A sunny day in Tudor England

Catch 22

I want to renew my driving licence - purely as a form of identity.  I can't drive any more but that is my view of my abilities, not the formal medical one which says I am OK to drive.  (But I know I would be too much of a hazard with feet slipping off pedals and double vision).

In order to renew my driving licence I need a Government log-in i/d.  I don't have one.  So the licence renewal site says I have to register for one.  I try registering and it says I can't (no explanation as to why).   So I go back to the start to see where I have gone wrong.  I try logging in without a Government i/d but it says I have to have either the e-mail address I used to create my i/d or the password.  But I don't have these because I have never had an i/d.  So I need to 're-register'.  But I can't...  Need I go on?

In the news

Just to show I am aware there is news outside of our house I should mention that here is to be a major change to the British monarchy.  In future the succession to the crown will depend upon who was born first and not upon the child’s sex.  In other words, an older sister will not be displaced by a younger brother as has always been the case in the past. I mention this specifically because Adrian’s friend, the Duchess of Cambridge, is pregnant and may have a girl.  In the past if she then subsequently had a boy he would have displaced the girl in the line of succession but from now on he won’t.

Also in the news, but a bit more local is the loss of what was believed to be the oldest oak in Britain.  The gales which we had a couple of weeks ago brought down the Pontfadog Oak, a 1200 year old tree near Chirk.   Some experts claim it could have been as old as 1600 years.  It was certainly already a major tree when Prince Owain Gwynedd rallied his troops beneath it before defeating Henry II at the Battle of Crogen in 1157.  Legend has it that it was spared by Henry when he had surrounding woods cut down in 1165.

A Tudor Day

It was sunny on Bank Holiday Monday and whereas Partner-who-loves-tea and I would normally stay at home away from the crowds we went along to Speke Hall in Liverpool because they were having a Tudor Day and I fancied photographing some of the outfits.  (The Tudor period in England and Wales is the period between 1485 and 1603).

  

 

 Could these two be Romeo and Juliet??

P-w-l-t was not particularly bothered about seeing the Tudor activities but there was compensation in the form of a silver jewellery stall that yielded a new pendant and a ring.

The new ring is the one on P-w-l-t's little finger.

On another day I shall blog more about Speke Hall and about the Morris Dancers who were there on Monday.

Who recommended the Curiosity Cabinet?

Someone recently recommended the book the Curiosity Cabinet by Catherine Czerkawska and I downloaded it onto my Kindle.  Nowadays it is a toss-up between downloading onto my tablet (which is what I did with all the David Gemmel books) or the Kindle which I have used for various other books.   I still haven’t decided which I prefer.  Czerkawska’s story is delightful so may I thank whoever recommended it and apologise that I can’t recall who it was.  It concerns a small Scottish island, the kidnaping of a woman in the late 17th or early 18th Century, and a potential love affair between an Edinburgh woman and an islander in the present day.  With three hundred years separating them, the two women are linked by the cabinet and its contents, by the tug of motherhood and by the magic of the island itself.

The Kindle / Tablet issue may be fairly irrelevant for the next few months.  I have decided not to add a single book, real or digital, to my collection until I have worked my way through some of the books which are piled high along the upstairs landing and in every room of the house (including the downstairs cloakroom /loo!). 

Gardening

The sunshine continued today and I spent almost the whole day in the garden working my little socks off.  But that is a story for another day.