The internet has made churchcrawling easier, and so some churches that prooved difficult to see inside can be contacted and visits arranged.

Over the years, several have taken a couple of years or more to see inside: Thannington, Hinxhill, Preston and Betteshanger just off the top of my head. But most difficult have been Barming.

We first visited here one Good Friday over a decade ago, one of several along the valley that were either closed or had services on. Since then I have been insde Mereworth and Waterningbury, but each time we went past Barming, it has been closed.

Then a few weeks ago, a friend posted pictures from inside, and told me he had arranged a visit from their website. I did the same, though one visit a few weeks back had to be postponed, a few weeks later I was back, hoping to meet a warden at ten.

It was at least a fine sunny and warm spring morning, perfect for snapping the churchyard and finding yet more details on the body of the church to record.

St Margaret sites halfway between the River Medway and the old high road out of Maidstone, and once might have been a separate village from Maidstone, but is now just a suburb of the town. The church sits down a dead end lane, and is really a wonderful location overlooking the valley to East Farleigh on the other bank.

The churchyard is filled with spring bulbs, and so in spring it is a riot of colour.

I saw the warden park her car, and walk towards me, so I get up from the bench near the porch to meet her, and than her warmly for opening up.

Unusually, I had read up on the church before my visit, and so was aware of the 14th century bench ends in the Chancel. They did not disappoint.

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An isolated church at the end of a lane above the River Medway. Norman origins are obvious - three windows in the east wall indicate the earliest work. The nave is also early and to this was added the fifteenth century tower with stair turret and needle-like spire. The north aisle was a nineteenth century addition and the chancel was restored by Sir Ninian Comper and represents some of his earliest work. Later generations have, unfortunately, undone much of his original design. The memorable feature of the church is the set of fourteenth century Rhenish carvings showing St Michael, Samson and Our Lord worked into bench ends in the chancel.

www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Barming

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BARMING.

CALLED in antient records, Bermelinge, lies the next parish to East Farleigh, on the opposite or northern side of the river Medway.

THE PARISH of East Barming lies on high ground, declining southward to the valley, through which the river Medway flows, being its southern boundary. It is situated opposite to East Farleigh, than which it has a far less rustic and more ornamented appearance. The soil like that is a fertile loam, slightly covering the quarry rock, from under which several small springs gush out, and run precipitately in trinkling rills into the Medway; it is enriched too with frequent hop and fruit plantations; the fields are in general larger, and surrounded with continued rows of lofty elms and large spreading oaks, which contribute greatly to the pleasantness of the place. The situation of it, as well as of the neighbouring parishes, from Maidstone as far as Mereworth, is exceedingly beautiful, the river Medway meandering its silver stream in the valley beneath, throughout the greatest part of the extent of them; the fertility of soil, the healthiness of air, the rich variety of prospect, adorned by a continued range of capital seats, with their parks and plantations, form altogether an assemblage of objects, in which nature and art appear to have lavished their choicest endeavours, to form a scene teeming with whatever can make it desirable both for pleasure and profit.

The high road from Maidstone to Tunbridge crosses the upper part of the parish of East Barming, over a beautiful, though small plain, called Barmingheath, part of which is in Maidstone parish, a little distance below which is a modern, and rather elegant seat, built by John Whitaker, gent. second son of Mr. Tho. Whitaker, of Trottesclive, since whose death it has come to his nephew, Thomas Whitaker, esq. of Watringbury; but Mr. William Rolfe resides in it. Farther on is the village of Barming, in which is a pleasant seat, called the Homestall, built about the year 1720, by Mr. James Allen, whose heirs are now entitled to the see simple of it; but by the foreclosure of a mortgage term, the possession of it became vested in Arthur Harris, esq. who kept his shrievalty here in 1746; his brother Thomas resided likewise here, and dying unmarried in 1769, gave this seat to Mrs. Mary Dorman for life; remainder to Mr. John Mumford, of Sutton-at-Hone, whom he made heir to the bulk of his fortune; she now possesses and resides in it. A small distance from hence is the seat of Hall-place; hence the ground rises to the coppice woods, part of which lie within this parish, and adjoin to a much larger tract northward. About a quarter of a mile on the other side of the road is the church, standing by itself among a grove of elms, the slight delicate white spire of which rising above the foilage of the grove, affords a pleasing prospect to the neighbouring country. From the above road the village extends southward down the declivity of the hill, almost to the river, over which there is a wooden bridge, built at the expence of the commissioners of the navigation. It is called St. Helen's bridge, from its contiguity to that manor, situated at a very small distance from it; about a mile from the village, close to the eastern boundary of the parish, adjoining to that of Maidstone, on the declivity of the hill, leading down to East Farleigh bridge, is the parsonage, lately almost rebuilt by the present rector, the Rev. Mark Noble, who resides in it, and by his judicious management and improvements has made this benefice, perhaps one of the most desirable in the diocese.

A few years ago several Roman urns, pieces of armour, and skeletons, were dug up within the bounds of this parish; the latter were no doubt belonging to those who fell in the skirmish between the Royalists and Oliverians at Farleigh bridge, in 1648; and the former serves to shew, that the Roman highway, a different one from the larger one of the Watling-street, and directing its course towards Oldborough, in Ightham, led near this place, of which more will be noticed hereafter.

THERE GROWS on Barming heath, the plant, Chamæmelum odoratissimum repens flore simplici, common camomile, in great plenty; and verbascum album vulgare five thapsus barbatus communis, great mul lein, or hightaper, more plentifully, and of a larger size than I have met with elsewhere.

THE MANOR of East Barming was given by king William the conqueror to Richard de Tonebrege, the eldest son of Gislebert earl of Brion, in Normandy, the son of Geffry, natural son of Richard, the first of that name, duke of Normandy, whence he bore the name of Richard Fitz Gilbert at his coming hither; (fn. 1) he was one of the principal persons who came into England with duke William, to whom he gave great assistance in that memorable battle, in which he obtained the crown of this realm. He had for that service, and in respect of his near alliance to him in blood, great advancements in honour, and large possessions both in Normandy and England, bestowed upon him; among the latter he possessed thirty-eight lordships in Surry, thirty-five in Essex, three in Cambridgeshire, three in Kent, one in Middlesex, one in Wiltshire, one in Devonshire, ninety-five in Suffolk, and thirteen burgages in Ipswich, of which Clare was one, besides others in other counties; accordingly, in the survey of Domesday, taken about the year 1080, being the 15th of the Conqueror's reign, this estate is thus entered under the title of, Terra Ricardi F. Gisleb'ti, the land of Richard, the son of Gislebert.

In Medestan hundred the same Richard (de Tonebrige) holds Bermelinge. Alret held it of king Edward (the Confessor) and then and now it was and is taxed at one suling. The arable land is four carucates. In demesne there are two carucates and five villeins, with eight borderers, having five carucates. There are thirteen servants, and one mill of five shillings, and four acres of meadow. Wood for the pannage of ten hogs. In the time of king Edward it was worth four pounds, and afterwards 100 shillings, now four pounds.

This Richard Fitz Gilbert, at the latter end of the Conqueror's reign, was usually called Rich. de Tonebrige, as well from his possessing that town and castle, as from his residence there; and his descendants took the name of Clare, from the like reason of their possessing that honour, and were afterwards earls of Clare, and of Gloucester and Hertford. Of this family, as chief lords of the fee, Barming was afterwards held in moieties by Fulk Peyforer and Roger de Kent, each of whom held their part of the honour of Clare.

In the reign of king Edward II. the heirs of Lora Peyforer and those of Roger de Kent, being Thomas de Barmeling and Wm. de Kent, held these moieties as above mentioned; and in the 20th year of the next reign of king Edward III. John Fitz Jacob, Thomas and John de Kent, held these moieties of this estate, in East Barmeling, of the earl of Gloucester.

THE FORMER OF THESE MOIETIES, held by the family of Peyforer, seems to have comprised the MANOR of EAST BARMING, and to have been given afterwards to the Benedictine nunnery of St. Helen's, in Bishopsgate street, London, whence it acquired the name of ST. HELEN'S, alias East Barming manor, by the former of which only it is now called; with the above priory this manor remained till its dissolution, in king Henry VIII.'s reign, when it was surrendered into the king's hands, who, in his 35th year, granted his manor, called St. Elen's, among other premises, to Richard Callohill, to hold in capite by knights service, who that year sold it to Gabriel Caldham, freemason, of London; and he next year sold it to Tho. Reve, (fn. 2) whose grandson of the same name, in the 4th year of queen Elizabeth, levied a fine of it, and then passed it away by sale to Mr. Stephen Pearse, who some years afterwards alienated it to Sir Robert Brett, on whose death, without surviving issue, in 1620, (fn. 3) this manor came by will to Robert Lynd, esq. who bore for his arms, Argent a cross ingrailed gules; and he sold it to Sir Oliver Boteler, of Teston, in whose descendants it continued down to Sir Philip Boteler, bart. who died in 1772, s. p. and by will gave one moiety of his estates to Mrs. Elizabeth Bouverie, of Chart Sutton; and the other moiety to Elizabeth viscountess dowager Folkestone, and Wm. Bouverie, earl of Radnor; and on a partition afterwards made between them, this manor was allotted to lady Folkestone, who died in 1782, on which it came to her only son, the Hon. Philip Bouverie, who has since taken the name of Pusey, and he is the present owner of it.

This manor extends its jurisdiction over the whole of this parish; the antient house of it, as well as the dove cote, stood nearly at the foot of the hill near St. Helen's bridge; both have been pulled down not many years since.

THE OTHER MOIETY of the estate of East Barming, held by John Fitz Jacob and John de Kent, seems to have passed afterwards into the family of Fremingham; for John, son of Sir Ralph de Fremingham, of Lose, died possessed of it about the 12th year of king Henry IV. and leaving no issue, he by his will gave it to certain feoffees, who, in compliance with it, next year assigned it to John Pimpe, and his heirs male, for the finding and maintaining of two chaplains, one in the monastery of Boxley, and the other in the church of East Farleigh, to celebrate for the souls of himself, his wife, and others their ancestors and relations therein mentioned. From the family of Pimpe this estate came, in king Henry VIII.'s reign, to Sir Henry Isley, who by the act of the 2d and 3d of king Edward VI. procured his lands in this county to be disgavelled.

Being concerned in the rebellion raised by Sir Tho. Wyatt, in the 1st year of queen Mary, he was attainted, and his lands were consiscated to the crown, whence this estate was granted that year to Sir John Baker, the queen's attorney general, to hold in capite by knights service; (fn. 4) in whose descendants it continued down to Sir John Baker, bart. of Sissinghurst, of whom it seems to have been purchased in the reign of king Charles II. by Golding, who died possessed of it in 1674, and was buried in this church, bearing for his arms, A cross voided, between four lions passant guardant. His son, Mr. Henry Golding, gent. about the year 1700, alienated this estate to Nicholas Amhurst, gent. of West Barming, who died possessed of it in 1715; and his grandson, John Amhurst, esq. is the present possessor of it.

HALL PLACE is a reputed manor in this parish, the antient mansion of which is situated at a small distance westward of the present seat, and is little more than an ordinary cottage, serving as a farm house to a small parcel of land. It formerly gave both residence and surname to a family, written in antient deeds, At-Hall, who before the end of the reign of king Edward III. had alienated their interest in the greatest part of it to one of the Colepepers, of Preston, in Aylesford, and the rest of it to Clive; and this part was by John Clive, about the 7th year of king Henry IV. likewise conveyed to Colepeper, who in the 10th year of that reign passed away the entire fee of it to Sampson Mascall, whose family was originally of Mascall's, in Brenchley, and in his descendants Hall-place continued till the latter end of queen Elizabeth's reign, when it was conveyed to Alchorne, whose ancestors were possessed of Alchorne in Rotherfield, in Sussex; in which name the fee of this estate remained at the time of king Charles II.'s restoration, but the use and profits of it were made over, for a long series of years, to Mr. Cook, of Stepney; and he, in 1656, alienated his interest in it to Mr. Rich. Webb, rector of this parish, who in 1667, gave it to his grandson, Richard Webb, gent. who, in 1726, conveyed it by sale to Mr. Peter Smart, who bore for his arms, Argent, a chevron between three pheons sable; about which time Christopher Smart, the poet, is said to have been born in this parish; at length, Mr. Peter Smart's widow, and their children, in 1746, passed away their interest in it to John Cale, esq. who resided here, and dying in 1777, was buried in this churchyard, having been a benefactor to the poor of this parish; and by his will he devised this, among the rest of his estates in this county, to the heirs of Tho. Prowse, esq. of Axbridge, in Somersetshire; in consequence of which his two daughters and coheirs became intitled to it; the youngest of whom married Sir John Mordaunt, bart. of Walton, in Warwickshire, and they became possessed of this estate in undivided moieties, and in 1781, joined in the sale of it to John Amhurst, esq. of Barnjet, the present owner of it.

CHARITIES.

THOMAS HARRIS, esq. of this parish, in 1769, gave by will, 5l. per annum for fifty years, 2s. of it to be given to the poor of this parish in bread, on each Sunday in the year, excepting Easter and Whitsunday.

JOHN CALE, esq. of this parish, in 1777, gave by will the sum of 200l. in East India annuities, the interest of it to be given to the poor yearly at Christmas, in linen and bread, vested in trustees, of the annual produce of 61.

THIS PARISH is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester and deanry of Malling.

The church, which is dedicated to St. Margaret, is a small building, consisting of one isle and a chancel, with an elegant spire steeple. The present rector, Mr. Noble, about twelve years ago, at his own expence, entirely repaired and ornamented the chancel; he gave likewise a new altar and pulpit cloth, and cushion; and the parishioners, followed his example, in the repair and ornamenting of the church itself; so that from being one of the most neglected, it is become equal to most of the neighbouring churches in those respects.

Walter, bishop of Rochester, in the reign of king Stephen, confirmed to the prior and canon of Ledes the patronage of the church of Barmyng, as it was granted to them by the lords of the soil, and confirmed to them by their charters.

Gilbert, bishop of Rochester, in the reign of king Henry II. granted to the prior and canons two shillings, to be received by them yearly, as a pension from this church, saving the episcopal right of the bishop of Rochester, &c. (fn. 5) The patronage of the church of Barming, together with this pension, remained part of the possessions of the above mentioned priory till the dissolution of it in the reign of king Henry VIII. when it came into the king's hands. Since which, the patronage of this rectory has continued vested in the crown, but the above mentioned yearly pension of two shillings was, by the king's dotation charter, in his 33d year, settled on his new erected dean and chapter of Rochester, who are now intitled to it.

¶In the 15th year of king Edward I. the church of Barmelyng was valued at twelve marcs. It is valued in the king's books at 12l. 7s. 1d. and the yearly tenths at 1l. 5s. 8½d.z The glebe land belonging to this rectory contains eighty-three acres.

www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol4/pp383-392

Algarve, Portugal - a difficult few days - high winds, heavy rain and of course this bloody Covid-19, which resulted in a premature repatriation back to the UK :-(

Colin at the wheel of RF 600 during a rainy East Grinstead bus running day.

"Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it -- namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign."

Thanks to the Nailbourne project, I now understand how the communities and landscape fots in along its length, though that a bubbling noisy stream can just vanish then appear miles away is very difficult to get your head round. The Nailbourne only fully flows in very wet years, but when it does, the beds that are dry now can be several feet deep.

But downstream of Littlebourne, where the Nailbourne becomes the Little Stour, it is wider, about six feet wide, clogged with reeds and weeds, but also was used to power to large mills. They both stand, one between Littlebourne and Wickhambreaux, and the other in Wickhambreaux itself, though is now just a house But is a large white clapboard building, with a large wheel.

These days, the village looks very prosperous, all grand houses or cottage conversions.

From here, the Little Stour makes its way over the marshes which centuries ago was the Wantsum Channel, so Wickhambreaux was almost a seaside town.

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The interior of this very pretty church is dominated by nineteenth-century work. The whole of the chancel and baptistry is lined with dark brown encaustic tiles, hiding a straightforward fourteenth-century church. The east window is an early example of American Art Nouveau in England, and dominates the entire building. It was designed by Baron Arild Rosenkrantz in 1896. Above the window are stencilled paintings of angels ascending, which can also be seen in the nave, whilst the roof there has a charming star-spangled sky. At the south-west corner is a vestry - screened off by an eighteenth-century screen which may have formed part of the refitting of the chancel paid for by Mary Young. Her monument in the chancel records that 'infirm from her youth she protracted life to the 68th year of her age'. She left £100 for wainscotting and ornamenting the chancel. The interior viewed from the east gives an unusual appearance as the aisles flank the tower (see also Sandhurst).

www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Wickhambreaux

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WICKHAM BREAUS

LIES adjoining to Littleborne north-eastward, being usally called Wickham Brook. It is likewise called Wickham by Wingham, to distinguish it from the two other parishes of the same name in this county. In Domesday it is written Wicheham, a name derived from its situation near the banks of the river, which runs close to it. There is only one borough in it, viz. the borough of Wickham, which comprehends the whole parish.

Wickham is a low, flat, and unpleasant situation, and lying so near the marshes cannot but be unhealthy, the land throughout it is in general good and sertile, especially near the village, where the fields are very large and level ground. The village, in number about twenty houses, stands at the south-east boundary of the parish, built round a green, over which the road leads to Ickham, having the church and court-lodge on one side, and the parsonage, a handsome brick house, on the other. At the further end of the green, the Lesser Stour crosses the road, and turns a corn-mill belonging to the manor, beyond it is only one house, called the Stone-house, being built of squared stones and slints in chequers, and by the arched windows and door-ways seems of some antiquity. The parish stretches a good distance northward, as far as Groveferry, the house of which is within it, and the greater Stour river, over a level of about 500 acres of marsh land, which extend from the river into a sinus, with a ridge of upland on each side, to within a quarter of a mile of the village. North eastward from which is the Saperton, formerly the property of the Beakes's, who resided here as early as king Henry the VIIIth.'s reign; it was sold by them to the Furneses, whence it came by marriage, with Copthall, in this parish, to the St. John's, viscounts Bolingbroke, who have lately sold it, but one of the family of Beake, many of whom lie buried in this church, now occupies it. A little beyond this is Newnham, once accounted a manor, formerly belonging to the Ropers, lords Teynham, afterwards to the Bartholomews, then to Joseph Brooke, esq. of Rochester, and now to his devisee the Rev. John Kenward Shaw Brooke, of Town-Malling.—Hence among the marshes is the hamlet of Grove, through which the road leads across them to the right over the lesser Stour, to Wingham, Ash, and the eastern parts of Kent, and to the left by Grove-ferry over the Greater Stour, to the northern part of the country and the Isle of Thanet. There is no other wood in the parish excepting Trendley park. There is no fair.

At the time of taking the survey of Domesday, in the year 1080, this place was part of those possessions with which that king had enriched his half-brother Odo, the great bishop of Baieux. Accordingly it is thus entered in that record, under the general title of his lands:

In Donamesford hundred, the bishop himself holds in demesne Wicheham. It was taxed at four sulings. The arable land is eleven carucates. In demesne there are two carucates, and thirty-six villeins, with thirty-two cottagers having nine carucates. There is a church, and one priest who gives forty shillings per annum. There is one park, and two mills of fifty shillings, and two saltpits of thirtytwo pence, and three fisheries of four shillings, and thirtytwo acres of meadow. Pasture for three hundred sheep and for thirty-one beasts. Wood for the pannage of eighty bogs. In the time of king Edward the Confessor it was worth twenty-five pounds, when he received it twenty pounds, now thirty pounds. There belong to this manor in Canterbury three plats of land paying six shillings and eight pence. Alured Biga held it of king Edward. Moreover there belongs to this manor half a suling of free land, which Sired held of Alured Biga, and Goisfrid, son of Badland, now holds it of the bishop of Baieux, and it is and was worth separately sixty shillings.

Four years afterwards the bishop was disgraced, and all his possessions were consiscated to the crown, of which this manor appears afterwards to have been held by the Cliffords. Walter, son of Walter de Clifford, possessed it in the reign of king John, and with Agnes de Cundy, his wife, was a good benefactor to St. Augustine's abbey, and that of St. Radigund. (fn. 1) By the marriage of Margaret, daughter and heir of Walter Clifford, with John de Brewse, it passed into that name, and William de Brewse, or de Braiosa, as they were written in Latin, was possessed of it in the 42d year of king Henry III. His descendant William de Brewse, lord of the honour of Brembre, in Sussex, and of Gower, in Wales, as he stiled himself, whose ancestor came into England with the Conqueror, who gave him the castle of Brember, and whose descendant afterwards, by the marriage with Bertha, daughter and one of the coheirs of Milo, earl of Hereford, became possessed of the castles of Brecknock and Gower likewife, and bore for his arms, Azure, a lion rampant, between twelve cross-croslets, or; though I find by the pedigrees of this family, that his ancestors bore Azure, three bars vaire, argent, and gules. He was several times summoned to parliament in king Edward I.'s reign, as was his son of the same name, both in that and Edward II.'s reign, and died possessed of this manor in the 19th year of the latter. Very soon after which it appears, with the church appendant to it, to have come into the possession of Edmund of Woodstock, earl of Kent, half brother to king Edward II. (fn. 2) After which it descended to his brother John Plantagenet, likewife earl of Kent, it being then held of the king in sergeantry. He died anno 26 Edward III. upon which Joane his sister, commonly called the Fair Maid of Kent, wife of Sir Thomas Holand, became his heir, who in her right not only possessed this manor, but became earl of Kent likewise. She afterwards married Edward the black prince, and died in the 9th year of king Richard II. being succeeded in this manor then held in capite, by Thomas Holand, earl of Kent, her son by her first husband, whose two sons, Thomas and Edward, both earls of Kent, and the former created Duke of Surry, in turn succeeded to it, and the latter dying anno 9 Henry IV. his five sisters became his coheirs, and on a partition made between them, Edmund, earl of March, son of Eleanor, late countess of March, the eldest of them became entitled to this manor in his mother's right, being the last earl of March of this family, for he died s. p. in the 3d year of king Henry VI. being then possessed of it. The year after which, Joane, wife of Sir John Gray, appears by the escheat rolls to have been entitled to it; not long after which it became the property of the family of Tibetot, or Tiptoft, as they were usually called, in whom it continued down to John Tiptost, earl of Worcester, who was attainted and beheaded in 1471, anno 10 Edward IV. king Henry being then restored to the crown. He lest an infant son Edward, who, though he was afterwards restored in blood by king Edward IV. yet I do not find that he was ever reinstated in the possession of this manor, which remained in the crown till the reign of king Henry VIII. who granted it, with the advowson of the church, to Sir Matthew Browne, of Beechworth-castle, who in the 22d year of it, passed it away to Lucy, widow of his uncle Sir Anthony Browne, standard-bearer of England, whose grandson Anthony was, anno I and 2 of Philip and Mary, created viscount Montague, and died possessed of this manor anno 34 Elizabeth, and by his will devised it to his eldest son by his second wife, Sir George Browne, who was of Wickham Breaus, and his grandson Sir George Browne, K. B. leaving two daughters his coheirs, Winifrid, married to Basil Brooks, esq. of Salop, and Eleanor, to Henry Farmer, esq. of Oxfordshire, they joined in the sale of it, at the latter end of Charles II.'s reign, to Sir H. Palmer, bart. of Wingham, who died possessed of it in 1706, s. p. and by his will devised it to his nephew Sir Thomas Palmer, bart. who died in 1723, and by his will gave it to his natural son Herbert Palmer, esq. who married Bethia, one of the daughters of Sir Thomas D'Aeth, bart. of Knowlton, who died in 1760, s. p., having devised this manor, with the advowson of the church appendant, to his widow. She afterwards married John Cosnan, esq. who in her right became possessed of it, and died in 1778, s. p. leaving her furviving, upon which she again became entitled to the possession of it, and continued owner of it till her death in 1797, on which it came to her nephew Sir Narborough D'Aeth, bart. of Knowlton, the present owner of it. A court leet and court baron is held for this manor.

Trendley park, now accounted a manor of itself, is situated at the north-west boundary of this parish, being entirely separated from the rest of it by that of Littleborne intervening. It was part of the possessions of Odo, bishop of Baieux, and is noticed in the survey of Domesday, in the description of the manor of Wickham above recited, in which it is mentioned as being then a park; and it should seem that at least part of it was then accounted as appurtenant to that manor; though in the description of the manor of Littleborne, in the same survey, which then belonged to the abbey of St. Augustine, it appears that the bishop had lands belonging to that manor too lying within his park here. Of this manor the bishop of Baieux has in his park as much land as is worth sixty shillings, says the record. In part of the recompence for which, the bishop seems to have given the abbot the manor of Garwinton, in Littleborne, and other land within the manor of Leeds, as may be seen by the entries of both these manors in the same record. Soon after which there was another exchange of land made between the bishop and archbishop Lanfranc, for some which lay within his park of Wikeham. What is remarkable in this instrument is, that it is given in two languages, in Saxon and Latin, but neither is a translation of the other, for both are originals, as was a frequent custom of that time. Appendant to it is the bishop's seal in wax, representing him on one side on horseback, with his sword and spurs, as an earl, and on the other habited as a bishop, with his pastoral staff; being perhaps the only seal of Odo at this time extant. (fn. 3) By all which it appears, that this park is much more antient than that of Woodstock, which has been accounted the first inclosed park in England. How long it continued an inclosed park, I have no where found; but in the beginning of king Henry VI.'s reign it was not so, as appears by the escheat-rolls of the 3d year of it, after the death of Edmund, earl of March, at which time there were two hundred acres of wood in it. He was lord of the manor of Wickham, and Trendley park was chiefly at that time certainly appurtenant to it, and continued so whilst in the possession of the same owners, which it did most probably till the attainder of John Tiptost, earl of Worcester, in the 10th year of king Edward IV. when they both came into the hands of the crown, and though king Henry VIII. afterwards granted the manor of Wickham to Sir Matthew Browne, yet I do not find that Trendley park was granted with it. From which time it has had separate owners. For some time it has been the property of the family of Denne, who continue at this time the owners of it. It lies in an unpleasant, lonely part of the parish, facing Westbere, and consists of three hundred acres of woodland, and a house called the Park-house. There is a high road through the middle of it from Stodmarsh to Canterbury market, which in king Edward II.'s reign, was attempted to be shut up, but the sheriff, with the posse comitatus, was ordered to open it again, as being an antient and allowed high road.

Charities.

Andrew Holness, of Seton, in Ickham, by will in 1554, gave to the poor 2s. in money and bread, to be distributed yearly; the churchwardens to take so much yearly out of his lands in Ickham and Wickham, except his house and garden at Seton, in case his executors did not give the same yearly.

Henry Sloyden, of Wickham Breaus, by will in 1568, gave for the use of the poor and Littleborne, in equal portions, a piece of land containing six acres and a half in the latter parish, called Church-close, which is distributed twice a year by the respective minister and churchwardens, and is of the annual produce of 4l.

John Smith, rector of this parish, by deed in 1656, gave a school-room, and a house and garden for a schoolmaster, in this parish, for teaching the children of it. The master to be chosen from one of his relations in preference, if any such could be found, is vested in the rector and churchwardens of this parish.

Sir Henry Palmer, of Bekesborne, by his will in 1611, gave the sum of 10s. to each of the several parishes of Wickham, Stodmarsh, Littleborne, and five others therein mentioned, to be paid into the hands of the minister and churchwardens yearly, out of his manor and lands of Well-court, at Michaelmas, towards the relief of the poor of each of them.

Thomas Belke, D. D. rector of this parish, by will in 1712, gave 501. for the putting out of five poor children of this parish apprentices.

There are about thirty poor constantly relieved, and casually seventy.

This parish is within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the diocese of Canterbury, and deanry of Bridge.

¶The church, which is dedicated to St. Andrew, consists of three isles and one chancel, having at the west end a square tower, in which hang six bells. The church is not large, but is handsome and neat. In the middle isle are several memorials for the Beakes, of Saperton. In the south isle for the Larkins, who lived at Grove, in this parish. In the east window are remains of good painted glass, viz. the arms of Edward the black price and of Mortimer, quartered with Burgh, and a representation of Herod's daughter beheading John the Baptist. In the chancel, on the pavement, is the figure of a priest in brass, and inscription, for Henry Welde, rector, obt. 1420. A gravestone, and monument for Alexander Young, B D. rector of this parish, who rebuilt this parsonage-house, and repaired that of Eastchurch, of which he was vicar likewife, at the expence of 2000l. obt. March 21, 1755. A memorial for John Smith, rector, obt. Oct. 28, 1658. In the church-yard are many headstones, and a tombstone for the family of Beake. In the windows of this church there were formerly many different shields of arms, long since demolished.

This church was always an appendage to the manor, and continues so at this time, Sir Narborough D' Aeth, bart. owner of the manor of Wickham, being the present patron of it.

There was antiently both a rectory and vicarage in this church, which continued till the year 1322, when on a vacancy of the latter, Richard de Newcastle, the rector, petitioned archbishop Walter Reynolds, that they might be consolidated, which was granted, and they have continued in that state to the present time. (fn. 4)

This rectory is valued in the king's books at 29l. 12s. 6d. and the yearly tenths at 2l. 19s. 3d. In 1588 it was valued at 250l. communicants one hundred and sixty-three. In 1640 the same. There are eighteen acres of glebe-land.

The marsh-lands in this parish, within Wickham and Preston valleys, pay a modus of two-pence an acre, and those within Newnham 1½d. only, in lieu of all tithes.

www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol9/pp158-166

Difficult lighting, but always worth a try to see a great loco back out on the mainline. 46233 "Duchess of Sutherland" storms through Longbridge with a Bristol-Derby Vintage trains excursion.

Panda is a frequent visitor to my parents house.

This young lady doesn't live too far away and is very well cared for.

Trouble is she is very hot footed and won't keep still so a decent photograph is very difficult!

www.flickr.com/photos/stuart166axe/tags/panda/

;-)

It seems difficult that the soles of the feet end up so black without having gone out into the street. Only a few minutes walking through the office, and that's how dirty they were.

Parece difícil que las plantas de los pies acaben tan negras sin haber salido a la calle. Solo unos minutos caminando por la oficina, y así estaban de sucias.

Cherry picker blocks entrance to gate six in Knoxville's McGhee Tyson airport.

The difficult thing about aging is when we “see” what other people refuse to “see”. It doesn’t matter whether, it’s 2 US Presidential Candidates or a dear friend who @ 71 years-of-age has passed-his-Prime, and too proud an too economically challenged to Close-His-Shop. My friend’s age + his age-related-deficits, have caused him to be a danger to himself around metalworking tools. It’s very troubling to observe this & be unable to help him, help himself.

... and it was a difficult choice.

This painted, traditional regional menu was on the wall outside a restaurant in Strasbourg.

Not being a fan of sauerkraut, or horse, or pigs' trotters (knuckle?), or calf's head, we moved on to another restaurant, but I do regret not trying the Baekeoffe, which sounds good. If as much care had been taken with the cooking as with the menu board, it was possibly an experience not to be missed.

MOST DIFFICULT PIC TO SHOOT EVER ! 30 sec exp. of a sleeping Leopard ... thank god she was sleeping soundly ;-) The night safari is something that should be in your list of 10 things to do before you die!

Difficult to make out the registration on the Escort, and I haven't got time to try lots of permutations on DVLA, but pleasingly the Rover is still around. DVLA suggests it has just been taxed for another year. I'd happily drive that one around.

Nice timewarp shot for 2008, with no other cars or wheelie bins visible to spoil it.

Edit: MicraK10 has confirmed the van's registration as G879ADX, last taxed until May 2010.

Difficult light, but when a 306 foot (92 meter) yacht passes through the ship canal, you go take a photo.

This one returned to Seattle/Lake Union in Spring 2018.

The was previously labled as Minneapolis, Snow and Dread. When I was taking these, it had to be about 5:30am or 6:00 am, and spent the entire night writing of my travel experience up to that point (by hand, with a bad pen - difficult when one is so used to typing). This was actually taken in Detroit...

So, fellow flickrite Autntie K pointed me to the JPG Mag group after seeing this image. The story behind it follows.

on my recent trip back home, I had a hop skip and jump through a few airports (ABQ, MSP, DTW, TOL). I wont' go into the grimy details, save for Sunday morning in DTW. I arrived at the hub about 4 hours early for my flight (had an overnight layover) just in case security gave me a hassle - plus, if I had gone to sleep so late, there's no way I would have woke up time. Anyhow, with so much time at the airport, I figured I'd saunter around and get some flicks.

Of course, I am aware of the issue of cameras, security, airports and all that - and I expected to be chastised at least once while shooting. But, I pretty much had my way with the place for a good hour or so before people started piling in. I didn't shoot anything spectacular, in fact, I think this was probably my "best" image of the morning. I also didn't go anywhere out of the way to get an image: I was as obvious as one could be. Anyhow, after blowing off about 70 or so images, I found my gate, and made a comfortable spot on the benches to relax on before my flight left. Just as I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, I noticed that I was now reclining in the shadow of a rather tall figure: A Detroit Police officer. He introduced himself in a polite manner, advised me that 'others' had called him to notify that there was some character running about the airport snapping photos. Then he asked just what I was shooting that made eveyrone so nervous. Indeed. Meanwhile, in the background, the gentle female voice recording echoes through the concourse: "...If you see anyone acting suspicious, or notice any suspicious behavior, please don't hesitate to contact security or an airport employee..."

I told him that I couldn't really tell what it was that I shot that made anyone nervous, and that I was just shooting whatever I though was interesting: piles of wheelchairs, empty concourses that are usually full, myself, blah blah. He asked me the same question again, but worded it differently - and I told him the camera was digital, and offered to show him the photos. He declined, but did ask for my ID, took my name and all that, checked for warrants. I asked if I was not supposed to be shooting images in the airport, and that I did not see any signs, and that the TSA drones didn't warn me about anything either. His only response was that he had to check it out because it was called in, and that if we weren't allowed to shoot in the facility, TSA wouldn't let the cameras through in the first place.

So, was I hassled? Not really, other than missing 10 or 15 minutes of pseudo napping. The lawman was very cordial in his manner, and I was the same in my response. I suppose it could have gotten ugly if A: he had a chip on his shoulder, or B: I had a chip on my shoulder. I got the feeling that he would have rather not had to deal with me, and was doing so only to appease the frightened masses ;) or whoever it was that called in.

Funny is that just after I entered the airport, I saw a young couple in front of me, and they were shooting images also. They had a smallish, silver, square looking Sony something or other (I had my Digital Rebel, with vertical grip), and we took turns shooting down a particular hallway in order to stay out of eachothers photos. I doubt they were interviewed though. But, I also understand why (sort of).

My experience was a pretty benign situation, to be sure. But I've read through the posts on jpgmag, as well as seen several news items in the last few years about the subject. I understand the whole security thing, but don't agree with the hammer dropping on photographers like it has. People are way too afraid, and common sense often times goes out the window when fear takes over. My favorite thing I've read in the forum here was something like "Terrorists used cell phones, why not ban them?". I don't think it's so much about safety/security as it is about the perception of security. Anyhow, just thought I'd share that, and the one of the pics I made that instigated the story...

Highest Explore Position #256 ~ On June 24th 2008.

Update ~ New position #'227 ~ On June 25th 2008.

Asian Ladybird - Leeds Castle, Kent, England - Sunday June 22nd 2008.

Click

You wouldn't believe how difficult this it was to get this image!!...It was blowing a gale here in Kent, England yesterday. This bug was clinging on for dear life and I just managed to click inbetween the sways..lol..:O))

This was also my first Ladybird image, the last time I saw one was when one landed on me in the shop where I buy my Sunday papers...which was typical, as I didn't have my camera with me.

The ladybirds seem to be very few and far between at the moment, unless they are just hiding from me...lol.

Hmmm, it looks like I captured a killer..lol..perhaps I should have squished it after I photographed it!!!

This would also explain my story above...the reason I've not seen many is because these illegal immigrants have eaten them all!!!!!!

Also see here... -

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-487281/The-Asian-lady-se... - and here - www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2004/10...

Killer ladybirds in the capital

By James Stern

Asian Ladybirds - One of the unusual mainly black variants.

Killer ladybirds are invading London and are threatening the Capital's insects and plants.

The large Multivariate Asian Ladybird - a native of Japan and Siberia - has been spotted in London, and has brought with it a new threat of terror to the Capital's ladybird population.

It is not known how the foreign ladybirds entered the country, but the illegal immigrants are thought to have arrived via intercontinental rail, or on imported fruit and flowers.

Many of the foreign colonies have been spotted in south west London - including the Chelsea, Lambeth, Northern Wandsworth and Southwark boroughs, with experts believing the Harmonia axyridis - to give the species it's Latin name - will spread further east along the Thames as it breeds.

London residents have been asked to keep guard and look out for the large aphid - roughly 6-8mm long. The ladybird can be identified by its white patches down the side of the fore-body, usually coloured red or orange with up to 19 black spots. It may sometimes be coloured black with two to eight red patches.

The public has been asked to send specimens or photographs of unusual specimens for identification to Michael Majerus - address given below.

The exotic ladybirds are a known menace to North American residents, entering houses during the autumn and reproducing in massive numbers. Native ladybirds and insects are edged out, either starved by competition or eaten by the in-comer.

In the longer term there is a chance that the ladybird will prosper in London. However entomologist Paul Mabbott, Co-ordinator for Surveys of Ladybirds in London and Essex, hopes European predators and diseases will keep the growing Asian ladybird population down. It may, however, be necessary to import parasitoids or bacterial treatments to deal with the situation.

Information:

Michael Majerus, Dept of Genetics, University of Cambridge, CB2 3EH

Ladybirds travel well by post if securely packed in a small, strong container such as a photographic film tube.

Rembrandt painted this self-portrait at a particularly difficult time in his life. In 1656 he was declared bankrupt, which caused social embarrassment and forced him to auction his grand house, extensive art collections and studio effects. Rembrandt probably produced more self-portraits than any other artist in history. In paintings, etchings and drawings, he recorded the changes in his appearance for more than forty years, from his youth to the year he died.

Rembrandt ha dipinto questo autoritratto in un momento particolarmente difficile della sua vita. Nel 1656 fu dichiarato fallito, il che causò imbarazzo sociale e lo costrinse a mettere all'asta la sua grande casa, ampie collezioni d'arte ed effetti da studio. Rembrandt probabilmente ha prodotto più autoritratti di qualsiasi altro artista nella storia. In dipinti, incisioni e disegni, ha registrato i cambiamenti nel suo aspetto per oltre quaranta anni, dalla sua giovinezza all'anno in cui è morto.

Match between the Utrecht chess clubs Magnus Leidsche Rijn and Moira Domtoren in the Dutch National League.

This was the last match before COVID-19 restrictions cancelled the remaining matches of this season.

Difficult light, moderately interesting composition. The editing is a bit uncommon for me, I think I like it for this one though.

Chapter Five…The House of Horrors…The Man in the Old White House…

On January the fifteenth of that year (2010) there was a strong knocking on the porch door of our home around eight PM which in itself is rather unusual. Julia went to the door to find Fred Maybee in a panic. He needed help, there was water leaking from his bedroom ceiling. I got ready, grabbed some tools in my emergency kit, not much as I didn’t know what to expect. What greeted me at the Old White House a while later remains a shocking event in my life. I don’t know that there’s much one could do to prepare themselves for entering a home such as Freds. He opened the rickety front door and then almost immediately turned on a light in this foyer, he stepped through another door to his right, it was a difficult door to open he was lifting the door up and down and over a hump in the floor boards then he turned on a lamp then turned around and turned off the first light in the foyer and closed the difficult door after making sure the front door was locked. As I entered the parlour I could see that the walls were covered in a soot like charcoal covered substance, like ash in a way and there was an odour of improperly burnt furnace oil with a hint of creosote. He shut that light off and led me into the middle room and turned a light on in there. We made a right turn into a bedroom, I’d never seen anything like it, there was a table lamp to the left of this double bed that had never had its bedding changed. Along the right side of the bedroom there was a heavy couch at least fifty years old, I tripped over a ten pound bag of rotting potatoes that had broken open months ago, on top of the soiled couch there was a pile of soiled clothing, from underneath the couch I could see the ends of a few pairs of well worn shoes and slippers, neatly arranged. After the couch there was a dresser a wooden dresser, dark in colour and on that dresser there were at least six old squarish TV sets sitting one atop another, it was like an art installation that was parodying our lives with TVs. Here and there the wallpaper was falling off the walls, I looked up and the ceiling paper was coming off in huge strips, it looked eerie combined with the cobwebs and soot. On the left of the bed there was a night table all very neatly arranged with some books stacked one on top of another and a lamp and a radio, an old radio but not one of those old vintage wooden radios and there was also a black well worn rotary dial phone. Beside that table there was a short stretch of wall with some pictures and photos in frames and some religious art of a Christian origin also in frames, it was hard to see who these images represented as the soot was covering the glass. Fred asked me to look up and in the far back corner, past the six pane by six pane window that could not let a speck of light in because of the layers and layers of old newspapers placed in the window frame and then covered by a tattered cloth blind, I looked up and there was a chunk of plastered ceiling nearly two foot square about to fall on to my head and a steady gush of water, much more than a drip was seeping down onto me, onto the bed, onto the floor, everything was wet and I made damn sure I didn’t have anything electrical in my hand or nearby. Fred went and got this old handmade extension cord with a lamp base plugged into it, it was showing bare wires, he found someplace to plug it in and I examined the ceiling some more, I reached up to feel the water, it was cold, my initial fear was that there had been a roof leak and snow was melting and coming into the house, you would think this if you ever saw the roof materials. I touched the bulbous ceiling and it came crashing down on me at which point Fred started to scream, “You broke my ceiling, oh no, you broke the ceiling what’ll I do now”. It was like a child’s cry, he was so upset, a strange look had taken over his face, I’d been in a few tight spots in life up to that point but I can tell you, I’d never seen behavior like this. He unplugged the lamp at my insistence more for worry of a shock than anything else and I asked him to take me to the room above the ceiling, I had to know what was up there.

We went back through the doors we had came in each light was meticulously turned on and off as we made our way. At the wide wooden stairway there was a small foyer where Fred had two bikes parked, actually crammed in beside each other. The basket of the Red CCM was for the time being used to place the advertising that came in the free weekly paper. I began to notice more papers were strewn all over the middle room floor, not just more but a lifetimes worth of soggy papers were piled in the room and taking up the space where one would normally walk, it was quite slippery. We went up the darkened stairway, when we got to the top he closed the stairway light then put on another light in that upper foyer by walking over to a fixture hanging from the ceiling and pulling a short cord. The only words I can use to describe the entirety of the situation was Hitchkockian. I remember him pointing to a thin doorway and telling me to go in there, which was something I was not looking forward to. I had him go ahead, which he would only do if I promised to shut the light off in the landing. I pulled the lamp cord then followed him into this narrow passage way where there was another closed door and there behind that door was the bathroom. The toilet seat was left up though once white it was a brown colour with finger marks that resembled finger painting and I soon found out why, there were a couple of choice human excrements sitting in the bowl that had not been flushed for a week or so, the water in the bowl smelled like the rot of the Florida Everglades on a hot night in July, the entire room felt and smelled like a cesspool, a threadbare runner all tattered and worn smelled like the urinals at Maple Leaf Gardens between periods. I had to get down on all fours to pull out a few floor boards to find the source of the leak. When I removed a board, I did not require any tools, they had been removed many times before. Fred was adamant that they go back exactly as they came out. I could see the little stream of water flowing along the boards to the hole they had made in the ceiling plaster. Following the stream was simple, the leak was coming from the busted cold water tap of the sink where it had split below the sink at a joint, I expect from freezing I guessed as the house temperature was no more than fourty one degrees and with the bathroom door closed it was easy to ascertain that the pipe had frozen. The sink was one of those heavy cast iron ones from the thirties, the inside of the sink was black as if rotting water had sat in it, but it smelled like a lifetimes worth of urine as did the broken downpipe coming from under the fixture. The drainpipe was coated with ten or more yards of rotting tape, differing kinds of tape, and a substance was oozing out of the tape joints, the smell was unbearable, from a distance it was tolerable, but when you were right beside it the smell overwhelmed, the smell of ammonia from the urine that Fred had been pouring down the sink from his night potty, this is where it was poured. Hanging neatly on little wire towel racks were several threadbare face cloths, they shredded when I touched them, I had to use one to wipe the foul matter from my hands. Fred went into hysterics when it was not placed back on the rack exactly as it had been. Over an old claw tub a string was strung from one side to the other, on the string was a pile of what looked like a bunch of rags and I could see when I got closer that they were articles of clothing, mostly socks, some tea towels, they may have been on that string for a decade as they were quite lifeless. When I went to flush the toilet Fred held me back saying, there’s more to go in there before you do that. My thoughts were he was conserving water, I was wrong the drains were blocked, it wasn’t long before I would see the sewage seeping in the basement of the house.

The only way to stop the flow of water from the broken joint was to turn the water source off. I asked Fred where the water came into the house. We made our way to the main floor. As we left each area Fred would carefully turn off each light which was just the way he did things. While standing at the top of the stairs looking down I felt very much as if I was in an Alfred Hitchcock film, only a set designer could create this deteriorating scenario. We were back in the middle parlour as we past the front parlour and the light with the orange shade was once again turned on I looked more carefully at the surroundings. There was a round thermostat on the soot laden wall sharing space with two interesting paintings of Fred, one was done in a Homer Simpson way the other painting was more in the style of The Scream. When I saw the thermostat I asked Fred what it was set at and he quickly said, “fourty one degrees”. The room was cluttered with a collection of TV sets, hard to say how many, ten maybe more, I could see pieces of furniture further in behind the stacks of TVs, paintings in frames on the walls, an old piano with some other framed pictures on each side, a couch that was piled high with stuff, there was a hundred or so vinyl record albums sitting on a stool ready to fall over, as we came to the other room, there were those papers again on the floor making for a slippery walk as they were all wet and slimy. Fred walked towards the covered window, beside it was a door which he opened and he went into the entrance of that door and found a light switch to turn on a light that shone at the bottom of the steep wooden steps. I followed him down, we passed a hydro meter that was mounted on the right hand wall, at the fourth step from the bottom the step came loose and I almost fell forward onto Fred, at that he stopped and turned then said rather sinisterly, “watch that fourth step” we continued. When we got to the concrete floor I looked around, Fred pointed at the water source coming into the old building, the house was a hundred and fifty years old. In order to get close to the turn off Fred had to remove a collection of five gallon pails filled with an assortment of bicycle parts, old gears and brake pads. There were numerous paint cans. Along the wall there was a wooden shelving system heaving at the weight of the assortment of bicycle lights in one bin, another held bike pedals all rusting from the basement humidity, there were tires as well, old worn rotted tires piled up, it was too much for the eye to catalogue in a quick viewing. We had to keep our heads down as overhead huge pipes attached to an octopus type furnace were hanging, wobbling in places, attached to the ceiling rafters that were like ships beams with thin wires, I noticed on top of the furnace, sitting in what looked like an inch of ash was a small perhaps four inch high blue and white Virgin Mary statue. I looked around I could see chunks of wood, plywood, two by four board, all manner of scrap wood that seemed to have no purpose other than to be made of wood. In my opinion the entire basement was a future site for an epic fire. Someone half my size would be better suited to maneuvering in the space. A galvanized pipe poked through the concrete foundation level with my knees where a well used solid brass tap connected the flow to the house lines. Fred went up the stairs partway to where his tools were stored haphazardly along the right wall of the staircase. There was quite an assortment of things there, rolls of black tape, tins with nails, an assortment of nails in old boxes, some hammers, the odd screwdriver, pliers. They were all visible and sitting on narrow shelving, no more than five inches wide spanning the length of the wall, four shelves in all. Cluttered would be a good way to describe the collection. Fred brought down an old pair of vice grips and said, “here use this to turn the spout off” I placed the grips on the worn and scratched lever as it would not turn by hand, I asked Fred which way to turn it, I gave it a good twist and water gushed everywhere, apparently I had turned it the wrong way and the brass fixture snapped right off. I was concerned as there were electrical outlets nearby, water filled the floor, Fred began screaming at the top of his voice, “Now you’ve broken my plumbing” it was like the cry of a baby banshee in a way, he was out of control. I reached in my pocket, took out my cell phone, called Julia and asked her to call the Public Utilities and have them come over right away.

Within fifteen minutes there was a rap on the front door, a PUC worker asked what the problem was, Fred told him, “the water line broke coming into the house” another worker was on the front lawn using a battery operated tool attached to a handle to poke through the foot or so of snow and detect where the shut off valve was located. I wasn’t watching but I believe they used a torch to soften the ground where the shut off valve was located. They weren’t there a half hour, the water was shut off, Fred kept asking, “is this going to cost me anything”? The workers looked at me a bit bewildered. They drove off in their white van, leaving me with Fred. Nothing could be done at this time of night, I knew how to repair the broken pipe but I would need parts from a hardware store. Fred was calmer now, there was no damage to the house, what had flowed in over the half hour or so had seeped through the mostly earthen floor and into the ground. In the basement I checked the diameters of the incoming pipe and the galvanized house pipe in the house, they were about the same. What troubled me was the rusting on the inside of the pipes. Fred did not want to hear about turning the heat up to keep the pipes from freezing, the temperature he kept the house at was fourty one degrees. From time to time the old furnace would come on, run for five or so minutes and shut off, during these periods the smell of improperly burning fuel oil was strong, but it’s funny, it wasn’t an offensive smell, the invisible soot in the air was a bit scary, as I was imagining my lungs coated in that stuff. I told Fred to go to bed, just not to run any water, that we would fix the problem in the morning, I drove home, exhausted, smelling bad, soot covered, confused and bewildered not only at what I had seen but what had happened, I couldn’t believe someone lived in these circumstances. Through out the visit I had taken several snapshots with a crappy camera to document the scene, and I’m glad I did, if for no other reason than to provide me fresh memories for this story. Years later, I still call the home a set from an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

My usual routine was sped up somewhat the next morning when I called Fred’s number, 742-4208 and there was no reply. I figured he was heading to the PUC offices on Ashburnham Drive to have his water bill adjusted to save money. I got in the truck and sure enough, I caught up to him right at 8:30 as the offices were about to open, he was standing outside the doors, his bike was parked along side the building, he hadn’t put his boots on properly as the wide whale corduroy chocolate brown pant material was not tucked into the grey workers socks, he was wearing a thick grey rubberish coat that reminded me of gear that sailors wore on open seas, it was lined and waterproof, although old and worn it would have been worth a pretty penny in its day as the logo Helly Hanson could be seen. I explained to Fred that he should just continue to pay the water bill because if he told the city authorities to terminate his account they might get suspicious as well they might have rules in place that someone living in a home must have water or the residence could be condemned. After some time, he agreed, we put his bike in the back of the truck and went shopping for parts to repair the busted pipes. At the TSC hardware store we found a one foot chunk of reinforced nylon with a ¾” inch diameter. It’s the type of tubing they use in high pressure situations, particularly on pool filter systems. A lady friend of mine, donated the piece to us once she caught Fred’s thrifty act. We purchased a heavy duty plastic valve to go between the two pieces of tubing which were to be attached to the pipe on either side. Ten two inch clamps were purchased at thirty five cents each, I knew there was loads of black electricians tape at the house. The bill for everything came to $19.75 cents. I had packed a bigger tool kit, as well as my plumbers kit including a hack saw to cut smoothly through the metal pipes and the reinforced plastic tubing. My concern was the broken tap in the bathroom, not so much the repair itself, but the terrible conditions the fixtures and downspout were in, the unhealthy fumes from the years of dumped urine into the sink. I had a spare single tap in my plumbing box that I brought along with the torch and the other tools for cutting pipes, we were lucky as the bottom of the tap led to a length of copper half inch, had it been a galvanized joint, I don’t know if I would have known what to do.

So we get to the house and Fred gets out the unsafe trouble light and I follow him up the Hitchcock stairway, it’s like old hat now, him stopping to turn on the lights and then turning them off as we passed each area. I had brought a chunk of old sleeping bag to place on the floor to work on top of. The old tap came out easily, my concern was the tinder dry wall behind where I had to light the blow torch to make the new connection. I singed the wall and quickly splashed water on it. We put the new tap in, tightened it to the fixture and made a weld for it to stay in place, the weld looked clean and we packed up our tools and headed down to the dungeon being careful not to break our necks on the fourth step from the bottom. The outdoor line repair went as planned, I had to use a bit of Vaseline on one of the pipes to fit it in the reinforced tubing, all the clamps were tightened on, there was one clamp left over, Fred put it in his shirt pocket. I tightened all the clamps again and in my mind went over the work, I demonstrated to Fred the ease with which the new valve worked, showed him the direction to turn it to have it turn on and off. I called the PUC, they were over shortly and with their long tool turned the valve on to allow water back into the house. I yelled to Fred to turn the valve on and I ran into the kitchen to see if any water pressure was building up, within a few moments there was water, I ran upstairs to check the sink faucet which had been left on, the water was running hard, it was ice cold, I turned that tap off, there was no leak, the job was a success, hooray, hooray. I told Fred the good news, the PUC guys had a chuckle at the sight of it all and left. Fred and I went downstairs to look at the new valve, it was holding tight, it looked so new in this sea of old stuff, for extra measure we dipped into a handy tin of roofing tar and applied it along the incoming pipe to prevent further rust.

In the parlour I told Fred to keep that extra clamp he had put in his pocket handy as ‘you never know when you might need it’ I asked him to refund me the $19.75 in repair costs and he said he had no money, I argued with him and actually got a bit testy with him for stiffing me and I gave him an ultimatum, I told him to come to my house with the money or I would put a lien on the house for services rendered and it would be for the labour charges of $500 as well as the $19.75 for the parts, I also told him that it was unlikely that any plumbing company would work in his house under those conditions, it all seemed to go over his head, he was one of those people that if he didn’t want to hear something, he would pretend he didn’t. I left the house not very pleased.

The next day he came over and paid me the $19.75 for the parts. I was serious, I would have went back and undone the work to teach him a lesson. He asked me for the bill for the clamps, the valve and the piece of tubing which was free. He took the bill and folded it carefully and placed it in his wallet. “Why do you need that”? I asked, his response was classic, he said, “well early this morning Wilbur I went to the TSC store to get a .42 cent refund for the one left over clamp and they wouldn’t give it to me, she said I needed the receipt”.

A couple of days later Fred came over to the house again. He looked quite forlorn. “What’s the problem Fred”? He looked at me rather seriously and said, “I want you to put the old tap back on the sink upstairs”. I looked at him for a few moments and told him, “you will have to get used to that new one Fred or pay a plumber to install the old one after he repairs it”. That didn’t go over to well. But what it did was teach me the ‘degree of need Fred had for things to remain the same’. I have done some small research on folks with Aspergers Spectrum and I have learned that this obsessive compulsive behavior is often present. Had the bathroom been in a fit state to work in I would have put the old tap back in, I just felt it was a health issue and Fred was not about to tear up the carpeting or anything else in that bathroom for that matter. In fact, a friend of mine at the time, Rennie an advocate had introduced me to the owner/manager of a big hardware store up on Chemong Road and that shop had given me, an entire new sink, new taps, all the downspout materials, pieces of copper pipe and all the fittings to replace the existing fixture, they were even going to supply one of them fancy vanity cupboards. I had the stuff in my truck and went over to Freds house to give him the good news, Free Stuff. He refused the offer of the parts even with my Free Installation. I left and said to him as I closed the front door, “well, I’ll have to take this stuff back to the Home Hardware Store”. He said, ‘oh no, I want to keep it”. And he would have kept it, he wouldn’t have used it but he wanted to have it, to add to his collections of stuff, to increase his feelings of wealth.

I can illustrate this by telling a short anecdote. A few years later as Fred lay in his bed at the Peterborough Regional Hospital Centre, I think it was his third stay there over a two year period, this would have been in 2012, the winter of. I went to see him and he was moaning about the high cost of heating the house. My services had been removed from the scene so to speak, but I believe I still had a key to the house. Fred asked me to go over, in the dead of that winter and see what was going on. I had told him, that I had been by the house several times and I saw no smoke coming from the chimney, I saw a condemned sign on the oil tank that was located outside the bedroom window on the south side of the house, and this made me somewhat suspicious. Inside the house it was as cold as cold can be, the furnace was turned off, I knew this because I went down to the basement and turned the switch on and the furnace started up. Now, only a few people would know how to turn that switch off, or to be more exact, where that furnace switch was. That solved the smoke coming from the chimney mystery. I went into the kitchen and the left hand tap had blown right off the galvanized pipe that I had repaired several times over the years, blown right off and was sitting in the heavy cast iron sink. There was a pile of ice in the sink and under the sink fixture as it was Freds habit to catch the water from the leaky drain pipes in old metal porcelain dish pan containers. I took the tap and placed it in a grocery store bag. Shortly afterwards I visited Fred at the hospital and to illustrate my point that someone had intentionally turned the heat off thereby causing the taps to burst and the water lines to break. I gave Fred the tap. He didn’t cry, but he was very emotional, like a child with a kitten that has taken ill.

His mind was working overtime, he wouldn’t have known the difference between truth and fiction, he had played so many of the same cards twice that his own mind was tricking him, even with the busted tap in his hands held close to his heart, an object that he knew better than anything, as we would know a sibling or a good friend, or the voice of a dear departed one, he didn’t know if I was telling him the truth, he was being so manipulated by another party who was lying to him about his home, about the conditions there.

A while later, that summer when I took him photos of his house torn down, and his Red CCM bicycle sold at auction along with all the worldly things in that home, his collections, his entire families history, his mother Eleanor’s rosary beads, the family photos for Gods Sake he still could not reconcile these things within his mind. The hospital barred me from seeing Fred because I brought photos that showed the Truth. And that so help me God is the Truth. Amen.

The End.

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Difficult to get away from flowers since they are my base for years.

Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations

View On Black

In the extremely difficult and stressful time that we are all in now, please do remember to be patient and to be kind and thankful to everyone who still has to work, especially Health Care workers - my daughter is one of them, and she said that she is overly stressed and exhausted, partly because of families and visitors who lose their temper over restrictions that have been put in place in the hospital.

About a week ago, I finally made a trip to a couple of stores, that I really didn't want to do. I knew that if there were a lot of people, I would instead turn around and go home. I needed food and I did buy an extra one of various items - but no hoarding. The cashier at the food store told me that one of the younger cashiers had been in tears because of being yelled at by some customers. At the drug store, the young woman cashier told me that she was so stressed out, again partly because of angry, yelling customers, that she was about to burst into tears. We had a talk, as there was no one waiting behind me in line, and I made sure to thank her for meticulously sanitizing the work space at the till. A few kind words can make all the difference, people! There were no line-ups at either store, for which I was extremely thankful. I know I do need to be very careful myself - I have 3 of the risk factors; age, high blood pressure, and the most concerning being a chronic cough that I have had for maybe 10 or so years, which sometimes turns into a coughing fit where I can't breath. Went through all sorts of tests but no one could find a cause. So, here I am, still coughing! The last thing I would want is the Coronavirus cough on top of it! Stay safe and well, everyone!!

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CORONAVIRUS UPDATE, 16 March 2020: 74 confirmed cases in Alberta, 342 in Canada. 4 deaths in Canada - so far, all have been in British Columbia.

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE, 17 March 2020: 97 confirmed cases in Alberta, 447 cases in Canada. 70 confirmed cases in the Calgary Zone. 7 deaths in Canada.

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE, 18 March 2020: 119 confirmed cases in Alberta, 83 confirmed cases in Calgary Zone, 591 in Canada. 8 deaths in Canada.

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE, 19 March 2020: 146 confirmed cases in Alberta, 101 confirmed cases in Calgary Zone, 736 in Canada. 9 deaths in Canada, 1 death in Alberta.

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE, 20 March 2020: 195 (up from 146!) confirmed cases in Alberta, 101 confirmed cases in Calgary Zone, 846 in Canada. 10 deaths in Canada, 1 death in Alberta.

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE, 22 March 2020: 259 (up from 226) confirmed cases in Alberta, 1,302 (up from 1,048) in Canada. 19 deaths in Canada, 1 death in Alberta.

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE, 23 March 2020: 301 (up from 259) confirmed cases in Alberta, 1,432 (up from 1,302) in Canada. 20 deaths in Canada, 1 death in Alberta.

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE, 27 March 2020: 486 (up from 419) confirmed cases in Alberta, 4,018 (up from 3,452) in Canada. 300 in the Calgary Zone (1 death). 39 deaths in Canada, 2 deaths in Alberta. Completed tests (as of March 25) in Alberta 35,089 - 419 positive.

www.alberta.ca/coronavirus-info-for-albertans.aspx

24 March 2020: "14 people sick at Calgary care centre (the McKenzie Towne Continuing Care Centre) where woman died of COVID-19."

calgary.ctvnews.ca/14-people-sick-at-calgary-care-centre-...

National Parks in Canada have now been shut down.

Olympics 2020 in Japan has been postponed to 2021.

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Friday, 27 March 2020: our temperature just after noon is +8C (windchill +5C). Sunrise is at 7:21 am, and sunset is at 8:02 pm. Sunny today.

The 9 photos posted today were all taken on Day 11 of our 13-day birding trip to South Texas, in March 2019. They are almost the last few photos taken that day, Only a few photos to post from the next day, Day 12, and I will be done!

The first place we went to was the Birding and Nature Centre, on South Padre Island. The afternoon before, we had spent two hours there, but our "proper" visit was for three hours in the morning of Day 11. Such a great place!

www.spibirding.com/

Simply amazing artist! "The South Padre Island Convention Center boasts one of only 100 Wyland Whaling Wall murals. The mural titled "Orcas of the Gulf of Mexico," depicts life-sized killer whales and is number 53 of Wyland's Whaling Walls series."

This is a list of Whaling Walls, which are large outdoor murals by the artist Robert Wyland, featuring images of life-size gray whales, breaching humpback whales, blue whales, and other sea life. Whaling Walls (a pun on the Wailing Wall) are created by invitation of the communities, institutions, and building owners of the structures on which they are painted. The one hundredth and possibly final Whaling Wall was painted in Beijing in 2008" From Wikipedia.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Whaling_Walls

Someone told us about a different location, and a short drive south from the Centre took us to around W Sheepshead St and Laguna Blvd, where we saw a Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Monarch butterflies, and a Green Anole (lizard).

We had our picnic lunch at the nearby Convention Centre, which is near the Birding and Nature Centre, and then looked for a Yellow-throated Warbler from the rear patio at the Centre. Amazingly, we did see it, along with a Black-and-white Warbler and a Wilson's Warbler. Not easy trying to photograph these fast-moving little birds that get hidden among the branches.

Driving north again, we called in at a beach that was part of the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, where we could enjoy seeing the ocean waves and Laughing Gulls. This was our last stop before returning to our hotel, the Holiday Inn Express & Suites, Brownsville.

The next day, 30 March 2019, we had to drive from Brownsville to Houston, where we stayed for one night at La Quinta Inn & Suites Houston. The following day, we flew from Bush Intl Airport back to Calgary. What a fantastic holiday we had!

They are getting very difficult to photograph now as they are starting to move out to other areas !

taken at 55mm on my kit lens! the fox was aprrox 1 metre away from me here!

on da 'TRACE'...

Our daughter bought me this for Christmas. It will keep me occupied for quite a while!

Holding a difficult tumbler of wine, if you look closely!

Spy Optic sunglasses are very important in your clothing everyday, .. both for men and women. But .. it is difficult to distinguish which one is right for men or to women ... because it all looks the same ..

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. Women, from all walks of life, can basically play around with their glasses!

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To be feminine girl, you can find the glasses with a frame that displays such a variety of colors of the rainbow that looks more colorfull.

Herein lies the major difference between the use of spy optic sunglasses men and women. It's about the taste of the wearer. To resolve the ambiguity difference worn by men or women .., there are unisex sunglasses, but still, more women benefit most from the unisex style.

Women can get away with pink, purple, and red frame. They can go to spot leopard, silver or plain stainless steel frame with ease ... Sunglasses basically women are smaller and lighter than his glasses but with the same level of UV protection, depending on the brand and type of glasses are used.

How to buy Spy Optic Sunglasses

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Also, make sure your sunglasses really protect your eyes from harmful UV rays from the sun.

Choose sunglasses with lenses featuring UVA and UVB protection (especially UV400 Protection, which is the best protection for your eyes).

Finally, consider your face shape. This is an important factor that will either make or break a good appearance

You .. in this case how you look at the suitability of your personal style while wearing sunglasses

SEE MORE SPY OPTIC SUNGLASESS HERE : www.flickr.com/photos/48455792@N04/sets/72157630869598480/

.

Sometimes it is really difficult to describe what they are selling

Today was difficult. It was a day of learning how messed up the country is, and how much distrust there is floating around.

This was another of the so called free days in the itinery. But we gave people the option of this visit, and everyone wanted to come along. From my point of view, this is reassuring. When we set up this whole trip, we specifically asked people who would take this seriously and be part of a learning and developing project. It would have been very easy for people to have a nice lie in, then a relaxing day In jerusalem, or to do some shopping since there's been no time for that yet. But I think we're all seeing just how much there is that needs to be known here, and we are going to have to make effort to do that.

Our first problem arose. Two of the group had forgotten their passport. They realised this on the coach after it was too late to go back. So we had to leave them before we got to the checkpoint, and let them catch a bus back to Jerusalem. Kusloom, a native arabic speaker, went with them to make sure they'd get back ok, and if they had time, they'd bus it back and meet us with passports.

We went into Dheisheh refugee camp. The name is a bit misleading. It is a refugee camp – but it has existed since 1948, and by now it's the size of a small town. It is one of the biggest refugee camps in the area – about 12,000 people live there. We met a guy called Yusuf. He has previously come to Gloucester, and through local churches done some fundraising work for Dheishah. We came to know about all this through Joanne Moston, who I have a lot of respect for, and who really started to make me think about what I should be doing for Palestine.

He first took us to a project for people with disabilities. The project has previously been supported by the UN, but that financial support has now stopped. They talked about how the governments don't do anything. The area that the camp is in is a Zone C area. That means that while it's technically Palestine, not Israel, Israel still controls all the civic services and the security measures. (Zone A is fully controlled by Palestinians, and Zone B has Palestinian control of civic services while Israel controls security) But this basically means that neither the Palestinans nor the Israeli's are taking responsibility for anything in Zones B and C (Zone A is only about 15 percent of the current occupied land of Palestine.) So basically it seems as though everyone is left to fend for themselves.

Yusuf took us to him home were he and his brother spoke to us and gave us a bit of history about Dheisheh. Like I said before, in 1948 when thousands of people fled from around Jerusalem, a refugee camp was set up in this small area just outside of Bethlehem. At that time as a temporary measure, the UN gave each family a tent to sleep in. There were about three and a half thousand people at that time. Ten years later the tents were replaced with small concrete living units as it became blindinly obvious this wasn't to be a temporary thing. As families grew, and as the population expanded, there was nowhere to expand the camp but up – so more and more stories were built upon the concrete units. So we have this town with about 1.5 square kilometers, packed to the brim.

We went to his roof where we could have a good view of the camp. Yusuf pointed out the water tanks on the roofs. They have to have these to store water for when the Israeli's cut the supply. Without notice the water would be off, with no idea for how long. It's quite common for the water to be off for up to a month at a time. So the people have to store as much water as they can, and hope it lasts. So basically if they can afford it – they fill the roofs with water tanks.

Yusuf's brother told us of how lucky he was since he was married to a woman from Jerusalem. This means he has the right to travel into Jerusalem. Most people who live in the West Bank don't. Yusuf hasn't been into Jerusalem for 15 years. So even though it's only 20 minutes drive away, He's just not allowed in.

While we were up there, Aunty Sanaa decided that she would wander around the camp. She's a very self determined lady who's from Syria. So because she speaks the language, she's very much at home just wandering around speaking to people. More than that she clearly loves it. She just went knocking on doors talking to people, finding out about how life is for people here, and in particular trying to find out about what people think of Yusuf and the project for the disabled people. She felt that if we were going to donate money, then we should do some investigation work. I could see the logic in that, but she tends to have a very brutal blunt approach (I think it's a very different cultural outlook that the Arabs have, that we clearly don't)

According to her polling, results were mixed. So she basically decided that it was much better to wander around, see which families were clearly the most in need and to hand out money accordingly. I didn't agree with this approach, but there was clearly no stopping her. So a few of us tagged along, and handed her money on demand to pass around. Now I'm sure this would upset Yusuf. He lives in the area, and would know better the situation here. But Aunty Sanaa felt the need to do this on her own. To be fair we did see some horrendous places that clearly were in a lot of need. But what I was trying to remind people is that there are 12,000 people in this camp, and the vast majority of them would be in need. Yusuf supports 41 families – he can't possibly support them all. I also know for a fact that if you asked a number of local people back in Gloucester what they think of the Friendship Cafe; a third of them would cuss us and call us heathens, a third would never have heard of us, and a third might say something nice.

Walking around Dheisheh was very upsetting. Nothing about it was fit for any human purpose. Just the fact that there was UN food rations being handed out was bizarre enough. I don't expect to see stuff like this in a so called democratic developed country. Even seeing cute children playing in the streets was fairly upsetting – just knowing how terribly hopeless it is for them. The worst part of it all is that these are just the things that we can see. Everyone says that all this is much much better than the situation in Gaza.

As we drove back to Jerusalem we have to drive up close next to the Wall. We wanted the driver to stop so we can take photos, but he was very nervous about it – if Israeli police find out, there'd be trouble. So instead we asked him to drive slowly past it while we took pictures slyly out of the window. We got to see Sheikh Bukhari's massive face on the wall as part of the Face 2 Face project – www.face2faceproject.com. We even drove past some Banksy stuff, but too fast for me to photo.

To get back to Jerusalem we have to go through a Checkpoint. There is a very ironic sign that says “Welcome to Jerusalem” right at the gate. The 8 meter high wall, and sniper towers offered a different view. There was lots of really cool graphitti on the wall. I particularly liked one right next to the “Welcome” sign that said “TO EXIST IS TO RESIST!”

On the drive back to Jerusalem we were talking to the driver. He seemed very concerned about our money donating. His view was that we shouldn't give to any organisations – only to individual families. He had a very jaded view that eveyone is corrupt and nobody is to be trusted. He didn't see why any money should go to running an organisation – that all the money should go to the end family. Now being involved with community organisations myself, I can see how limiting that view can be. But he did have a point – the only way to be sure the money is going to the right places is to see for youself. The problem we have is how do we from the UK do that? We tried to explain that we need some linking organisation. Instead he said that he would take us round to visit families himself, and that we should talk to them and dedide for ourselves if we'd like to donate to them. This seemed a bit over the top to me – but it appealed to Aunty Sanaa.

The driver also started telling us about how crazy the Palestinian internal politics are. People are turning on each other all the time. His had some very strong views that anyone with a good job and a religious look had to be a collaborator – there would be no other explanation for it.

As we got closer to the old city of Jerusalem, we hit more and more road blocks. Not really sure what was happening. In the end we had to stop a little away from our hotel and walk the rest. As we got to the hotel we met thousands of jews marching down the street. I ran up to the roof of the hotel to get a better look. Something big was happening. Later on we found out that this was the funeral of the Rabbi and wife that were murdered in India recently. They were to be buried on the Mount of Olives.

As we prayed our evening prayers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque the whole business of our donations was going through my mind. Aunty Sanaa clearly was thinking the same, and spoke to the Imam of the Mosque to get his view on where we should donate the money. He gave her some suggestions which she was happy about. But as he left a random person came up to her and told her not to trust him – that he wasn't a nice man. She tried to explain what was happening – but I could only get the bare jist of it, as she was ranting away in Arabic.

Later on throughout the evening we met a number of locals; each one with a different and conflicting piece of advice – give to the mosques, don't give to the mosque. Trust the Imam, don't trust the Imam. One person says that you shouldn't give to the refugee camps since they get a lot of international aid – but being there it was hard to see any. He also said that nobody in Jerusalem needs financial help as they all have “blue cards” which means that they can work or claim welfare. Another person says that the blue cards only work if you're a collaborator, and so if you're not you'll get no help.

I was finding this very overwhelming. I must say that I personally have seen no reason to distrust anyone, and I have no desire to cast aspersions as to anyone's intent or actions. But at the same time, we were trusted with the money that was collected, and so we have a duty to use it rightly. In the end we had a little meeting. It was decided that as long as we're fair to all sides, we should be ok. The problem seems to be that because there is so much need everywhere, people are now competing against each other, and more than that, distrusting and fighting each other.

Professor Akotiomga Michel heads up the service for treating women suffering the consequences of FGM/C at Suka Clinic in Burkina Faso.

“FGM has no benefits, only consequences,” he says. “Women who have been cut find it difficult to have sex or go to the toilet. The operation takes around 15 to 30 minutes depending on how bad the scarring is and it makes a huge difference to the women’s lives.”

The clinic provides reconstructive surgery to dozens of Burkinabé women every week – allowing them to have sex, give birth safely, and avoid a multitude of other health risks. All this costs just 6,000 Central African Francs, or $15, but changes lives beyond measure.

The UK government - via a UNICEF and UNFPA Joint Programme - provides the clinic where Professor Akotiomga works with medical kits to carry out the operation. The kits include needles, gloves, paracetamol, antiseptic, injectable antibodies and cotton bandages.

Take a stand. Pledge to end FGM, child marriage and forced marriage now: www.girlsummitpledge.com/

Picture: Jessica Lea/DFID.

Sortie essai gros matériel.

Du lourd le boîtier, en performances, taille, poids.

J'ai essayé…

Waouuuuh ça dépote, trop pour mon petit gabarit hi hi hi.

Brök au réglage.

C'est fort long.

Là je capitule. Je ne me lancerai jamais dans pareille entreprise.

Le panorama de haute volée, je le lui laisse.

Toutefois, j'ai l'intention de passer à un modèle à un zéro, dans quelques temps, apprendre à utiliser différents objectifs.

Depuis le 15 août dernier, j'utilise le pied dans les églises par exemple. Je trouve cela extrêmement fatigant, mais le résultat motive.

J'ai récupéré celui de Brök.

Lui a racheté celui de Arnaud FRICH.

Et plus tard l'appareil que l'on voit.

Evidemment les prestations changent du tout au tout;

Désormais il est dans le matériel professionnel.

Un viaduc par rapport à l'ancien temps.

Tant mieux.

Je ne peux que l'en féliciter, l'aventure reste très enrichissante ;

j'ai le privilège de la vivre à ses côtés. Dieu, merci. Entre passionnés, jamais de lassitude, toujours la joie, la vitalité, l'esprit d'entreprise. Tout cela rend heureux et humble également.

Pas si facile, surtout pour Brök.

Un vrai métier, et beaucoup d'obstacles, de réelles difficultés de tout ordre que souvent je dois soutenir, adoucir et contrebalancer.

Au moins l'on se sent vivant, utile, motivé.

L'accompagner reste pour moi un très grand bonheur, d'autant que je peux bien plus simplement pratiquer un tout petit peu cet art sublime.

Quelque part, j'apprend pas mal rien qu'à l'entendre me parler de tout cela, et cela m'aide à mieux raisonner de ce point de vue.

Que du bonheur encore une fois. Vraie joie de Dieu donnée selon moi.

Je le bénis pour le parcours, qu'il dure longtemps, longtemps.

As its difficult taking new pictures during the virus lockdown, here are some from 2006.

This old-timer was a regular performer on the Moorsbus network in North Yorkshire.

The most difficult footpath?

My wife & I walked the Blencathra Wainwrights. Finishing on Blencathra, we descended Doddick Fell (one of the ridges on the south side of the mountain). This path is steep and rocky but has no great difficulty. At the bottom, direct access to the road (A66) is not possible and we had to follow the footpath (on the fell side of the open land boundary wall) eastwards towards Scales. I could see from the map that the path loops into the Scaley Beck valley.

Upon reaching this valley we encountered this steep, rocky and smooth step. We managed to get down by holding onto the fence as the rock was curiously devoid of good handholds. This put us onto a horizontal path which led in a few yards to a second, even steeper rocky step. This step was much steeper than the first and was about 15 feet high (high enough to do serious damage upon falling). To the left (facing downhill) was a vertical chimney absolutely oozing with water and slime; in the middle is an overhang; to the right was a vertical wall. Again the slabs above were curiously devoid of good hand holds. Hoping to get a better grip on the rock and fully expecting to be down in a minute, I removed my gloves in order to get a better grip and threw them down to the bottom. Bare hands didn't help at all and after lots of dithering, we climbed back to above the first step. A faint path leading higher into the valley seemed to offer a safer alternative. We followed this, heading for what appeared to be a more manageable slope, but this path soon petered out. As we battled further up through dense foliage, a walker appeared at the top of the corresponding Bad Step on the West Bank coming in the opposite direction. He had some difficulty in descending that step but did make progress. I realised that he would find my gloves and I tried to shout down to him, but he couldn't hear because of the water and he didn't look our way, so didn't see us. I was hoping that he would be stopped by the West Bank step because I knew that he would pick up my gloves.

The thick foliage and steep slope slowed us considerably and it took a while to reach the stream bed further up the valley. We now followed the stream down hill, back towards the path. Even here progress was difficult, with many rocky drops being encountered; at several places we actually had to wade in the water. After a long time we finally regained the path where it crosses the stream. There was no sign of the walker nor of my gloves, so presumably he'd climbed the step and picked up my gloves thinking that he might catch up with their owner (me).

My wife and I managed to ascend the rock step on the East Bank without too much difficulty; it's definitely easier than the West Bank step, although again, it might be intimidating to descend.

We finally got back to the car at Scales. I looked at the map, trying to decide where the lone walker might emerge onto the road. We drove to several possible locations but we never saw him (or my gloves) again. What was bizarre was that he was the only other walker we saw on that side of the mountain and at the very moment that I was (temporarily) separated from my gloves.

Has anybody else walked that path and encountered those Bad Steps? I would say that they are definitely the most difficult that I have encountered on a footpath.

...my blog

www.gliocchidi.raonediceppaloni.it/

I didn't have flocking that was the exact shade of Clawd's original sideburns/hair. However, I found that the shade "Mahogany" from my vintage Ken flocking kit got the job done. It's difficult to see in these "after" photos, but the patched areas of flocking are ever so slightly more reddish than his factory stuff. But since Clawd had several large bald areas, with random bits of his original hair intact, it was fairly easy to blend seamlessly. Even if it's not 100% a match, Clawd still looks worlds better than he did when I first rescued him. I didn't anticipate how much more youthful he'd look when I touched up his flocking, but his freshly flocked side burns draw so much more attention to his handsome face! He was the perfect candidate to flock, since the flocking I used was dark enough to provide ample coverage with just one coating!

Tutorial: How I Flock Doll Hair

www.flickr.com/photos/athousandsplendiddolls/41531947120/...

A large female Northern Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis).

I have seen many large birds of prey up close but only the gaze of a Goshawk has ever filled me with dread!

This girl is a falconer's bird used to hunt grouse and other game on the hills above Loch Awe. I rarely take images of captive wildlife but we were visiting the owner of this bird as my wife was purchasing a Briittany puppy from him. The chance of photographing a Goshawk up close was too good an opportunity to miss and her owner kindly allowed me to take some images. An incredible bird that can never be truly tamed.

Wild Goshawk became extinct in Scotland due to persecution but have since re-colonised. They are secretive birds that favour extensive conifer forest which makes it difficult to assess the true wild population however many of these birds are thought to be descended from escaped falconer's hawks which are usually of Central European origin.

This girl was captive bred from German stock.

This photograph is about experience. I mean, only tho who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. Cracking under pressure, or hollowed out by time. Nothing really matters outside it’s touch, but death hasn’t touched you yet.

The best project you’ll ever work on, is you. Fixing and adjusting constantly, craving for some solace. I mean, nothing is as difficult, as to handle your own soul. Cause you’re nor empty, nor too full. We all want to have relativity with the earth. In addition, there reveals a semblance of transcendence, a transformation to the present day. A liberation from an intense emotional content.

The screws individual symbolize your mental structure and own identity. Sometimes, things that don’t make sense is often where the mystery rises of. The use of your thoughts to just not participate in life.

I have owned Birdwing for 17 years. I bought her from the original owner in Cape Town. He did two Cape Town to Rio races. The Bird is still documented in Cape Town, South Africa…

I kept Birdwing in St Vincent for several years, but it was expensive and difficult to fly there. All told I have put about 30,000 miles on her.

So I sailed on to Guatemala’s Rio Dulce, where she has been for ten years. The Rio is a fabulous place to keep your yacht. The labor rates are very low and there is excellent infrastructure to get all parts and services easily and professionally, if you ask around.

I have not found a partner who desires to share the cruising life with me, and I have too many other projects to attend to. With sadness, I must confess that I can no longer properly care for Birdwing, and must pass the torch.

I sailed over 25,000 miles on her and she always took care of her captain and crew. She is relatively light and fast, and we often hit 13 knots, with a few 17’s every season and an all time record of 22 while surfing in big swells.

The average days run are around 180-190 miles with the record being 240 miles while crossing the Atlantic. We were also grossly overloaded at the time with extensive stores including 100 bottles of wine.

I just, 12-16, had the bottom sanded to bare gel coat, re gel coated, primered and bottom painted with two coats each of Hempel copper. I am having a new mainsail made here by an Italian master sail maker, Louigi, of Camelia Sails. There is a good roller furling North genoa, two spinnakers and a roller furling code zero. I also had a custom A Frame 3.5 meter bowsprit made to hold the code zero furler.

There are seven top of the line Anderson winches. They are due for service now. I replaced the pelican striker 10 years ago. The sail maker advised replacing all standing wire rigging and repainting the mast. This can all be done here.

I am also planning to replace the bimini with a hard dodger with more solar panels, and more water catchment. Currently there are five panels of 75 watts each.

There is an 48” six blade Aerogen 6 quiet wind generator.`

The Lofrans Tiger windlass had the motor rebuilt on January 2017. There is a cockpit remote as well as a foredeck remote switch. I stopped using the 45 lb CQR in favor of the Fortress FX 37. There is 210 feet of 5/16 hi test chain and two other storm anchors, chains and rodes.

The dingy is a 3.8 meter AB… with sunbrella cover. An older 9.9 mercury mercury has it planing with 2- people and groceries. The Dingy is getting old and may have one or two seasons left in it.

Layout is four cabins and four heads and four sinks! I have been planning to remove two heads for years and never got round to it… I would make one aft cabin into storage, and the other into a workshop space.

There is a 12 volt fridge/freezer in saloon and another 12 volt Minus 40 fridge n the galley. The galley has synthetic Teak Holley sole, and the hulls both have traditional teak and holly soles.

The saloon roof has built in rainwater catchment that works great.

Engines are reliable yanmar 3GM30 with SD 20 saildrives connected to two blade Max props.

I was planning to extend both transoms and bows to gain some water line. There are highly skilled fiberglass techs here who work very cheap. For 20k, depending on how much work you do yourself you could have a fifty foot water line!

As a new owner, you will spend some money on improvements, maintenance and repairs… I would guess that for $15-$20k you could have her looking fine and ready for some serious blue water again.

I know the boat like the back of my hand so don’t hesitate to ask a question or two… I have singlehanded over 4000 miles and she is a breeze to do so. She tracks straight and floats easily over a seaway.

In certain conditions, hard on the wind, where there is short and steep chop, the bridgedeck will get slapped, and it is annoying. These conditions, luckily, are uncommon in my sailing days.

I have never used the staysail in 17 years, though I hear it is a great sail to have… It is a laminate sail, and may need replacement.

There are one or two spinnakers on board, but I have chosen to use the screecher every time when shorthanded. It is so easy to just roll it up…

Sometimes I have wished for a long pole when running wing and wing. Would have been better to drop the main and or just fly the chute.

Finally, I have never taken a wave over the deck or into the cockpit; though I have thought it was imminent! Cats simply fly over the waves and don’t smash into them!

With a good crew, or singlehanded, I would sail Birdwing anywhere warm, and maybe even some cold places too.

Equipment:

New mainsail being made now

Stackpack mainsail cover with lazy jacks- new 2015

Profurl roller furler genoa- inspected, new sunbrella cover, and restiched 2015

Profurl roller furler staysail- original laminate sail- never used and likely damaged from tropical heat

Profurl code zero on two to one halyard- sail being recut by Louigi

Harken top of the line fiddle block mainsheet

Norseman on standing rigging- 12mm shrouds; and 10mm forestay, backup forestay, and staysail stay

Force 10 three burner stove

Double sink

Dual freshwater pumps

Four three gallon aluminum propane tanks

Remote propane shutoff solenoid

Minus 40 fridges- two

Seawater foot pump

Seawater washdown pump- flojet 12 volt

Four jabsco heads

Lofrans Tigre windlass- rebuilt 2017

Windlass remote on foredeck and at the helm

180ft 5/16” high test

45lb CQR

FX37 Fortress

FX 16 lunch hook

AB 3.8 meter dinghy- two years left on it- Sunbrella cover

9.9 Mercury outboard- old and reliable!

Stainless Targa Bars with davits and 350 watts of BP solar -19 amps in full sun

Prostar 30 LED digital readout charge controller

1000 watt Heart 110 volt inverter

2000 watt Heart 220 volt inverter

Whitlock helm

Fish finder

Raymarine 7002 Autopilot- new 2014

Raymarine ST60 instruments- new wind transducer- not installed

Yanmar 3GM30/SD20 Saildrives with Max props- Engines were serviced 2017 with impellor checks/engine oil changed/trans oil changed and heat exchangers cleaned…

Aftermarket spin –on diesel filters- Raycor- (8 extra filters)

Aerogen 6 wind generator

Blender, food processor, coffee grinder etc…

Plenty of snorkel and scuba gear

Five aluminum dive tanks

Fishing tackle, rods and reels

Good tool selection

Lots of spares

Tank Tender fuel and water monitor

Two sit on top kayaks and paddles

Icom M125 VHF handheld

Icom AT 120 SSB tuner- and brand new Icom 802 SSB radio uninstalled

Thrane and Thrane Satphone

LED lighting

Xantrax Link 2.0 battery monitor

Four Trojan T-105 6 volt house batteries

Two 12 volt start batteries

Built in rainwater havesting on saloon roof

Seven top of the line Anderson winches- need servicing

Southern Spars mast with jumper stays for masthead screecher- time for full service/inspection

Hella fans throughout

Cockpit cushions

Fused breaker panel

Trampoline was replaced in 2007 and seems ok still

Genoa (North) was built in 2001 and seems fine, but the shape may not be ideal anymore

One or two spinnakers with spinnaker sock

Things needing attention:

Rig

Sliding door track

Some interior paint

Some interior wood

Cleaning and organizing/labeling

Some plexiglass hatches are crazed

Port shroud to deck seal

Mildew maintenance

Remove two aft heads- make tool room, dive storage or?

Cockpit lighting

All the electrical works, but not well labeled

Some latches should be replaced

Except for the rig maintenance, and getting the sails sorted, Birdwing is ready to cruise again, wherever there is 3 feet or more water…

Difficult to see with her long pants !