Stonehenge

You would hardly expect 4500 year old Stonehenge to have changed much since I took this photo in the 1960s.  But it has.  The ancient monument is now fenced off and no longer can one just wander around among the stones as we used to in those days.

Although this is one of my better photos of the monument there were too many people around for there to be much atmosphere.  On another occasion I visited, it was a wet, dark day and the stones were not photogenic but the absence of people made it really feel as old as time.

An ancient Welsh woodland

I have recently been looking at some of my thousands of slides (transparencies) from the 1960s and 70s.  They tend to fall into a number of main categories - people, landscapes, architecture, plants and wildlife being the main ones.  I decided to show a few of them over the next few months.  This one is of beautiful ancient birch and oak woodland near Dolfriog in North Wales.

Grange in Borrowdale

During the 1960s our family spent a number of summer holidays in the Lake District, often staying at Grange in Borrowdale.   I have many happy memories of times spent there and when I came across this transparency I once took of the village from the nearby fells I couldn't resist sharing it with you.

Sometimes we stayed with the Roscamp family at Riggside and on other occasions we had rented their self-catering bungalow, Westrigg.

30 days hath September…

Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November;
February has twenty eight alone
All the rest have thirty-one
Except in Leap Year, that's the time
When February's Days are twenty-nine.

The words to "Thirty days hath September" (of which there are a number of variants) are still used by many adults to prompt them into recalling how many days there are in each month! It's therefore often referred to as the Days of the Month Rhyme! The origin of the lyrics to "Thirty days hath September" are obscure but use of the word 'hath' suggests it dates back to at least the 16th century.

The composer Rossini was born on 29^th February 1792.  As 1800 was not a Leap Year, his second true birthday occurred when he was 12.

But anyone born on the last day of February 1812 in Sweden never had another birthday at all!  In February 1812, as the country wavered between using the Julian and Gregorian calendars the month was allocated 30 days.

Annabel and Mac

Next time we go away Mac wants to come with us.