Sojourn (with small boy) on the Isle of Wight

Last week saw Dog Walker and son saying farewell to the rest of the family for a short trip to the Isle of Wight.

The outing was in lieu of a Year 6 school residential trip which the boy was unable to go on. And so it was meant to be a bit educational!?

It didn't start well - departure postponed from Monday to Tuesday due to big storm which meant some of the ferries were cancelled. I'm not a good sailor so it was just as well.

The storm was a bit of a godsend in that I was able to show firsthand how coastal erosion takes place (one of the subjects being studied by his classmates on the Norfolk coast). A double bonus is that one of my favourite things is walking by the sea in stormy weather.

Stormy at The Needles

He loved it at The Needles where we were blown across the car park and where the night before windspeeds of 95mph had been recorded. Round the corner, at Freshwater Bay, the waves were crashing on to the beach and around the chalk stacks.

Waves at Freshwater Bay

We also visited the Dinosaur Isle museum, at Sandown. It's quite interactive and designed for kids (I think) so he quite enjoyed that - he didn't even complain when I made him complete one of the worksheets.

There was a lovely lady in the reception/gift shop who seemed quite pleased that she'd been inundated with new stock in readiness for the coming season. I think the winter months are a bit lonely for her - she said there were days when her only customer were museum curatorial staff buying sweets and snacks.

The son blew £10 of his £15 allowance for the trip on a Horrible Science book on dinosaurs. I blew £14.40 on my undisclosed allowance on something I've coveted for most of my adult life - a geological map of the Isle of Wight (what a sad old git!). I remember studying one at an exhibition (Local Look, at Brook WI, by the Isle of Wight Natural History Society) when I was 12 or 13 and I've wanted one ever since. I can't really explain why - I'm not sure I can even read it properly!

The boy had also hoped that we might be able to play crazy golf while we were on the Island - a favourite holiday pasttime. He wouldn't believe that they wouldn't be open so we went down on to Shanklin seafront - a desolate place in winter - and he soon believed me!

Desolate at Shanklin

Desperate to continue the 'educational' theme, the next day we took Grandad to Portsmouth to the Historic Royal Naval Dockyard. The guided tour of HMS Victory was quite fun - the guide (an ex-Navy man I presume) made it interesting, though you got the feeling that his 'script' was very well rehearsed.

HMS Victory

Raising the wreck of the Mary Rose was obviously a great feat, but I'm afraid viewing a few old timbers through a thick mist is not that exciting. The museum (nearby but hopefully, due to Lottery funding soon to be in the same building) was better and was quite child friendly. This was just as well as we shared our time there with a class of youngsters with learning difficulties. They were quite delightful, but the teacher in charge of them was completely dipsy and, to be honest, not really in control of herself!

The weather quickly got worse at this point so we had to forego the boat trip around the dockyard and tucked into sausage in chips instead. This was followed by a wander around HMS Warrior, which is a beautifully restored early iron warship - the most advanced of its time (1860s).

The it was back through the rain to the ferry terminal and the Island.

Another highlight of the day was taking Grandad on public transport, namely the Island's railway, which runs from Shanklin to the end of Ryde Pier. The railway itself is quite historic, in its way - the rolling stock being made up of 1950s London Underground carriages.

Grandad was outraged that the ride was so bumpy and was almost apoplectic at the language used by some of the school children who shared our compartment.

Spring has sprung . . . not

The bright spell we had before this current stormy weather tempted me and the dog out of our armchair/basket and into the countryside.

We had a couple of walks which were chilly (with frost) but nice because of the bright sun.

One such walk, we discovered an old threshing machine decomposing in the corner of a field. It made me think about the days when dozens of men would be working the fields around the village, when there were up to a dozen pubs (none now), shops (just a small post office today) and a real sense of community (definitely none now!).

I was brought right back into the 21st century by an equally decrepit piece of machinery lying in a nearby hedge. Dumping your unwanted items in the countryside seems to be the way you get rid of them nowadays. I wonder how long it'll take this motorbike to rot away completely - probably never will.

Our noses were assaulted when we came across a farmer spreading muck on his field - poor dog, her sense of smell is thousands of times more sensitive than mine. In fact, the smell wasn't too bad as we approached as we were upwind but it got worse as we went around the field. Also, the next day, the wind changed towards the village and the place stank for a week!

I don't think it has been a particularly bad winter, but the rabbits have obviously been hungry, devouring the bark on these young trees . . .

Finally, we found some more frosty teasels - one of my favourite photographic subjects.

Book of the week?

I wonder how many people had this useful little tome in their stocking at Christmas?

It was on sale at a local garden centre at a bargain £2.99 - reduced from £6.99. Do you think they might have had trouble shifting it at the original price?

Bicarbonate of soda is, apparently, a very versatile natural substance - but who on earth could find enough to say about it to fill a book?

I didn't look to see who wrote it - apologies if it was you.

Is it spring yet?

Like a big, old grizly bear, DW has been in hibernation. He might interrupt his slumbers for the upcoming festivities, but who knows?

In truth, I sort of blinked, summer had finished, autumn had passed by and winter was here! Plus (as I think I've said before) the crappy new computer system at work means I'm keyboarded out by the time I get home, so blogging is the last thing I want to do.

It's agony . . .

I spend many of my lunch hours in Waterstone's, the nearest thing Bury has to a good bookshop (I was spoiled by my years working in Cambridge). I'm pretty much a fiction person. I can't remember the last factual book I read all the way through - I tend to dip in and out as and when I want to look something up. And I'm ashamed to say I tend to use Waterstone's as a sort of reference library. Recently, I've been browsing the 'smallholding' section as I'm considering getting a few hens for the bottom of the garden.

However, this week I decided I needed to top up the pile of books next to my bed which are waiting to be read. There has been a bit of a hiatus in my reading recently - I read mostly in bed at night but, because of the awful and exhausting new computer system at work, which I may have mentioned in a previous blog, I've just been too tired to read. Instead, I drop off in seconds to The World Tonight on Radio 4.

I thought a few new titles and/or authors might reinvigorate my page turning, so it was off to Waterstone's. I quickly found one book I had been waiting to arrive in paperback, then - after a long browse of the shelves - another by an author I'd not read before but which looked interesting. Then came that terrible dilemma . . . you've got two books in your hand and they both happen to be part of Waterstone's 3for2 offer. Do I just pay for the two and forego the offer or do I spend yet more time (with my lunch hour quickly disappearing) finding a third book?

I'm too mean to turn down an offer, so it was back to the shelves. The hunt was proving fruitless, nothing tickled my fancy. So, I thought, why not break out of this fiction-only routine? Let's try a biography.

I trawled the biography section and quickly discovered why I didn't read them - what rubbish. I picked up Lord Stevens' autobiography (he was a deputy or assistant or deputy chief constable of Cambridgeshire police for a while) and flicked through it. He should stick to police work - when a sentence begins: "I remember one amusing incident . . ." it says it all.

As I put John Stevens' tome back on the shelf, I noticed the sign . . .

I hate the way they divide up bookshops. A novel is a novel, it doesn't matter if it's crime, horror, romance or sci-fi, they all belong on the same shelves - in author order (you wouldn't guess my Saturday job when I was at school was in the local library!).

So, what on earth is a Painful Life? Do you need to die a terrible death? Do you have to be a martyr to chilblains? Or perhaps you just have to peddle misery and despondency in a literary format!

Another reason I hate all these signs in bookshops (Waterstone's isn't the only guilty party) is that in the past I've found myself perusing a perfectly tame novel, only to look up and find that I'm leaning against a shelf headed 'Erotica' or 'Gay and Lesbian fiction'. Being easily embarrassed, I tend to flee the shop flushed red and imagining that the guys manning the security cameras are having a right hoot.

I managed to survive finding myself at the 'Painful Lives section and stayed in the shop to find a third novel, though I'm not too hopeful.

By the way, my favourite book is A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, and I recently finished his latest, Until I Find You, which, despite its great length, is also excellent and well worth the hernia you'll get lifting it off the shelf and carrying it home.

Serene I stand . . .

'Serene I stand among the flowers and only count life's sunny hours,

For me dark days do not exist I'm a brazen-faced old optimist.'

Sometimes, places and events become so familiar that you forget to look for new things. I discovered this at the weekend when we went for one of our regular walks around Anglesey Abbey, near Cambridge, which is one of our favourite National Trust haunts.

We have a bit of a set route around the grounds, which are wonderful and change with the seasons. But we've become sort of complacent, forgetting to look around us.

So, on Sunday, it was great to discover something new there. For most of the time we've been going to Anglesey, the Rose Garden has been the preserve of the family which owned the place and lived in the summer house (a mere 11 bedrooms) next to the abbey itself. They've now moved out and the Rose Garden has been opened to the public - and what a treat it was.

First discovery was the sundial (above) adjacent to the entance. Sorry about my shadow spoiling the picture, but I was trying to get the dragonfly in the shot without scaring it away. I thought the inscription (Serene . . . ) around the 'dial' was lovely - but having looked it up on Google, it must be on every other sundial there is.

Continuing the weather theme, I noticed for the first time (I think) the golden weather vane (below) in the shape of a longship. In all the years we've been going to Anglesey Abbey, we've always been too mean to buy a guidebook, so I'm afraid I don't know the significance of the sundial or the longship, or any of the other things we spotted on our first visit to the Rose Garden.

Flanking one of the entrances to the garden are two statues of Pan, which are slowly (I presume) being enveloped by the yew hedge.



But even more intriguing is this tombstone(?), the head end of which is now under the hedge - one assumes the hedge came second.


Then, on the other side of the hedge, in the Rose Garden itself - by the way the actual roses had begun to fade a bit - was an even stranger discovery . . .


What seem to be stone coffins or, more to the point, empty stone coffins! It's no good - I've got to get the guide book, I have to know . . .

Further into the garden is a doorway - presumably leading to the old private quarters of the family. The door looks really ancient and, according to a plaque fixed to it, once belonged to Henry Cromwell (Oliver Cromwell's son).

Either side of the door are the heads of what appear to be bishops - but they look too mischievous to be senior clergy - one has even suffered a broken nose!

Finally, a detail from the gates leading into the garden. A lovely, surprising and intriquing afternoon stroll which taught me not to take things for granted. And when I find out whose coffins they were, I'll let you know.

Sunflower power

The sunflowers in my garden sort of gave up the ghost at the weekend - heads heavy with seed, no support, dogs running round them etc.

I've chopped off the heads so they can dry out and the birds can peck at the seeds through the winter.

It also gave me the chance to get close up and take some pictures. They're fantastic things, sunflowers - beautiful, shapes colours and patterns.