Excavations in the Bureau

So we've been sorting through some of my wonderful Grandad's (otherwise known as the Venerable Bede) stuff, which is much easier said than done, given the sheer volume of stuff he had. I can kind of understand it, given that I too have a lot of projects in various stages of preparation, progress or finished and kept for when they're useful, but some of the thigns we found were beyond bizzare. I mean, what could you possibly want with an incredibly small box of chocolates that are over ten years out of date?

Anyway, we started with the bureau (largely because it's a contained space) - Grandad made it himself, and I think it's beautiful; I can't remember what wood it's made of, but it's a light honey colour and he made the keys for it himself. It's probably got a cubic capacity of roughly one and a half meters, but it took us about three days to sort through it all, and the contents covered several rooms. I'm beginning to wonder whether Grandad had some workshop training on Galifrey...

There were old photograph albums I'd never seen, with some wonderful pictures of JacAbsolute (Mum), Mithrandir (Uncle Keith), the VB and The Lovely Madge (Grandma), along with shots of more distant family members. Some of them were lovely - and some of them were just plain hilarious: photos of JacAbsolute and her best mate dressing up when they were kids :D

There were lots of interesting clock parts, and strange looking implements from the early twentieth and late nineteenth centuries... there was the insignia from Great-Grandad Harry's WWI uniform (he was a sapper and fought all over the place, but most notably the Messine Ridge) that the VB was converting into a brooch for TLM... even some ivory - a statuette of a man in a boat (I suspect the VB was intending to fix it) and a letter opener.

And envelopes. LOTS of envelopes.

I took pictures of some of the most interesting bits (except the ivory, which I forgot about), and a couple of other things the VB made :)

This puzzled us for a while, but we eventually figured out that it was the inside workings of a pepper pot (the VB made several of these, this one is still in potentia).

Not wholly sure why this made us laugh, except for the zombie Windle Poons in one of Pratchett's Discworld series... the VB got very interested in fixing and making clocks and watches... wonder what the life of this clock oil is :)

My Great Aunt Sara is one of the most accomplished and inventive crafters that I've ever met - these are four of the many and awesome cards we've had over the years. My favourite - which lives in the christmas box and is therefore absent, is a partridge with a fanned paper tail. Making things sort of runs in the family :)

A carved, wooden clock made by the VB - 'Tempus Fugit' or 'Time Flies'!

This is a silver rose bowl designed and smithed by the VB - it's based on the structure of a carbon atom - hence the shape of the feet. It's one of things he was most proud of, and it was good to see it full of roses once more. The mat underneath was crocheted by TLM :)

Easter 2011: Guisborough Priory

(Easter 2011)

Continuing the monastic flavour, we went off to Guisborough to have a look around the ruins of the Augustinian priory there. Much less survives here than at Mount Grace, but what does is still pretty spectacular. There appears to be a small army of volunteers keeping the gardens in check, including a large cottage-garden area with a beautifully restored and oddly huge dovecote in the middle. Much of what is left has been robbed out - presumably as building materials for the village that appears to have grown up in the forecourt of the priory. The great eastern window is still in tact, however, along with part of the cloister; the quality of the building work is indicative of the kind of wealth and status enjoyed by the priory during its life. The window looks very strange, standing as one great wall despite the disappearance of its supporting structures.

A lime grove has been planted in an area beside the priory known as the monks' walk; the limes, the tallest (and, as any palynologist will tell you, a very old) variety of deciduous tree in Britain, stand guard over a memorial garden where the remains exhumed from beneath the priory church during excavations there. The clearing in which they are buried is surrounded by carved pieces of stone from the priory, beautifully maintained flowerbeds and a woodland garden. The ground is covered (at this time of the year) with bluebells and wild alliums, and the dappled sunlight spills through the lime trees that appear to have formed their own cathedral of wood about the burial ground. I honestly cannot think of a more peaceful or beautiful place to be buried in all this world.The woodland garden has been very skillfully planned to provided teaching and meeting areas with seats made from sawn up logs, natural habitats for insects and fungus and a general area in which volunteers can relax. It seemed that every time I turned around in the garden I found some new secret place amongst the leaves and flowers. It was a little like being in my own head - in that it was more or less how I imagined parts of the world I'm writing about. There was even an ancient and wonderfully rusty garden incinerator tucked away against one of the walls.When the priory shut for the night we had a brief foray into the churchyard next door, which has some of the most interesting gravestones I've seen in a while (sorry, I know I have bizarre hobbies), including an amazing carving of a skull-bat (probably soemthing to do with the idea of 'king-death'). One stone simply had initials on... their mourners probably couldn't afford more, but it's that grave that I remember most out of all the beautifully carved specimens surrounding it. How perverse of me.

We also had a nosey through a hedge at a church school that was set up in the Elizabethan period, which also had some intriguing architecture (in this case, largely obscured by the hedge) and was quite beautiful. In a nearby field we were astonished to find an entire colony of llamas (no, really), who seemed monumentally uninterested in a party of strange bipeds who were stood waving at them... There was a wonderful moment when I turned around to find Poom attempting to attract their attention using semaphore, but unfortunately all our attempts at communication were spurned.

A good day, though, all in all - leading to a large volume of photographs appearing on (you guessed it) my dA profile.

Photographs: The extraordinary east window through which you can just see the distant dovecote; the lime grove memorial garden; meet me amongst the wild alliums; the Almighty Skull-Bat and the lonely initials; no, really: llamas!

Easter 2011: Saltburn in the Mists

(Easter 2011)

Me and the Mr went up to visit his family for easter and we had a brilliant time - going out to somewhere interesting every day! When we headed up it was in that random week of blistering sunshine, so of course the first afternoon on the coast was spent with so much sea-mist we couldn't even see the beach - it was brilliant! Strangely eerie, absolutely freezing and very beautiful. Stubborn folk as we are, those of us not attending mass all had ice creams, despite the cold; we had a good walk up and down the pier and along the beach, meeting up with my Mr and his Mum at a pub when some of the mist had cleared.

Had the chance to take some brilliant photos, many of which can be seen on my dA profile.

'Where'd the sea go?'

Disappearing pier.

Wanderers in the mist.

The funicular lift (apparently) to nowhere :)

Cliff-top folly.

Clearing Ben and Poom's Garden

So, it's been a while since I posted (I know, I know, again), for a variety of reasons, including finding out that we had to move house, moving house, and the illness and passing away of my dear and wondeful Grandad. I've gone into it in more detail on my other blog, but suffice it to say I'll be doing some catching up on the blog front.

(Sometime in mid-April)

Spent a few days this week taming Ben and Poom's garden - they moved house in the winter and their garden is something of a jungle. After a while I could sort of see where the original garden plan was going - before a few years of neglected pruning there would have been a winding path leading to the back of the garden with woodland flowers like japanese anemones and primroses along the edge. Then, further back from the path were flowering shrubs and dark foliage. At the back of the garden were raspberries, both the usual varieties and a variety of golden fruiting raspberry, redcurrants, blackberries and blackcurrants. The front beds are full of flowers: spring bulbs, clematis, wallflowers and pansies. I even found a tree none of us knew was there inside a buddlea. Oh, and there was pampas grass. I hate pampas grass.

As you can imagine, after a few years with no one looking after the plants it all went a bit mental. Surprisingly the buddlea was the easiest to deal with - largely because Ben and Poom wanted to keep it, so it largely just involved cutting back. The expanding hazel thicket took more time, and a good deal of help from my Mr and Tom; I still haven't quite finished with the laurel, but I defeated the larger of the two pampas grass bushes and helped my Mr take out the second.

At school we used to call it slit-wrist, and with good reason - even being within three feet of the damned stuff means cuts on arms and legs and faces. It was a proper ****er to get out, I can tell you: several feet deep and about two foot thick with dried grass and snail shells - some of which were still alive. Urgh. I have to say, I've never seen the point in a plant that looks sort of ok-ish for approximately two months of the year and ragged and hideous for the rest of it, is so big that it kills off anything nearby and so vicious that you start bleeding of you even look at it. I mean, why do they plant it in schools, for Gods' sake?

Anyway, it took some time - as you can see from the photographs, which don't look like I've made any progress at all, other than greatly increasing the pile of sticks in the front - and I'm not yet finished, but it's going to be a lovely garden again soon.

To the Beach!

25thish of May

Spent the weekend up in New Marske with Niall and his family; we had a great time just hanging out :) Last time we went for a great walk along the old railway lines, but this time we decided to spend the afternoon at the beach, as it was glorious out. In my studenty-city bound way I've really missed going on adventures like this, and seeing the fields of mustard that herald summer for me. I didn't even bring work this time :) and we all enjoyed shouting at Saturday Kitchen. There was a pub at some point too... but the best bit was watching the surf under the pier at Saltburn.

Photos: Saltburn beach; look, sand!; Sarah, Tom and Niall