The UK hospitality industry is complaining because I don’t visit coffee shops nearly as often as I used to. But on a Wednesday, the local firm of lawyers, Express Solicitors, pay for the drinks after our weekly walk through Kenworthy Lane Woods and beyond. We start and finish at Boxx2Boxx and this week, I sat in a different place, from where I saw an intriguing new picture hanging on the wall. Well, new to me, it might have been there for years. But it did make me laugh!
About every year or two, whether it needs it or not, I take the car in for a wash and a valeting service. There seemed to be fewer young men around on this occasion so the queue was moving much more slowly. While sitting in the waiting room, I admired this colourful pot plant.
It seemed so out of place with all the car-washing paraphernalia and piles of new and used and well-worn tyres. Anyway, here he is:
Wythenshawe Park is the venue for our walks on a Friday. There are now signs up apologising for the mess left by the recent series of concerts. What I didn’t expect to see was somebody camping there, behind a hedge.
I made some noise but couldn’t attract anyone’s attention. It might belong to an otherwise homeless person, I suppose, but I wonder if this too was left behind after those concerts?
Anyway, it was a very pleasant wander around the park and after enjoying our coffee, I drove home giving Dot a lift on the way.
But walking around Northenden and Wythenshawe can be a bit repetitive, so I took myself off to RHS Bridgewater. And not only to use the £5 voucher that they gave us when we joined the organisation recently! I do miss seeing our grey heron down by the Mersey, so I was very pleased to see one at Bridgewater.
The sculpture was commissioned and paid for by Salford Council as part of the Salford Centenary celebrations. I hadn’t realised that Salford is just 100 years old.
There are more Lego sculptures inside the gardens, but there are no prizes for finding them all. Which I didn’t. But when I showed my membership card to the counter clerk, she asked if I’d brought a guest with me, ‘No, I’m on my own today.’ She went, ‘aaah’, and I thought, well you could walk round with me if you think I need a buddy!
This consists of 796 bicks and it took 68 hours to build. Well, they should have asked our grandson William to do the job, he’d’ve knocked it off in five minutes!
Hmm, I thought, you’re a little bit early, it’s not Michaelmas until September 29th.
I spent a lot of time walking around the Chinese Streamside Garden. Some of it was roped off and at the time, I didn’t realise, the Yangzhou Scholars’ Garden wouldn’t officially open for another week. It would be the spectacular centrepiece of the Chinese Streamside Garden here at Bridgewater, the UK’s largest Chinese garden. As the blurb says: Inspired by the historic gardens of Yangzhou in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, it is the first authentic classical Chinese garden of its kind constructed in the UK. Combining authentic Chinese architecture with centuries-old craft techniques and cultural traditions, the garden has been meticulously constructed by a team of skilled artisans from China, alongside horticulturists from RHS Bridgewater.
Down by the waterside, mama duck was trying to herd her now nearly fully-grown chicks back into the water, but they were more interested in sniffing and pecking at people’s shoes.
Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society has been broadening minds since 1781. I’ve seen their talks advertised a few times but so far, I’ve contrived to miss them all. This week, the guest was Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell. As a PhD student, she discovered pulsars, for which her male supervisor later won a Nobel Prize.
She gave a really interesting talk, Careering through Astronomy, connecting the atoms that make up you and me with massive cosmic events.
After answering some questions from the very nearly sold out audience, Dame Jocelyn was presented with only the 17th John Dalton Medal since 1898. It is Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society’s highest award, given to those who have made a distinguished contribution to science.
Going back to Jill Scott’s picture: if you really can’t work out what she said, I hope you can lipread because here is a short clip of the offence!
