Spring Blossoms

April 29, 2025 / fgrtommo / 2 Comments

In the weeks since we got back from our month in Edinburgh – a month we have already booked again in Edinburgh for 2026 – we have settled into a home-based routine. This has been especially pleasurable due to the exceptional Spring weather. It has been largely sunny, the mornings have been fresh and clear and, since the clocks went forward, the evenings have been long and getting longer. It has been a lovely time to be back at home in the country and to see the trees, bulbs and perennials start to come back to life and into flower.

*^{Cherry Tree In The Local Town of Nailsworth}*

The walks into the local town for the newspaper and daily provisions have been chilly on the way in but warm on the way back. The dry weather has opened up previously muddy routes across the fields. The paths have offered views in the local woodlands and hedgerows of, first, the last snowdrops, then daffodils, then bluebells and primroses, and, now, wild garlic and cow parsley.

The bursts of white from the blackthorn and, now, the hawthorn have been terrific while the early flowering cherry trees have now been supplanted in their splendour by later flowering cherry, apple, plum and pear tree blossom.

*^{Apple Blossom In The Neighbouring Field}*

In the midst of all of this we have had a late Easter celebration with our grandchildren and their parents. The weather was kind and made the construction of my Easter Egg Hunt for the grandchildren easy. First Grandchild in particular, really enjoyed it and we all enjoyed watching him gather up rather too many Easter eggs. FG and his parents live in a central Edinburgh flat and he really appreciates the contrast of English countryside. It was so rewarding to see his excitement on the Easter Egg Hunt and on other nature hunts and adventures we had organized.

FG also loved seeing and holding the brand-new baby goats owned by some village friends of ours. I was amazed at how gentle both the baby goat and FG were.

^{Easter: First Grandchild And A Brand New Kid}

Second Grandchild was too young to join in everything directly but he too seemed to capture the vibrant atmosphere of our Easter weekend. He always seems to be smiling. That was particularly the case at Easter with so many people around including, especially, his cousin.

The good recent weather has allowed me to catch up on clearing vegetable patches. There is more to do and I need to be careful not to aggravate joint aches and pains, but I am pleased with the progress I have made. Plus, the sunny evenings are starting to beckon us out for relaxed drinks amongst the euphorbia, Judas Tree and wisteria and, soon, the alliums and salvias.

Against this Spring backdrop, there have been a few other highlights. We made a rare trip to London for a wedding (of Jane’s God-daughter) and to see and stay with some old friends of ours. The finale of a decade-long set of ‘boy’s nights out’ with mates dating back to the 1970’s was arranged to coincide with our trip to London. Apart from the hangover, it was a splendid trip and very enjoyable, particularly as we got to see our friends’ newly renovated house. It was great that the final boy’s night out was a little extravagant with a private room, silly hats and a wonderful souvenir booklet produced by the prime organizer. This included pictures of long-ago evenings together that encapsulated fading but amusing memories.

Also, back in March, friends in the village took Jane and I on an excursion to Dyrham Park. We have long admired this couple for heading out on quickly arranged short breaks and excursions when the weather looks promising. This time they took us off with them for a very relaxed and interesting time together.

We didn’t venture into the Dyrham Park house which has been renovated comprehensively recently, but the gardens were lovely. The daffodils were in peak season and the beautiful pale limestone of the baroque hall provided a great backdrop to views of the planting. The parkland around the house offers splendid views of the south Gloucestershire and Avon landscape.

I hadn’t been to the park for several years, when I went with my parents well before my Mum died, but I’m keen to go again in Autumn. By that time nature will have moved on and the trees and gardens will look very different.

Two other highlights: first a very enjoyable visit to Tetbury Goods Shed to see a band we have seen a few times called Faeland. They were on good form with an extended lineup and the lead singer’s beautiful clear voice resonating around a well-designed venue.

Second, I finally pickled the crop of shallots that I harvested well over six months ago. They have been winking at me from the string bag I had stored them in every time I went into the shed. Two years ago, I set myself a New Year resolution to do something creative at least once a month; I have failed on that. But pickling well over a kilogram of stored shallots counts as being creative for April – even if I haven’t actually tasted them yet.

Not everything in March and April has gone smoothly. My knee and ankle are improving slowly with help from physiotherapy but both have been annoyingly painful at times. Plus, a couple of weeks ago, I had a ‘fall’ (when approaching 70 one seems to call them ‘falls’ rather than a ‘trip’ or a ‘slip’ which would have been a more accurate description of the event) which wrenched my shoulder. But, overall, it has been a very good early Spring and I have appreciated being retired and so able to fully appreciate it outdoors rather than from an office window.

Expanding Family

April 3, 2024 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

Easter is a time when we tend to think of the emergence of the new. For the religious Christians, there is Jesus’s resurrection, for me there is the coming of Spring blossom and warmer weather, and for children there are Easter eggs.

This year, for Jane and I, there was the magic of a new life: a Second Grandchild (SG). What a marvellous thing!

SG’s mother and father (Middle Son) are absolutely besotted with the new arrival and seem to be coping very well. SG himself has seemed very chilled during the two visits that we have made so far to his Bristol home. He seems so much smaller and longer legged in comparison to First Grandchild (FG) at the same age. But maybe that is my faulty memory; all babies seem impossibly vulnerable, tiny and yet so full of potential.

*^{Second Grandchild In His Easter Chick Suit}*

SG’s arrival has been a great excuse to drag out old photo albums to look for similarities and differences between him and his father as a baby. Certainly, like his Dad, he has a fine head of hair!

Our Easter weekend was also blessed with a visit from Eldest Son (ES), his wife and First Grandchild (FG). It had been almost three months since we had last seen FG and I had been suffering something like withdrawal symptoms from not having seen him for such a relatively long time. It was great to see his development since the New Year and now we have a whole new set of videos and pictures of him to look at on repeat.

During a spectacular sort out and tidy up of our top floor storage (following on from a huge effort to sort out her late Mum’s heirlooms and other stuff), Jane had dug out some of my, and our kids’, old and very battered Matchbox and Corgi model cars and a whole bag of old plastic animals.

*^{Thunderbird 2 And Lady Penelope’s Car: Battered But They Have Been Through A Lot!}*

FG loved these old toys and it was great to see him using his imagination (and his new regard for Batman) as he played with them. He was also demanding in his requests that we also participated in his play. The refrain: “Grandad (or Granny), come and play” was frequent. When I did get down and play, but also tried to have a conversation with someone else or do anything else at the same time, I heard him plead “Grandad, come and play, you keep stopping!” Irresistible!

A highlight was an Easter Egg hunt around the garden following chalked arrows pointing to the route and egg hiding places. FG struggled at first with the concept of arrows pointing to things but he loved finding the eggs with a bit of help and then collecting them in a little bag. His parents were left with the awkward problem of how to manage the unprecedented volume of chocolate in his possession.

The anticlimax that always follows a visit from the Edinburgh branch of the family is offset this time. First, it is only three weeks before we travel to Edinburgh to babysit for a few days while FG’s parents go to Spain for a wedding. Second, we now have a Bristol baby just 45 minutes away to fawn over. We are loving the prospect of seeing SG’s development, and the developing parenthood of MS and his fiancé, in a more ‘little and often’ way than is possible with FG.

It’s all so exciting and it’s enhancing the bounce I always get as Spring arrives.

Various (so far) minor but irritating health issues have reminded me of my mortality in the last year or so. This was underlined by the death of one of my friends from university just before Easter. I once thought that as long as I lived to see my sons settled and had a grandchild, I would be happy to ‘pop my clogs’. Now, of course, I want more. I want to see more of my expanding family and see the grandchildren grow up. We can’t have it all but, so far, so good.

Life and Death

April 12, 2023 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

Spring is definitely with us after a very wet March. We have April showers – it even snowed for a minute or two earlier today – and spring flowers. The cherry blossom is out and there are lambs in the fields.

^{One Of Many Cherry Trees In Full Bloom In The Local Area}

The birds are marking out their territory and gathering material for their nests. During just 15 minutes of my walk to my Food Bank duties in Stroud yesterday I switched on the Merlin bird identification app on my phone and detected (and sometimes saw) 20 different bird varieties (plus a seagull and a buzzard that didn’t squawk at the right time). Spring is such a busy time for these little home builders and it was relieving and lovely to hear that our rural pathways are still home to such avian diversity.

*^{Birds Heard In 15 Minutes During A Local Walk}*

The outside temperatures are gradually rising with the prospect of heatwaves to come. At Easter, when Youngest Son and Middle Son came to stay for a couple of days and the weather was sunny, we managed our first outdoor lunch of the year.

*^{Random Roadside Bulbs On The Way To Food Bank}*

Spring really is a season of new life and promise.

Except that, this spring, we are mourning the passing of Jane’s mother who died peacefully last week in the care home we had all come to love and respect. Her death came as no surprise after a steady decline hastened by a fall but of course there is mood of sadness around the family. Easter and its Bank Holiday’s was a convenient pause for Jane to enable reflection on her relationship with her Mum before getting stuck into the administration of funeral arrangements. Death brings sadness but also a need for clear thinking about the fall out. Death balances out life.

Before the funeral we are off to Edinburgh to see Eldest Son, his partner and First Grandchild. That will be a great distraction and an antidote for Jane to the last couple of weeks of focus on looking after her Mum and then the mourning of her passing. Of course, discussions about Jane’s Mum and the making of funeral arrangements will continue, but it will be in the company of a little grandchild who will demonstrate as vividly as possible that life goes on.

A few days of tiny, effervescent youth and spring; what could be better!

Big Month and Bacon

May 2, 2022 / fgrtommo / 1 Comment

April 2022 was a truly memorable month. Eldest Son (ES) and his partner (plus First Grandchild) bought a flat – the first of our sons to become a home owner. Also (and I’m afraid ES, at least as significantly) Forest Green Rovers were promoted to English Football League Division 1 (EFL1)!

I have supported Forest Green Rovers Football Club since the family moved to Gloucestershire almost 25 years ago. I was finding it increasingly fraught and onerous to take our boys the 70 miles there and back to my boyhood club of Reading. I wanted them to like football and have the opportunity to watch it live and so I turned to the ‘biggest’ local Club: Forest Green Rovers.

When my support started, the Club had just been promoted to the National Conference League (the fifth tier in England) and offered a poorly attended, but viscerally intimate, version of semi-professional and then fully professional football. I watched the football while the boys messed about one the terraces with each other and with Lego.

The Club were perennial underdogs at that time. However, the Club was transformed progressively following investment from green energy industrialist Dale Vince in 2010. Dale uses the Club to promote his green and vegan values – we are reportedly the ‘greenest’ football club in the world – but has also applied finance, ambition and vision to the Club. Promotion to EFL2 followed via the playoffs and a truly remarkable day at Wembley. Now, just 5 years later, we are promoted again to EFL1. Next year will be very difficult but it has been a wonderful journey for me and all the other fans of the Club.

*^{After A Win Versus Oldham Athletic Which Virtually Guaranteed Promotion}*

Unfortunately we are likely to just miss out on finishing top of EFL2 following a relatively poor run of recent results. But one chance remains if we can win our last game at Mansfield next weekend. In a slightly crazy itinerary, I am going to that game via my Dad in Nottingham and then onwards to Edinburgh to see ES’s new flat. The start of another memorable month perhaps…..

April was not solely dominated by football. I also attended an alumni event in London with people who were exact or approximate contemporaries during my first 2-3 years of work way back in the 1970s. It was a great to catch up and also an opportunity to tidy our Barbican flat ready for sale and to see a London exhibition.

I chose to visit the Francis Bacon, Man and Beast Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. It’s hard to say I ‘like’ Bacon’s art since it is so menacing and challenging but I do enjoy seeing it and admire it hugely. I had last seen an exhibition of his work almost three years ago at the Gagosian Gallery in London. That had highlighted Bacon’s interest in animals and the new exhibition at The Royal Academy followed that wildlife and animal theme.

In practice, some of the work on show was only loosely linked to his fascination with wildlife and the parallels between wild animals and humans (much of which seems to have stemmed from his early life as a horse-breeders son). There were a number of works that one almost expects to see at a Bacon exhibition and the links between these to apes, bulls, birds (but never horses) sometimes seemed tenuous.

*^{Royal Academy Exhibition: Typical Images By Francis Bacon (Head VI, Figure Study II) And, More Unusual ‘Landscape Near Malabata’ (Bottom Right)}*

Nonetheless, it was an excellent exhibition that told a fascinating life story and that was well worth seeing. I found the triptych’s at the end of the exhibition particularly daunting but impressive.

*^{Royal Academy Exhibition of Francis Bacon Triptychs}*

I was lucky too that I was able to attend as the exhibition opened when it wasn’t too crowded. That enabled time and space to take in all the skewed wildness and menace in some of Bacon’s best work.

*^{‘Two Studies From The Human Body’ By Francis Bacon – Probably My Favourite Painting In This Royal Academy Exhibition}*

Back home, we had a very family oriented Easter with Youngest Son, his partner and pretty much all of Long-Suffering Wife’s (LSW’s) close relatives. The weather was kind enough to enable us to spill outside for a lot of welcome catch-ups with LSW’s nieces and nephews. We hadn’t seen YS since Christmas so it was just great to see him and his partner over the long weekend too. We must plan another trip to Belfast……

*^{One Of The Signs That Spring Is Here: The Annual ‘Amberley Cow Hunt’ – ‘Mootallica’ and ‘Calf Awake’. Two Of Over 30 Displays}*

Spring hasn’t fully warmed up yet but gardening has started in earnest – I can tell from the muscle aches and the good nights’ sleep. Preparing the ground for vegetables at this time of year by digging it over and clearing weeds is one of my favourite tasks; there is no pressure yet to protect stuff from deer, voles, mice and badgers or to actually produce any vegetables yet. It’s just good old physical work and I don’t have so many vegetable beds that I need to overdo any exertions.

*^{‘Everest’ Crab Apple and Camassia In Our Garden}*

It’s is lovely and lucky to be doing that gardening in such a pretty and relatively untroubled part of the World.

*^{The Cotswold Countryside Appears To Be Supporting Ukraine}*

Spring Visits

April 1, 2022 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

Ok, so yesterday afternoon we had a brief blizzard of snowflakes, but Spring is well and truly here! Trees are starting to reveal their leaves and the blackthorn has been in flower for weeks. Cherries and magnolias are in full bloom. Lambs have arrived in the fields adjacent to and opposite our house. Their carefree gambolling about on wobbly legs is always a huge pleasure to watch at this time of year.

Worryingly, but not unexpectedly given the fact of global warming, Spring seems earlier every year. Even by mid-March I was starting to see a range of butterflies (including Brimstone, Clouded Yellow, Small Tortoiseshell, Orange Tip and Red Admiral). But, whenever Spring feels like it has arrived, it is always a joy.

Once again, during a trip to Edinburgh, the weather was very kind. One time in the future when we visit Edinburgh, all our sunny days there so far are going to be repaid by relentless rain and grey but… not yet!

*^{On Carlton Hill, Edinburgh With FG (Asleep And Out Of Shot)}*

On this trip there was the novelty and pleasure of picking up my Dad on the way and taking him up to Edinburgh with us. That enabled him to see Edinburgh again for the first time in a decade or so but also, critically, to meet his great grandchild (our First Grandchild (FG)). It was actually too, the first time he had me FG’s mother since previous attempts to meet up had been thwarted by train cancellations or pandemic restrictions. The building of new relationships even extended to my Dad meeting FG’s other grandparents over a lovely lunch at their flat.

Of course, Long-Suffering Wife (LSW) and I did our pram-pushing duties to send FG off to sleep while taking in the sights and smells of Edinburgh. (There is a brewery in the city and the smell of hops reminded me of the breweries in my home town of Reading when I was a kid.) Once again we visited the excellent Royal Botanic Garden which was perfect in the sun.

*^{Inside The Alpine Houses At The Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh}*

*^{The Obligatory (But Lovely) Slew Of Daffodils In The Royal Botanical Gardens}*

In the Botanic Garden entrance hall was a colourful and interesting exhibition (called ‘Forth Lines’) of local artists’ embroidery with each of 96 panels depicting a point along the Firth of Forth coastline. FG stayed asleep long enough for me to enjoy it and to encourage my thinking about future walks along that coastline.

*^{Sample Rows Of Embroidery Pieces By Local Artists And Residents Along The Firth Of Forth (The ‘Forth Lines’ Exhibition)}*

*^{One Of The Individual Panels From The ‘Forth Lines’ Exhibition (By Kathleen Wilson)}*

Another exhibition I visited while in Edinburgh was a major exhibition of John James Audubon’s pictures of birds at the National Museum of Scotland. My Dad has long been interested in Audubon and I tagged along since I love exhibitions of this sort and it was great to share the experience with my Dad. It is an excellent exhibition. Our only wish was that there would be more on the process of actually executing the drawings, engravings and colouration – it was clearly a substantial team effort. Regardless of this, the resultant prints on show are stunning and the explanations of them and of Audubon’s life were fascinating.

Audubon was certainly a rather strange character. He was born in 1785 in Haiti to French parents – a plantation owner and his maid – and became a self-trained naturalist, artist and hunter.

Audubon had many contradictions. He owned slaves and dabbled in ideas related to eugenics but took funding from slavery abolitionists. He shot thousands of birds in his life but was also one of the first to document how industrialisation and agriculture were destroying bird habitats. His lack of an academic background meant many in the scientific community in America denigrated him but he was – with his drawing talent, determination to succeed and his wild looks (complete with bear oil slicked hair) – a big hit in the academic and artistic circles of Edinburgh.

*^{Detail From Plate 26 Of ‘Birds Of America’ – ‘Carolina Parrot’ by Audubon}*

It was here and then London that he gained sponsorship for (apparently £2m in today’s money) and published his most famous and hugely popular work, ‘The Birds of America’. The huge volumes consist of 435 hand-coloured, life-size prints of 497 bird species, made from engraved copper plates of various sizes depending on the size of the image. One of the volumes was on show at the exhibition alongside numerous individual prints. The book was extravagantly large because, remarkably, each bird picture it contained was drawn at life size.

*^{One Of The Volumes Of Audubon’s ‘Birds Of America’}*

The prints on show were vibrant and wonderful and the lack of crowds at the exhibition meant that the stunning detail could be seen up close and at leisure. That many of Audubon’s prints boasted incorrectly of newly discovered species or were anatomically incorrect didn’t matter given the high quality of the overall impact.

*^{Detail From Plate 72 Of ‘Birds Of America’ – ‘Swallow Tailed Hawk’ by Audubon}*

The exhibition was also good because it told Audubon’s story about his talent (and the way the world responded to it) interestingly, and it was honest about his flaws. Most of all, it was great to have the afternoon with my Dad sharing something so memorable.

*^{Although We Didn’t Explore It Beyond the Audubon Exhibition This Time, The National Museum of Scotland Is In a Lovely Building}*

To round off March, LSW and I visited The Newt Garden in Somerset for the second time this year. Spring has definitely come to this 350 acre garden and woodland. Already, the myriad varieties of cordon and espaliered apple plants are starting to come into flower.

*^{The Newt Gardens – The Parabola Garden}*

As reported in this blog several times before, it is a wonderful garden which continues to evolve and grow. This time we were able to visit with two friends from our village which added a lovely extra dimension which was topped off by a delicious lunch in the Garden restaurant. I’m looking forward already to visiting again later in the year.

*^{The Gardeners Cottage And Magnolia From The Victorian Garden At The Newt}*

Before that, we have April to look forward to: a re-warming of the weather, the Football League run-in of the final games of the season (I go in hope for Forest Green Rovers), more blossoming of plants and shrubs, thriving seedlings (again, I hope), and Easter with Youngest Son and his partner. Not a bad prospect but what a shame it is the global context of Russia’s dire attack on Ukraine. Spring is sprung but not everyone can appreciate it right now.

^{Bonus Photos of Sunny Edinburgh}

Lockdown Life In The Country

April 11, 2020June 11, 2020 / fgrtommo / 1 Comment

The lockdown continues to affect me much less than most people and I count my blessings for that – and for avoiding infection so far. I’m retired and live in the country with plenty of space, leisure time and a nice garden to sit or work in. I know many are far less fortunate – and doubly so because the weather has been so lovely since the lockdown kicked off.

Nonetheless, the difference for me between this Easter and last year’s Easter is a stark indicator of how much the world has changed. Last Easter, Long-Suffering Wife (LSW) and I hosted a treasure hunt and lunch for 19 of our family. Two of our sons brought their girlfriends to stay with us and, throughout Easter Sunday, the extended family intermingled in the garden over drinks and food. There is none of that this year. The only similarity is that the weather is hot and sunny, the new lambs are in the next door field again and all the other reliable signs of Spring are in evidence.

The First Ducklings I Have Seen This Year And Spring Lambs In The Neighbouring Field

Easter weekend is, this year, just like any other day in lockdown. There is now so little difference between one day and another. Planning and execution of holidays, trips to London and visits to my parents in Nottingham has stopped. Now planning is merely about deciding which circuitous and deserted route to take into the local shops, who is going to cook the evening meal and with what, and what trivial task will be undertaken today.

A View On One Of My Favourite Circuitous Walks To The Shops

Most of my usual routines have persisted; I’m a creature of habit after all! For example, I still have fruit/yogurt/granola breakfast midweek but bread and jam at the weekends. The consistency of our salad lunches (except Sundays when we have roast chicken) has remained unperturbed by the Coronavirus. I still insist on listening to the radio news headlines twice a day (at 1pm and 5pm) despite their increasing repetition and depressing content. I still walk into town every morning to collect my newspaper. LSW and I still attempt the Guardian Quick Crossword together every late afternoon over tea.

But now, some new markers for the progression of the day and week have emerged. For instance, primarily at Youngest Son’s (YS’s) prompting, we play a game of Monopoly Deal after every lunch and dinner. Primarily at LSW’s prompting, we participate in the regular Thursday evening ‘Clap for Care Workers’ event in our lane alongside her ‘Hearts For Horsley’ banner – now, one of almost 100 in the vicinity.

Hearts Around Horsley Banners/Flags Including LSW’s And A Lego Version

Life has slowed down. It is just less full without the trips away from our home and my attendance at football games. Football ceasing at Forest Green Rovers during the lockdown has, I estimate, given me a day a week back now that there is no game to prepare for, travel to, watch, write up on the forums afterwards and generally worry about.

Now I spend more time sitting down to read my book or the newspaper in the afternoons which risks, and often leads to, snoozing. Amid the tendency to inactivity, my to-do lists have become more important again as I try to ensure that at least one thing worthwhile is completed each day. LSW, YS and I have collectively tried to structure our days and weeks to make sure we stay focused on achieving something even when there is so little pressing to do.

Wood Anemones Among First Bluebells And Massed Cherry Blossom

Another example of imposing a new structure to our time is that we have started to stick more rigidly to a schedule of drinking alcohol on just Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. This new rhythm feels more feasible now we are not going to dinner parties, social events or holiday destinations any more. It is certainly helping me achieve my New Year resolutions for alcohol-free days and reduced overall alcohol intake. The loss of the pre-Coronavirus/pre-Pub closure routines of the monthly Pub Quiz and beer while the Sunday roast is cooking has, alone, reduced my alcohol intake by about 10%.

As with the other (few) positive impacts of the virus outbreak – on increased local shopping and home cooking, decreased carbon emissions and improved air quality for example – it will be interesting to see if I revert to bad habits and previous levels of alcohol once the lockdown has passed. I’m confident I can avoid that.

Meanwhile, we all need to enjoy Spring as much as we can while, predominantly, staying at home and away from people outside our household (‘to protect the NHS and save lives’, including our own). Easy for me to say while in my relatively comfortable position, but I hope everyone reading this adheres to the current health guidelines and avoids the virus too.

My Thank You To Our Bin Men In A Time Of Crisis

Climate Change in January

January 19, 2020 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

It seems incongruous thinking about climate change and the Climate Emergency on a day like today when there are clear skies and degrees of frost outside and I’ve just returned from a lengthy walk down icy lanes. However, the recent fires in Australia – many close to areas that we visited during our two relatively recent trips there – and the floods that followed Storm Brendan here in the UK, have underlined that all is not well with the climate. It is increasingly imperative that we act to, hopefully, avert permanent and very significant upheaval to global life as we know it.

Frosty Garden

As readers of this blog will know, for several months, I have been a member of a local group agitating for our Parish to declare a Climate Emergency, to set a target of carbon neutrality by 2030 and to help the establishment of plans to achieve that target. The Parish Council have agreed to take climate change seriously and have committed to a number of measures including mass tree planting. However, beyond this, in practice, we are making only slow progress; we are simply a too small and a too intermittently dedicated group.

Frosty View On The Way To Nailsworth

I am now planning to align myself more with a much larger group of climate change responders in our nearby town, Nailsworth. This group (Nailsworth Climate Action Network) seems to have more momentum as well as size. I’m excited by some of their plans.

One of these plans is to hold an ‘envisioning session’ along the lines advocated by Rob Hopkins at which we will think about what we want Nailsworth to be like in a couple of decade’s time. Rob Hopkins established the Transition Network movement many years ago. Since then, he has developed his thinking to promote the harnessing of our imagination to envision a near future that has responded to the pressure of the Climate Emergency and to measures of well-being and societal health rather than Gross National Product.

Long-Suffering Wife (LSW) and I saw Rob speak in Nailsworth in October last year and he was very inspiring. LSW has read his latest book – ‘From What Is To What If’ – which encourages the reader to use hope and imagination to break out of the current systems and structures we find ourselves in to envision a different way of living. He also provides examples of how others have done this in various parts of the world, and how these can inspire similar action in our own lives and towns. I too must read this fully before our town ‘envisioning event’ planned for June.

Walking Near Our House Between Showers

Of course, all climate change activists encourage us to reduce our reliance on planes for travel. Air travel is apparently the most carbon emitting of transport methods. I have calculated my personal carbon footprint using a calculator provided by the World Wildlife Fund and, while I am just below the average for a UK citizen without flights, with the two flights I took last year, I am almost 50% higher. As I reported in this blog a few posts ago, I did carbon offset one of these flights and plan repeat that process in future. But the impact of flying on the climate is disproportionately high and LSW and I plan to cut down our few flights even more.

That means ‘staycations’ in the UK and train based holidays. We plan to walk some of the north Somerset/Devon/Cornwall coast in June and try a train trip somewhere in Europe later in the year. Holidays in India and Thailand, which we have also talked about, may be now on hold.

Perhaps we will adjust to one long haul flight a year and offset it through Solar Aid again. Certainly we have a strong desire to revisit India and try South East Asia for the first time. And not only do I want to visit these places; I also miss the opportunity to see the world from the window of a plane flying thousands of feet above the ground. What better, often stunning way is there of appreciating both the planet as it is and that we have to act to prevent a climate disaster ruining it?

One Of Those Dreamy Views Out Of An Aeroplane Window – In This Case Over The Alps. I’d Miss These If I Wasn’t Able To Fly

Back on earth, the first signs of weather change and the onset of Spring are emerging amid the sodden ground and current frost. I’ve seen my first lambs, bees, snowdrops and primroses of the year. The dippers and kingfishers are active near the streams again. Excitingly, a kestrel has been hovering over our garden and field looking for strays from a colony of voles or mice that have taken up residence there.

First Snowdrops Of The Year On New Years Day

Early Snowdrops and Bee Activity

There is another uplifting development in the valley I walk through to Nailsworth every day. A swan arrived on the lake there over three years ago. She has occasionally disappeared for weeks but always returned alone and apparently lonely. Last year she produced some eggs and they now lie abandoned on her nest. This week, suddenly, a partner has arrived and so the chances are that they will mate and that new eggs will be fertilised this year. I am so hoping for a clutch of cygnets; fingers crossed!

Early Lambs And Swans In Love?

Spring and Stuff

May 19, 2018May 19, 2018 / fgrtommo / 3 Comments

Spring has arrived late but with waves of sun and warmth that suggest it is trying to catch up on lost time. Leaves and blossom have burst into life and colour and the landscape suddenly has that fresh feel of Spring. The carpets of bluebells in the nearby woods are already usurped by the wild garlic and the paths and verges are lined with cow parsley 4 foot high. Already, we seem to be marching into summer.

Cow Parsley, Wild Garlic, Bluebells And Cowslips On The Walk Into Town

The recent improvement in the weather has encouraged me to resume vegetable gardening in between trips to London (a cheeky, impromptu visit primarily to see a favourite band, Kefaya) and Nottingham (to see my parents). I have been planting seeds, digging the vegetable patch and putting up a bit of new fencing. For the first time, I am retired from work during a Spring. When I was working, I used to perform what I called ‘speed gardening’ at weekends. This year I can devote time throughout the week to a more relaxed style of gardening.

From bitter experience I know that not all this reinvigorated effort will bear fruit in terms of usable crops. Not everything germinates or thrives and squirrels, deer and badgers have taken more than their fair share in recent years. However, now Spring is here, frustrations with the local wildlife, and memories of needless gluts of vegetables that the animals don’t like, are set aside and the vegetable patch is cultivated once more. Once again, in a few months’ time, we will probably be scouring recipe books and the internet for meals requiring lots of beetroot or courgettes and having beans with every meal.

About three weeks ago, Long-Suffering Wife (LSW) had one of her periodic purges of our possessions to populate a table at a village table-top sale. I had my usual power of veto to prevent the discarding of things that might conceivably be useful to me, our sons or any of their as yet entirely unplanned children at some point in the future. However, I kept my veto in my pocket and a car-load of stuff was priced up and went for sale.

Unfortunately, our village evidently has a lot of people who want to offload things but few who wanted to accumulate them. By the end of the sale, due to LSW buying yet another designer tap, she came back out of pocket and only one item lighter. Given the investment of time in pricing all this stuff up, LSW had another go at a local car-boot sale. She had about £60 more success but it’s clear that much of what we are trying to sell is going to take the normal trip to the local charity shops.

We gather so many material goods over a lifetime. Some have a now outdated function and some are purely decorative but are no longer in vogue or have a place. A classic example was an Apilco tea set which we once used and loved but which has been in a cupboard untouched for years. We tested whether any of the sons wanted it and got negative responses (‘its horrific’ said one). They already have what crockery they need and, if they need more, will go online at Amazon, John Lewis or Ikea. Handing stuff down over the generations doesn’t seem to work any longer.

Apilco Tea Set Awaiting A New Home

At our age, we simply don’t need many additional material goods. Indeed, LSW is strong – and persuasive in the face of my greater, but softening, reticence – on reducing our footprint by clearing our old stuff out. Thank goodness for the recycling work of charity shops but the dump is also a regular destination.

These thoughts were going through my mind as LSW and I visited the annual neighbourhood open studios events of the last couple of weeks. Lots of creative and talented people were displaying their art and craft work in their homes and in local galleries; some was impressive. In past years we have bought some of the items but, more recently, we have walked around the open studios rather aimlessly. We just don’t need any more things to sit on shelves or to go on walls.

LSW has recently started a ceramics course. My fear is that her work – worthy and perhaps even lovely as it may turn out to be – will be another avenue of stuff entering our home. If so, then at least I will have a bargaining chip in negotiations around hanging onto some of my long-standing possessions for another year. But my realisation that I have to declutter that stuff is growing – maybe I’ll go to the next car boot sale or even learn to try eBay…..

Kefaya At Archspace, Haggerston, London; One Of My Favourite Bands

Happy Week

April 23, 2018 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

The last week or so has seen warm temperatures at last. Despite my fears, Forest Green Rovers have had sufficient success on the football field to ensure that a dreaded relegation will almost certainly be avoided. I’ve been able to get started on preparing the vegetable patch and growing seedlings for the garden and managed to fit in another trip to London. It’s been a good time.

Lincoln Fields: Every Green Space In London Fully Occupied When The Sun Comes Out!

There has also been some nostalgia this week. 20 years ago, Boards of Canada, a band producing an evocative brand of psychedelic electronica, released their first studio album called Music Has The Right To Children. I bought the CD soon afterwards and have spent the last 20 years buying their other albums and loving almost every minute of them.

It’s hard to pick a favourite band because there are so many music genres and different music suits different moods and circumstances. But I believe that, at any time over the last 20 years (including today), I would have said Boards of Canada are my favourite band. An example of their sound – with typically off-beat images evoking public service documentaries, childhood and nostalgia is here (Everything You Do Is Balloon).

Boards of Canada are two Scottish brothers who have only produced three more full albums since that first one that got me hooked. To my knowledge, they have never played live. They leave me grasping for more. I therefore jumped at Eldest Son’s (ES’s)suggestion that we go to a jazz interpretation of the Music Has the Right to Children by Byron Wallen’s Gamelan Ensemble at Camden’s Jazz Club in London. It was an excellent event – though inevitably a shadow of the real thing – and so popular that, I understand, a repeat performance is being scheduled.

Byron Wallen’s Gamelan Ensemble Reinterpret Boards of Canada At The Jazz Club, Camden

The gig was a good reason to visit London for a couple of days. I not only spent time with ES – as usual staying in the Barbican flat he rents from us in a very convenient arrangement – but also managed to meet up with Middle Son (MS). I also saw the Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition at Somerset House, which was a huge and incredibly varied array of often remarkable photos, and then the superb, new Monet and Architecture exhibition at the National Gallery.

Sony World Photography Award Winner: Veselin Atanasov

I really enjoyed the Monet exhibition which recalled the Impressionists in London exhibition I saw at Tate Britain last year. Several of individual pictures were stunning, the information provided was just the right level for me (not too much and nothing highfalutin), and the gallery was busy but empty enough that I could see every piece up close. There was a little personal nostalgia here too since the exhibition sponsor was my last employer before retirement.

Monet And Architecture: The Boulevard Des Capucines, Paris

Since returning to Gloucestershire, I have started longer spells of gardening than I managed before Spring truly sprang into life this week. I have also resumed the interminable painting of the TV Room. Both activities have provided moments of humour.

My vegetable patch is adjoined by a field of sheep that have been fed with hay recently because the pasture is so far behind its normal growth levels due to the poor weather. When I appear in the vegetable patch they expect me to feed them and so rush over towards me. One got so enthusiastic that he barged through the fence, jumped over the wall and started munching the weeds in our garden. Fortunately, we managed to guide the sheep back to his field quickly enough to leave us amused by the experience rather than concerned.

Sheep Intruding Into Our Garden

On the painting front, I have recently opened another pot. As I was leaning over it to dip in my brush, my spectacles dropped off directly into the paint. I felt pretty stupid as I fished the drenched, dark blue spectacles out and rinsed them off. Luckily, the paint is water based so, as with the sheep, no harm was done.

Happy week!

Sunny London: Somerset House, Royal Courts of Justice, St Pauls And The 4th Plinth In Trafalgar Square

The Cost of Entertainment

April 13, 2018April 13, 2018 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

So, still not much Spring in the air and the water-courses have been full. But lambs are starting to pop out and Spring weather is apparently going to finally arrive next week. Such a relief!

Full Local Water Courses and New Lambs

Long-Suffering Wife (LSW) and I went to the Theatre Royal in Bath last week to see Mary Stuart starring Juliette Stephenson and Lia Williams. The last time I went to the theatre was years ago when I saw War Horse in London. I really can’t recall when, before that, I saw a play. In retrospect, it’s surprising that I didn’t do more theatre-going while I was in London – one of the theatre capitals of the world. I love cinema, which is perhaps the closest art form, and I love live music which provides similar intimacy. So why not go to more theatre?

Part of the reason is that a large part of good acting is in facial expression. My eyesight is just not good enough to be able to discern the subtlety of such expression from the distances I expect to find myself away from the stage and so I feel I will miss out. That was true in Bath earlier this week but, in truth, the performance was very enjoyable anyway.

The other reason for not going to many shows in London was my perception of the expense of the ticket relative to my knowledge of the theatre and, therefore, my chances of enjoying the experience. However, the costs of going to the theatre are lower outside of London and we knew the play LSW and I saw in Bath would be good because we’d seen the reviews and it had already had a successful run in London. In any case, I have been thinking more about the relative cost of the entertainments I choose.

The tickets for Theatre Royal cost £33 each. That is quite a lot of money in absolute terms and, given that the theatre has a capacity of 900 and was packed, that creates a decent revenue stream for the theatre. But then we were seeing a couple of near-top actresses, and a cast of 20 or so, all directed and acting in front of a backdrop and lighting that all needs to be maintained and manned. This production is a success but not all are and so maybe Mary Stuart has to cover losses on other plays. Also, the play was a pretty compelling three hours long – so that’s around £11 per hour of (dramatic, absorbing and memorable) entertainment.

A week before, I had travelled up to London to see Forest Green Rovers (FGR) Football Club lose against our relegation rivals Barnet. The ticket cost £23 which is above average for English Football League 2. For that, over 90 minutes, I saw a poor game of football with a bad result for us. I can’t say I enjoyed the experience and it cost of over £15 per hour. Of course, had FGR played well and won, I would have been overjoyed and very pleased to have seen the game. But FGR’s away form is such that I could have expected disappointment.

Small scale live music gigs are very good relative value. Many I have attended in recent years have cost less than £10 and, with support bands, provide around two hours of entertainment at £5-8 per hour. The latest band I saw was a (supposedly) up and coming band called Goat Girl. For the cost of a CD (£11), I got in to see them live in the intimate surroundings of Rough Trade East record store in Shoreditch, London. It was a lively hour, I liked much of the music and it was very good value (given I have the CD memento).

Goat Girl at Rough Trade (With Goat Props!)

Of course, the quality of music venue (the comfy seats available at Theatre Royal Bath are not an option in the small venues I tend to go to!) and the quality of the music is variable. Generally though, I will have listened to the band on Spotify or CD in advance and have enough knowledge to aim at events I enjoy. The good value of live music has, for me, been pretty consistent over several years.

The other thing I did on my football and music trip to London was go to a couple of art galleries. Both shows, at the Hayward Gallery and the Barbican, entertained me for about 90 minutes. By far the most interesting was the excellent exhibition of Andreas Gursky photographs at the Hayward. It provided a fascinating insight into the work of someone I had never heard of before at a rate of about £10 per hour. Thinking back to other exhibitions I have seen recently, that rate of entertainment cost per hour seems about the norm for me. I like free art shows but having to pay focuses my attention of what I am seeing.

Example of Andreas Gursky’s Photos: Paris, Montparnasse

Further Example of Andreas Gursky’s Photos: Bahrain Racetrack

Exhibition: Another Kind of Life, Photography on the Margins (Here, A Nigerian Man With His Hyena by Peter Hugo)

I might consider further the relative value of other entertainments such as restaurants, cinema, watching catch-up TV, gardening and walking (which is certainly cheapest!) Clearly cost per hour is not the only factor. However, from the past week I conclude that:

Theatre (out of London at least) is better value than I previously thought – I really enjoyed it
Music events are high value entertainment provided I keep my knowledge of what I am going to see current
Art exhibitions are good entertainment value despite the high absolute cost of tickets; indeed, I suspect the fact there is a high cost drives me to concentrate more on what I am seeing and get more out of it
following Forest Green Rovers away from home is bad value unless we win (just twice in the last 9 months!).

Nonetheless, the pain of the football fan is to carry on ploughing the same furrow regardless of results so I’ll be handing over my cash at Cheltenham on Saturday and hoping for value for money and, rather desperately, three points for FGR.

My Retirement Journey

I've Retired! What Next?

Spring