Clarissa et al.

Sunday

Spring Forward
Fall Back

It is so easy to remember, and I got it right except that custom and my bladder got me up around 7.45 (summer time) - so quarter-to-seven.

Having fitted a lot of little jobs into my extra hour, I arrived at church at 9.20 in good time for the 9.30 service advertised, only to discover that, in order for the priest to fit in an 11 o’clock service elsewhere they had brought it forward to 9.15. Thank goodness the first hymn was a long one so they had only just reached the summary of the law when I took my place. Rightly or wrongly, if by any chance I arrive after the general confession (or even the creed) I feel I have to back-track and go through the missed parts silently in order to validate my presence at the communion table.

I have to say that something which really irritates me in our group of parishes is the way that some of the churchwardens treat the church as a private club for one village and don't make sure that the rest of the group - even if only the half-dozen or so of us who regularly visit the other churches - is kept informed. You can't cancel a parish service because the churchwarden's family will be away that weekend even if the parish is so tiny that it reduces the congregation by 70%.

Monday

Group Meeting for the Swallow Group of Parishes. Very badly attended with no reperesentatives from three of the seven parishes, and only 'the usual suspects' from the others. A lot of financial stuff, BUT I have got my pew sheet plan through by which I email a basic letter to representatives of each parish with the service times for the next two months, and that representative adds local news and contacts and prints off pew sheets for his/her own church. These service times will also now be published in the parish magazines of the two groups with which we are 'allied' during the interregnum and in the two local papers.

This meeting clashed with our Book Group meeting, which Joe attended. I picked up him and the books just as the meeting was ending, and I am now reading last month's choice 'Pompeii' by Robert Harris (which I missed through being on holiday) and this month's 'The Jane Austen Book Club' by Karen Joy Fowler. I'm only about 100 pages into the former, but the opinion that it is 'a cracking read' expressed by one of the smallish number of men in the group would seem to be a valid one.

Well, we had the Reading Group Ghost Story evening last night which Joe was so keen on and, as I suspected would be the case, the members stayed away in droves so that there were just the six of us and Joe's customary over-catering. Anyway, it gives me the excuse I needed to say that those reading group meetings held at our house are not so well attended as those actually in the village whither the majority can walk, so we'll take our turn bringing a plate or a bottle but not host any more.

I actually quite like hosting things, but Joe gets a bee in his bonnet and puts out dozens of china cups, loads of silver and scores of candles which tends to turn a simple social evening into a major chore. The pots can't be put in the dishwasher, and the setting up and clearing up take hours instead of minutes. Apart from occasional semi-formal dinners, I am of the cast iron pan full of casserole set on the middle of the kitchen table school of entertaining so that everyone (including me) can just enjoy themselves without fuss and help themselves to as much or as little food as they fancy.

Having said that, the evening would actually have been quite enjoyable if had not been for the terrible airless heat from all those candles - more even than Joe's usual since he felt that a ghost story evening should be entirely candle-lit! Never let anyone tell you that the houses of the wealthy before the twentieth century were cold: even allowing that the rooms of a stately home would have been bigger, believe me candles generate more than enough heat to keep even the chilliest person warm.

We kicked off with Joe's choice of story - a recording read by Richard Pascoe of "The Upper Berth" by F Marion Crawford - beautifully read, but the author was obviously paid by the word and had spun a very slight tale out to an interminable 33 minutes of ponderous Victorian prose! I then read one of my own short stories "Lost in the Mists of Time", Andy Emmerson read a 'true' story which he had found on the internet about a haunted road near where he lived as a child, and then we exchanged a variety of 'true' tales of ghosts encountered in our homes and by our friends and relatives. We remain somewhat sceptical whatever the evidence.

One nice thing which did come out of the evening was, that having decided to dress appropriately, I had found a black velvet dress which I had almost forgotten I owned (it is about 25 years old): it claims to be a size 12 and it fits! It also looks remarkably good now I have taken the ruching elastic out of the wrists - these uncomfortable sleeves which tended to ride up and cut into my fore-arms were I recall the reason I wore it so seldom when it was new.

I am becoming increasingly irritated by what I would term 'second hand' blogs.

Obviously I don't expect every blog to be a daily account of the writer's life either in general or a specific aspect of it, although those are generally the sort I most enjoy reading. Such blogs will naturally contain from time to time comments on the news, on books, on television programmes - these are a part of our lives. There will be occasional lengthy quotes from various sources which will be followed by comments by the blogger, though I would suggest posting a link to longer stories makes more sense than copy and paste. We may even 'borrow' published pictures to illustrate our stories.

However, it seems to me that there are too many blogs which consist largely or wholly of copy and paste from other websites with little or no personal input. I don't deny that I have read some good jokes, seen some stunning pictures and joined in some interesting debates on such blogs, but in some cases I am beginning to feel that servicing the blog by the inclusion of random media stories has become more important to the blogger than relating the content to his/her personal concerns.

We were invaded today by the Roman Army who set up camp in the museum garden.

They captured some slaves - a practice which, under the circumstances, one can only approve and which I feel should be adopted in classrooms up and down the country.

We Romano-British ladies sat watching

In the meantime visitors to the museum were constructing catapults, making pots, making jewellery, and enjoying a wide variety of activities before and after a hog roast. It was here that we Romano-British ladies came into our own serving those authentic Roman drinks tea, coffee and chocolate.
This is the day's youngest visitor - six week old Strawberry, photographed (with parental permission) with her owners.

Strawberry is enjoying some morsels from the hog roast, which she washed down with one of those individual containers of milk.

Auntie Barbara travelled about 5,000 miles to visit her brother, and her nephews and nieces. At the beginning of her trip she made a brief visit to her brother David, with the promise of a return before she went back to Canada. He died yesterday, and I can't decide whether it is good chance that she was able to see him one last time and will be in England for his funeral, or the rottenest of luck that it should happen at this time. At the moment she is with Pam who, like me, is not related to David and may well never have met him; does it make it easier that she is not having to offer comfort to people as much affected as herself? Or does the fact that she is with people who, however sympathetic, do not personally share her grief make it harder to bear? I think that the fortnight of her holiday before the funeral will be completely overshadowed by this, so that any enjoyment of the visit will be tinged with guilt, and when she doesn't manage to enjoy outings and treats laid on for her a different guilt at not being able to take sufficient pleasure in them.

There is also a horrid bit of me that remembers an episode of Seinfeld called The Implant in which George Constanza tries to get hold of a copy of a death certificate in order to get 50% back on his plane ticket. You can see where I am going with this . . . not a nice thing to think. Not my money, not my bereavement and certainly not my business.

This mystery concerns the male inability to multi-task.

Last Friday Joe arrived early with the intention of keeping our guest company and making sure she wanted for nothing. I gave him several simple instructions before I left for work:-
- hang out the washing
- put away the pots and cutlery I have already taken out of the dishwasher.
- light the fire once the sun has gone off the sitting room
- at lunchtime serve and eat the pheasant and vegetable soup I have left in the slow cooker.

I got home at four o'clock to find that he had accomplished just one out of four, and there are no prizes for guessing which it was.

How come petrol at Morrisons in Scunthorpe is 94.9, when it is 96.9 at Morrisons in Grimsby? I am told that there are places in Scunthorpe where it is 93.9. On the other hand the Jet station where the Humber Bridge road joins the motorway petrol is 99.9, and at a small garage in the country it costs 101.9.

It seems that, despite the cold, wet summer, this is a very good fruit year. I've just finished harvesting the October apples and pears. The Howgate Wonder and the Ellison's Orange Pippin are enormous, scabby and delicious. The Conference pears and the Blenheim Orange are more numerous than I have ever known before and, like the the Bramleys (as usual) and the unknown variety, are virtually blemish free.

I've left all the windfalls, the undersized ones and those that have been insect or bird attacked to feed the birds throughout the winter. I've given away loads, and I still have a storage problem. What's more I still have an enormous, ancient apple tree of unknown variety to pick, but I usually leave that one until early November when, maybe, I will have used enough to make room for them.

What happened to scrumping? I'd welcome a few young scrumpers. Anyone around this coming half-term is welcome to a bag of fruit.

Driving home from Newark, whither I had taken Auntie Barbara to catch her train to Hatfield for her school reunion, I heard a discussion on the radio about the importance of children spending part of every day singing and making music to help make them into rounded, relaxed people(which tied up with what Barbara had been telling me about great-grandsons Luke and Carter and their toddlers' music group).

It sounds wonderful - time set aside in every school day for joyous music making which has nothing to do with targets and all to do with enjoyment, but what about the teachers? If I just think about my two best friends, both of whom teach nursery (brave souls). Becky plays the piano competently and sings well; Liz doesn't. Now, I have no doubt that Liz can lead a rousing chorus of The Wheels on the Bus as happily as anyone and gives the children a great start, but to give children theraputic music on a daily basis you need a daily progression and a real love of music to impart to the children as well as a wide repertoire of tunes with which the children can sing along or to which they can bash their drums and rattle their maracas. Are there enough such people in the education system?

I'm all in favour of children singing every day: I owe my huge repertoire of hymns and carols to daily school assemblies throughout my childhood far more than to weekly church attendance for most of my life, and vast numbers of secular songs to Time and Tune and Singing Together on the radio and talented music teachers who took us year by year through the Oxford School Song Books.

I'm not a particularly musical person, but the pleasure of being able to sing (my pleasure rather than the listener's) song after song as I work or drive (yes, I am that nutter you see singing alone in the car) is enormous, and a gift which everyone deserves to be given. However, its does so much depend on the teacher. At my infant school it is clear to me now that there was no music specialist - nobody who had either the skill or the enthusiasm to impart a love of music making to us, and that weekly band and singing lessons were a duty which had to be done. At junior school we had a headmaster who was a star of the local operatic society, an odd little lady who taught recorder, and several class teachers who did swaps with other class teachers to share their musical expertise with all the classes so that from Monday's Singing Together, through recorder band, class singing and choir practice, to Friday's hymn practice we had music every day, as well as the two or three hymns in assembly each morning.

Both at the time, and even more from an adult perspective, I can pick a lot of faults with my primary schooling, but the music we were given in the four years of junior school was phenomenal, and was to an extent continued with Mrs Hutton at the grammar school, although, after her general approach in the first two years, music became more of a specialism reliant upon private lessons for progress in the orchestra or as a soloist with the choir.

At the moment I am enjoying a visit from Auntie Barbara. This is the first day this week that I haven't been at work so we (thrillingly) went to Morrisons, then on into Cleethorpes to see the dreadfully dilapidated state on Mummy's and Uncle Peter's childhood home, the over restored state of mine from early childhood (plastic window frames and door), and the very smart job done on the house I grew up in.

Yesterday Pa had a meeting in KingsLynn, so Joe and Barbara went with him and had a look at the museums there, and went to visit Captain George Vancouver RN (June 22, 1757 – May 12, 1798) who went from KingsLynn to explore and chart the coast where most of the Huston clan now lives.

This evening we went to Thoresway for their Harvest Festival. It was a very nice, simple service although of all the churches in the group this is one which should never have an evening service except in the height of summer as it is up a short, steep, unlit track away from the unlit village street, and I was very glad of my new wind-up torch. Moreover they have a heating system in the church but it needs to be turned on about three days in advance, costs a fortune to run and doesn't actually warm anything much, so they don't use it.

Have you seen 'The Tudors'? Is it really as bad as I think it is? I mean really bad like 'The Borgias'?

Time was when the likes of Keith Michell, Glenda Jackson, Annette Crosbie, Dorothy Tutin, Anne Stallybrass, Elvi Hale, Angela Pleasance, Rosalie Crutchley, Daphne Slater, Robert Hardy, Bernard Hepton, Michael Williams, Margaretta Scott, John Woodvine, James Laurenson, Angela Thorne, Robin Ellis, Peter Egan and all the others had us almost believing that they really came from that period of history, speaking dialogue into which the writers had almost seamlessly placed the authentic utterances as though, like the bi-coloured python rock snake, they always spoke like that.

In this current series the actors speak modern (not timeless or period) dialogue, have modern hair dressing (including several ladies with fringes!), and generally act like people attending a fancy dress party rather than professional actors trying to recreate an authentic period of history. Not that the dialogue they are given is any help: from the, perhaps pedantic, irritant of 'Your Majesty' at a time when 'Your Grace' was still the correct form of address to Henry, via the casual use of first names, to the modern 'calling a summit' the dialogue is dire. Don't misunderstand me: I think 'Shakespeare in Love', for example, with its wittily un-period dialogue is original and brilliant; but there is neither originality nor brilliance in the dialogue of 'The Tudors'.

Nor do the actors appear to have been cast with any consideration taken as to whether they look like the extant portraits of the people they are portraying.
A dark Henry VIII? . . . . . . A slim Wolsey?

No, definitely a ginger. . . . No, he really did eat all the pies.

Did I miss trailers and fanfares while I was on holiday? Or is it hidden away in a late night slot because the BBC is aware of what a turkey it really is?

I think the pose and expressions of the actors in this picture show 'The Tudors' for the soap in fancy dress that it is.

"After the Lord Mayor's Show comes the dustcart"

After the Harvest Festival and Supper comes the clean-up. So that is what Christine, Kath, Peter and I spent the morning doing, and now the Village Hall is spotless and shiny again. While we were there a couple turned up in their car and asked if they could leave it on 'the lot' while they went to see the church. (This gave us a clue as to where they came from.) So we said yes, of course, and I went to my car to fetch the church key. We have a key notice, but 3 of the 4 keyholders were cleaning the village hall and the other one is in America enjoying a New England fall, so they wouldn't have had any luck if they had gone looking.

Anyway, it turns out that he is a direct descendant of Stephen Gibbons who lived at Vale Farm in the middle of the 19th century, was Lord Yarborough's agent, and whose memorial (containing a maths mistake about his age) is in the church on the south wall of the nave. Three of Stephen Gibbons' sons emigrated ending up in Alberta where they farmed in an area not dissimilar to the Lincolnshire Wolds. According to Wikipedia "Gibbons is a town in central Alberta, Canada. It is located on Highway 28A, 37 km (23 miles) north-east of Edmonton. The town was named for William R. Gibbons who settled in the area and was created from the merger of two smaller communities: Astleyville and Battenburg. Gibbons is situated on the southern banks of the Sturgeon River which is a major tributary of the North Saskatchewan River."

The church apparently is a smaller, but clearly modelled upon Swallow's.

When they had finished looking at the church, I directed them to Vale Farm where I hope Basil gave them a warm welcome, though I warned them that Joyce can be a bit suspicious of strangers.

It was our Harvest Festival and Supper tonight.

The Festival was as usual with the largest congregation of the year (barring weddings, christenings and funerals) and the church looking lovely with all the flowers and fruits. I didn't take any photographs.

Afterwards was the supper: usually we have fish and chips which are provided by a local chip shop using fish donated by the Cleve family who are Grimsby fish merchants. Since last year they have lost their contract to supply that shop, which left us on the horns of a dilemma. In the end we decided against buying in fish and chips, and in favour of making fish pies from donated fish, to which we added cottage pies and vegetarian cheese and onion bakes. We served these with a choice of peas, mushy peas and salad (or all three) and were delighted with how successful the evening was. We slightly over-catered on the meat front but that was a fault in the right direction, and I know what's for Saturday lunch in several Swallow households.

As well as having a great evening we have made a nett profit on the supper of £533.43 before we add in gift aid. In a village with a population of about 150, this is an amazing sum. Of course everyone who comes to the harvest festival doesn't live in Swallow, but numerically the attendance is between 30% and 40% of the population which translated into city terms is fantastic: just think of a gathering of 35,000 people in Grimsby, or 2,500,000 in London!

Well, I'm back, and this is what I did . . .

SATURDAY

On the way (avoiding motorways which are not conducive to a holiday mood) we visited Selby Abbey, a magnificent Romanesque parish church, and Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal where we ate our picnic before walking through the park to the ruins, where it really wasn't as dark and moody as this picture would imply.

As well as the abbey (comments on beauty of the setting and the building may be taken as read since this is our customary stopping off point for the north west and I can’t go on saying the same thing) we visited Fountains Hall and fell into conversation with a man from a bit further south in Lincolnshire who also deplored aloud the fact that the pine panelling had been stripped which led to a lengthy discussion of the relative merits of the houses, castles and abbeys of Lincolnshire.

Thence we drove north mainly along the Ure valley to Burtersett near Hawes.

My first impression of Sunnyside Cottage was that it was easily the worst equipped cottage I have ever stayed in.

The description states “All fuel, power, bed linen and towels included in the rent.” However when we arrived there was a small bucket of coal and a packet of firelighters. During the week I bought four sacks of logs and one of sticks at a cost of aroud £3 per bag. The grate had not been cleaned out – the ash pan was full to over-flowing and the hearth was filthy. Moreover there were no matches, so it was a bit difficult to know how we were expected to light the fire. Fortunately I carry a camping gas stove in my picnic set which ignites itself when you turn it on, so we brought that in and made spills out of an old diocesan magazine I had left in the car.

The crockery, cutlery and kitchen utensils were fairly minimal, and there was no milk jug unless you count a miniature cream jug so small that it would be hard presssed to hold milk for two cups of tea – certainly wholly insufficient for breakfast cereal. The teapot leaked – not just dribbling when poured – but the pot slowly seeped from below the spout whenever it was more than a qaurter full.

There was nothing in the larder cupboard – not so much as salt and pepper pots, let alone salt and pepper. I expect to take supplies - and had done so - but work on the assumption that certain basics will be supplied. Every previous cottage has had a basic store cupboard – condiments, flour, sugar, teabags etc. – and one in Northumberland had an ‘emergency’ cupboard full of tins and packets with instructions to replace like with like if you used anything, while one in the Lake District had a drawer full of enticing jars of dried herbs and spices. Several had a tray set for tea to welcome us, and at one in the Lake District (a different one) the kettle was boiling on the Aga. I know that people need to be careful about perishables, but not to the extent of there being nothing at all!

There were lots of other little irritations – no table lamp in the sitting room, no looking glass in the front bedroom, insufficient plugs, trailing extension wires (surely a contravention of health and safety?), doors that didn’t close properly, blunt kitchen knives, no hand towel in the kitchen, only two tea-towels for a whole week, no large scissors, no matches, torches without batteries in them, radiators in need of bleeding (and no little bleeder), no suitable light for make-up or shaving (depending on gender) in either bedroom or bathroom, no bath mat . . .

Don’t misunderstand me: apart from the filthy hearth and some less than shiny brass, the cottage was spotlessly clean (I am sure the cleaner does as much as she can in the time for which she is paid) and much of the equipment and furnishings were clearly brand new; indeed Sunnyside Cottage felt as though somebody had furnished and equipped it in a single afternoon at Ikea. After location I always choose my holiday cottages on the basis of price – I don’t expect a palace – but there was nothing individual in this cottage and nothing to say “Welcome to your home for the week.” I think that every previous cottage had a vase of fresh flowers, and it is these little things that make so much difference.

Having said all that, once we had made up the deficiencies, it was a good central location and we made ourselves comfortable.

SUNDAY

Joe and I went to church in Hardraw where they had had a busy week with both a wedding and a funeral. The priest was late – held up by a herd of cows – and at least half of the congregation was later, and several of them seemingly bemused by the communion service, and completely taken by surprise by both the collection and the peace. Maybe they were all wedding guests from the previous day?

My original plan was either to visit Hardraw Force straight after or to explore the Dales Harvest events in Hawes. At this point in the day it was raining steadily so we decided to postpone the waterfall, but when we reached Hawes either the events had been cancelled or had moved so far indoors that only the natives could find them, so we popped into the Spar shop to buy salt and matches among other things, then to the garage to buy firewood – in fact by the end of this little expedition the boot of my car looked like that of a serious arsonist!

By the time we had drunk a cup of coffee in the cottage and had our belated breakfasts, the rain had pretty well stopped so we drove to Bolton Castle.



This semi-ruined castle looks magnificent when viewed from the distance, and continues to look good quite close up being externally about three-quarters complete. Once inside it is considerably less good than it looks on the website http://www.boltoncastle.co.uk/ as everything in the displays is tired, damp, grubby and in some cases simply missing. It is a really good try at showing mediaeval castle life – more successful than Conisbrough, but less so than Skipton – but it desperately needs a full time maintenance wo/man. You can see the real problem when you walk to the ticket office and shop through an area stacked with catering and cleaning supplies: the concept is good, but sufficient care simply isn’t taken with the delivery. On the day we visited there were stacks of some wonderfully authentic mediaeval plastic garden chairs in one of the rooms.

Having said that, it was clear from comments overheard that this place is a great favourite with young children who can rush around as at a truly ruinous ruin, but are given sufficient visual aids to interpret what they see in terms they can easily understand.

We drove on to Reeth where we visited the Swaledale Museum which Joe partially remembered from a visit fourteen years ago. It had all the things you expect to find in a local folk museum, and was somewhat less cluttered than previously, the curator was friendly and informed, and we enjoyed a pleasant hour before having cream tea at the Copper Kettle Tearoom and driving back to Burtersett.

MONDAY

We drove west into the southern Lake District to meet Becky at Levens Hall. This was the wettest day so we spent quite a while having lunch and drinking coffee before going round the hall which only I of the party had visited before. Originally a mediaeval pele tower, it is essentially a Tudor/Stuart house with some later innovations. I love the plasterwork ceilings, the hangings and the carved furniture, but am less enthusiastic about the (very well preserved and conserved) leather wall coverings.

The rain had stopped by the time we had finished in the house so we were able to see the garden with its magnificent topiary. A minor bonus was that there were no children out there so, mindful that the playground is not for the use of children over 12, Becky and I (who are assuredly not children of any sort and therefore not contravening the rules) went on the big swing much to Joe’s disgust.

We then had a proper grown-up afternoon tea and stayed talking until everyone else had gone home. (One day I will write my guide book called “Stately Homes wot I’ve been chucked out of” – or maybe I won’t.)

I am expecting to hear that Becky has won/been left a spectacular amount of money any day now, as she tells us that she actually drove through the end of a rainbow on her way to Levens and that for a few seconds everything around the car sparkled in myriad colours.

TUESDAY

North to Barnard Castle going through the national park and over the grouse moors and army firing ranges to enjoy the best of the scenery on a fine day. Eggleston Abbey was our first port of call. This was a slightly spooky experience for me, as the approach to the abbey broke part of a dream or series of dreams I have had over the years: Every now and then in my dreams I visit a small market town. I think that this town must be somewhere in Yorkshire judging by the buildings although it could be almost anywhere in England or Wales where they build mainly in stone. Each visit reveals more of the town, and so far I have visited the main market square, and walked by a small cobbled back lane to the lesser, mainly residential square which is also linked to the main square by a tarmac road which turns left down the hill and out of the town. A right turn off this road leads to the ruined abbey, and a footpath from here up behind cottage plots takes me back to the town. The road leading to this never previously visited abbey was utterly familiar.

Dreams aside, Eggleston Abbey was a pleasant brief visit before going on to Raby Castle. This was another place we went to fourteen years ago, and we have a video of two year old Joshua standing up at one of the picnic tables in the grounds shouting his favourite words “sex” and “milkman” at the top of his voice encouraged by his brothers aged 7 and 5, and hushed by his mother. I should point out that these two words are totally unconnected in the life of any of the Thompson family: the milkman at the time was scared of dogs so Josh had to look out for him to shout ‘milkman!’ so the totally non-aggressive dogs could be called in, while ‘sex’ came from a delighted exclamation of “What sex?” when a friend’s husband rang up to announce the arrival of the new baby which little Josh picked up as a favourite and oft-repeated word – something Joe and Jake were sufficiently wise to realise could be used to discomfit the adults in the family.

Lord Barnard is clearly very windy about the danger of foot and mouth reaching his herds of deer, and for the first and only time this holiday we had to drive through disinfectant and clean our shoes.
The main tourist season being over we were on a guided tour rather than wandering at will as we had previously. What I had forgotten was how much there is of Raby Castle; maybe with small children we had hurried through just enjoying selected highlights rather going for the full appreciation. Some things – the magnificently OTT octagonal drawing room and the gruesomely horrible spaniel lap rug – had remained clearly in my mind but much had vanished into that box in the memory which contains miscellaneous and unidentified rooms of houses visited and partially forgotten. I would have liked to hear a bit more about the early Neville owners of Raby, but it was on the whole a good tour although I think the guide was fairly new to the job as he was being shadowed by another guide to whom he deferred on a couple of occasions. He made one or two minor historical errors such as putting in an extra generation describing the relationship of Henry VIII to Cecily Neville, and a couple of words he simply couldn’t pronounce, but nothing glaringly bad. The gardens were a touch autumnal, but still quite pretty and more extensive than I had remembered.
At Raby Castle they have one room where they apologise for the smell of mothballs but the wardrobe is full of all the state robes over the centuries. I wonder what the Abbey must smell like at a coronation? It doesn't bear thinking about. However they are talking about mounting a costume exhibition at Raby next year which might be worth remembering.

In Barnard Castle I went to Boyes and bought Joe a jacket since the idiot boy hadn’t packed any outdoor wear thinking his thick shirts would be sufficient! When do they stop needing their mothers to do their packing (and thinking) for them? I also popped into the Co-op to buy some milk and other bits to replenish our stocks for the rest of the week. In the meantime Joe browsed the town’s antique shops and bought himself a 1930s wind-up gramophone!

On the way back, Joe took this picture of the end of a rainbow, but unlike Becky we didn’t get to drive through it.

WEDNESDAY

Back to the Lakes. Stott Bobbin Mill is one of those places which has been shunted off the bottom of my visiting list by the exigencies of time on at least five visits to the Lake District. I am glad that I have at last seen it because it was a really fascinating tour. A young Polish woman showed us round, and gave us lots of detailed information. She seemed surprised when five of the six people on the tour all knew what a gross was, but then we were all (except Joe) quite old enough to know all the tables of weights and measures which used to be printed on the back of school exercise books and can flash back without thought that there are 5,280 feet in a mile, 1,760 yards, 8 furlongs, 80 chains . . . or that there are 240 pennies, 480 ha’pennies or 960 farthings in a pound and that each farthing would buy a fruit salad or black jack (although by my taime these were always bought at least in multiples of two since the farthing had ceased to be legal tender). One of the other ladies on the tour also had quite a collection of threads still on their wooden bobbins (like mine, I bet they are mostly dreadful colours never needed again after finishing the one dress for which they were bought), although I still have my white tacking thread on a bobbin very like the ones we watched being made and were given to take home with us.

On from here to Hill Top (Beatrix Potter’s house) which we visit each time we are in the Lakes, but I had never before seen it quite so crowded. Although we are National Trust Members we had to collect timed tickets far enough ahead to have time for lunch between collecting the tickets and being admitted. Nice lunch at the Tower Bank Arms which features as the butcher’s shop in ‘The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck’, but the visit to Hill Top was rather oppressive with so many people in a small house.

Apparently it has been like this ever since the film “Miss Potter” was released. On the advice of the guide we decided to give Hawkshead a miss, and driving past it looked as though the whole village had reached the stage of ‘standing room only’.
The ‘standing room only’ theme continued when we rounded the north of Windermere and found ourselves stuck in a traffic jam right along the A591 through Ambleside and beyond where it took us more than an hour to cover the mile to the turn-off for Townend. After the vist we tried to return to the A591 at the next junction a mile and a half or so further on to find the road still blocked, so we turned round and went back to the A592 junction where we found The Queen’s Head, Townend, Troutbeck and had an excellent dinner – Joe’s a seafood risotto and mine grilled mackerel – both off the starter list, but quite substantial enough. Joe then had a pudding of fruit crumble with cream and Lancashire cheese icecream which I gather was odd, but nice, and we both had coffee in a cafetiere.

However to return to the visit to Townend: this was my third visit to this delightful old farmhouse with its idiosyncratic carved furniture. The room guides between them make a rag rug each year, and the guide (male) kindly showed me what I was doing wrong when I try to show children in the History Detectives workshop how Eliza Ashton turns old clothes into a warm floor covering: the answer is that I am trying to work from the front when I should be working from the back of the rug.

THURSDAY

Thursday was our day in and around Hawes. We went to Dales Museum which is larger and much more professional than the Swaledale one, but covers much the same stuff. There was a display of needlework in the exhibition hall which was very well arranged and well worth looking at.

This rather tired and immobile engine was the nearest we got to a steam train this holiday.

We then went to look at the Ropery where they were in the process of making a sally for a bell rope, and I bought Jess a leading rein and Josh a dog towel.

Lunch at the Wensleydale Creamery which I thought somewhat overpriced. The cheese was good (as one would expect) but the bread was a very ordinary roll of the type one buys half-baked (and in my opinion you’d have to be too to pay the price they charge for these things in the supermarket), and the coffee was adequate. We bought cheese to take home from the shop having tasted a whole range of flavours. I think that plain Wensleydale is the best cheese in the world to eat just as it is, and that adulterating it with other stuff is just gilding the lily. I was thwarted in my plan to buy cheeses for everyone for Christmas in that only the smoked cheese had a use-by date later than mid-November.

We then drove on to Gayle Mill which I remember from the Restoration programme (northern winner). The slightly tatty notice says that it should be open in 2005. It wasn’t, although it may have had some open days between the proposed completion date and now.

Next Hardraw Force – the longest single drop waterfall in Britain, and truly a waterfall for people who don’t like long walks to their scenery being just five minutes walk up a path accessed through the pub. If I had known what a very short walk it was I would have gone there on the Sunday when it was probably even more spectacular with all the extra water. We had a chat with the owners of a couple of delightful (and wet) retrievers (one golden and one black although mother and son).

This was a very cold day, so we drove back to the cottage for a cup of tea, Countdown and a nice warm in front of the fire. After that we went to see Semmerwater, less than three miles away, but hilly and rainy, so we went in the car.

The Ballad of Semmerwater

Deep asleep, deep asleep,
Deep asleep it lies,
The still lake of Semmerwater
Under the still skies.

And many a fathom, many a fathom,
Many a fathom below,
In a king's tower and a queen's bower
The fishes come and go.

Once there stood by Semmerwater
A mickle town and tall;
King's tower and queen's bower
And the wakeman on the wall.

Came a beggar halt and sore:
"I faint for lack of bread!"
King's tower and queen's bower
Cast him forth unfed.

He knock'd at the door of the eller's cot,
The eller's cot in the dale.
They gave him of their oatcake,
They gave him of their ale.

He has cursed aloud that city proud,
He has cursed it in its pride;
He has cursed it into Semmerwater
Down the brant hillside;
He has cursed it into Semmerwater
There to bide.

King's tower and queen's bower,
And a mickle town and tall;
By glimmer of scale and gleam of fin,
Folk have seen them all.

King's tower and queen's bower,
And weed and reed in the gloom;
And a lost city in Semmerweater,
Deep asleep till Doom.

OK, so there isn’t a word of truth in the story, but it is the only glacial lake in Yorkshire, and it may be smaller than most of those in Cumbria, but it is beautiful, and very moody and gloomy it looked in the gathering (and early) dusk.

FRIDAY

Richmond, a jewel among the many lovely market towns of the North Riding. We started with a visit to Easby Abbey, and the near by St. Agatha’s church. In the latter the mediaeval wall paintings must be seen to be believed, and my photographs don’t begin to do them justice.

There were no interpretation boards at the abbey, just one picture at the entrance reconstructing what it may have looked like before the dissolution. We were told later that this omission is a result of vandalism. (Is the youth of Richmond so much less law-abiding than that of Barnard Castle?) My suggestion would be to have a board up in the church (which has its own surveillance system) and small leaflets like the 4d yellow card guides the old Ministry of Works used to sell in the 1960s on sale for about 20p by way of an honesty box also in the church. As it is, I don’t think that there is even a notice to tell you that Easby Abbey is included in the guide to Richmond Castle.

In Richmond we discovered that the theatre (our main objective) was closed until 3 o’clock because of a wedding, so we had a look at the Green Howards Museum. I have to admit that military history is not really my thing, but it was very well set out and displayed, and one of the volunteer guides took us in to see the Normanby Room (named for the Marquess of Normanby) with its collection of Robert Thompson (mouse man) furniture. We had a good discussion, but I still don’t know what, if any, connection there is with Normanby Hall where I work and the Sheffield family to whom it belongs.

A late lunch while we fulfilled our parking obligation to go away for an hour before returning to the Market Place, a quick visit to Richmond Castle (which we visited properly en route to Northumberland two years ago) then on to the Georgian Theatre. First restored in 1963, it has recently had a further restoration since Mummy and I visited in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, and looks truly magnificent.

The volunteer guide clearly knows her Richmond Theatre stuff – and it was a good and detailed tour - but she was a bit thin on general theatrical history. She clearly found it quite remarkable when she opened a drawer of playbills saying something about forgotten plays, that I had not merely heard of at least three-quarters of them, but had read a good half. The Gamester, The Stranger, Jane Shore and so on were all very well known in their day, and make interesting, if not exactly enjoyable reading still. I got an opportunity to do a short speech from the stage. I suppose nowadays I should be looking at Mrs.Malaprop or Mistress Hardcastle, but I chose Phebe from As You Like It, a part I have never played, but always had a fancy for. The acoustics are perfect, needing hardly more than the natural voice to fill a space which once held 400 people and is now licenced for 214 (including those on and back stage).

A last drive over the moors above Reeth. Rain this time, but no rainbow.

SATURDAY

Our drive home was punctuated in its early stages by a series of visits – re-visits in my case, as had been almost everything for me this week.

Middleham Castle was our first port of call; it is actually a better castle than I remembered, mainly I think because on my first visit I, an ardent Ricardian, expected so much that nothing could have lived up to my expectations. Age has moderated my views and, while I am still very much more on his side than Henry Tudor’s, the passion for Good King Richard is somewhat more muted. They have acquired this statue (which I don't like) since I last visited. As I came up behind it, I thought 'Oh, not Richard III? - St George for Merry England methinks?'

But it was clearly labelled Richard III, and the face is that of the famous portrait. So what is the significance of the dragon thing with what looks like an ostrich's head draped down his back? And why does he have a pig under his feet? If it was a Tudor King with the Hog crushed beneath his feet I'd understand, but why would Richard III have a porker thus? And what does the ram's head on his shoulder signify? Am I just being thick about something obvious, or is the symbolism seriously obscure? And why no arms? Did the sculptor just run out of stone? Liz, my fellow Ricardian from primary school (although it took the best part of two years to convince her before I finally achieved a full conversion – so much so that her son is Richard) suggests this interpretation “I presume the squidgey pig he is uncertainly balancing on must be his own White Boar (who let him down??) and the dragon on his back must be Henry Tudor, with the Earl of Derby (the Ram) helping. No arms to show he was a 'armless bloke who'd never of killed 'is nevvies?’” Nice try Liz!

On to Jervaulx which in my opinion is the epitome of what a ruined abbey should be, and probably my favourite picnic place in the whole of the British Isles.

Surprisingly we chose not to have a picnic, but ate in the excellent tearoom – the best among several very good tearooms during the holiday. Once again the rain held off while we looked round the abbey and Joe had another of his mammoth photography sessions. I love the fact that Jervaulx isn’t over manicured; the grass is neat and short, but from the wild flowers of the spring to the berries of the autumn there is a romantic wildness about the site which is lacking in those run by English Heritage where the walls are invariably stripped clean. There was a very friendly and somewhat lame, elderly border collie wandering round the ruins clearly looking for somebody; we told the lady in the tearoom who rang somebody to rescue him, which was the best we could do since (if he was lost rather than abandoned) it would have been wrong to take him too far from where we found him.

Our last visit of the holiday was to Marmion Tower, the gatehouse of the vanished Tanfield Castle. I had recalled the superb oriel window and that there were stairs right up. What I had forgotten was that the roofless upper chamber was ankle deep in pigeon poo (or maybe it wasn’t twenty years ago) and that the upper flights of stairs led not to a spectacular view over the River Ure, but to a barred gate with an obscured glass infill. I don’t mind climbing dozens of steps up a spiral staircase (although I prefer them to be a bit cleaner, and – leaving aside the danger of Weil’s Disease, Bird Flu, Psiticosis etc. - it is probably good for me so to do) but I do like to have some reward when I reach the top – a room, a roof, a view. Couldn’t English Heritage just put a notice at first floor level saying that there is nothing further to see by climbing higher and it really is open only for the benefit of spiral stair freaks?

By this time, still north of Ripon, it was mid-afternoon, so we drove home across country without hitting the motorway at all.