
Suddenly, we’re into the last third of the year, as a kind soul reminded me just as we turned into September. And since it’s a work term, maybe a prospective look at what’s coming up in this last big slice of the calendar pie might be salutary. I’ve done some cross-checking on the little Pocket Directory, which will have another iteration in the shops again very soon, and that’s helped to focus my mind as well for the next months of diary entries. According to the handy Day Number Calculator, today is Day Number 254, with 111 more days to go.
I reckon there are nearly a dozen events of note happening throughout the area this autumn, so they’ll be important to mark in this ‘Year in the Life of a Village.’ That leaves a square century of days to be filling with interesting facets of life in this community.
Of the 11 Places of Worship in the patch (that is, the East and West Allen Valleys just about up to the River Tyne), there are 4 more to feature. Of the 11 further Meeting Places & Venues listed in the Pocket Directory, there are 5 yet to consider. Of the 14 Pubs and Eating Places, there’s still 8 waiting for an entry. If we collect them all, that leaves space for 83 more entries.
We’ve done about the same on Shops & Services, featuring so far 22 entries from that category, with something like 21 yet to go. Thereafter, 62 days yet to fill.
There’s a lot of Clubs & Organisations in these Allen Valleys, and the diary has featured some 47, but there are still some 49, give or take, that should be mentioned somehow. That should leave 13 more entries to go in the year. Space for a few salient artists and tradespeople, I’d have thought, who are quite challenging to pin down; there are 41 tradespeople listed in the Pocket Directory, at least!
I’ve thought that the challenges of writing about the individual Bed and Breakfasts and the AirBnBs (some 29), as well as the individual Holiday Cottages (an additional 40 or so, though the directory has some redundancies among the two categories), are just too daunting. Still, as a gesture of good faith, I’ve gone out of my way to identify and keep the listings of these accommodations current on the inside pages of the Pocket Directory. Perhaps a few items about the tourism trade, in general, as the season winds down, will be useful and informative.
So it’s going to be quite an interesting final third of the year, isn’t it, if we can get through most of the remaining entities that are still available for describing for the diary. Time to get our skates back on and get cracking after a long summer of some indolence. I’ll try to work hard towards a comprehensive goal, getting out and about again and interviewing folks as I can.
But it will really help to finish this lovely piece of work if any entity or individual not yet featured in the diary, but becoming aware of this opportunity, would like to send me some details, chat, information about their group or their passion. I have a waking horror that someone will collar me at some point in January, when the book of the blog has gone to the printer, to say, ‘But you didn’t write about us!’ The invitation is fulsomely open to all! It’s really easy to email me, Larry.Winger@btinternet.com . . . honest! A photograph to make the description sing, a word or two about how the activity feels for the participants, what it’s like, its history, current status, whatever reflects life in these valleys during this year, will all help to make this diary really worthwhile.