I'm also late for February.

 And so to February as I try to catch up on my year and my blog posts.

 

We finally had a couple of sunny days, so I took advantage of working from home and headed out for a lunchtime walk. It really does do the soul good, well it does mine anyway, to get out into nature.

I was walking along the old disused railway line near our town when suddenly a load of birds shot out of the hedges just ahead of me.

I did have my purple waterproof on which is quite rustley, and my old brogue boots which for some reason clomp loudly when you walk (Himself calls them my Mr Noisy shoes!) 

so I did wonder if they had been startled by my approach, but the next minute a blackbird zoomed along the hedge line with a sparrowhawk in hot pursuit! 

That blackbird dipped and wove like the finest Spitfire pilot with a Messerschmitt on his tail and did escape to fly another day. It was over in seconds but breathtaking to watch.

 

On Saturday the 7th Soo came over and we decided to have a bus adventure. We caught one over to the nearby town of Wantage, which other than visiting the hospital for physio when I broke my shoulder 5 years ago, I haven’t been to in probably a decade. 

I have no idea why and it turned out to be not only bigger than I remembered, but really rather lovely. It was meant to poor with rain but instead the day was sunny and we had a lovely time. 

As seems to have been the theme for this year I forgot my camera so I don’t have any pictures to share, I really must go back and rectify that.  

We mooched the streets looking at all the lovely old buildings and looked round all the shops. I must say it was lovely to see many independent stores and hardly any chains. 

It was also the first time I had stepped into a charity shop, other than to drop of donations, since we moved house. I bought a mug, a plant pot with a crab on it and a cook book, pretty restrained even if I do say so myself! 

By now we were hungry and after looking at the menus outside various places settled on Marmalade a lovely café in the market square. 

It was packed but we managed to snag a table and had a delicious lunch. 

After we had eaten we had a mooch past the church and a bit of a walk by the stream that runs nearby, it was beautiful but very muddy so we decided that is somewhere to visit on another day. I need to look out our OS map and see what walks there are around and about the town centre.

 

The middle of February was super busy workwise. 

Himself and I went out for a walk on Valentine’s Day. I chose the route which got very muddy at one point, but we did see a beautiful deer, so I felt it was well worth it even if Himself was not so happy with the mud.

We also managed to get out for some fresh air the following Sunday too. It had been so wet we had been pretty much sticking to the old railway line as it is tarmacked, it’s a good 2.5 miles from end to end so you do get to feel like you have had a decent walk. At one point I was taking a picture of some early blossom in a hedgerow when I had this overwhelming feeling I was being watched. I stepped back and looking between the trees met the eyes of my observer. 

I cannot lie it was a tad unnerving!

 

On Wednesday the 25th we attended a Seed Talk. I had seen various adverts coming up on my time line for a while now, when I spotted one called ‘Folklore and Women’ by Dr Joan Passey that was actually taking place in the main lecture theatre at my place of work!

 I messaged Charlotte to see if she fancied going and she relied almost immediately to say yes. I mentioned in passing to Himself that I was going, and he surprisingly announced he would also like to go so I ended up buying three tickets. 

Charlotte and I met in Oxford for a drink at The Grapes and then pizza at Franca Manca before heading to meet Himself outside my work. 

The talk was pleasingly busy, and I even saw a couple of our students there. Overall, I did very much enjoy it, but I feel it might have benefitted from focusing on a specific genre, or era of folklore and or storytelling. It was a huge subject to cover in a couple of hours, so it felt like a somewhat frustrating skim over the surface rather than a deep dive. I am keeping an eye on their future offerings and will definitely go to another. Himself was pondering why the name sounded familiar and on getting home realised he has a couple of Dr Passey’s books!

 

On Friday 27th I met my friend’s Simon, Carole and Liz for lunch and to celebrate Carole’s 80th birthday. We had arranged to have a couple of roses for her garden delivered the day before which she was delighted with.

It was fairly quiet in the pub, but we clearly made up for that I think because the landlady came over with our bill at the end and said it had been lovely to hear all the laughter from our table!

That evening Himself and I were off into Oxford again to see ‘2:22 - A Ghost Story’ at the New Theatre. As mentioned here before I am a fan of the Uncanny podcast and Danny Robins the presenter wrote the play which was partly why I wanted to go, it had also had rave reviews when it was on in the Werst End. Indeed, we had had the tickets for 18 months.

We had a drink in The Grapes before going in, a good job really because my small glass of wine in the theatre was an eyewatering £10 and tasted like paint stripper!  

 

Sadly, the play did not live up to expectations, and we ended up going back to The Grapes for a post theatre drink and to dissect it in detail. 

The main issue was the actors were not wearing mics, so they were literally bellowing at each other to make sure they were heard by the whole audience. We both found this incredibly distracting, and it really, really detracted from the atmosphere. It’s almost impossible to have nuance and emotion when you are roaring across a stage at one another. 

I spoke to a couple of friends afterwards who also saw the play, and when I mentioned the shouting they both said it was a problem for them too, and that they couldn’t always understand what the actors were saying. Having said that in both their cases though they enjoyed the play and didn’t guess the ending.

As a lifelong fan of ghost stories, I guess for me the other thing that bugged me was literally every classic ghost story trope had been shoehorned into the script somehow, which made it feel a bit cliched. I had also figured out the plot twist well before the end. Funnily enough so had Himself, but for a completely different reason to me!

 

I may have done a tiny bit of sale shopping. I bought a dress from Kharibu which is lovely but a much lighter weight that I was anticipating for the cost. 

I also did a bit of brooch buying. 

Erstwilder did a Hanna Barbara release and when I saw the Scooby Doo ones, well it had to be done!

 

So that was February. 

I’ll try and do March before the end of April so I am just about caught up. I can’t promise anything though as I am off to Germany on Thursday for a family wedding among other things... 

I'm late for January...

 Well, that’s another couple of months consigned to history.

January always feels like it is 350 days long and the fact it was almost relentlessly grey, and or wet, didn’t help. 

I’m not going to lie, January, and pretty much February as well were a struggle this year.

There were however two bright spots on the horizon in January. On the 17th we went to Soo’s house to join the wassail taking place in the allotments and orchard in her village.

I’ve never been to one before, but having had a pretty much rural upbringing, I had a rough idea of what to expect.

Traditionally a wassail was when revellers went from house to house on twelfth night, drinking toasts to good health and prosperity for the year ahead. Or if you were somewhere more rural, and particularly somewhere with orchards, the aim was to appease the spirits so you would hopefully get a good harvest that year. 

In simple terms an orchard wassail involves the lighting of a huge fire, drinking lots of cider, eating apple-based cakes, singing songs and making a lot of noise! What’s not to like?

The fire is lit to signify the return of the sun after winter, over this you cook some toast which is then hung in the trees, they are also anointing with cider, and finally after singing some wassail songs, you process around the orchard banging pots and pans to awaken the trees and scare off any malign spirits.

I was definitely up for the experience, but I cannot lie I was rather surprised when Himself said he would come too ( mind you, he is a big folk horror fan so perhaps he was expecting something more sinister.)

Suitably warmly wrapped up, we met Soo, and two other friends Gina and Chris at her house, arriving at the orchard just as the sun was starting to set. Where we added our cider contributions to the already heaving tables. 

Despite the miserable weather each side, the 17th was actually a nice day weatherwise so we got to enjoy a rather lovely sunset whilst standing around the already roaring fire. 

There were two huge cauldrons bubbling away, one of mulled cider and one of non-alcoholic mulled apple juice. 

I stuck with a bottle of Cornish rattler until it got a bit colder, the hot mulled cider was suddenly most welcome then.  

Once we had processed around the trees behind some morris dancers whilst making lots of noise with our pots and pans. We tucked into some delicious pieces of the various home-made apple cakes and watched a jaw dropping display of fire spinning from the local tree surgeon, by this time it was getting very cold so we decided to head somewhere a bit warmer, and more importantly with a toilet!

Soo’s other half Gav had been working all day and had planned to meet us back at the house, but as we were a bit earlier than anticipted we messaged to say we would be in the pub and he met us there.

Gina, Himself and I had been invited to stay the night, so Himsefl and I headed back to the house with Gav, who was on jacket potato duty, whilst Soo and Gina walked Chris to the bus stop to catch her bus home. Soo had left a casserole in the slow cooker all day which we devoured with the said jacket potatoes and some cavolo nero. 

Replete with good food, the wine and conversation flowed, and we finally got to bed at 2.30am. 

Here’s to a happy harvest for 2026.

 

The following weekend I was off to London to meet with Charlotte and Alex. I had my train ticket prebooked so moseyed down to breakfast with what I thought was plenty of time. One mouthful into my stewed banana, blueberries and Greek yoghurt, I spotteda message from Charlotte on my phone,apparently our train had been cancelled! 

She had managed to catch an earlier one, they are a lot less frequent for her, and was already pretty much in London. 

I did a quick search and found I had an alternative train I could catch in 20 minutes, so I shovelled down the rest of my breakfast and hot footed it down to the station.

Charlotte was waiting patiently at Paddington when I finally arrived, having been delayed meaning I arrived later even though it was an earlier train (go figure.)

We jumped on a tube towards Tate Modern where we were meeting Alex for the Lee Miller exhibition. 

 

I had known about, and been fascinated by, Lee Miller the model, muse of Man Ray and avant-garde photographer for many years now. 

Mostly thanks to an article in Home and Antiques magazine and the amazing 2020 BBC documentary about her. 

It was fortuitously replayed the week before we were due to see the exhibition, so I watched it again to refresh, and it’s still available on the IPlayer here if you want to catch it.

Her incredible war photography I was reminded of more recently by the 2024 film Lee starring Kate Winslet, something else I would recommend seeing if you haven’t already.

 

As one of very few women war correspondents, she was the first person to photograph the full horror of Nazi concentration camps. Returning to the UK post war and without the kind of mental health support available now, it’s hardly surprising she never spoke about it again and spent her life struggling with addiction. The exhibition a separate side room for this element of her work, with a strict no photo policy and clear warnings for those who would rather pass by without going in. It was truly sobering.

I must admit I particularly loved the case that had her US Army uniform and Rolleiflex camera, for me there is something I can connect with so much more when you see things that actually people wore or used.

 

It was an amazing exhibition starting with stunning early pictures of Lee as a model before focusing on her work as a photographer. 

It was fascinating to see not just her experiments with technique, but her style develop. 

In the section on the early days of WW2, her frustration at being stuck taking magazine friendly pictures of hats for Vogue whilst war raged, was almost tangible. 

I’m so glad I got to see the exhibition before it shut.

I always take my camera to exhibitions with me and if allowed, take pictures as a kind of aide memoire to look back on and remind myself of what I saw. I couldn’t take nearly as many as I would have liked because the exhibition was so busy. 

I hope it had been like that all the way through it’s run, we were seeing it literally a week from the closing date.

 

We decamped to the café to have a drink and just sit for a little to absorb what we had seen.

 

We had no plans as such for the rest of the day, but Alex fancied a walk through St James’s Park to see the pelicans, and as it was one of the few gorgeous sunny days of January, we headed there next. 

I was inspired to take some abstract pictures of my own on the way!

It was lovely to amble through the park and enjoy the sun on our faces.

There have been pelicans in the park since 1664 when some were gifted by the then Russian Ambassador to King Charles II and they are now looked after by The Royal Palaces. There is so much birdlife to be seen in the park, exotic and otherwise, and sadly so many people completely disregarding all the signs warning about the avian ‘flu and asking people to please not feed or get too close. 

We had pretty much seen everything except a pelican, and were starting to wonder if they were even out when finally, we spotted a big crowd of people up ahead. 

Sure enough, when we got closer, there were the pelicans busy preening and looking beautiful whilst studiously ignoring the hordes of excited tourists snapping away at them. Of course we joined the horde.

 

Pictures taken we decided it was time for lunch so ambled through the park and walked the nearby streets not really finding anything until in hunger and desperation we ended up in a Pizza Express which was fine but not anything to write home about. Of course sod’s law, after we had eaten and carried on with our exploring about 5 minutes up the road was a lovely family run Italian restaurant!

We came upon Westminster Cathedral on our left (not to be confused with Westminster Abbey) so decided to take a look around inside as we were there.

 

Alex and I both wanted to find a Buns From Home before we left London, so we ended up catching the tube to Baker Street because Charlotte knew there was one there. 

It also meant I go to walk past Montagu Mansions, the block of flats that featured in the fascinating, most recent House Through Time series about two blocks of flats, one in London and one in Berlin during WW2.

We found our bakery, both purchased our cakes to take home, then found a great pub for a cheeky glass of wine as there was time in hand before we had to head for our respective stations.

And that was January