28th February 2021

 

Dear All,

This week has been dominated by Zoom, Ivy stripping, walking and the garden gradually drying out a little.

The extra Zooms this week were a Garden Club talk for Chesterton GC and a couple of U3A lectures one on Antimicrobial resistance and one on China. Giving talks on Zoom is not too bad but you are screened from any audience reaction as they are all muted so you have no idea how it is going down until question time at the end. The Antimicrobial talk was by Dame Sally Davies ex chief medical officer for England. She is very worried about over use of antibiotics due to over prescription, use in animal feeds and fish farms and less development of new actives by pharmaceutical companies as they have lower profit margins compared to medicines which are prescribed for life.

The China talk was delivered by Prof. Alan Macfarlane an anthropologist and historian, and a Professor Emeritus of King's College, Cambridge. He is the author or editor of 20 books and numerous articles on the anthropology and history of England, Nepal, Japan and China. He is extremely pro-China and stressed all the good points in modern China and tended to gloss over any negatives. He claimed there are now more Buddhists and Christians in China than Communists. Also, China has lifted more people out of poverty in the last 30 years than any civilisation in history.

Kate and I have spent three sessions stripping ivy off of gateposts and gravestones in the cemetery. It was much more difficult than we imagined as it was a mass of thick stems and packed roots. We had a large bonfire yesterday and happily it burnt very well.

 

 

Gateposts

 

 

 

Gravestone before

 

 

Gravestone after

 

We haven’t planted anything outside yet but it has been dry enough to hoe and dig and planting has continued in pots in the greenhouse.

On Thursday we walked the Willingham Fen, Gravel works, Earith, Rothschild Way, River Ouse, RSPB loop. It was much drier than of late and sunshine all the way. There was again plenty of bird life especially geese everywhere.

 

 

Early (grubby) lambs

 

 

 

12 furrow reversible articulated plough

 

Gravel works

 

 

A still damp field!

 

Yet another new Badger Sett

 

 

Geese at the RSPB

 

“Biographies” topic this week was “Frank Ramsey” 1903 to 1930, born and raised in Cambridge, son of a mathematician who was extremely bright and contemporary of Wittgenstein, John Maynard Keynes and Bertrand Russell and brother of Michael Ramsey who became Archbishop of Canterbury (he himself was a militant atheist). He excelled in mathematics himself as well as philosophy and economics. He died aged 27 having contacted a liver problem swimming in the Cam.

 

 

Frank Ramsey

 

With love

Mike & Kate