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Journal entries prior to May 2008 can be found in the old archived site here
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Escape from the City
Out and about in Northamptonshire and the Cotswolds
11 August 2012
Rodney, the macaw, at Coton Manor
oriel window at Fawsley Hall, looking upwards
Our shadows in the Fawsley Hall car park
Missing knot affords spy hole into Ladies
Tessa and Gabriel as we work on our Secret Project
A mossy area outside Hill House
Sample of Caroline's latest painting 1
Sample of Caroline's latest painting 2
Gravestones in Little Rissington churchyard
Though dated 11 August, this blog was filed on 14 August - a day when I worked at home, writing the latest Guardian Sustainable Business blog and a 3,000-word piece for CRO Magazine. In writign the GSB blog, I had reason to look back at my first ever blog, on the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution visit we made in 2003. Feeling exhausted before I started, but better by the end. Happily, the last GSB blog, on Danny Boyle's opening ceremony for the London Olympics, has occasioned a great deal of (positive) email commentary.
Last week was holiday, mainly, sith a trip out to Northampton to see Elaine's sisyter, Christine, and her husband Michael Green, he of the Art-of-Coarse-this-and-that. We stayed at Fawsley Hall, which was wreathed in swallows, and journeyed out to places like Canons Ashby, Compton Verney (to see an exhibition on flight and the artistic imagination, where I was thrilled to see my favourite images of such pioneers as Otto Lilienthal and the Wright Brothers) and Coton Manor. Amazing, different worlds.
Then on to Little Rissington and Hill House, to stay with Pat and Tim, and see much of the rest of family. The constant shifting of scene made the week seem much longer than usual, in a good way! Wonderful to catch up with some of Caroline's latest painting, too.
A week of distressed fledglings, though: at Fawsley Hall, I tried to pick up a fledgling swallow, which seemed in great distress, only to see half a dozen really grotesque crab-like spiders emerge from the feathers around its neck. As soon as I appeared, they disappeared back under the feathers. Then, at Hill House, a day or two later, I cradled a robin chick as it died, having been savaged by a neighbour's cat, then trapping itself in netting. A very personal moment, feeling life leave the tiny, feathered form.
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