I have been thinking for some time that I ought to let you know something of what we have been doing this year but I haven’t been sure where I should start! I will begin by telling you of our recent big family celebration, my brother Andrew’s wedding to Helen on the 12th of May.
Helen and Andrew – my brother and his lovely wife
This photo and the one below I ‘obtained’ from Facebook and they were taken by Andrew and Helen’s friends. I didn’t take any photographs that day and am very grateful to those who did. Don’t they look a happy couple?
Helen and Andrew
Richard and me – taken by Elinor
Alice and Elinor – taken by Richard
The day was a little chilly but fairly bright and it stayed dry until we were all at the reception, which was very lucky.
I had spent quite a bit of time during the preceding months helping Mum find a new outfit for the occasion. I visited many shops, on my own, in a number of towns looking for something she might be happy to wear. The shops had to have easy access and be near to a car park. The clothes had to be suitable in design and price. I eventually got together a plan of campaign and we had a shopping trip just ten days before the wedding. We were very fortunate in finding just what Mum wanted but I am disappointed in not having a photograph of her in her finery.
It was good to see Andrew’s children Natalie and Robert and Natalie’s partner Adam. My sister Francesca managed to take the day off work but her three children weren’t able to attend. Mum was very pleased to see them all.
oooOOOooo
My niece, Natalie specialised in weaving when studying for her degree in Art in London. I thought, as I hadn’t been able in an earlier post of mine to include any photos of the embroidery and textiles I saw at an exhibition, I would mention the work Natalie does and include a few links.
Natalie works for Humphries Weaving based in the town of Sudbury in Suffolk. Here is a short video produced by that company and in it you will be able to see Natalie and her colleague and listen to them talk about the work they do. Natalie is the woman with her hair up and she doesn’t have a Scottish accent!
One of the projects Natalie has been working on for the past few years is helping to conserve the Saloon in the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, that wonderful building commissioned by George IV.
Here is an article from the Guardian newspaper about the restoration work.
I also include another film made by Humphries Weaving which explains the work they have had to do and all the detailed research that has been carried out.
I am looking forward to visiting the Royal Pavilion and seeing this beautiful room!
Before I resume my Highlights posts from last year I thought I’d better write something about this new year.
Frosty path next to our big pond
There have been lots of frosts this month; probably more frosty mornings than non-frosty which makes a pleasant change. The last two winters have been quite mild with frost being a rarity. We have had some rain, even a day of snow (it didn’t hang around for long) and a fair amount of fog. The best days have been the sunny ones; a sparkly start to the day and then blue sky until sunset. Freezing nights with countless stars and a moon latticed by the bare branches of trees. Today the temperature stayed at -2 centigrade and a very cold wind and thick cloud made it unpleasant to be outside.
Full moon
Full moon
My life has carried on as usual – driving Elinor to college in Norwich, taking Mum shopping, to her hospital appointments and to church once a fortnight and when I am at home, basic household chores. I have been very tired this month so haven’t done more than necessary! I went to see my Rheumatoid Arthritis clinician at the hospital for a routine appointment and she seems to be pleased with how I am coping and doesn’t think I need any change in my drug regime. Richard is feeling much better, though still has some problems with his leg and back. He is driving again and we have resumed our sharing of the driving and shopping duties.
Birch tree in the breeze
I mentioned at the end of last year that Elinor had decided to try acupuncture to see if it helped to reduce her anxiety and its symptoms. She had three appointments before Christmas and has had three more this month. She would have gone this week but it was cancelled as the practitioner has ‘flu. Elinor is continuing with it, despite it being quite uncomfortable at times, because it has made a difference. The first session caused her to feel calm for the first time in her life and the effects lasted for nearly 24 hours! Not all her sessions have been as effective but since Christmas we have all noticed that she has been able to make decisions more easily and has had the courage to do a few things that for some time have been beyond her capabilities.
Dunston Hall
The venue for her treatment is Dunston Hall, just south of Norwich, which is a mock Elizabethan building constructed between 1859 and 1878 but is now a hotel with spa, beauty and therapy treatment rooms, a gym, a pool and outside, a golf course, driving range and football pitch. The acupuncture reception area and treatment rooms are ‘below stairs’ and I have become used to sitting on a sofa listening to ‘ambient’ music, attempting to read a book and trying to keep awake while waiting for Elinor.
Dunston Hall
She had her 20th birthday on Saturday and we went out for a meal together that evening. She felt a little unhappy to think that her whole teenage years were given up to anxiety and, because she has no friends, she had to celebrate her birthday with her Mum and Dad. Richard and I felt so sorry for her and wished there was something else we could do to help her.
The following day was quite eventful because she announced that she had decided that the college course she has been studying since September was not one she was happy with and was considering giving it up! We spent the day discussing this statement and even though it does sound like a negative step I am amazed that she has been able to come to this conclusion. She has been studying Graphic Art because she is interested in illustration work and had been told this course was the best one for her. She has struggled with it and has not been able to attend many of the classes. I have suspected for some time that she found it unsatisfactory but until this weekend she has said she thought it fine and was going to continue with it. She has been told of a one-year-long Art and Design course at the college for students who are 19 years old and older and this is what she intends to apply for. This week she has been talking to her tutors and support staff and has explained the situation to them. Her final day is tomorrow when she will try to apply for the new course and discover if there are any short courses she can attend in the meantime.
A bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula) in my winter-flowering honeysuckle. I opened the kitchen blinds this morning and saw two bullfinches in the honeysuckle. I found my camera and because I didn’t want to disturb the birds too much I crouched down by the window and took this poor photo while peeping over the window sill. I now know why I haven’t had many flowers on the shrub this winter!
We had a beautiful day here on Monday and wanted to go to the coast for a walk to enjoy the cold but still and clear day and also to recover from our surprise the day before. Because of other duties we had, we didn’t set out until 3.30 pm and it was nearly sunset when we got there.
We have had a very busy few weeks here with very little time for relaxation. We are all rather tired and stressed and could do with a holiday (or a few weeks at home with nothing to do!), though there is little chance of that just yet.
All the planned work in this first phase of house renovation has been done and we are very pleased with the results. The new windows, doors and garage doors are looking good and the house and garage are feeling much warmer. We still have a little sorting out to do in the garage and a few more trips to the tip and charity shops with the things we no longer need. There is a little room at the back of the garage which had a toilet and wash-hand basin in it which we never used. We had the plumbing removed shortly after Christmas and Richard painted the room last week. He has bought some shelves for it and we hope it will be a good storage room for the bird-seed and fruit and vegetables. It has a window which we hope to brick up and put in a vent in its place. For now we will put a screen against the window to prevent the light getting in.
Potatoes chitting on the garage window-sill. Note the new window!
We worked very hard to get the house ready for the work and it was worth the trouble we took. Most of the time there was just one window fitter – a very pleasant, hard-working man who was so proficient and tidy it was a pleasure to have him here. He let us know which rooms he would be working on during the following day so we prepared by moving furniture and covering everything we could with dust sheets. While he worked on one room we got the next ready and so we progressed round the house. He was here for five days and on his last day with us he was joined by a colleague and together they replaced the Velux window in Elinor’s room. It was unfortunate that the weather wasn’t very nice that day with snow, sleet, hail and rain showers and it took some time for Elinor’s room to warm up again. We supplied the men with plenty of hot tea to help them keep warm!
I washed, dried and ironed lots of pairs of curtains and also took the opportunity to launder other furnishings too. I feel I made a good start to my spring cleaning!
Elinor took her two mock maths GCSE exams the same week that we had most of the window work done. (She is re-taking her maths because the grade she got last year wasn’t good enough). She also handed in her art project work that she had been working on since Christmas. She got a pass mark for the art (there are only two marks she could have got – a pass or a referral) and she got a ‘C’ for her maths which has pleased us all. If she gets a ‘C’ grade when she takes her exams for real in the summer it will mean she has the minimum grade all colleges and employers demand. She won’t ever have to go to a Maths class again or take any more maths exams. (A sigh of relief from Elinor!)
View from Crockham Hill churchyard.
I now feel I must say how much I appreciated all your kindnesses when I spoke of the death of my aunt – I was most touched; thank-you. The funeral went very well and was a very satisfying celebration of her life. It was good to see my brother, sister and all my cousins and their families and to re-visit Kent and Crockham Hill, the village where my Aunt Marie and Uncle Fred lived for so many years. Aunt Marie had moved away into sheltered accomodation after Uncle Fred died.
Aunt Marie and Uncle Fred
It was sleeting and snowing as I set off for my brother’s house that morning and that continued until my brother had driven us to the Suffolk/Essex border when the clouds began to break up. When we got to Westerham in Kent where we stopped for coffee, the sun had come out. My cousin had arranged a lovely buffet meal for us all after the funeral in The Royal Oak, Uncle Fred’s local pub.
The Fens in Cambridgeshire seen from the window of the train I took to Sheffield.
The Fens seen from a train window
The Fens seen from a train window
The Fens seen from a train window
The Fens seen from a train window
I travelled to Sheffield by train so that I could see Alice in her production of Agatha Christie’s ‘And Then There Were None’. The play was excellently performed by all the cast and I enjoyed it very much. I stayed at Alice’s house overnight and met one of her housemates and also Alice’s cat, Mona. Alice and I breakfasted in the city next morning before I caught my train back home.
The Mosque in Peterborough seen from the train
Norwich Railway Station
These life-size figures stand outside the station and are rather a disparate group. Admiral Lord Nelson on the left; born in Norfolk and was a great Naval commander during the Napoleonic Wars and was killed during the Battle of Trafalgar – Edith Cavell; born in Norfolk and was executed during WW1 for helping allied soldiers escape from occupied Belgium – Stephen Fry; born in London though grew up in Norfolk and is an actor, writer, presenter, activist and ‘National Treasure’.
I saw quite a lot of my mother during the middle of February as she had a number of appointments to keep ( two hospital appointments in Norwich and two with her local doctor) and a fair amount of shopping to do. Elinor and I had a meeting at her college to discuss her support needs for her next academic year and to deal with any support problems she has this year. I had been looking forward to Elinor’s half-term holiday but as the window replacement carried on into that week and as we had other duties to perform it wasn’t as restful as I’d hoped. Elinor had a hair appointment on the Thursday and we had planned to go with her and have lunch out in the city. Unfortunately, I woke with a migraine and had to spend most of the day in bed. Richard took Elinor to Norwich and they had lunch in a café. Richard brought me back a lovely couple of presents.
My presents!
I love the design on the tote bag! It is by the artist Amelia Bowman and is a view across the roofs of the market towards the castle. The book is also just what I need for my visits to the churches in the city.
We have managed two short walks; one at the RSPB reserve at Minsmere and the other in Tyrrels Wood which lies to the north of Diss and Harleston in Norfolk. Neither of the walks were particularly interesting but we were out in the fresh (very fresh and cold!) air and were taking some exercise.
Minsmere trees
Minsmere trees
Minsmere trees
Minsmere trees
Richard at Minsmere
Minsmere reedbeds
A slideshow of some small but quite interesting things!
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Our walk in Tyrrels Wood was less pleasant as it was so very muddy and we were disappointed by the state it was in. There was a quantity of litter in the wood, especially near the entrance and it was obvious that the wood is used by dog-walkers. We had to watch where we walked! In this country it is illegal to allow one’s dog to foul a public area and not clean up after it. I am surprised that a large organisation like the Woodland Trust is happy to leave the wood in this condition.
The spotted leaves of Lords and Ladies/Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Arum maculatum) next to Dog’s Mercury (Mercurialis perennis)
Lesser Celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) also with Dog’s Mercury
Tyrrels Wood
An ancient coppice stool. This group of trees was once one tree but through repeated coppicing (cutting back the tree to near ground level to let new shoots re-grow) it has become a group of trees with a shared root system.
The bark patterns on this tree are interesting.
And now for my music selection! A little trip down memory lane to the summer of 1978 when I was nearly 20 years old and fancy-free.
This is another diary post. Before I write anymore accounts of days out and holidays I really ought to tell you about a few things that have been happening lately.
Self-seeded Viola
Self-seeded Viola
The saddest event of all is that my mother-in-law died on Thursday 13th August. She had been in very poor health for some time and had had to move into a nursing home a few months ago. This made her unhappy but she knew that she was incapable of living on her own any more and was doing her best to come to terms with the changes this entailed. My brother-in-law had visited her during the afternoon of the day she died and hadn’t been home long when he got a call from the nursing home telling him she had collapsed and the ambulance had been called for. He telephoned us and said he had been told that there wasn’t much hope that she would survive and we were to prepare for the worst. He phoned us again a few minutes later to say she had died.
Marsh Mallow (Althaea officinalis)
The strange thing was that we were only an hour or so away from Manchester (where my husband’s family live) when Chris phoned us. Thursday 13th August was the day we travelled to the Peak District with our caravan to spend a week there on holiday and with the hope of visiting Mum-in-law. We had set up the caravan where we usually stay in Leek, Staffordshire and put up the awning on the side of the van already. We had then driven to Sheffield (about an hour’s journey) to take Elinor to stay with Alice for the week. Alice had given us a cup of tea and we had left the girls there together and were driving back to Leek. We had almost got to Buxton when Chris’s call came through.
Alpine Allium with bees
We went to Manchester the next morning. The rain, which had started when we got to Sheffield the night before, was still coming down so the roads were very wet and some were flooded. We went to Chris’s house and spent some time talking to him and his partner Annie and then went out to have some lunch together in a pub. During the afternoon we went to Joyce’s (Mum-in-law’s) nursing home and sorted out all her belongings, taking some away with us but donating all of her clothes and a lot of her equipment and wheel-chair to the nursing home. They were pleased to accept all we could give them as there are many old people in homes who have no relations to get them clothes and other necessaries.
Peacock butterfly (Inachis io) on Water Mint flowers (Mentha aquatica)
The Coroner couldn’t establish a cause of death despite a post mortem and there have been a number of tests done and an inquest has been held. All extremely painful for my husband and his brother. Eventually the date for the funeral was set and it duly took place yesterday 2nd September. There was a large turn-out of family and friends and all went smoothly and we hope Joyce would have approved. Richard had the difficult task of writing the eulogy which he delivered with dignity. The wake was in the upper rooms of a nearby pub and that was a success too.
Female Gatekeeper butterfly (Pyronia tithonus) on Marjoram (Origanum majorana)
Our holiday was a weird one to say the least! Richard’s 62nd birthday was on Sunday 16th August so we went to a church in Leek and said more prayers for Joyce and then went to a café for brunch. There wasn’t much else we could do. We met Alice and Elinor in Bakewell on Tuesday 18th August and told them the sad news.
This was one of Joyce’s favourite pieces of music.
A lot of our time has been spent (as usual) in keeping appointments with doctors, with physiotherapists and at hospital. Not a week goes by, it seems, without one or other of us having to go to see some specialist or another! Elinor went to her yearly appointment with the physiotherapist and was told she needed to do more calf-stretching exercises. I’m not sure that she has done anything about it yet! Richard went to the hospital for yet another MRI brain scan but won’t hear the results until he sees the specialist in a few weeks. He also went to the eye clinic and all seems okay. I took my Mum to her eye clinic again last week and she had to return there on Tuesday for another eye injection. I went to the Rheumatology clinic for a check-up and it seems I am in a medically-induced remission. My blood tests show excellent results and I have lost all the fluid on my finger joints. The nurse suggested I give up one of my drugs for a month to see if it made any difference to the problem I have in my throat. It hasn’t made any difference at all, so I’m back on the drug and my GP at my local surgery has asked the Ear, Nose and Throat clinic to give me an appointment so they can investigate further.
Swallows (Hirundo rustica) and House Martins (Delichon urbica) on electric power cable
Alice works part-time in the University library in Sheffield and some months ago went to a number of internal job interviews. She desperately needs a full-time job, preferably one in which she can use her librarianship skills instead of filling shelves and moving crates of books about as she is doing at the moment. She was disappointed to hear that though she had been offered a job one grade higher than the one she was doing, it was still a part-time job and as the hours were fewer she would be earning less money. After a lot of thought she decided to accept the job and after some discussion with her supervisor she has been given a few more hours and is earning slightly more money than in her last position. She moved house at the weekend and she is now sharing with a few other people (one of them a friend of hers) and will be paying less rent. This will be a Good Thing! She has finished the corrections and amendments to her PhD and has handed it back in to have it read through again. When that’s done she will have to get it printed – not just one copy but several – which will be yet another expense for her. We will then hear when she will receive her Doctorate which we all hope to attend if possible. She had her 30th birthday on the 24th July and her friends got together and arranged a Haunted Sheffield Tour for her to go on which she found great fun.
Southern Hawker dragonfly (Aeshna cyanea)
Southern Hawker dragonfly
Elinor wasn’t able to go into college to collect her GCSE results as we were still away in the Peak District so she got the results in the post. She didn’t do as well as she had hoped but she passed three out of the four exams she took. She got a D in Maths so she will have to re-take that exam next year. She got an A in Psychology but only Cs in English and Art. We are pleased that she managed to do as well as this because she missed two whole years of school and at one stage we didn’t think she’d ever be able to get any qualifications at all. The college have found that the grades the students got this year were generally much lower than expected. I don’t know if this is the fault of the college or if the marking was stricter than usual. She went into college last Wednesday for her enrolment and was disappointed to find she can’t take the Graphic Art course she wanted to do because of her failed Maths exam. She will do a years Art and Design course and re-take her Maths and then she will decide what she does next. The Graphic Design tutors say that they will assess her work after six weeks this term with a view to moving her onto the Graphic Design course if she is doing very well.
Young Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus)
Richard has now retired. His final week at work was last week and he had a good send-off from his colleagues. He will be giving back his fleet car tomorrow and has ordered a new car of his own which will be delivered in just over a week’s time. He hasn’t had time to appreciate the fact of his retirement yet. He still has a number of things to sort out with his brother with regard to his mother. Once that has been done he will relax a little and then begin to feel retired.
I spent a lovely day in Norwich with my dear friend Wendy. We met at school 45 years ago! Her husband was working in this area for a few days so she joined him and took the opportunity to visit former neighbours of theirs and to see me. Fortunately the weather was fine and we were able to find somewhere to sit outside and have coffee and a long chat.
A photo of the Assembly Rooms where we sat outside and had coffee. This photo was taken last December – the garden was much brighter and greener when we were there a few weeks ago!
We then went to have a look at the Roman Catholic Cathedral which is an enormous building and has many fine features. I’ll probably make a post about it sometime soon. We walked from there to the Plantation Garden. We had a lovely lunch together and I then walked back with her to her hotel. In thinking about this special day I am amazed to realise that I cannot remember the last time I spent a day out with her or in fact with any friend. I very, very occasionally meet someone for coffee or lunch or I visit Wendy’s house in company with my family but a whole day away from home with a friend enjoying myself…. no, I can’t recall anything since I was in my early twenties!
Gipsywort (Lycopus europaeus)
I always look forward to having my piano tuned each year. Kimble Reynolds is a very skillful man who not only tunes pianos but can also build, restore and repair them. He has a piano gallery in Blundeston in Suffolk and has recently invented a way of teaching people how to read music which doesn’t entail having to learn the names of the notes. His invention is called Noterettes. He is a lovely man and I enjoy talking to him and we spend most of his visit laughing together.
Fly ( possibly Tachina fera) on Marjoram
Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) with unknown bug
Common Ragwort (Senecio jacobaea) with Hoverfly (Sphaerophoria scripta) and another unknown insect
Common Ragwort with Hoverfly (Helophilus pendulus) also known as the Footballer Hoverfly because of the striped thorax which looks like a football jersey
I cannot identify this Hoverfly
With all the upheaval of Joyce’s death and Richard’s retirement, we haven’t had time for much gardening or walking locally. We managed to visit Dunwich beach for an hour on Saturday. We bought some chips from the fish and chip restaurant in the beach car-park and then walked on the beach. The weather was quite over-cast and there was a very strong wind blowing but it was good to be away from the house for a while.
Sea Kale leaf (Crambe maritima) with sheltering snails
Sea Kale with seed heads
Dunwich beach
Dunwich beach
Yellow Horned-poppy (Glaucium flavum)
Yellow Horned-poppy
Common Evening Primroses (Oenothera biennis) Introduced and naturalised, these plants like to live on waste ground on poor soil; they only open on dull days or in the evening. I see them on railway sidings quite often. These particular plants have spread along the base of the crumbling cliff.
Common Mallow (Malva sylvestris) This plant was on the path from the car-park to the beach but at this time of year Mallows are seen everywhere in East Anglia. The round fruits that you can see just right of centre are called ‘cheeses’ and contain many nutlets.
Out of focus photograph of the sunset that evening during a rain shower.
We have been fairly busy during the past few weeks with not much time for trips out. Not that the weather has been conducive to those type of activities; we get one quite nice day with sunshine and a bit of warmth and then we revert to cold, windy days with grey skies and some rain too. We are still getting cold nights and looking at the photographs I took this time last year, the flowers and blossom I am seeing now were ones I saw then during the second half of April. The photos I am including in this post have been mainly taken on the few nice days we’ve had this month.
Crabapple ‘Evereste’
I took my mother to the hospital for her six-week check-up and we were sorry to be told that both her eyes had suffered a bleed or some damage and she would have to return to have injections in both eyes at the same time. We duly returned a few days later and she had the injections. Her eyesight has deteriorated again and for someone who has always enjoyed reading she is finding it so hard not to be able to read with ease any more. She can’t read sub-titles on the TV quickly enough either so has had to give up watching her favourite foreign-language programmes. She has also been told her kidneys are not functioning too well and her GP is having to re-think what medication she should be taking now. She is a brave and sensible woman and is trying to make the best of the situation.
Crabapple ‘Harry Baker’
My mother-in-law has now moved into her care-home. The actual move caused her some distress and she is still very unhappy. She had lived in her home for over forty years and she had been very happy there. She knows that she wouldn’t be able to care for herself if she went back home, even with a full care package, as she is almost totally immobile now and has so many other serious medical problems. But that thought doesn’t take much of the sadness and frustration away; it probably adds to it. Richard and his brother spent two full days last week going through her whole house finding the few things she would be able to take with her to the home and then trying to decide what to do with the rest of her belongings. They had four trips to the tip to get rid of things no longer needed and have stored the rest of her possessions in my brother-in-law’s cellar. My poor mother-in-law is sad that she has to sell her house to pay for her care and that she won’t be able to leave anything to her sons when she dies.
Pear ‘Concord’
My eldest daughter Alice is working hard on the few corrections that have to be made to her thesis before it is printed and bound. She is also rehearsing for her next production with her drama group. Because of her work schedule she won’t be able to visit us until the beginning of June. We haven’t seen her since 31st December – the longest time we have ever gone without seeing each other.
Bergenia flowers. I took this photo on the 5th of May thinking that they may not be around that much longer. In past years I have had all my bergenia flowers eaten by deer or rabbits almost as soon as they came out. Not this year (so far). They are still flowering and have got so tall and look wonderful.
Elinor has taken her Art exam and has finished and handed in all her course-work. She was pleased with the way her exam went. She managed to do all she had wanted to do and didn’t panic at all. Of course, she is now starting to worry that she hasn’t done enough and might not pass her exam! She has an interview on Wednesday with tutors of the next two-year course she has applied to go on. She wants to do Graphic Art and we and her current tutors think that she will do very well.
Lathyrus ‘Spring Beauty’
We are currently applying for assistance for Elinor for next year. This will provide her with one-to-one mentors who will be able to help her if she experiences anxiety at college and it may also be possible to provide her with different equipment and/or furniture which she may need because of her mild scoliosis. She suffers from frequent back pain especially when she has to stand for any length of time.
Apple ‘Discovery’
She has her other exams during the first two weeks in June and is trying to revise for these at the moment. English and Psychology are no problem to her and she is predicted to do well in both these exams but it is Maths as always which is causing her, and us all, such headaches.
Heavy rain on 8th May
Dove’s-foot Crane’s-bill (Geranium molle)
Richard is fine and is getting used to the fact that he will need to be on medication for the rest of his life. Join the club, I say! He will be seeing the specialist in a few months time to have his situation reviewed with regard to the lesion on his pituitary gland. Will he or won’t he have to have an operation to have it removed? He is counting down the days until his retirement at the end of August but in the meantime is having to work very hard at work and has been allocated a number of jobs to do at locations all over the country, all to be done in the next couple of months. The firm is getting its money’s worth out of him before he goes. He is naturally saddened about his mother’s situation but knows she is being cared for properly now.
Lilac
Not a good photo of Bush Vetch (Vicia sepium)
I continue to have a problem with my dry throat. I have seen a different doctor at our local surgery a couple of times and he has prescribed artificial saliva spray and also pastilles that should stimulate saliva production. This all sounds unpleasant but the treatment has improved matters a little. I would have liked to find out why I suddenly got a dry throat in January, which can be very uncomfortable at times, and would also like to know if there is anything I am doing or eating which has brought it on. It would be good to know that I could get rid of it by a change in life-style. I cannot get anyone interested in this and am just supplied with medication to alleviate the symptoms. The GP says I am to tell my Rheumatology specialist about my dry throat when I next go to see her – there is a possible connection between one of the tablets I take, rheumatoid arthritis and dry throats. I asked if the specialist might be able to do anything for me. Oh no, I doubt it, said the GP, she will just find it interesting! The one unfortunate side-effect is I am unable to sing properly any more. I get great pleasure from singing and hoped to be able to re-join a choir when circumstances allowed but if things stay as they are I would be a liability. It saddens me that I have had to give up so many hobbies because of my health and I had hoped that I would be able to sing for a while longer – I hope nevertheless that the medication will eventually enable me to sing again. I have also had a very upset stomach for the past ten days. I have had to continue with driving my daughter and mother to the places they need to be and also had a few appointments of my own to keep, but when I have eventually got back home I have no energy for much housework or any gardening let alone the enthusiasm for reading and blogging. I have felt quite a lot better today and have managed to catch up with commenting on the blogs I follow but if I have said anything over the last couple of weeks that has been a little odd please blame it on the stomach bug (it wasn’t me!).
Bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta)
Male Orange-tip butterfly (Anthocharis cardamines) on bluebell. It’s a pity the butterfly chose to drink nectar from a bluebell with a bird poo on it!
On May Day Bank Holiday Monday, Rumburgh village had its annual fete and as usual I provided a couple of cakes for the church’s cake stall. Richard pulled a large amount of our rhubarb as well which was also sold on the stall. I spent most of the day before baking the two cakes I took to the fete. We went out in the afternoon to Captain’s Wood to see if the bluebells were flowering. I will put that visit in a separate post.
Honey Cake tray bake. It’s always good to provide tray bakes or individual small cakes for cake stalls. They sell for more money than a large cake does.
The tea tent at the Rumburgh fete
Last week, while Richard was away in Manchester helping his brother sort out their Mum’s house, Elinor and I went to Minsmere RSPB reserve to walk through the woods. This will also be the subject of another post.
While I was baking cakes for the fete I also made an Eve’s Pudding for us to eat at home. I didn’t manage to photograph this before some of it had been eaten. The other cake I made for the fete but didn’t photograph, was a Mincemeat Cake. A good way of using up the extra mincemeat bought at Christmas.
This is the sum total of our activities so far this month. Quite gloomy in places I’m afraid.