Midsummer Roundup

At last, summer, and a chance to get on the road, in the meantime some great discoveries at home and away and time for another #nanoblog round up of TheWonderingWay.

My midsummer nine microblogs began at home, with one of my favourite pictures, discovered some years ago in an antique market in #Salisbury. It shows the peaks of Britain and as a lovely reference point it includes the cathedrals of Salisbury and St Pauls. Fascinating that then measurements would have been made with geometry of distances and angles and yet now all we need is an app on our phone. The mountain theme was brought to life by the #Tom Patey biography I picked up in #UllapoolBookshop, which even as a non-climber, I revelled in the exhilaration of the life he led.

One negative of that mid-20th Century period was how farming practices had led to drop in biodiversity. It is so encouraging that charities such as Plantlife are leading the meadow movement. Yet again I found the #BSBIPlantAtlas invaluable in understanding how the distribution of flowers have changed and seem to be recovering with the aid of government incentives.

The discovery of #PublicDomainReview was such a joy, the eccentricity of their collection piques my curiosity and the importance of this movement to protect images from commercialization matters to me. As I am now a “member” it will be fun to see how my friends and family react to the extraordinary postcards I will be sending them now. Another movement of historic importance to me is the #GreenHowardsMuseum as my Great Uncle was serving with them at the time of his death in #WWI. This visit we were amazed by the ingenuity of the escapes of WWII but my focus for the post was my amazement at learning how the Red Cross were able to provide next of kin parcels to our soldiers held prisoner.

A more positive aspect of our history was the “landmark” series #TheAscentofMan as a child I had no appreciation of why my parents found this so fascinating. Now as I watch enthralled, I can see why it was seen as “groundbreaking”. A documentary from half a century ago that I am excited to watch every episode to see how well the ideas are presented.

My final post was to celebrate the community theatre project of the CJSansom book #Sovereign. It was a thrilling evening, not just the brilliant story that I had just read, but the joy at seeing a community theatre group delivering such a high quality production steered by @theatreroyalyork.

A thoroughly stimulating and refreshing midsummer.