It was the late Bishop of Durham, the Reverend David Jenkins, who opined that the resurrection which encapsulates Christianity was “not just a conjuring trick with a bag of bones”. Blunt, but frank, at least. How he loved controversy, yet…
Category: Anecdote
Barbecue Saturday!
Seems like it might be our first real opportunity of the year for a family barbecue today! Our brother-in-law is from South Africa, and his life is built around barbecues, which down south in hearty Herefordshire he fires up every…
Tweet-a-pedia to the rescue!
I could not quite believe it, upon interrogating Google to find out some useful information about our resident cock pheasant and his cheerful harem of three hens, expecting to be pointed towards a Wiki-pedia entry, only to find that ‘Tweet-a-pedia”…
Isaac Holden, a very odd and wonderful person
Isaac Holden is probably older than the ‘guysers’ and the bonfire on New Year’s Eve in Allendale’s Market Square, though he must have seen them during his last decade, but he’s maybe not quite as famous as Allendale’s Tar Bar’l…
Curlews, lapwings — later black grouse, and more
[Sketches derived from apparently royalty-free images on the internet] So the large curlew is back on the Sparty Lea fellside, gliding through the air, and the lapwings have been skirling in the sky for some time now. Only after we’d…
Chitting potatoes . . . and a link to the past
We use the ‘no-dig’ protocol to grow our award-winning potatoes (High Forest Show 2017) on a southern exposure in Sparty Lea. It’s taken us some time to figure out how best to grow any vegetables at all up here, but…
Tranquility, but not just yet please
My brother emails me from the Near North, Ontario, just below Lake Nipissing where the northern half of the province begins, to wonder if the recent diary entries are not some sort of metaphor for my current state of health…
Wait forever for a fuss . . .
. . . and three come round at once! Well, in Allendale time, three fusses in less than six months rates as slightly extraordinary, when there’s been no fuss to speak of for years now, that I can remember, anyway….
Snowdrops to keep us going
Still the middle of winter, though it’s been soft so far, but snowdrops bursting through the soil in their multiple clumps seem to tell us that spring is not far away. They could be great pretenders too, of course, and…
Walking the circuit . . .
Yesterday I alluded to ‘the circuit’ and wondered if anyone might comment on that somewhat obscure reference. Maybe it’s one of those things that everybody knows about, which often feel like the most fun sort of things to comment on…