Nick Stone

That's 23 that exist in Cheltenham by the way, there's hundreds more, check out the map for your local ones. thereturned.co.uk/map/

Anyway, sometimes I forget the stuff I've done, and this was an incredible project, so it's nice to see a small part of what we recorded not just resurface, but to do so in such an amazing way, and the fact that it was helped by the local community.

So we set up the project and ended up with over 100 volunteers across the country from all walks of life from 8 to 80 wandering into churches and delving into records trying to find all of them we could. Here's a bit about the idea and how it worked. thereturned.co.uk/the-project/

I won't go into too much detail here, but here's more of an explanation. thereturned.co.uk/the-grave-ma...

And what are they? At the end of the war, thousands of the original wooden crosses from the Western Front were returned to Britain, to families, churches and communities. Many were lost or destroyed, but, many hundreds still exist. So we decided to map them. thereturned.co.uk/map/

This is one of the largest collections of crosses returned from the Great War, 23 in total still exist, they were installed in the cemetery not long after the Great War finished. Here they are on our website in their original position. thereturned.co.uk/gloucestersh...

Cheltenham Battlefield Crosses - Cheltenham’s unique museum of WWI battlefield crosses Build an impressive website with the best-rated top-seller WordPress theme

There's a few of you who might like this. Will explain in a thread for those who don't know about The Returned project we ran until 2018. Anyway Cheltenham Civic Soc have not only conserved and researched their collection of crosses, but have created a museum. cheltenham-battlefield-crosses.org

Yes it is, if you read down the thread you’ll see I indicate that, but forgot to mention the other volunteering I did in the 80s at the place that eventually gave me a contract. But, now, those opportunities are limited by under resourcing in inner city and older urban estates in the UK generally.

Coward.

@thelouvreof.bsky.social here you go, last December, about as peak as it gets.

I think what does my head in is, there are local initiatives, but they're funded by charity grant application, CICs, sometimes short-lived and never stable. This is something which should be funded centrally using a national system, money directed locally and fairly, employing qualified people.

One of mine and his mates got kicked off a basketball court for 'playing basketball'.

Mostly what we'd now term 'excluded', disabled groups. I enjoyed it, they enjoyed it. One of them got his only GCSE off the back of it. It all feeds into itself, you fund youth and community services, and you will get positive outcomes. Labour know this and should be doing it.

I ended up unemployed at the peak of Thatcher's horror years. It was that experience that ultimately gave me a vague CV and got me a job as a Community Worker teaching animation and photography on a Manpower Services Commission scheme. Working with teens from some fairly horrifying backgrounds.

They could sort out the minor problems but also offered a non-parental, non judgemental adult, but also read the riot act, explain stuff or leave people alone. I didn't go often, but I went enough to end up joining the Youth Service for a while teaching the youth arty stuff with cameras and that.

I am of an age where we had a youth club, it was a terrifying place in some ways, or the discos were, a bit of a shithole, governed by a couple of youth workers, one older bloke called Terry and another younger one called Dawn, both lovely engaged with their jobs types of folk.

*Worrying lack of any government funding or investment in local youth centres, clubs, and places teenagers can go and actually safely hang out for decades.

A bit like a Tenpole Tudor album really. You don’t want to play it all the time, but it’s quite nice to remember jumping about to it at a youth club disco every now and again.

A fairy castle cactus. Which is very complex looking and rather beautiful for it.

Seeing as I repotted it earlier here’s a Fairy Castle cactus that I tend to forget about for ages, then remember how fantastic it is to stare at for a bit before forgetting it again. I give you Acanthocereus tetragonus.

That one has hooks rather than straight spines, so we’d know fairly quickly if one of them did.

Shades more like. #morelike

A rather hefty 12inch or 30cm Mammillaria Spinosissima, having a nice lie down with three pups.

That lovely danger sausage I posted about the other day, now relaxing in a new bed under a sunlamp.

Not just one, a triptych.

Agreed.

So basically Lovejoy then.

I bet he'd struggle to play me. All those fucking pies he'd have to eat.

YouTube video by MizMamie 1981 Nadia Tour gymnastics Paul Hunt comedy uneven bars

Here, this'll cheer you up.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu-Y...

Also it’s likely that the coastal variants had a lot to do with smuggling, if you perpetuate a story of terrible demon spirits and link it to a beach where contraband is landed it keeps people away, and can be an excuse for weird sounds and lights.

The stories vary so much. I grew up in North Norfolk, so mine was the ghost dog that wandered between its two masters lost at sea around Overstrand and Cromer, but even that one has internal variations. I believe it’s an independent iteration to Bungay, but rooted in the same older folklore.

Lost in a Landscape: North Walsham – The revolt 1381 | Invisible Works I found myself with a few free moments on Sunday afternoon and after some deliberating with tea and fags decided the best option was to tick something off my lists of things I wanted to go and see and...

North Walsham – the revolt, 1381.

www.invisibleworks.co.uk/the-peasants...