Tuesday 31 July 2007

Museum of Welsh Life

I was going mental staring at the walls. Thought a break from my dissertation and a reward for all the injections I’m suffering (had two more today) was in order.

The weather is utterly glorious here at the moment. So, I piled myself into the trusty ol' wagon and set off for the Museum of Welsh Life, which I’ve always wanted to go to but haven't managed thus far.

I had an absolutely lovely day and found a couple of very pagan things whilst ambling about. The first find was a maypole in the middle of a field!






Bit wonky, but definitely a maypole because it said so on the information board.

The second thing was a big ol' farm house. They find these buildings all over Wales, disassemble them, and bring them down here. Then they put them back together again! It's quite amazing. Anyway, this farm house was painted red:





The information read:
The red colour is traditional and considered useful in keeping evil spirits away from the house, as was the Rowan tree in the garden.
There are bits and bats in Marie Trevelyan's Folk-lore and Folk-stories of Wales but it was brilliant to see history up-close and personal like that. I especially like anything left intact from the 1500s.

There was also a reconstructed Celtic village:





They're reconstructing a church and painting original medieval artwork on it that was found underneath the plaster. It was like no church artwork I’d ever seen in my life:






I was really surprised by the variety of buildings. It's a wonderful place. I recommend it to anyone - on a sunny day :)







[NB 2013: At the time of writing, someone had made the entirety of Marie Trevelyan's Folk-lore and Folk-stories of Wales available free online. It may still be out there somewhere, but it is one of the greatest travesties of transience that particular website has gone.]

Monday 23 July 2007

Yay Dad! :)



(Sorry to embarrass you Dad, but it has to be said!)

He's on the 'Silver Command' for Cheltenham Borough Council dealing with the flooding, one of the worst affected areas. After the Police/Fire Brigade/Army etc. (Gold Command), they are the emergency planning team who deal with all of the other provisions such as the supply of drinking water and emergency shelter and housing (which is Dad's area).

Not having a TV myself I didn't realise just how bad things were until I turned on the news in the kitchen today whilst eating lunch. My jaw hit the floor as Fergal Keane introduced the devastation around the country. This is the special I watched. I knew there had been problems on the M4 as our friends couldn't get over last weekend, but the scale of it had not hit home until I saw the images.

Dad works for Cheltenham but lives in Gloucester and is without water himself at the moment as the supply got contaminated and there was a power cut too, luckily his house is okay but there's a shortage of water as the tanks can't keep up.

Hopefully the water has peaked now and will start to go down, but you can't help wondering if this is a sign of things to come.

In the mean-time, go Dad! :op