Making an exhibition of ourselves

Today’s picture, sent by her mother, shows that no aspect of giving Maisie a guid education is being neglected.

There were some strong gusts of wind with some heavy rain during the night but by dawn, all was comparatively quiet again.  This gave Dropscone and me the chance to get out round the morning run…after a short delay to let the temperature get above 3 degrees.

There was still a stiff breeze blowing and we had to hold tight to the handlebars on more than one occasion when the crosswind caught us napping.  Still, we got round safely if slowly and enjoyed our scones all the more for having earned them.  As Dropscone is off to a funeral tomorrow,  he kindly brought the treacle scones round a day early.

Some idea of the strength of the wind may be gathered from the fact that my maximum speed of 30 mph was achieved on a flattish piece of road with the wind behind me rather than down any of the steep hills on the trip.

We had the best of the weather for our cycle outing and the light got progressively worse until it started raining and then didn’t stop until late in the evening.  There was just enough to catch a bird or two.

A blackbird looks at snowdrops

Look behind you!

It’s better when you have the place to yourself.

A goldfinch wasn’t discouraged by this twig swaying violently.

The universal robin thought it better to keep in a sheltered spot.

I paid a visit to the pulmonaria too as they were looking very decorative in a subdued sort of way.

A few days ago, I had ordered a magnifying embroiderer’s lamp for Jean and it arrived yesterday so I took it up to her after lunch.  It is always a bit nerve racking to get things sight unseen from the internet, especially on behalf of other people,  but on this occasion, the item was exactly what was wanted which was a great relief.

I spent the rest of the afternoon, tweaking up my slide show for the presentation that Sandy and I were going to give at the Ewes WRI in the evening.

We met early, picked up Jean who was coming as our road manager and arrived at the hall in a furious rain storm.  We were so prompt that the hall wasn’t open but soon a good number of ladies had turned up and we prepared our equipment for the talk.

We had put quite a lot of work into the affair and we were pleased both that there was a good sized crowd and that they gave every evidence of having been interested and entertained by the talk on different sorts of cameras (we showed them a pixel!) , photo editing demonstrations and finished picture slide shows.

We had to judge the competitions afterwards  but got away with our lives.

Sandy and I enjoyed ourselves so much in giving the presentation that we hope that some other group will ask to see it now that we know that it works quite well.  We even made £21 by selling cards and bookmarks for the benefit of the Archive Group so it was a good evening all round….and the rain had stopped by the time we left the hall.

So, not a very good day for taking photographs but quite a good day for showing them.

I found a flying chaffinch.