Home Ground

Half-term and I feel as though I am "nivver off t'road", as my mother used to say.  First, we visit the in-laws in the Cotswolds on a bitterly cold weekend.  Somehow, freezing fog seems to gather over Stratford-upon-Avon.

Next, by train to this northern city, Carlisle, its streets studded with Georgian treasures like this one.

Georgian street in Carlisle.

To Wigton, birthplace of Melvyn Bragg, the very essence of a run-down and depressed small town, although this memorial looks bright enough.  Sample"crack" in the charity shop I visited:

"How come he had a 36 inch flat-screen telly when he was burgled and he's nivver had a job in his life?"

"Mebbe somebody was just pinching it back."

Highly edifying, but if one was planning a slice-of-life drama set in the north...

Wigton, Cumbria

To Caldbeck, where John Peel has his grave, and where the Wool Clip, and the cafe above it at the Priest's Mill, is a place of pilgrimage:

Caldbeck Church

Click the picture to read the date over the door on this cottage.

It was wet and windy while I was in Cumbria, but weather like that creates the most dramatic lighting effects.  Here, the play of light over the fells as seen from the A596.

Finally, knitting.  I travelled up by train and entered the usual conversation with a lady of a similar age to me, as I showed her my progress on the Aeolian shawl in the lovely Cascade silk.  Why is it that people imagine you could sell hand-knitted items at a profit, or that you would want to?

This last, a cushion made from a failed attempt at a Starmore sweater, which was impossibly bulky. The buttons are Icelandic reindeer horn, gifted to me by my sister.