One of the great things about working at the Garden Shows is the birds of prey.

( There are lots of things actually: enticing ways to spend your wages on everything from bulbs to handmade jewellery, clothes, sausages made by ex-offenders and I recommend the fennel ones. The great group of crew and organisers, the many nice stallholders and the generally appreciative visitors in their hundreds and on a good day, thousands.)

But it is a special delight to watch these amazing birds in action.

So, they are housed for the day in mesh tents and you can go and learn about them from their trainers/keepers.

Then they fly.

Once, just once as it happens, we had a stallholder who had a wedding business bringing a flock of doves to fly around your ceremony. When he mentioned that he let them out so potential customers could see them in action, I had  to make sure he knew when it would be a very, very bad time to do that.

And once one of the birds of prey went awol and her tracker ran out of battery. She was only located in a nearby village when someone posted on Mumsnet, ‘does anyone know what this really big bird on my bird feeder is?’

Mostly though they are very well behaved, not worried by an audience – indeed quite pleased to show off it seems.

Luke who owns the centre where they live, and flies them, is knowledgeable, assured, gives a really interesting running commentary on what they are doing, how they fly and their habits.

He is a man who knows what he is doing.

This year he brought a sea eagle along.

‘She is new to all this,’ he said, ‘And at the moment not at all sure she wants to be involved.’

‘She’ll fly to the gauntlet but if she’s not amused a cross bird of that size, flying at speed, onto your arm makes her point.’

Over the three days of the show, he let her out first on a leash and just let her survey the crowd.

On the second day, he let her fly on a long leash – though he did have to ask the parents of a small child running across the grass to ‘remove temptation.’

And on the last day, he let her fly free though I have to say it was a rather sulky flight and she spent a bit of  time ostentatiously sitting in a tree looking anywhere but at either Luke or the rest of us.

On the Saturday, Luke said to me he needed to get away promptly as he had to go to a hen party.

‘Wow,’ I said, ‘ birds of prey at a hen party – that’s novel.’

Luke said, ‘ Oh you don’t know do you? My other life is as a drag queen.’

Well you could have knocked me down with a falcon’s feather.

I remember my mother saying, once retired, she had no idea how she had managed to fit in a full time job.

Being in my 30s at the time, I was just a bit sceptical and had always worked on the basis of ‘if you need something doing, ask a busy person.’

But now I find myself agreeing with her – and I am sure if she was still around to hear that, she would be sporting a rather self-satisfied smile.

Over the years, I have slipped from employment, into self-employment, into less self-employment and since the pandemic, no real paid work – and never actually retiring in the sense of ‘ Ok that is it, work over, retirement here we go.’

It turns out, I have plenty to occupy my time.

And what a heady mix of ‘plenty’ that turns out to be; Oxfam, upholstery classes and a bit of hammering and banging, re-stuffing and hand-stitching on the side at home, dog-walking fixtures, lunch outings for an elderly relative, gardening, cleaning out the fridge now and then……

Not exactly running from pillar to post, I hear you say, and indeed I was feeling guilty about being so ready for a holiday and relishing the thought of waking up and not having a list of things to do, places to be, over and above when to go for the first dip in the sea, and where to eat that evening.

Meanwhile, there is something very nice about sitting with the Best Beloved on our terrace watching the yachts coming into the bay and sorting out where and how to anchor.

This was always a tense time for us on sailing holidays ( actually one of quite a lot of tense times) and remind me one day to tell you about our anchor coming loose and our boat bumping (gently) around and into all the other boats in the bay.

So there is a lazily delicious schadenfreude in watching the oh so usually competent Swedes (among others) spending an anxious hour going backwards and forwards to the prow and peering down to check their anchor is still laid.

We have two weeks of time to spend pretty much like this and I have a feeling that much though I was very, very keen to get here, there will be a bit of me itching to get back, get busy, and do the Oxfam window display.

The window theme is travel, so no irony there then.

Following on from the last piece, remember the ‘modern proverb’ If at first you don’t succeed, try turning it off and on again?

Well, the Best beloved needed (another) spine operation and, as is usual, he went for the obligatory check ups before.

They found he had a slow heartbeat.

This was not a surprise as for every other operation he has had in our however many years together, every time the medics have commentated on his slow heartbeat.

No worries, we said.

Mmm, they said.

And then they said, Go home with a monitor strapped to your chest for a night or two and we shall see.

He did.

They were not impressed.

You need a pacemaker, they said.

Now here was the rub, the surgeon doing the operation ( privately, I have to say) was going on sabbatical so we had to get the pacemaker in before he left.

A privately funded pacemaker cost nearly as much as the spine operation – really you ask, yes indeed.

So I spent a lot of time on the phone with medical secretaries – secretaries/assistants/receptionists are always the route through a problem.

Eventually after a lot of chasing around the NHS to try and get this done in time, the private/NHS heart doctor who had first had said  said, Do you know what, just add him to the end of my list and I’ll get it bloody well done.

And I close quotes.

So, it is a quick in and out to get something put in the size of say a 50 pence piece and yes it is visible under the skin and it takes about 40 minutes under local anaesthetic.

We were very grateful and relieved. 

And when it is done they strap you up to a monitor to make sure all is well and leave you on a bed for an hour or so.

So, all is well.

The monitor is behind the BB’s sightlines but visible to me as I sat solicitously (and rather impressed by my own ability to get this done in time with the help of several great women).

I could see that his heartbeat was registering not so much rather high as alarmingly high.

But he was chatting away and offering crossword clues.

In the end I asked a nurse to come in and check things.

She took one look at the monitor and called in someone else.

But he is fine, I said.

Mmm, she said.

She took his pulse in the old fashioned way.

And said, Mmm….

I’d better call the technicians but that may take some while.

I said, Shall we just try the turning off and on again trick? After all it is only a monitor not something keeping his heart going.

Mmm, she said.

But we did.

And do you know what – all was just fine.

It’s a great proverb and, along with the 80/20 rule, one that I swear by.

‘It is a far cry from the Age of Flint and Neolithic Man to the Age of Steel when the Great Western Expresses thunder from the East to the extreme West in less than 6 hours.’

Well it takes even less time now (sometimes), but no doubt costs a lot more.

This is about a delightful little paperback guide from, I think, 1926 to where you can get off from the Great Western Railways expresses and get to, by whatever other means, see ancient sites.

George Burrow, the author and illustrator was clearly a man for who ancient sites held particular thrall.

According to Wikipedia:

Edward J. Burrow (8 June 1869, Wellington, Somerset – 19 September 1934, Cheltenham) was a prodigious engraver and founder of Edward J. Burrow and Co., a printing and publishing firm.^[1]

Beginning in the years before the First World War Burrow published more than 500 travel guides in a series titled The “Borough” Pocket Guides (also known as The “Borough” Guides) to various localities of the British Isles and some parts of the Continent.^[2] In the 1920s he published a book series titled Burrow’s “RAC” Guides,^[3] which were issued under the auspices of the Royal Automobile Club Touring Department. In the 1930s he issued another series named Burrow’s Grey Guides.^[4]

Until the 1960s Burrow was the most prolific publishers of local authority official guidebooks in the UK, from booklets covering small rural districts to large civic handbooks for London metropolitan boroughs.

So, our little book is hardly a rarity but it is nevertheless rather charming in lots of ways including the rather nice typeface.

I have not the time to do the research but would love to know what typeface it is. 

I tried a gentle tootle around to see if I could get a link to the Cheltenham Press who printed the booklet but nothing – it was not a rigorous and thorough search.

The serif links st, ts,  and ct. 

It looks a but Arts and Crafts to me but what do I know. Would like to though, so when it is raining and when isn’t it these days, I might spend an afternoon searching old typefaces unless anyone can get their quicker…….

So, this book came into the shop and luckily I knew someone who was a Russian linguist – at least I knew his mother and two degrees of separation is just fine with me.

He told me the title is ‘Russian Language in Pictures’.

Published in Moscow in 1960, it is the images which are so redolent of the Soviet art of the era and a portrayl of life as it not count wasn’t, but the authorities wanted to say it was.

I leave you with the pictures.

So, dear reader, this is another old and interesting, and surprisingly funny, cookery book – and it is long read of what the author wrote, so dip in and out – think stealing a leftover out of the fridge now and then, a snack to return to.

Well it was interesting to me anyway. But if you are about to heat up a Waitrose’s curry for Friday night’s supper, or make yourself a fish finger sandwich (nothing wrong with either of those), you might want to get on with that.

If you are still with me, and in case you need reminding/informing, a chafing dish is basically a metal dish which has a mechanism to keep food warm.

If you are old enough, think predecessor to the hostess trolly – and who isn’t ( if you are old enough) now thinking Alison Steadman in Abigail’s Party – start hearing Demis Roussos everyone.

Anyway, this is well before any of that.

But back to basics.

Modern chafing dishes are for keeping cooked food warm. They are not going to reach a temperature to cook, nor should food be kept at lukewarm temperatures for too long lest bugs start breeding and poison you and your guests.

But the very jolly cookery writer of 1905, Frank Schloesser had other ideas and to be fair, what he describes might be a chafing dish with knobs on.

Just to make things clear, he has a name for his, Chaffinda:

Though, again in the spirit of making sure that any reader doesn’t get the wrong idea, using an asbestos tray over a chafing dish flame to make toast is really not a good idea.

It turns out on close inspection, that even for enthusiast Frank, the chafing dish is not always an alternative to cooking. Quite a lot of the recipes require you to have pre-cooked meat, vegetables and other stuff.

So, think of it this way – as he does. When you are returning from the theatre with your friends, here is a way to have something ‘cooked’, on the table, for a late supper, relying on what you (or someone in your pay) has cooked before and you can heat up into a tasty, light morsel.

It is rare that a cookery book makes me laugh but this one did.

He is a man who thinks eating less is good, some condiments (mayonnaise) are an abomination in the sight of some god or another, and things should be done in precise and small quantities – a walnut of butter, three chives, three drops of tabasco……

He is not a man to think that a recipe unlike the food, plain and simple, needs nothing more – Frank is a man with history and anecdote as garnishes.

I will just leave you with some more tasty morsels…….