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An itinerant observer and thinker about life in general, sharing some moments of wandering and wonderment.

Wednesday 7 August 2013

THE OLD & THE NEW,

Well folks this last week has been a strange one in many ways (too complicated to relate) but it has had its highs and lows. On Saturday a dear friend came here to stay, he has been researching my great, great grandfather who was the first to make a collection of English folk songs and I had found more stuff relating to Frank Kidson. Whilst he was here, Wicken windmill was open and working ... so we went to visit it. I have mentioned it before in my post entitled "Home Ground"which has lovely photographs of the inside. The other day this wonderfully restored, working windmill looked so lovely in the bright sunshine and the village is  celebrating her grand  200th birthday this year. 
So from black & white to colour ...

It was just wonderful to sit at the top level, seeing all the wonderfully engineered components turning and grinding the corn on the level below and to feel the slow, almost drum beat rhythm of all the hand engineered wheels & cogs, grinding flour beneath us. Now, I love working with wood, having been in aircraft engineering and working with metal, but there is something so special about machinery that is largely constructed with old trees. In the oldest part of the barn here the uprights are just tree trunks, wonderful.
There is a certain fell and scent to wooden engineering that aluminium and steel simply cannot replace. And to see it all processed from grain into bags of flour is amazing, but ...
only just recently whilst sorting out here, I found some things that are thousands of years old which my father found and carefully collected and catalogued  around the year that I was born ... they are all Neolithic stone tools from The Cameroons, West Africa.
An archaeologist friend  and I, slowly unwrapped the newspaper that they were wrapped in and just sat on an old, low brick wall, amazed. Here was a selection of tools made thousands of years ago. Lovingly crafted by hands that hunted, skinned, or ground. It was just a sun warmed moment of sheer excitement as we handled these lovely ancient tools.
But we also had to handle some thing much newer and as you might say, "Up to date."
She has recently rescued one hen & fifteen newly hatched chicks, none of them Eastery ... 
They are growing day by day at a rapid pace and will soon need a much larger run but they are just delightful, Now the single mum ... must have hatched some other hens eggs, (she could never have laid 15 little ones all by herself) but ... not only being a feral hen, (now caged) and to find herself caring for a brood of 15, she is doing very well, bless her!
And lastly before I say goodnight folks, wherever you are in the world, here's roses for you
May the old combine with new in harmony!

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