I have nothing against Arthur (he actually reminded me of my grandfather) but that Bee song which he seemed to drop on us at every opportunity was just one ridiculous piece too far. He seemed to think it immediately identified him which of course it did! I seem to remember watching Noel Fielding doing a similar routine a couple of years ago and that was equally embarrassing and unfunny.
Of course in Coronation Street, Kirk is Buzzer The Bee - the mascot of Weatherfield County Football Club. Many moons ago when the residents wanted to talk about football in the Rovers Return, they mentioned United or City - a reference to Manchester United and Manchester City. Now its Weathy County who are a fictitious team.
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Facebook took me back nine years yesterday with the Media coverage of the day Hethersett became the first village/town/city in the UK to be awarded a Prime Minister's Big Society award. I travelled down to London with Shane Hull to receive it from the then PM David Cameron. That meant being admitted to 10 Downing Street and having light refreshments. We were then put into groups to meet David Cameron.
I shall always remember him walking into our group and saying:
"Hello I'm David Cameron," as if we didn't know that and thought he was Peter Sellers.
It was an enjoyable day and the awards are in a showcase in Hethersett Library along with many other trophies. One of the things I remember vividly was the high jinks of one of the winners - a group involving young people who insisted of doing cartwheels across a room in Number 10 presumably to tell their friends, children, grandchildren that they had once done cartwheels across the floor in Number 10.
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On Tuesday we went to Snowshill - another National Trust garden and mansion. This one was certainly different and weird but not necessarily in a good way. Charles Wade was an eccentric who bought Snowshill after returning from the First World War. Charles was a collector. He seemed particularly interested in the Far East but never travelled there. Apparently he never travelled anywhere outside the UK apart from the West Indies as we shall see, but just bought everything and anything that took his fancy.
He put them all over the place in his mansion and lived in a side cottage which was also full of what can only be described as stuff. He never labelled anything because his was not a museum but a living and breathing work of art. So we have rooms full of musical instruments, rooms full of old bikes, rooms full of Samurai models and much much much more.
All the clocks in the mansion showed different time. Apparently he didn't like them chiming at the same time. In fact he didn't live according to time at all and would be lost in his work of collecting. Just why he collected pocket watches and clocks is therefore a mystery although he collected items he considered to have been well made.
Charles was an architect by trade, although his fortune came via plantations in the West Indies and he spent quite a bit of time in St Kitts. He is also heralded as a poet, although his poetry is extremely poor and childish. In fact you could say that Charles was a weird fish and Snowshill is a weird place that I somehow found discomforting.
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Thursday saw us pop along to Winchcombe which was about six miles from where we were staying. We visited this historic town on our last visit and enjoyed eating at a tea room there. But this time the traffic was manic with thousands heading to Cheltenham for the horse racing. Many of the shops/businesses were shut. We decided to go to Winchcombe as rain was forecast and it duly arrived.
On our last visit it seemed to be a magical place where time had almost stood still. This time it was clogged up with traffic.
We like horse racing but decided not to go to Cheltenham for a number of reasons. Firstly last time they let the crowds in it was pretty much the start of COVID and later said to be "irresponsible behaviour." Secondly rain was forecast, thirdly it was too expensive and fourthly too much traffic and hassle. My idea of fun isn't sitting in long queues of traffic to park in a field in the rain and a field that eventually turns to mud. Then there's paying a fortune to get in, the thought of getting soaking wet, having to queue up for some time to get out of the car park and sitting in queues of traffic to get home.
So we went as far as Winchcombe and stopped at the Lion Inn where we enjoyed coffee, although even that posed a problem. They had no spoons. Yes you read that correctly. An expensive hotel had run out of spoons. We had to stir our coffee with a fork until a spoon was supplied, having been washed.
"It's the only clean one we have," we were told.
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I currently have 580 followers on Facebook and would like to get this to over 600, So I have sent out a number of invites to numerous people - many of whom may already be subscribers. So if you are a member of this blog already and get another request to join - apologies.
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How would you describe Vladimir Putin? Well it's quite simple. There hasn't been a word invented in the English language or any other language to describe him. Think of the strongest word you can and it's not strong enough. So you could invent a new one but that wouldn't be strong enough.
I do wish they would stop referring to what is going on between Russia and the Ukraine as a war. To me a war has to involve two nations who declare war on each other for whatever reason. The current conflict isn't a war. It is an illegal invasion by one country of another with the other country trying to defend itself. There has been no aggression by Ukraine other than in defence of their country.
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Finally today I would like to talk about urinals (well somebody has to). When refurbishing or building men's urinals, there has been a tendency to build them further and further off the ground.
This is annoying to us vertically challenged folk who are beginning to find it more and more difficult to (how can I put this delicately) point Percy at the porcelain.
I know ladies don't suffer this problem but do suffer from often not having enough sitting down cubicles.
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I'm including some more Cotswold photographs from a few of the places visited. Many thanks for everyone that has told me how much they enjoy seeing them. I will finish off tomorrow with some of my photos of Gloucester.