my legs, several on my arms and one on my tummy: I itch like hell, and have applied anti-histamine cream and calamine lotion.

Today's workshop was also outdoors - in the walled garden rather than out in the park - when we did Trug to Table. I like this one a lot better; I talk a pretty good garden and the social history of the nineteenth century gardeners and their employers is right up my street. The only real problem with Trug to Table is that it covers so many areas of the school syllabus (history, science, maths, geography), and has so many possible worksheets attached to it at so many levels from foundation to year 6 at the very end of key stage 2, that we have very little idea until we meet the bus and talk to the teacher exactly what we will be covering in that praticular visit.

Tomorrow I am in the Victorian schoolroom. Then next week - the final week of term - sees me as the wife of an ironstone worker in the middle of the nineteenth century and a laundress at the end of the same century. Then it's back to being myself with the dreary task of stock-taking so that any new equipment can be ordered during the summer to be in place for the first school parties of the new school year in September.

I went to Helen's to take some more pictures of the puppies this evening now that their eyes are open and they have started walking. Unfortunately they were all asleep.


However, Daisy and Rowan thought it would be nice to get a bit of attention . . .

Well, nobody expected that at the beginning of the fortnight.

A British winner at Wimbledon!

Don't mistake me for a tennis fan, but I really did enjoy the mixed doubles from the quarters through to the final. And what charmers Jamie Murray and Jelena Jankovic are with their smiles for good shots by their opponants, their laughter and their obvious pleasure in the game.

And, after all that rain, a finish to the tournament on the scheduled day. Amazing!

Another one borrowed from Rev Ruth. This is my Weemee, and my best friend's - trouble is there is nothing wee about me widthways or Liz lengthways.

and here are my nephews and niece . . .

Joe, Jake, Josh and Jess - otherwise known when younger as Grumpy, Wingey, Stroppy and Squawk.

Fed up with all the rain Joe and I decided to have a day out yesterday (Thursday) so we took ourselves to Hardwick Hall.

As a teen-ager I was fascinated by a television series about Bess of Hardwick. This wonderful series starring Hilary Mason in a tour de force role appears now to be completely forgotten, not available on DVD or video, not even mentioned in the late Miss Mason's IMDb list; yet at a time when television was producing such classics as The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R this (produced, I suspect, on a much lower budget) stands out in my mind as the real must watch television. I think I made my first visit to Hardwick not long after seeing this series, although my guide book (a real classic among guide books written by Mark Girouard) dates from 1976 - six years after the television series.

Anyway, our day out started in sunshine, and we stopped for coffee and a banana in Clumber Park. The road I had planned to take was closed due to floods so we took an alternative route. The grass carpark was distinctly waterlogged and a somewhat over-officious 'park-meister' was carefully signalling people onto the less soggy areas. Unfortunately he seemed rather less than aware of the fact that cars have doors and was flapping his hands at me trying to get me much too close to a lady who was busy getting out of the previous car; why he wanted us so close I don't know since the place wasn't exactly crowded.

The house was, as always, fascinating and there were several rooms and displays which were new to me since our last visit three or four years ago, and we enjoyed interesting discussions with the room guides in several of them.

By the time we had finished tea (Derbyshire cream tea for me and carrot and corriander soup for Joe) it was raining. We risked the old hall, but it was just too wet to enjoy the gardens, so we didn't even try.

Anyway, here is a picture of the 'new' hall taken from the ruins of the old which has come out rather well despite heavy rain..

One thing I wonder, is it true that there really have been people going round the house who ask in all seriousness why Bess built her house so close to the motorway? Surely this much told tale is apochryphal? This picture of the view including the motorway gives a much clearer idea of how very wet the afternoon was.

Today it was back to work - a morning putting together flat pack stuff for the laundry, followed by an afternoon of Victorian schoolroom with the school my god-daughter and her sister attended until they went on to secondary school - the same school which on one school outing managed to leave a child behind at the swimming pool. I am glad to say that there were no such mishaps this time, and the children were very good indeed keeping their teachers almost under control even the jokey one.

The post has just come.

I've been paid - good.

I have also received a DVD in a brown A5 envelope clearly addressed all the way down to United Kingdom - British first class stamp with Graham Hill in his racing car on it and an unreadable postmark except for the date which is July 3rd. The DVD was wrapped in a blank sheet of white A4 copy paper.

That's it. No return address. No note "Dear Lissa - here's some of our holiday footage / your godchild/nephew/niece graduating/getting married/getting an award / some archive family pictures / a message from our long lost cousin in Outer Mongolia / the DVD you ordered about constructing a nuclear reactor in your back garden (I haven't)/ a blank disc for those photos you promised me in 1997 - nothing to indicate what it is about or from whom it is sent.

I popped it into the lap top and tried to play it - dangerous proceeding it could contain a virus to kill off my computer (or rather father's since mine only does floppies), but I didn't think about that until later. Nothing. Black screen. No sound.

Does some well meaning friend or relative think she has sent me something she really wants to share? Have I ordered this on behalf of one of the children? I don't know, and it looks as if I never will! Unless you sent it, in which case tell me what it is supposed to be.

I'm professional, not manual and it shows - two days of physical work and I'm shattered; so are those of my colleagues who volunteered to help.

When we do the Victori