A Friday Five

 Five things for Friday

1. Artisan Bakers.  

Above and below The Dough Mother

Last week we visited friends in Beeston and we wandered down to meet Robert who once a week visits The Dough Mother which is just a ten minute walk from home.  Once there he sits in a corner facing the door and writes and people watches.  He produces what he calls his 'paperbag' stories as on one visit he forgot his notebook and the lovely owner of the bakery gave him white paper bags to write on.  Some of his stories have been made available in the shop.

We spotted another bakery in Ashbourne.   

This one specialises in sour dough bread.

I know our friend Robert who, like Paul, makes his own bread will like the sound of the rye and carraway loaf above.

2.  Water - or lack of it.

Not far from Ashbourne is Carsington Water.  It's a Severn Trent Water reservoir with lots of walks, a visitor centre and a few shops.

We were headed for the RSPB shop to buy suet sprinkles for our garden birds. These purchased we popped them back to the car and went for a walk.

As you can see from the photos the water level was low, worryingly low.  We've seen the reserves low before but never as bad as this.  Sheep have taken over the mound where we normally see Lapwings. 

 

 3.  In the conservatory

The Paperwhites are well and truly in flower now.  Their scent fills the air.

4.  Telephones 

I'm probably showing my age by calling them telephones and not 'land line' or 'mobile'.  I still call a radio a wireless but of course like lots of words it means something totally different now.  Anyway our land line cut out late on Sunday night after our service provider had updated the speed of our internet connection.  We didn't realise until I dialled 1471 on Monday to see if we had received any calls whilst we were out.    The next day it still wasn't working and it was difficult to find a way of contacting the provider as the mobile phone is a different service to the land line and internet.  In the early hours of Wednesday morning the land line phone started ringing at 4.a.m and continued to beep over the next two or three hours so we switched it off for a while.  An engineer was finally booked for today.  This morning the internet was down too.  By the time the engineer came both land line and internet services were back. A fault had been found in the system at the box round the corner.

5.  Armistice Day Today

I haven't taken any new photos but here are a couple from the travelling exhibition of  'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red.'   This is 'Weeping Window' at Middleport Pottery in August 2018.

 

and below 'Wave' at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in September 2015

Such wonderful exhibitions to see and so poignant too. 

 

 

When we visited Ashbourne I purchased a copy of the Derbyshire Life Magazine and inside there is an article about Paul Cummins who had the vision to create the poppies and the first exhibition at the Tower of London.