Tags
'The Company', beetles, clouds, cream tea, Fruit, harvesting, insects, Lilium longiflorum, moths, purple beans, Sheffield, Suffolk, sunset, The Man in the Iron Mask, trees, wild flowers
I haven’t published a diary post lately so this is a short resumé of my activities over the past month or so.
To start things off I have a photo of a cream tea that Elinor and I enjoyed while out shopping in Bungay before our holiday.

A very brightly-coloured café called ‘Jesters’ at the entrance to Bungay castle. We were going to walk round what is left of the castle when I remembered in time that I had only allowed myself an hour’s parking . The cream and jam scones were yummy!
Elinor and I went by train to Sheffield on the 2nd of July to visit my elder daughter, Alice. The day was hot and the journey quite uncomfortable as the carriage we were in on the train from Norwich to Sheffield had faulty air-conditioning. The ticket collector handed out bottles of water to anyone who wanted some. We had noticed large quantities of water bottles in the waiting room at Diss Station as well, with a notice saying any customer could help themselves to water if they needed it.
We were travelling to Sheffield in order to watch Alice perform in ‘The Man in the Iron Mask’ by Alexandre Dumas. We then stayed the night with her in her single room. It was snug to say the least, but lovely to be all together again.
These are some photos of her that I have ‘borrowed’ from her drama group’s Facebook page.

Alice (in the green dress) played the part of Constance, D’Artagnan’s wife. She is watching D’Artagnan (on the right) fighting his foe.
The man on the left is an expert in weapons and fighting and has an armoury at his home. He taught all the cast how to fence and fight. It all looked very real.

I thought Alice did very well especially as she had to wear a costume which gave her a terrible rash for which she needed medical treatment.

Dumas will be spinning in his grave at their version of his very sad and doom-laden book. It was a brilliant, funny, well-acted and well-choreographed play with a happy ending.
As we were waiting for our train back home the next morning I saw and heard the piano in the concourse being played. The piano is there for anyone’s use at any time.
Unluckily for me and Elinor, the carriage we were in on our return journey also had no air-conditioning. This time there was no free water but we were able to leave the carriage at Nottingham (I think) and get into another carriage with AC that they had attached to the train.
The following week was busy with preparations for our holiday. Elinor’s laptop stopped working and had to be taken in for repair. She worried that it might not be repaired in time for her to use on holiday. She used my lap-top all week. We were able to collect her’s on Friday :). I shopped with Mum on Tuesday and made sure she’d be alright for food and other necessaries while we were away. My friend Heather came to lunch on Wednesday and we had an enjoyable time chatting about friends and family. She gave me a book – Janet Marsh’s ‘Nature Diary’. Such a thoughtful present. I had an appointment at Norfolk and Norwich Hospital for a rheumatoid arthritis check-up on Friday – the day before going away.
We were surprised to find on our return from holiday on the 18th July that the field of barley behind our house had still not been harvested. The weather at home had been warm and quite dry while we had dripped and shivered on holiday. We did get a superb sunset to welcome us back.
We had another busy week catching up on household and gardening chores and I had two weeks’ worth of washing and ironing to do. On the Monday I had to take Mum to the hospital for her regular eye check which went very well. I collected her shopping list as I would be doing her shopping for her that week. When I got home I started to make a loaf of bread and discovered I hadn’t enough yeast so had to go out again. I bought some other groceries as well as the yeast and was on my way home when I got a flat tyre. I managed to get the car into the town central carpark and got the spare tyre out but couldn’t work out how to remove the jack from the car! Shameful! I’m also not strong enough to take the wheel off anyway so had to phone Richard who had just sat down with a drink. While I was waiting for Richard to come and rescue me I got two offers of help from kind gentlemen who saw my pancake-flat tyre. The age of chivalry is not dead! The tyre had a rip in it and a couple of nails too.
The next day they began harvesting the barley field.
The countryside at harvest-time is a very noisy, dusty, dirty place to be. It proves at this time of year to be very industrial. Our houses and cars get covered in a thick pall of dust and bits of straw. We all start wheezing and coughing and anyone with allergies or asthma has problems with their health. There is a constant roaring and whining of engines as the combines trawl up and down the fields all day and most of the night too and the tractors with full trailers of grain are driven at break-neck speed along our narrow lanes to the silos and barns at the farms. Woe betide anyone or any creature who gets in their way!

The barley field was only half finished that evening and the combine went off to another field to work on that. Both fields were left with strips of uncut grain.
I am not sure why they left both fields like this. Bad weather was forecast and duly arrived a couple of days later. Perhaps less damage is caused by wind and rain when the crop is in strips.

This is a photo of the other field our local farmer cut in strips. We took this picture while on a walk nearly two weeks ago. The fields were both finished last week – almost a month since they had begun.
This was the first walk we had taken from home in months.

I disturbed this moth as I walked through the long grass. I think it may be a Shaded Broad Bar moth (Scotopteryx chenopodiata)

I remembered seeing a large patch of Common Fleabane (Pulicaria dysenterica) in the corner of a field last year. It was still there though a large heap of prunings had been left there earlier in the year

The Field Maple(Acer campestre) was looking bright, not only with its new ruby-coloured winged-fruits and leaf stalks but also with the crimson galls on many of its leaves. These galls are small red pustules probably produced by the mite Aceria myriadium.

New Pedunculate (or English) Oak leaves (Quercus robur) shining in the afternoon sun. There are also tiny acorns on long stalks to be seen.

I saw my first Dewberry (Rubus caesius) last year and was worried I wouldn’t find one this year because of all the hedging and ditching that was done in the spring. I eventually found a small plant under a hedge.
When I checked my photos on my return home I was dismayed to see the spot just above the trees at the centre of the photo. However, when I cropped the photo…
…I realised a bee had photobombed my picture!

An Oedemeridae beetle, perhaps Ischnomera sanguinicollis on a Spear Thistle flower with lots more Pollen Beetles.
These beans sadly lose their purple colour when cooked and end up a rather dull green. They taste very nice and they have appreciated growing in the cooler summer.
The rain soon cleared away and as I turned back toward the house I saw the sky to the East was lovely too.
Thanks for visiting!
Enjoyed reading about your adventures and the pictures were perfect accompaniments. Alice looked lovely 🙂 and that was a very realistic looking costume despite the skin reaction.
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Thank-you! The costume looked innocent but I think it had a hidden agenda 😀
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Thank you for the view into your adventures over there! The gardens and countryside are lovely, as always.
I like the piano anyone can play!
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I was impressed by the piano. There was a polite notice asking customers not to take advantage of the facility and to consider others and I hope people do.
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Oh, Clare, what a wonderful collection of photographs. I am impressed with your daughter’s ability to perform while wearing a rash-inducing dress. She looks beautiful. Lovely landscape shots! I’m glad I wasn’t there when the barley was being harvested though as I don’t think my lungs would have coped! I like the way golden barley looks against a blue sky though.I can’t remember all the things I wanted to say now. There was so much in this post. It was great to be able to read and see more about your life. Thank you.
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Thank-you Jane. My daughter loves acting and will ‘suffer for her art’ any time! Since moving to East Anglia (me from London and my husband from the NW of England) we have both developed hayfever and all sorts of allergies. I also have asthma and my younger daughter used to have it when she was tiny but seems to have grown out of it, fingers crossed! She has lots of allergies and hay-fever too. We keep large supplies of anti-histamine tablets and paper tissues in the house at all times. 😉 We love living here though and put up with the side-effects willingly.
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You lead a very busy life, I’m glad that I don’t have to try to keep up.
I have a hard time picking a favorite series of photos, let alone a favorite photo. I liked the behind the scenes look at the play, your daughter is a real trooper for carrying on despite the rash. I liked the sunsets, the flowers, and even the photos of the farming operations. I know that it must be very hard to cope with dust from the grain harvest, but people have to eat.
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Thank-you Jerry. We do cope with the harvest knowing that it has to be done to give us food and to give the farmer a living. The rest of the year (apart from muck-spreading time) we have a charmed life here and feel very lucky.
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Alice looks at home on the stage. I hope her rash didn’t linger too long. Your photos are lovely, Clare. I loved the sunset with the added rain shower and the bumblebee photo bomb! 🙂
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Thank-you Jill. Alice recovered very quickly I am pleased to say and yes, she is at home on the stage. It is her first love!
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A busy time and I always feel like I sit down and have a tea with you…and yes please, I love a cream tea!!! Alice is a star and beautiful. And what a trooper to endure the rash. I am sure Dumas applauds the whole performance! And oyu see..not being able to change your tire is not shameful, look how happy you made your knight in shining armor;0) And the photos, bee and all ( how lucky!) are gorgous, the piano man is my absolute favorite!!! xo Johanna
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Thank-you Johanna! I’m not sure I made my husband very happy especially as he had to put his contact lenses in before he could get in his car!
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Go, Alice!
I didn’t realize you had actual farmers nearby. Do they all use conventional chemicals? I remember you said that they have cut down the hedges.
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Yes, we are surrounded by farmers!! They do spray their crops but try to do so when it isn’t windy. They do a pre-germination spray and a post -germination spray and if there is a lot of certain types of weed about that they don’t want someone drives round the field in a buggy spot-spraying. We are quite fortunate with our local farmer as he is trying to encourage wildlife by leaving wide unsprayed headlands round the fields. He encourages nettles and other weeds that are beneficial to bees and butterflies. He only trims the road verges once a year and leaves it late until the flowers have seeded. The hedges and ditches have to be maintained (ditches especially as the land is fairly flat here and they are our only means of drainage). Until quite recently farmers were grubbing out all their hedges and planting crops right up to the roadside. They had governments grants to bring as much land into production as possible. Things have now changed and they are getting government grants to plant hedges and leave land fallow! Without hedges they were finding that the topsoil was blown off onto the roads and rain was washing all the nutrients away. What a surprise! Who would have thought that?
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Oh, that’s great news for the land! Thanks for sharing that, Clare!
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What are the chances of being photobombed by a bee?! Amazing! Love the lilies too, they look completely free of the pollen beetle that blighted all the flowers in my garden. Two years ago we were camping and watched the harvesting of a field over a hedge and watched quantities of panicked hares running for cover. I have already picked nearly three pounds of blackberries in Barham. Sue
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Thank-you Sue! Three pounds of blackberries – wow! Lots of pies, crumbles and jam perhaps? We too have had so many pollen beetles and I have had to give up photo-ing a lot of our flowers because of them. I photo-ed the lilies at dusk when the beetles had disappeared. The lilies were so luminous I was able to get quite a good picture.
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Yes, jam mainly, John loves blackberry jam on his porridge.
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Lovely!
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I have travelled on trains in Scotland and Ireland and enjoyed the Scottish experience was delighted to read about the kind gesture with free water – here – Ireland you would have had to pay . sounds as though you pack a lot into your average day. I enjoyed the photographs
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Thank-you very much for commenting – and I now see you have decided to follow me too. Thank-you again! I was really impressed by the free bottles of water – large packs of them were stacked in the waiting room at the station from where we set off and we were really encouraged to accept a bottle from the ticket collector on the train. We didn’t as we had brought water with us and there is only so much you can carry (or drink)! I will be visiting your blog later. Best wishes, Clare
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Bad luck with your hot trains. Perhaps the government will realise sometime that infrastructure needs investment and not endless payments to shareholders. I don’t hold my breath. A very nice set of pictures to go with your diary.
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Thank-you! The train is a Sprinter (hardly!) which starts off with two carriages and at Nottingham gains another couple and continues, after we get off at Sheffield, on to Manchester and Liverpool. Very old stock which should be replaced.
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The story of much of the UK’s railway stock.
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Sadly so.
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You sure do have a full life, Clare. There aren’t many people who can say they have an actress for a daughter.
Those barely fields must be huge if it takes them that long to cut them. I have allergies so I can imagine what people must go through.
I’ve never heard of the Field Maple. It’s leaves are very different from anything we have here.
The sunset photos are beautiful! I’m glad you’re having such a fun summer!
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Thank-you Allen. The fields aren’t that big, they just left them while the bad weather passed through. The grain has to be completely dry when they harvest it. If it is only slightly damp mould will grow and the grain will be worthless. The leaves on Field Maple are fairly small – about 12cm long (4 or 5 inches) and I believe slightly smaller than Sugar Maple leaves. I love their shape – strongly lobed and the lobes sometimes have lobes of their own too. It is our only native Acer and thrives on chalky and alkaline soil.
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Whilst the harvesting made for some very pretty pictures, I can imagine it gets a little annoying after a while…and most of the time your neighbourhood is gorgeous if your photos are any indication! The bramble flower made my mouth water, as did the cream tea. We call them all Devonshire teas here – much to the annoyance of many UK visitors who patiently explain the difference between the different counties take on cream and scones 🙂
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Thank-you! I can imagine that Cornish folk would get quite miffed when presented with a Devonshire tea! We in the East don’t get involved in the politics especially as we don’t produce much cream. We are grateful to whoever supplies us with our clotted cream. Yes, the summer harvest is trying on the nerves especially when it carries on late into the night. The crops here are mainly barley, wheat and rapeseed. We used to grow a lot of peas here too but the factory that took them all for freezing closed down a few years ago so the farmers had to re-think what they grew. It was hard on the people who had invested in enormous pea-harvesters. I almost miss the smell of burnt peas emanating from those machines!
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So good to hear from you, Clare. What a thrill to catch up with Alice’s acting! Though I’m sorry that costume gave her a bad rash. Yikes.
Sounds like the three of you had a good time together.
Thanks for your post – very interesting — and those photographs, including the one with the bee!
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Thank-you Cynthia. I do like to have my girls together but sadly it doesn’t happen very often these days.
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