18th November 2012.

Dear All,

It was our week for Amélie minding and it coincided with a Workshop at Wisley on Tuesday so Kate came with me and had two days in Godalming. The Workshop covered items on "Sustainable Growing Media" and "Biosecurity and Quarantine for Pests & Diseases" the latter was quite depressing with the number of problems that have entered or are queuing up to enter the country. It also covered the recent outbreaks of “Ash Dieback” and “Sudden Oak Death” which are rather alarming.

On Wednesday the sun shone and we took Amélie to Winkworth Arboretum. The trees were at their most colourful and we were all impressed. Amélie is walking strongly now and covered most of the area on foot.

Winkworth Arboretum

I went with Kate to “The Dickens Society” meeting on Monday. They were discussing “Pickwick Papers”. There was an interesting talk on the various illustrators but the remaining discussions were rather rarified from folk, who albeit experts, were a tad precious.

On Thursday it began foggy and only lifted briefly at lunchtime, so our walk round Ely was a bit gloomy. We could supposedly see the cathedral from every point on the walk but in practice we did not see it at all. However the lunch in “The Cutter” was very good.

The biography this week was “Richard Trevithick” a Cornish mining engineer who initially designed stem driven pumps to drain the mines and later invented steam driven carriages. He was a fiery character and ran out of money a few times and spent several years in South America helping drain silver mines.

      The Zimmertones                                              

   Lucy & Barry

We had a Music Night at chapel last night as part of the 275^th celebrations. It featured a quartet “The Footlight” led by Hilary Allen and a harpist, Lucy Bunce accompanied by her father. The quartet finished the evening as aged “The Zimmertones” with grey wigs and walking sticks, zimmerframes etc.

I have struggled a bit with a sore back this week and following my kidney scan was summoned to the surgery as although the kidneys were clear they spotted a small nodule on my lung. I and the doctors don’t seem to know what the implications are but I have to go for another scan sometime.

Love

Mike & Kate