A Thursday Rush by a Busy Bee

Haven’t time to ramble aimlessly (or should thast be mindlessly) as usual; today I'm all of a rush… I’m trying to do ten things at once.

1) Prepare for Helen’s wedding (Hopefully now all finished apart from haircut which in my case is a simple affair, unlike Jo’s which has involved weeks of agonising about who to go to. Her usual hairdresser is on maternity leave and changing hairdressers is a major undertaking. If my barber isn’t available I walk along to the next one. Mind you, I’ve a lot less hair!)
2) Prepare for holiday in the Hebrides. (Haven’t started that and probably won’t until about twenty four hours beforehand. I have packing for holidays down to a fine art and apart from ensuring in advance that I have enough medicines it’s an easy task).
3) Gardening – a never ending job which I enjoy when not under pressure or when the task isn’t too big but sorting all the things I want to do before going away is pressure!
4) Planning the garden. This is a different task to actually working in the garden. This is creating a diary of things to do over the next twelve months. I am forever finding that I meant to move a plant or prune it or do something else to it that now can’t be done because the season isn’t right. I make a mental note to do it in November – or whenever – and then the next June I realise once more I failed to do it. So I’m creating an advance diary.
5) Circulating my book around publishers. Perhaps it would be easier to run off a whole load of letters in advance of the next rejection but that seems rather a defeatist approach to life!
6) Writing my next book. I’m up to Chapter 9 (which is probably about a quarter of the way) of the first draft.
7) Introducing a new laptop to the household. Hopefully I’ll be getting it tomorrow and then |I’ll have to pouty all my favourite programmes on it and add all my pictures, music, etc. to its 640 Gb memory. I recall when the Computer Manager at my old job told me I’d never need as much as 16 Mb for home use. He said 8Mb would be more than adequate.
8) Writing blog posts.
9) Updating my natural history and garden photo files.
10) Editing my latest photos.
11) Have my quarterly medical check-up.
12) Do all the boring things like eat, sleep, cook, do the dishes, vacuum, dust, wash clothes and, yuckiest of them all, do the ironing.

OK so that’s twelve things at once and I forget to mention it’s Wimbledon Finals week-end but you get the idea. Busy, busy, busy. So busy my wings are a blur….

Chirk Castle - Ceilings

Happy Monday - Apples and Wine

Bone pins and Samian Ware

These bone pins are from Roman times are to be found in Chester museum which has a host of Roman artefacts from its archeological excavations. They were used for fastening clothes or holding up women's hair.

Viewers of Time Team will recall frequent refernces to Roman Samian Ware pots. Here are a few examples from Chester.

There are a number of Roman tombstones from nearby excavations in Chester's Grosvenor Museum. This one is dedicated "To the spirits of the departed, Curatia Dionysia. She lived 40 years. Her heir had this made." The name, like that on a number of Chester tombstones, is of Greek origin suggesting she came from the East of the Roman Empire where Greek rather than Latin was the common language.

When we see the stones in a museum we tend to forget how they would have looked in their original state when brightly painted. The following is an original altar stone and a replica showing how it would have looked in its heyday.

The inscription reads "Aelius Claudianus, optio, fulfilled his vow to the scared Genius of his Century (by setting up this altar)."  (Ooops - one of my better typos - as Librarian points out I should have written sacred not scared!!)It was found in 1861 at a depth of 13 feet - about 4 metres - on the North side of Eastgate Street. An Optio held a rank just below that of Centurion. Genius means Guardian spirit. On one side of the altar an axe and knife have been carved and on the other there is a jug and a patera (a small round metal saucepan).  All these would have been used in the religious ceremonies which took place at the altar.

Irises - Chirk Castle

Some of the Irises I found in Chirk Castle Gardens in our recent visit.

A bicycle blog...

Give way to bicycles (Norton Priory).

Stop me and buy one!

Novel bicycle stands (Loggerheads).

Have you...

Chirk Castle Gardens

Dish Cross

This is a dish cross, hallmarked Chester 1779/80 and made by Joseph Walley of Liverpool. More usually dish crosses have four arms rather than three. They were used to keep serving dishes warm. The bracket on each arm can be slid along to accomodate different size dishes and the centrepiece is placed over a small spirit lamp.

Happy Monday - Fish need water!