David Shepherd

He doesn’t know that farthings went c1960 and that crowns weren’t in general circulation and the coins in the image dated 1970 were commemorative. Plus he would never have had to do sums in £sd as I did.

I still think of them as new as they replaced all those WR hydraulics.

Have you seen a cc of a drawing of the original Saxon church which the current church replaced in the C19? It was to the N in line with the ancient pathway that enters the churchyard from the E. I think the drawing is in the BM. Unbelievable now that it was demolished.

I was remembering D-day on 15th Feb. My Grannie b 1890 never really mastered the new coins. I can still remember some of the educational ditties from BBC nationwide. I guess I’m now one of the youngest people still fluent in £sd.

Suffragette leader Christabel Pankhurst. c.1910, photo by Scottish photographer Christina Broom (1862-1939), UK's first female press photographer, who documented the women's suffrage movement.

‘May God bless and guide you, Larry’ | Westminster Abbey

This takes the story foward from the blue birth plaque in a street in my hometown of Dorking. www.westminster-abbey.org/about-the-ab...

I guess a small positive is that it makes us notice texts more. It’s one of my favourite hymns, I like it’s sense of movement on the vertical between earth and heaven and especially the last verse. We often sing without noticing why words move us so.

Had to look it up. I see what you mean.

My son’s a scientist and he already knows a few US scientists who would like to relocate. In the UK having recent Irish ancestry is highly desirable as it gets you an Irish passport and EU citizenship.

Tropical

I detect a ‘low’ view of Baptism - all that junk near the fonts.

UK migration could be negative this year – how will that hit the economy? Universities, builders and health trusts are feeling the squeeze, as thinktank says effect of zero net migration could be similar to Brexit

Brexit the gift that keeps on giving.

Save that we seem stuck in the aftershock and Starmer hasn’t done a great deal to get us out yet.

Wondering what the Bulleid Pacific is doing there? The excursion train suggests it might have been the end of the Great Central route.

Increasingly coming apart at the seams though.

Saw a photo of a GB loco the other day and its shape reminded me of Bulleid’s Leader loco.

In England the Church is celebrating SS Cyril and Methodius. The latter sounds as if he should be the Patron Saint of Methodists.

I seem to recall that Michael Ramsey said the vocation of the Church of England was to die so resurrection can follow.

I make that a small majority for the Right Wing parties. One thing I find disappointing in local elections is the failure of progressive parties to work together which often lets the right win. Not quite that simple here and I expect the turnout was very low too.

Sometimes I wonder if the writers have made up the problems too.

It's all getting a bit 'Gradually, then suddenly', isn't it?

Transformed by its recent restoration.

Great, in England they tended to be on top of the funnel.

Sounds a bit like Churchill’s comment on the Battle of Al Alamein!

‘It’s sacred and transformative’: Somerset holds Saxon-inspired festival to embrace ‘month of mud’ Community organiser Jon Barrett says event, inspired by the tradition Solmōnaþ, aims to reconnect people with benefits of mud

Recalling an anticipation of this when I took my thensmall boys on a short February hike and the youngest aged two or three fell headlong into a muddy water filled tractor rut in the lane and returned home mired from head to toe.

The bottom right has the most impressive tower.

McSweeney damns Starmer in his resignation statement making him look weak and foolish as well as exposing the failings of the Labour project.

What is the function of the flared section between smoke box and chimney. Is it a spark arrester or something else?

A Calvinist church on the site of an Augustinian Friary, what Fr Ted would call an “ecumenical matter”. That and the historical confluence.

Politicians ‘don’t live how we live’, voters tell me. The Mandelson scandal won’t change their minds | John Harris Whoever succeeds Keir Starmer will have an almost impossible task: convincing voters that politicians will serve the people, not themselves, says Guardian columnist John Harris

…its defining themes: women and girls reduced to trafficked commodities, the kind of organised abuse that depended on private planes and secluded islands, the involvement of royalty…’