Sunday Sunday. Apparently sales of the Bible are rocketing. Heared it on the wireless just now. Heard it. Autocorrect didn’t kick in there. Woke up a bit later than normal and missed “on your farm”. Also missed the even earlier 2 minutes of church bells which I only discovered when I was recovering from hiphop2 and couldn’t sleep. That phase is over yay. Might rewind the radio and listen to it anyway. Later.
Now lying in bed waiting for the Sunday Service to come on. Stand by.
“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God”. It’s ok. Not too bad anyway. Coming from Belfast. Need to give it more time. I wouldn’t say it has immediately done it for me. Actually the first hymn is quite boring. There are a lot of bland uns out there. The jewels are islands of beauty in a sea of tuneless mediocrity. Off it goes. A bit of toast beckons. Two bits. White wild farmed sourdough or similar. From Waitrose.
Another thing this morning is a slightly itchy left shoulder blade that I can’t quite reach to scratch. I’ve been doing bear impressions on door jams as I walk through. Ooby do.
No fox action. Not been seen for a few days now. Maybe it’s killed everything around here that it can get at and has moved on to another part of town. Do foxes hibernate? Gone on holiday to see its country brothers maybe. A dangerous trip.
Today will to a large extent be a day of watching snooker. The finale of the Masters from Ally Pally. We’ve never been but we have been to The Crucible Theatre in Sheffield for the “worlds”. Also to Llandudno for the final of the Welsh Open. We don’t mess about, us 🙂
In between frames we have a very nice pork loin that I shall be roasting to perfection with particular attention being given to the production of top notch crackling. And the gravy. Good gravy is essential. Last time I opened a bottle of the Herout Cider (Cidre) I bought last time we were in Normandy. It’s much better than the crap you get in supermarkets here. The other thing is that there is far more in the bottle than I need for the gravy so I’ll have to polish off the rest whilst cooking. Doesn’t keep yanow. I may still even have some of their calvados. A numbered bottle (something like 27/61) of their limited edition vintage single harvest stuff. Quality.
My latest book purchase arrived yesterday. The Welsh Cattle Drovers by Richard J. Colyer. A quality read. Lots of really detailed and interesting facts albeit mostly from the nineteenth century. My real interest lies a hundred years earlier but that was a time with very little written record. The drovers themselves tended to be illiterate and memorised everything.
The lack of written records in Wales before the nineteenth century is an observation that often rears its head when looking at histories. Wills are very useful, which I think I’ve mentioned before. What complicates things is the difficulty of reading handwritten scripts before 1700. I need someone who is an expert in this style of writing. Lots of twiddly bits and abbreviations. It takes hours of staring at one document to figure out the words. I no longer bother trying. Might take a course in it someday! Probs wont.
Not much will have changed between 1730 and 1830 in our part of the world so it is all relevant stuff anyway. The things that did change were prices but there were loads of things that went on over the course of the century that pushed some costs up and some down so it is difficult to extrapolate. More time needs to be spent in the library in Aberystwyth. The key finding from the book is the mention of the route that went directly past our farm in Llanllwni and that the drovers preferred to buy direct from the farm rather than at market fairs.
The drovers and the cattle industry became early pioneers of the modern banking system. They handled what was a huge amount of cash for their times. For wealthy individuals wanting to deposit cash generated by their Welsh estates a drover would take the cash and leave it in Wales but pay the money out of that generated by the sales of cattle in Smithfield Market thereby avoiding having to carry larger amounts of dosh than they needed to. A very risky business being a drover. The modern Lloyds Bank grew out of a bank started by drovers. There ya go. Learnt something new.
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Things wot I observed when out and about this morning. There was a fire engine in action by the Brayford. A hose was attached to a standpipe in a hydrant and anotehr ran into the bock of flats just by the bridge behind M&S. Saw another fire engine passing the Peacock though it didn’t have its blue lights on like the first.
Then at the lights at the bottom of Lindum Hill a Land Rover Discovery sport was indicating to go into the left hand lane. When someone let it in a hand sporting a posh watch reached out from the passenger seat in acknowledgement.
While in the car, on a rare tuning in, albeit very momentarily, to BBC Radio Lincolnshire I was informed that Fantasy Island and Pier at Skegness have 150 vacancies for thre forthcoming season if anyone is interested. Comes with a healthcare package and unlimited free goes on all the attractions.
In other news my hilton points level, 1,505, is the lowest it’s been since I joined Hilton Honors, their spelling not mine. I burned 360k on a week at a 5 star hilton in Malta in September. All part of the slippery slope of extracting myself from the world of business. The BA club class flight cost £60 plus 60k avios. I still have a ton of avios.