9th May 2021

 

Dear All,

Kate celebrated her 2^nd lockdown birthday with a trip to the bluebells in Waresley Woods followed by collecting food from Cambridge Services garage and home delivered Fish ‘n Chips in the evening  - we know how to live! The children sent flowers, gardening gloves, a pizza cutter and a book and Kate F delivered a Salvia.

 

 

Kate with Birthday loot

 

Bluebells were a major feature of Thursdays walk which was a new route for us west of Stevenage and the A1, starting at the “Rusty Gun” at St Ippolyts. The walk took in two large woods: Hitch and Walk Wood which were both carpeted with bluebells, in fact I do think I have seen more in one day. The route circled the Bowes-Lyon estate and included the Queen Mothers memorial in St Paul’s Walden cemetery and the Bowes-Lyon family stately home called “The Bury”. It was an hour drive for us but was well worth it.

 

Hitch Wood

 

 

Queen Mother’s Memorial

 

The Bury

 

 

The Rusty Gun.

The weather has obviously taken a quantum shift this week with frost replaced by emptying the rain gauge 6 days running. This has meant much outdoor planting and sowing so I have planted out runner beans, climbing French beans, celeriac and early sweet corn and sowed a second lot of parsnips, carrots and scorzonera. Of course, frost could return any night but you have to go ahead sometime. Kate meanwhile has nearly filled her allotment extension with flowers with plenty to follow.

My cricket pitch maintenance colleague John is in Scotland for a week, so it took me over 3 hours preparing wickets for adults and juniors on Wednesday, followed by another top up rolling on Friday – only for it to pour with rain all Saturday morning, so the adult match was cancelled!

The night camera has not been so productive this week with just a squirrel and a plethora of cats showing up. Wildlife is clearly choosey about the weather!

Our Biographies Zoom session was led by Ann this week, who spent 3 months in India in the 1970s on a British Council scheme exchanging scientists. She had expertise in electron microscopy at Cambridge University and she was sent to Benares, now Varanasi University as they had been gifted an instrument from America. When she arrived, it was still in its packing case and damaged and no one knew how to either mend it or set it up. Electron microscopes need a steady supply of electricity and as they had daily power cuts it would have bee a tricky operation anyway. So, it was not the most productive of exchanges. Benares is on the River Ganges so she also described the ceremonial funeral pyres that were constantly lit on the banks of the river. As the wood for the fires was very valuable as soon as the relatives departed from the ceremony the operatives would retrieve as much wood as possible and tip the bodies into the river!  

Mary-Ann and Andy have received an offer for their house but the elderly vendors of the one they have placed an offer for are wavering about moving. Moving house is seldom straightforward – or so we understand, we have had very little experience!

I watched Over Reserves 4 v 0 Swavesey in a keenly fought local derby yesterday.     

 

With love

Mike & Kate