Apologies for the dearth of posts this past week or so.
We’ve done a bit of travelling and are now heavily involved in a village event coming up at the end of May.
The weather here in Dorset is absolutely splendid and it’s wonderful to get out in the garden and soak up the sights and sounds. Flowers are bursting forth from lush green foliage, bees are buzzing and blackbirds are singing their dear little hearts out.
I made the mistake of watching some of the Chelsea Flower Show programmes on the BBC this week.
One was probably enough, to be honest.
I mean, I love seeing the incredible gardens and plants on display but there is only so much I can take of grinning presenters we are clearly meant to know (their names only appear in the credits at the end) and celebrities I have never heard of.
Grayson Perry described Chelsea along the lines of being Middle England’s ‘Glastonbury for people who wear linen’, and he’s not wrong.
There is no way I could cope with all those crowds. I get slight agoraphobia just by watching it on the telly.
So this spring bank holiday weekend, I’m looking forward to spending time in my own glorious garden -small but on the way to being perfectly formed – as the sun beats down from a clear blue sky.
I’m determined to up my steps each day so I hit the magic 10,000, a figure dreamed up by a marketing campaign but not a bad one to aim for.
It’s the equivalent of 3.9 to 4.9 miles, depending on your stride length, speed and height.
I walk a couple of miles every day with the dogs but it’s not quite far enough, so I need to add a section at the beginning and end of the day to cover it.
Or otherwise achieve 7,000 steps every day, which the experts say is enough, especially when combined with some real bursts of energy.
I like what the British Heart Foundation has to say about walking: To boost the health benefits, aim to walk at a brisk pace, meaning you can talk comfortably but would be too out of breath to sing.
As someone who had a surprise heart attack ten years ago when I was fifty-four, that hits home.
Having had a bit of a slothful week of editing, where I mostly exercise my fingers while sitting at a laptop, I know I need to keep my body moving to improve my general fitness.
There’s more I can do but this is a good start. I’m not one for the gym or joining a class, preferring my own company and that of the dogs. I’m not an introvert exactly, and certainly not an extrovert but more of an omnivert, apparently.
Maybe I should lift a few weights next, or schedule my own personal dance class in the confines of my own home. Perhaps I should ask my old friend, over-50s fashion and lifestyle blogger Gail, at Is This Mutton?
All suggestions gratefully received.
In any case, eating more healthily and not drinking so much alcohol should help me achieve my goals.
I have a ‘health’ app on my phone but I don’t think it’s very accurate. I walked 3,790 steps this morning and several hours later it’s not showing any increase, even though I’ve got the phone in my pocket so steps around the house and up the stairs ought to count.
So I’ve ordered a ‘non-smart’ pedometer watch to help me in my quest.
It’s non-smart because I don’t want a watch to pay bills or receive calls and messages. For me, it’s better to be away from all that constant interruption, hence the need (I think) for a simple pedometer which also tells the time.
Along with that, I want to eat more healthily, cut down my alcohol intake and engage in constructive pursuits when I’m not reading and writing, rather than doom scrolling on my phone or laptop and getting depressed by a word gone mad.
I want to learn and see new things, whether it’s visiting an art exhibition or getting a close-up view of a golden beetle. I want to hear and identify birdsong and possibly learn the ukelele, although I don’t think I’m quite ready for that just yet.
Maybe just soak up the beauty of nature, as and when it happens. Live in the moment.
So there you go, those are my May resolutions – what are yours?
Did you see that news story about scientists claiming to have discovered the ‘real’ face of Anne Boleyn?
Now that would be some feat, because her real face would have been on the head cut off by a French swordsman in 1536 at the behest of the corrupt court sycophants surrounding Henry VIII.
She was executed for adultery, incest and treason – charges which paved the way for Henry to dump rather than divorce Anne and make room for wife number three, Jane Seymour, and the potential for a male heir.
It was typical of this tyrant king.
No, this ‘real’ face is a previously unknown sketch by Hans Holbein the Younger in the Royal Collection.
The finding is the work of a computer science team from the University of Bradford, which used modern facial recognition techiniques to come up with the controversial theory.
They believe another sketch below in The Royal Collection was mislabelled and is more likely to be of Anne’s mother, Elizabeth (nee Howard).
It doesn’t really fit with the description we have of Anne with a long and slender neck and dark hair.
Up until now, the painting below, from The National Portrait Gallery, is the one that has informed the modern world what the doomed queen might have looked like. It’s not contemporary, it’s Elizabethan, but it’s the one we all know.
So are we any closer to the truth? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder – as we know from the famous Holbein painting of a sweet Anne of Cleves. We are told Henry was rather taken with the portrait but, apparently, when he saw the lady in real life, his reaction was that she was the spitting image of a “Flanders Mare”.
And looking at this image now again, could the ‘discovered’ portrait be, in fact, a sketch of Anne of Cleves?
We were sitting there, out in a French garden last Friday, listening to the sound of a midwife toad (look them up, they’re incredible).
(The noise they make is more like a scops owl, but it doesn’t show up on the Merlin bird app on my phone for the obvious reason that a toad is not a bird.)
Anyway, Mr Grigg began regaling the barbecue guests with a story about a very low aeroplane we’d watched in the sky one afternoon earlier in the week.
It went into a cloud and we had followed its trajectory, the two of us fully expecting it to come out the other side.
But it didn’t, which led me to suggest a Bermuda Triangle-type theory in which the plane used the cloud as a time and space portal to disappear into a different world.
I relayed this to the others, who were a bit non-plussed by this explanation, with one of them even humming the tune to The X-Files and another doing an impression of a cuckoo.
So I zoned out and gazed up at the night sky, which is my wont, while they discussed UFOs and other dimensions. In my own head, the theme music for Stranger Things was playing loudly, drowning out their scorn.
And that’s when I saw it, a long line of lights moving slowly towards the little full moon, which was about to appear above a tree.
I savoured the moment for a few milliseconds and then said calmly: ‘What’s that up there?’
All eyes turned to the sky. We watched this strange phenomenon for a minute or two as it traversed its night stage, seemingly on some otherwordly mission above our heads. We were transfixed.
By the time I took out my camera from my jeans pocket, the sight was dimming and so were my photography skills because I was so excited.
After the thing left our field of vision, silence ensued, followed by a feverish conversation about what we’d just witnessed.
It took me another five minutes to retrieve something from the back of my mind and to declare the thing we’d just seen was the Starlink satellite train. I’d heard about it once on the radio and had always wanted to see it, and now I had.
It’s operated by SpaceX, whose driving force is a strange man I do not like. I refuse to name him so my blog doesn’t get launched in to the outer atmosphere but just think of Batman gone bad and you’ll know who I mean.
That aside, we all rely on the internet these days, so the Starlink satellites have a job to do and, when you read up on it, you realise that there is so much in this world we do not understand.
And why am I telling you this? Because you need to know.
Also, the thing in the sky looked very like a Star Wars lightsaber moving gracefully across the universe. And as today is May the Fourth and I always put down my religion as Jedi on the census, I felt I needed to share that with you.
You must wake and call me early, call me early mother dear; To-morrow’ll be the the happiest time of all the glad new-year, Of all the glad new-year, mother, the maddest, merriest day; For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother I’m to be Queen o’ the May.
The opening words of The May Queen by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), who was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom for much of Queen Victoria’s reign, seem apt on this May Day morning.
I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t up early. Some, I know, were dancing up on Dorset’s Cerne Giant as the sun rose. And possibly bathing in the morning dew in the quest for eternal youth.
I’m usually an early riser during the week, but not today. It’s a Bank Holiday here in France and life is even quieter in this village than usual. So I’ve taken the day off.
Whatever you’re doing over the next few days, here’s to a peaceful, happy May Day weekend.
Incidentally, the pictures come from a brilliant article on the British Newspaper Archive’s blog tracing the traditions behind the May Queen ritual. It’s an absolutely fascinating read and can be found here.
Maddie Grigg 