Day Out to see Dame Laura Knight in Newcastle

There are no pics for this blog cos we went on the bus and I didn't take a camera! In fact, we caught the first bus at the end of the road.  We had to do a small jog because the crossing lights were against us but the last person in the queue held it till we got there. At the local bus station we slid seamlessly onto the express to Newcastle and climbed upstairs to the front seat.
Got off at the corner where the Laing Gallery is!...  http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/laing-art-gallery.html 
The Dame Laura Knight portrait exhibition is on till the 16th Feb and if you are within reach, it is splendidly worthy of a visit.
The weather remained fine and we walked a couple of blocks to our favourite lunch spot...http://caferoyalnewcastle.co.uk/.
Afterwards the goddesses were with us and all the buses arrived at the same time as we did. We sauntered home before 4pm with a fresh loaf of bread from Lidl for ron.
Billy was so glad to see us and has eaten well and settled down in front of the fire just as I'm about to do now.
Cheers Gillian

The Cake Thief

It wasn't me!
Oh yes it was. DJ's apple sponge had been left on the kitchen bench overnight. Billy the kid (aka Billy the Cake Thief) had removed the foil and enjoyed a midnight feast. He particularly liked the golden crust.

High as a kite on his sugar binge, he spent the rest of the day racing around like a mad cat...

...wondering whether to have another bath...

...adding his toy duck called "Chicken" to the nut shelf of the veggie basket...

...playing soccer with an almond he liberated in exchange...

...and playing hide and seek with a rescued "Chicken".

Today he's pretty tired out and has settled down for a long sleep.
Cheers Gillian

Waiting for Winter

I sort of expected winter to start a while ago. I've been waiting since we got back from our New Year visit to my sister's in Dorset. It has rained a bit and the wind has been wickedly icy at times but the roses still have a bud or two and only the dark mornings belie the true season.
Some dawn skies have been very colourful...

and...

...but the bright mornings are followed by dreary afternoons. This brings out the slow cooker!

This stew has done two meals already and a third is in the freezer. The freezer is also loaded with soups. Food is a major preoccupation with me in winter and another trip to the farm shop for chicken and eggs is on the cards today. This is a biggish decision because a chicken lasts us four days and I have to have a mind -set ready for the use of it. I get a great deal of satisfaction out of using up all the food we buy but I do relent when something comes out of the fridge for the third time.
Billy is preoccupied with food too and had become a veritable dustbin. One session of night starvation lead to him demolishing the of a corner of this christmas cake. Those are his teeth marks! He must have enjoyed the icing and marzipan as well.

He was neutered last week and has been quite a bit calmer and far less demanding of food. Hopefully he will settle into a sensible eating pattern and also sleep through the night.
We continue to plough our ways through as many Robert Harris books as possible. I recently finished "Ghost" and "The Fear" and DJ couldn't put down "The Fear" and has now moved on to "Imperium". That could lead to a trip to Rome just as the reading of "Pompeii" last year lead to a holiday there.
However, I had already browsed the Travelsphere catalogue and found a holiday to Carcassonne, Andorra and Barcelona and we had loved the description of it and decided it would be terrific for this year. A friend asked if that was because I had read the Kate Mosse books....No, I hadn't! Not then, anyway!

I finished "Labyrinth" yesterday and shall start "Sepulchre" tomorrow but I had to knit another square for a baby blanket for a baby due soon and at the rate I'm going it won't cover her feet. Anyway, as they say, that settled it and the holiday to Carcassonne is booked and the volumes returned to the shelves for DJ to read when the RH books are done.

Also busy now with painting again. Classes started this week and production began.

I quite like this sort of work. It is easy and once the sky is right the moors are great fun. This is Cronkley Fell up in Teesdale where I once went to study lichenology for the day in a downpour.
Cheers for now
Gillian

Happy New Year .......High Force Falls

Happy New Year to you all.

We haven't had as much rain up here as some poor places but there has been enough to set High Force roaring. 

Cheers Gillian

Marxist Feminist Xmas with Feline Allowances

While I was in Oz I nearly completed an MA in Geography at Melbourne Uni (two chapters short of a thesis).  One of the courses I loved best was the unit in Marxist Feminist Theory. It opened my mind to the unfairness of the "unpaid work" that women do, the world over.
I did some micro-research, using a matrix of four women, all of whom were in full time work at the same place. One married/partnered childless, one single childless, one married/partnered with children and one single with child/children. I was not able to choose the number of children. It was one or two and YES I know it makes a difference.
It was established by my research that partnered women without children spent a smaller amount of their day doing the unpaid work tasks....housework, childcare, shopping, cooking etc as expected. But those with partners and children did very much more than those without. Indicating clearly that women do more than their share of such tasks even when there are more people around to help out. In most cases it seemed from interview that, the "other people" in the household thought it was the woman's job! Some sort of birthright!!!
Here is a really good example of how well the new male gets away without joining in the unpaid work at our place. Fortunately the other two members of the household share all the jobs very well.

This young kitty is off to the vet next month and will come home with major changes to his anatomy, but will then spend his life doing much more of the same.

Of course he really looks like this. The days are darkening early and even though it is not very cold yet, DJ has been lighting the fire. Little Billy has had to be pulled away by his tail on more than one occasion as his curiosity gets the better of him.

It has also been deemed unwise to put up the tree this year because Billy loves to climb, so I bought this small tinsel branch and dressed it with robins. BUT...we are already one robin down and have had to pull some red stuff out of Billy's throat.
A day or so ago a woman in Sainsbury's called out that cakes were half price....so I bought the one on the left for £4.50. I hadn't had a chance to make one so I was glad to get it. Today Maureen, cake baker from up the road, turned up with the splendid cake on the right. "Thankyou" she said. I carried some shopping home  for her once. FABULOUS cake. Lovely neighbours. Xmas at home will be good.

Cheers to you all
Gillian

ON HADRIAN'S WALL AGAIN

I must admit that when I returned from OZ, I wanted to live in the north of England, and particularly near the Pennines and the Wall.

Here I am again. On the Wall, taking a picture of me, on the Wall and casting my shadow northwards towards Scotland. I am on the corner of the remains of the Roman Barracks.

It was three in the afternoon and there was still some frost in the shade!

If you clamber around the best bits you can see the Wall which was supposedly built to keep the Scots and the Picts out of the Roman Empire. In fact they were all so far away from Rome that the locals could just carry on farming, mining and marrying in the local area. Many of the Romans were Syrian soldiers. It was considered to be a good idea to send the soldiers to the other ends of the Empire.

There are only small sections of the Wall which can be accessed by the average punter. You can walk along this stretch to the west of Housesteads. It is grassy and offers good views.

There are better views to be had of the Wall along the scarp face but this was the best one today. If you visit in the winter it's a good idea to check the opening times. We had to do a bit of wall-clambering to get into the closed part and Vindolanda, further down the road, is closed during the week and is well locked up!

We spent some of the day looking around Corbridge and then climbed up the Wall before gathering at Langley Castle for a B&B stay.

It was a grand place and we all enjoyed a great night there.
Had to be careful where we walked outside....surprised not just by the frost but also the peacock poo!

Cheers to all
Gillian

HUMAN REMAINS at HERCULANEUM

These are quite gruesome pics of the residual bodiforms at Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Pompeii was hit by a cloud of noxious, super-heated gas. People who were left behind were killed on the spot. Their bodies were made rigid by the pumice and ash that fell upon them.

Their preservation was designed by an operation that allowed the pouring of plaster into the hollow forms.

The white areas are the old bones.

These old bones are famous and have been shown before, but more recently, the remains of those marooned on the shore at Herculaneum have been exposed.

As you approach the site from above ( the third most densely populated area of Europe lies above the site) and wander down to the small area which has been exposed, the guide points out the old coastline below.
In 79AD this town was quite Greco-Romano. The Greeks were admired for their "style" and "culture". But it didn't help them get saved by the boats which they expected to arrive and save them.

The boat sheds contain the remains of many women and children waiting to be saved. They were overwhelmed by a lava-mud-slurry. They have only recently been exposed by careful digging.

Their skeletons display the body language of those last few tragic moments. They are mainly women and children and it is suggested that the men were on the beach trying to get boats to come ashore to save them.
It is a chillingly awesome sight...
Gillian