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Showing posts from June, 2017

A Trip to Norfolk

Belton House.  Biggest adventure playground ever.  Seriously.  You start at one end with the seesaw which pumps water for a splash pad, and go past the treehouse and rope bridges, and cross over the miniature railway, and discover the giant glockenspiel and spinning wheel, and hop over some stepping stones, and it still goes on.  We gave up and had lunch without ever finding the end, and went off to draw pictures in the beautiful gardens instead.   And that was only a short stop on the way to the real holiday in Norfolk.  We were headed to a little house in Heacham, just a few minutes from the beach.  It was a bit cool and breezy that first evening, but you've got to paddle and dig, haven't you? The sun set beautifully over the sea, and we tucked Toby and Theo up into their bunk bed - which according to them, was the best bit of the whole holiday. The next day we got a perfect beach day.  We drove to Wells-next-the-Sea, where the sea was so far away

The start of it all: Derbyshire's industrial heritage

Where would we be without the Industrial Revolution?  Derby Silk Mill c.1910, via Wikimedia Commons The development of factories changed our world beyond imagining.  People worked in different ways, ate different food, expected different lives, bought different possessions.  The effects were so wide-ranging that it's astounding to realise that it all came back to a few men in a few places on a small island in the North Sea.  Over the couple of centuries from 1750 to 1950, Great Britain burned coal, harnessed steam power, invented machines, built mills, and had an industrial output out of all proportion to its size.  Once you try and wrap your head around the magnitude of what happened here, it's just incredible. And Derbyshire was in at the very beginning of all that.  The first factories, buildings made just to do one job, over and over again.  The development of the idea that one water wheel could drive all the machinery in that factory.  The employment of women and

It isn't that important to me...

When we went sailing a few weeks ago, I mentioned to one of the club members that I had tried sailing a topper as a teenager, and really enjoyed it.  He asked: "Why haven't you done any sailing since then?" Well. On the face of it, that's a perfectly reasonable question.  On the other hand, why don't we do all these many things that we would probably enjoy if we did them? Because our weekends are already full.  Because we don't know anyone else who does it.  Because it will cost money.  Because we're afraid it will take up all our time. Because the kids don't want to. Because, quite frankly, it isn't that important to us. Which isn't really something you can say to someone who's been sailing for longer than you've been alive.  But that's pretty much what it comes down to. That brief conversation, and a similar one with a tennis instructor, served to point out the difference between those who are "in" an