It is the hour! We challenge heaven above
Now, to deny our slight ephemeral breath
Joy, anguish, and that everlasting love
Which triumphs over death.


Alfred Noyes

Easter Blessings

Spring made a late but definite appearance today,
with the arrival overnight of The Rhubarb,
long awaited, keenly anticipated.



There will be days that make us swoon, and days that make us shiver, but I think this is Show Time.

Here are the daffodils that just a few days ago were only promising glory.



Already flirting with the Bees....



Good Friday, and I scurried around this morning trying to polish up a few spots around the house before it was time for the somber morning service.

The Ecumenical Church in the village is a combination of Anglican and United Church adherents, and it is suffering all the ailments which beset the mainline churches in this Post Christian era. In addition, although we have done our best to accept a combined service, the form of worship depends a lot upon the denomination of the Minister.

At present we have a new United Church Minister, and so the worship this morning veered wildly from the traditional Anglican observance of Good Friday. We have been involved in this arrangement for almost forty years, and I am no longer familiar with the modern traditional Anglican way, but I cast my mind back (away, way back) to the three hour Good Friday Service at St. Faith's in Edmonton, commencing at noon, and continuing with reflections on the Words from the Cross until three o'clock.

But it was a come and go affair. Come for the first Words, but if you had to leave someone else would soon slip in to take your place.

Today's service was less than an hour. It was solemn and reverent, - the words were different but the Gospel and Tenebrae told the same story.

The only time I raised my eyebrows was when the Minister referred to being "suffocated by tradition". I do believe that tradition in moderation is important to a stable society, a source of guidance, and mindfulness and strength.

And what are 'memes' but modern tradition in the making? Spreading ideas, planting seeds of change, creating new traditions in a random world.

Off to toast a home baked hot cross buns, made from my mother's traditional recipe! Currants, - no peel.....

ABC WEDNESDAY ROUND 4: L is for....


L for Lavender



HERE is a pretty site to find out about all the wonderful pleasures Lavender can bring you, - its fragrance, its use in cooking, in aromatherapy, in cosmetics, and just making you feel you're pampered and in heaven.

And while you're there listen to this lovely song, sung by Burl Ives. It will stir your imagination and send you to wander in days gone by amid the romance of your grandparent's era.



And here are some lyrics from days gone by that are slightly more risque than the modern version of 'Lavender's blue, dilly dilly"

Lavender's blue, diddle diddle
Lavender's green,
When I am king, diddle diddle
You shall be queen.

Lavender's green, diddle diddle
Lavender's blue,
You must love me, diddle diddle
'Cause I love you.

Down in the vale, diddle diddle
Where flowers grow,
And the birds sing, diddle diddle
All in a row.

A brisk young man, diddle diddle
Met with a maid,
And laid her down, diddle diddle
Under the shade.

There they did play, diddle diddle
And kiss and court.
All the fine day, diddle diddle
Making good sport.

I've heard them say, diddle diddle
Since I came hither
That you and I, diddle diddle
Might lie together.

Therefore be kind, diddle diddle
While here we lie,
And you will love, diddle diddle
My dog and I.

For you and I, diddle diddle
Now all are one,
And we will lie, diddle diddle
No more alone.

Lavender's blue, diddle diddle
Lavender's green,
Let me be king, diddle diddle
You be the queen.

Lavender's green, diddle diddle
Lavender's blue,
You must love me, diddle diddle
'Cause I love you.

Edward Rutherford, author of London, linked the song to the environs of London where in the 17th-century London lavender was cultivated for perfume.**

An enchanting fragrance.....

We had an early morning appointment today, - an hour's drive up and over the pass to Summerland for Charles to keep a seven o'clock date with the eye surgeon.

What better place to get new and improved sight than in Summer Land!

We topped the hill before descending into the Okanagan about 6.15, just as the sky was gathering in the morning light and the trees that rimmed the mountains were delicately silhouetted against the pale glow.



Making good time, - we passed Skaha Lake where a faint skim of ice disturbed the clarity of the water, and the reflection of the hills.



Down the By Pass and then we turned towards Summerland, following the winding road that skirts Okanagan Lake.



The bluffs that rise along the other side of the road remind me of friends from our newly married days, - artists who introduced me to the beauty and colour in these sculpted walls.



We turn towards the hill approaching the hospital site, and Giant's Head mountain is bathed in the morning sun. Unfortunately these pictures are all taken from a moving vehicle, and Giant's Head is a little out of focus, but look, there on the left hand side at the top is the Giant's head that surveys the southern part of the Okanagan Valley.



We arrive at the Hospital. Charles goes off with a kindly volunteer to have drops put into his eyes at ever increasing intervals, and then it is his turn to watch for the great light show that seems to accompany this type of cataract operation. In the meantime I am comfortable in the waiting room with a good book and interesting company.

No pictures on the way home, - I am driving and the patient is being tender with his blurry eye.

But when I get home the daffodils are out to greet me and the baby Daphne has small, beautifully fragrant pink flowers. The Delphinium were first past the post, and are a lovely mound of greenery, whilst the peony tips are just showing, pink and promising.



A long day, - we are off to bed....

BTW - in the 1930's when my grandmother had cataracts removed from her eyes she had to lie for weeks in a darkened room, with sandbags surrounding her head, to keep it still. Blessings surround us!

Music Monday

I think this is a really powerful and moving rendition of Il Silenzio, by the composer, Nini Rosso



The silence of the night, the silence of eternity, the Last Post - beautiful....

Oh heavenly days - spring dropped in today!!

We went for a late afternoon drive and saw two ducks swimming at the east end of Ginty's Pond.

And the sap rising red in the pond side willows.



We topped a little rise and stopped to take a picture of the valley, stretched out towards Chapaka and the border with the U.S. of A.


Great changes have happened in the Lower end of the Similkameen over the last year. In place of the stretches of sagebrush and grass above the road the land has been planted to grapes, - acres and acres and miles and miles...... This picture is of the land which adjoins our old farm and orchard. It is a private Indian reserve (deeded by Queen Victoria to this particular family). When we first came to the farm old Mr. Terbasket was nearing 100 years of age. He and Charles would converse, in Chinook, Mr. Terbasket on his side of the fence where the soil sustained the original bunchgrass that grew in the Valley, - and Charles on the other side of the fence, a newcomer on a Veteran's project, planting fruit trees.

At the top of the cultivated land is our old barn, where we spent so much time lambing and shearing and generally caring for the sheep.

The white portion is land which has been planted to grapes, and I hope fervently that economic times will not last so long that the sipping of wine will be abandoned! We are going to have to drink a lot of wine to put these grapes to good use.



Above the grape plantings there are rocky outcroppings on the sides of the hills, and the occasional Hoodoo stands out bright in the sun.



We turned to come home, and in the distance the mountains that stand behind our home on the other side of the valley were blue ridged and now, today, only topped with snow.



We passed great fields of cows and calves, lazily eating supper. I'm sure the babies caper, but calves don't gambol like lambs do, and I remember what a delight it was to watch them run and jump for sheer joy while the Mamas dined.



Alas, no sheep on our drive today, but glory be, it was a Spring Day!!!! And when I came home I inspected that little clump of daffodils and I can see they are going to keep their promise of golden blooms, - maybe tomorrow.....

Dipping into Memories

The wind blew and the clouds swirled, and it was definitely not a day for the garden. Most things are just staying sheltered, but there is a little clump of daffodils that promise to be blooming in a few days......and I have a scarlet wastepaper tin sitting in the big tub, full of forsythia in full bloom, as well as a couple of pruned branches from the maple trees. They have lost their vivid colour as the catkins emerge, but make a nice contrast to the gold and green of the forsythia.

Charles calls this bathroom the greenhouse, - it is such a lovely bright place for plants, - I can't resist.



But this is not what I sat down to write about.

Because it was such a discouraging day outside my attention turned to a project Charles and I are working on together. Over the years he has been faithful about interviewing old veterans and pioneers, all of them on tape. Recently we bought a machine that magically turns tape into disk!!!

Currently we are transforming a series of tapes done on various Remembrance Days when the still active veterans stash a few bottle of rum in their vehicle and are off for the afternoon to visit shut in comrades. And what a glorious time they have.

Towards the end of the afternoon the bottles of rum are sadly depleted, but the spirits they contained have morphed into all the nostalgic men who cherish their bittersweet memories.

The last visitee on the 11th of November, 1995, was a loquacious old military driver who had been many places, seen many things and had a wonderful grasp of all these memories.

The two visitors were no slouches themselves when it came to the retelling of WW11 adventures, and the tape drew us both into the computer room as it was being transformed into a medium that could be burned.

This was not the same Remembrance Day when a slightly unsteady visiting veteran tripped and required a visit to one of the local doctors, who shook his head in disbelief and reproof. Such goings on amongst the most sober and respected men of the village.

Of the three men who laughed, told tall tales, enjoyed the fellowship of shared experiences, only Charles is left, and so the voices that have been stilled lived again and the memories of that day were fresh once more. When they are burned to CD's we will give them to sons and daughters, and the sound of their dear familiar voices will give the same bittersweet moments to their children and grandchildren, ad infinitum....

Just a little report on the state of Spring here in the Similkameen....



Here are the Pansies I brought home on Monday. They haven't lost their perkiness as they sit in the garage, waiting patiently to put their little roots down into the warming soil.

Warming soil, you say????

Here is the Valley this morning.....



Where have all the mountains gone????



And what is this imitation of a Christmas Eve Snowfall?



The morning's snow brought afternoon showers. Entirely welcome. Perhaps a little moisture will coax the rhubarb to make a tentative appearance.

Late in the afternoon the clouds lifted....



and tonight a little searching found a patch of friendly blue sky, - almost springlike.



Are we just being teased again??

Pictures taken with new camera - wonderful gift - and so much fun as I learn....

Kicking Horse Pass



A strange name for this spectacular pass that lies between Lake Louise, Alberta and Field, B.C.!

In 1858 the Palliser surveying expedition was given the task of finding a way across the Great Divide. In August of that year James Hector, a British medical doctor, geologist and natural historian, set out to search for mountain passes crossing this Continental Divide into the western river valley. He and his men camped at Wapta Falls. When a pack horse bolted James Hector gave chase, but as he rounded up the horse it kicked him, breaking his ribs.

James Hector was knocked unconscious. His guides thought he was dead, and had even gone so far as to select a site for his grave. It is said that he regained consciousness within a minute or two of being buried alive, and that he managed to wink an eye to show that he was still alive. This story is not officially recognized, but it adds to the adventure..... Hector recovered and he and his men followed the river east to its summit pass. "Both the river and the pass were named 'Kicking Horse' for Hector's ornery steed".

In 1885 Donald Smith drove the last spike that marked the fulfillment of a Confederation promise to build a railway in Canada, stretching from Sea to Sea. Nowhere had it been more difficult or treacherous than through the Rocky Mountains. West from Lake Louise the trains chugged up the mountain to Kicking Horse Pass, but once they had reach the top it was a deadly descent to the division point at Field - a hurtling drop of almost 300 meters in just over 6 kilometers at a grade of 4.5%. There were many accidents and several railroaders lost their lives. With 4 locomotives required to move even the shortest train up the mountain it was a costly endeavour.

In 1907 John. E. Schwitzer, a CPR design engineer, proposed the building of 2 spiral-shaped tunnels, with tracks that crossed over themselves in a figure 8. They were completed in 1909 and now, a hundred years later, are still used as part of the CPR Mainline.

Here is an excellent source of text and pictures.

And here is a video posted by Terry Rowsell on February 21st 2007.



We have not traveled this CPR route since our honeymoon, almost 64 years ago, and these days it is a pretty expensive trip by rail, but there is a fine viewpoint along the Trans Canada Highway which doesn't give you the thrill of the actual experience (especially if you are on your honeymoon) but does provide enough of a view to put one in awe of this engineering wonder. The trains which travel through Yoho National Park (Yoho is native for WOW) are no longer short, - nor do they require four locomotives, - at times the first locomotive is emerging from the second tunnel while the caboose is just disappearing into the first tunnel, on its way to making an almost complete circle within the mountain.



Come and see this splendid engineering feat and the spectacular mountains that surround it.....

Music Monday

Reinhardt Django

Something to listen to while I'm gone.....

Sweet Georgia Brown

The Meteorologist said
(not the Weather Man)
The Meteorologist said,
(with data to prove it)
that the wind would blow
and the snow would fall -
5 centimeters in the lower Valley.

The air was full of birds -
What the meterologist said had
reached their tiny ears.



In the fields a flock of starlings
(close to two hundred)
spread out over the bottom of the pasture
and worked their way to the top,
diligently bobbing, greedily feasting
on worms, or bugs, or beetles.
a gift of Spring.

Two dozen blackbirds chattered
in the trees next door,
suddenly falling silent as three crows
came swooping by
and taking up their story again
as the cawing disappeared in the distance.

A flock of geese rose up from the river,
circled twice around the valley
and eventually headed west by north-west
off to the northern lakes.

The robins, quiet and genteel,
searched out their own dinner
around the bottom of the apple trees -
quite oblivious to the thirty seven shiny black crows
that cawed rudely through the tops of the walnut trees

while the hunter went looking
for his blunderbuss....

Tonight the meteorologists, abashed,
enjoy the fine weather........
Windless, snowless, a gentle rain.
I hear the garden sighing with pleasure.

Or perhaps that is the meteorologists

Post Script

It is four a.m.
I waken to the sound of the wind,
ferociously circling the house,
slipping under the open window,
rippling across the bed,
assaulting my nose.

I hear the Meteoroligist's
self satisfied chuckle.

But this morning the sun is shining
and there is no snow....

BOOKS

Old Books, New books, Lists of books....

Here is Maclean's current Canadian best seller list

FICTION

1. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Anne Shaffer and Annie Barrows, - which I have read and enjoyed immensely!

2. The Kindly Ones, by Johathan Kittell. This sounds as if it would be a small, sweet read, but no, - it is 900 pages based on a Greek Tragedy, and examines the morality of an S.S. officer, who tells of his involvement with the horrors of the Holocaust with no apology and from the point of view of the Nazi German. I doubt if I will read this, and yet I feel I should!!

3. Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult - a novel about the care of disabled children.

4. Old City Hall by Robert Rotenberg, which immediately appealed to me because I used to work in an Old City Hall, but I discovered it held no memories for me and will pass it by.

5. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley. A must for its charming reviews and its promise of more to come about the heroine - an eleven year old girl named Flavia, a mystery solver!

6. The Associate by John Grisham - bound to be good.

7. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, - well, I think it's out of my league.

8. Cutting for Stone by Abraham, a novel with Egyptian overtones, I believe.

9. Fall by Colin McAdam - and its reviews interested me not one wit.

10. Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden. An novel about aviation in remote areas. Sure to catch the eye of a Flyer.

The Non Fiction is a mishmash of success stories, stories of failure, books on the economic woes which beset us, a book about the Yankees (Baseball) and the one the I have ordered from the library, - The Inheritors by David E. Sanger. It is a book which analyzes and forecasts the Obama years.

How does this Canadian list compare to other countries? I am sure we are not so global that we all read the same books, but certainly there are some that entertain or educate people in all countries. The Kindly Ones is a translation of a novel written in French by an American author and I think it has a moral message for all people.

I don't seem to have time to read during the day, but my night time reading is still dominated by Peter Ackroyd, - the Clerkenwell Tales and still The Sacred River.

This morning at the breakfast table Charles and I were discussing the amazing things we had read about the Hologram Theory, and, in passing, how it affects the structure of the breakfast table. Or is that an oxymoron considering the possibility that what appears to be the breakfast table is only an illusory perception.

The very same son who alerted me to the Hologram Paradigm also introduced me to The Galaxy Zoo. I was immediately drawn to its amazingly beautiful images of far away galaxies and as soon as I was recruited as a citizen scientist, (one of about 150,000 people who do duty by observing and classifying the various types of galaxies, stars and other phenomenon)I was busy classifying too, with awe and wonderment. Are these stupendous galaxies really all part of the Hologram???



The Galaxy Zoo files contain almost a quarter of a million galaxies which have been imaged with a camera attached to a robotic telescope (the Sloan Digital Sky Survey). In order to understand how these galaxies — and our own — are formed they need help to classify these images according to their shapes — a task at which the brain is better than even the fastest computer.

The galaxies can be elliptical, spiral, cigar shaped, disks - some close together and merging. All of them most wonderfully beautiful and glowing with unbelievably gorgeous colours.



There is a short tutorial and then you are off on your magic carpet on a fascinating inspection tour of space.

And you never know when you might find something unusual and out of the ordinary.


From Galaxy Zoo....

"One of the most exciting discoveries from the original Galaxy Zoo was something we never expected. Hanny Van Arkel, a Dutch schoolteacher and Galaxy Zoo volunteer, posted an image to the Galaxy Zoo forum and asked "What's the blue stuff below?" No one knew. The object became known as the "Voorwerp" — Dutch for "object". The original images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey couldn't tell us what it was, so we took follow-up telescope observations, in optical and ultra-violet light, as well as measurements from the Swift satellite.



The Voorwerp is shown above but you can read more about it and see additional examples on the Galaxy Zoo blog article: The Mystery of the Voorwerp Deepens!.

The Voorwerp is only one of the many interesting and wonderful objects that users found in Galaxy Zoo 1. Teams of astronomers — and of Zooites — are working hard to follow up on these. It's something that is unique to a project like the Zoo. Computers will slowly get better at classifying galaxies, but looking at an image and asking "what's that odd thing?" remains uniquely human".

So if you haven't come across The Galaxy Zoo, why don't you arrange to take the tour?

In the past few weeks two of my children have spoken to me about The Hologram Paradigm. I'm not sure if their motive was to startle me, or merely to share information.

Well, it does startle me, and I find it very difficult to get my head around these
fantastic new ideas, - and I use the word fantastic as describing what seems to have slight relation to the real world because of its strangeness or extravagance.

Quantum Mechanics and the String Theory have never been clear to me, - I grew up with particles and relativity and these strange new theories make my head spin, - slightly. The fact that physicist Alain Aspect and his research team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them, whether they are ten feet or ten billion miles apart does not communicate to me with instant clarity, although I can see that this might be an explanation for telepathy.

As I continue puzzling and reading I come across a portion of work written by Michael Talbot on the Universe as a Hologram which blows away my Memory File Drawer Theory and leaves instead a blank space waiting to be filled.

Michael Talbot informs that a fellow name Pibram was drawn to the holographic model by the puzzle of how and where memories are stored in the brain.

Well, I had wondered about that too, and thought my Theory was quite reasonable, - when you can't remember something the drawer is stuck! Simple...

However, I feel it necessary to try to understand how Pibram explains memory storage. And this is what Michael Talbot has to say about it.

" For decades numerous studies have shown that rather than being confined to a specific location, memories are dispersed throughout the brain. In a series of landmark experiments in the 1920s, brain scientist Karl Lashley found that no matter what portion of a rat's brain he removed he was unable to eradicate its memory of how to perform complex tasks it had learned prior to surgery. The only problem was that no one was able to come up with a mechanism that might explain this curious "whole in every part" nature of memory storage.

Then in the 1960s Pribram encountered the concept of holography and realized he had found the explanation brain scientists had been looking for. Pribram believes memories are encoded not in neurons, or small groupings of neurons, but in patterns of nerve impulses that crisscross the entire brain in the same way that patterns of laser light interference crisscross the entire area of a piece of film containing a holographic image. In other words, Pribram believes the brain is itself a hologram.-->

Pribram's theory also explains how the human brain can store so many memories in so little space. It has been estimated that the human brain has the capacity to memorize something on the order of 10 billion bits of information during the average human lifetime (or roughly the same amount of information contained in five sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Similarly, it has been discovered that in addition to their other capabilities, holograms possess an astounding capacity for information storage--simply by changing the angle at which the two lasers strike a piece of photographic film, it is possible to record many different images on the same surface. It has been demonstrated that one cubic centimeter of film can hold as many as 10 billion bits of information.

Our uncanny ability to quickly retrieve whatever information we need from the enormous store of our memories becomes more understandable if the brain functions according to holographic principles. If a friend asks you to tell him what comes to mind when he says the word "zebra", you do not have to clumsily sort back through some gigantic and cerebral alphabetic file to arrive at an answer. Instead, associations like "striped", "horselike", and "animal native to Africa" all pop into your head instantly.

Indeed, one of the most amazing things about the human thinking process is that every piece of information seems instantly cross- correlated with every other piece of information--another feature intrinsic to the hologram. Because every portion of a hologram is infinitely interconnected with every other portion, it is perhaps nature's supreme example of a cross-correlated system."

My word! What next, I wonder......



If we allow, for the sake of argument (Talbot says) that the superhologram is the matrix that has given birth to everything in our universe, then was it by Design or by Chance????

I went down the hall with the express purpose of making my glasses sparkle and glow, but something distracted me and then I forgot this important aspect of Sunday morning, and I played the organ throughout the church service, seeing but darkly!

Although I think I played Amazing Grace with some elegance and emotion, inspired by Il Divo.

Afterwards, in the grocery store, it came upon me that all was not as bright as it should be, (including mine own dear self) and I resolved to clean my glasses as soon as I got home.

But alas, the little old dog met me at the door, apparently in dire need to go for a walk, - and we found the leash and the walking shoes and away we went. Only arriving back in time to get lunch, - in a haze, still darkly....

After lunch I put the telephone and the glasses beside the couch and Casper and I laid ourselves down for a small nap after the morning's musical exertions. I dreamt I lost my friend who I was taking back to the Care Facility, and I wandered in the dark looking for her in vain.

Finally I woke, gratefully, and I thought how glad I was that dreams relinquish us from their terrors and anxieties. Then I went to put the kettle on for tea, and was inspired to lighten things up with some freshly baked orange muffins.

I put on my glasses to check on the amount of baking soda in the recipe, and somehow the day lost its brightness, and became heavy, and dreary.

Casper needed to go out again, - we left the muffins in Charles' care and I took off my glasses and away we went, finding pleasure in the mildness of the afternoon and the small tufts of green showing up along the lane. In the distance there is a lovely tree that every March seems to have an aura of spring around it, long before the leaves are ready to unfurl, and as we walked it occurred to me that perhaps this encouraging phenomenon is caused by the large evergreen behind it and across the road, lending its colour to the bare branches.

We saw the quail, in pairs, skittering after each other, and two woodpeckers courted shyly in the neighbour's walnut trees.

We had tea, and sweet warm muffins, and while Charles read the paper I leafed desultorily through Theodore Roethke, looking unsuccessfully for a poem.

Carelessly, I had once again donned those dirty, filmy spotted glasses.

I lifted my head from the book and looked across the valley, where nothing was as sharp and clear as it should be. The sap is rising in the golden willows, but they were not glowing ...

Oh, ENOUGH - at last I rose and found the glass cleaning spray, and polished those spectacles within an infinitesimal inch of disintegration.

Our nice Welsh preacher this morning spoke about God's gift of the Grace of Endurance, but I felt somewhat unappreciative of this gift today, - a whole grey day when the Gifts of Awareness and Common Sense would have saved me from its dreariness.

Tomorrow I will wear my rose coloured glasses, and search in the garden for more signs of spring.

They have a new round-about in Penticton - a nice simple one that we had no trouble navigating on our way to see the ophthalmologist.

However, it brought back memories of other round-abouts we have known which have struck terror in our hearts as we tried to find a way off them - headed in the right direction! Mostly they were in Britain, or on the Continent.

We had been to a crew reunion at Coningsby - then journeyed up to Lincoln and were on our way to Buxton.

We set off for Buxton after lunch - this time with George, the Scottish Engineer (Crew) in the lead. All went well for a goodly number of miles, but then we got cut off from him on entering one of the roundabouts, - cut off by four big lorries. Couldn't see where he had turned off, so we guessed. Wrongly. Three times.

Finally, as Lincoln seemed to be getting closer, rather than further away, we stopped for instructions and started off again in the right direction.

From my Journal - 'The countryside changed as we got closer to Buxton - more hilly and rolling - through Robin Hood country and Sherwood Forest. Eventually we started up a long, long hill. There were sheep everywhere. The pastures are all divided with stone fences and the buildings are beautifully crafted with stone. A quarry nearby, no doubt. Surely all of these stones couldn't have been picked off the fields!

Jack and George were waiting for us half way up the hill, and escorted us into town to the Palace Hotel, - a structure of great grandeur. Our bathroom is larger than our whole room was in London. It is an old hotel, - built in 1868 to accommodate all the wealthy patrons of the Spa. It has broad, wide staircases, beautiful old furniture, gorgeous (if shabby) carpets - and pretty fair service.




Went tonight to a pub about half an hour away, and had another very warm communal dinner. The talk never stops. Or the laughter, - or the memories.

Tomorrow we move to another hotel, and have a trip planned to the Derwent Valley dam, where they practiced for the dam-buster raid.'

And on June 12th (back in 1985)

'After breakfasting together at the Palace we all went out to tour the shops briefly, and then to lunch at the Devonshire Arms on our way up to the Derwent Valley. A nice pub - the proprietor is a nephew of Brownies (the Radio Operator) and of course there were the inevitable pictures. Everyone is so interested in this crew of men - I guess there is a certain romance about their friendship for one another, and certainly it must make people feel good to see it.

We stopped at Castleton on our way, - the most picturesque of English towns. A real tourist trap! All of the shops on the main street sell BlueJohn jewelry. We bought some too. Above the town is the remains of a medieval castle, and as you leave the tourist part you pass through lovely old stone residences. Onward and upward through Hope to the dam - the country still full of sheep (lots of Jacobs) but the pastures were then divided by hedges and there was considerably more forest land. Margaret says the village of Castleton is decorated each Christmas with fir trees and the castle is flood lit.





The Derwent Valley is all parkland, but it is also full of sheep who keep the grass nicely clipped. The dam itself was of great interest and I understand was used in filming the picture "Dam Busters".






We returned via the Duke of Devonshires' estate (a stately old home) and what a wonderful flock of sheep he has. They seem to use a lot of Suffolk for their final cross, and these sheep were in superb shape. The lambs were fat, and looked about ready for market.

When we got back we moved our belongings to the St. Ann Hotel - another really old relic of bygone glory. The Baths of Buxton are no more, but the accommodations linger on. Tonight we are sleeping in four poster beds. The rain is beating down and the wind is blowing in gusts. Tomorrow we go to York.'

Well, I did digress, and I have not told you yet about our way around and around and around about Lille - or Njimegan. I was in tears in Njimagen! But these pages do bring back wonderful memories, and I guess I got lost in them. It was beautiful county, marvelous companions and I think each and every day we were together with the Crew would qualify as a Golden Day.

We had an early lunch and lingered over coffee, talking idly about Charles' singing group which had visited the local Care Centre in the morning. We reminisced a little, and then fell to discussing the river Thames, and the wonderfully researched book that Peter Akroyd has written about the Sacred River. I was particularly interested in the wealth of Neolithic and Bronze Age artifacts which have been found, concentrated in the short stretch between Twickenham and Teddington. We were discussing the complex geology of the Thames and reading aloud little bits about the relevance to ancient earth ages when suddenly there were strange noises coming from the nether parts of the house.

I went to investigate.

The cat was in the laundry room, swishing her tail and with a wildly concentrated look in her eyes. A mouse, - somewhere behind the hot water heater there was a mouse!

Charles came to investigate.

I left the two mighty hunters behind closed doors, discussing the capture of the creature.

Through the door the discussion grew a little frantic, - I could hear the cane (Charles' cane, not the cat's) pushing things aside, banging on the floor.

Ah, things have quietened down somewhat, - Charles is speaking to Miss Callie with gentle approval - "Good Cat, Good Cat" I hear.

Suddenly, all approval gone, the feline intelligence is being questioned. Loudly. Miss Callie has let the mouse escape....well, of course, - isn't that the name of the game?



She catches it again, - Charles tries to guide Callie and the mouse through the open door, but in vain. The mouse is free! And in behind the washer, where nothing and noone can reach her/him....

I lie down on the couch and feign sleep, - Charles and Callie emerge from the laundry room. Callie comes and lies on my chest, telling me what went on and commenting on the status quo.

It is clear that the answer lies in a mousetrap, generously baited. Charles moves the washer and dryer closer together so that there is room to slide in the cheesy morsel. We close the door, and settle for a little nap, complacently confident that this will do the trick.

We are old hands at this game....

Tonight Miss Callie haunts the laundry room, frightfully bucked at the thoughts of another exciting chase. Nobody has the heart to tell her the cheese was the poor little creatures downfall.....