I like Tunnels (by sarah)

After visiting the extremely cute alpacas we headed off to the Honister Slate Mine on route Simon - Al's step brother asked me what the landscape was. I confessed I didn't actually know anything about the region but I looked at the scenes passing my window and guessed at volcanic with glacial action afterwards.

My back was in a bit of a state still and I bascially could not rotated my head but I really wanted to go in - I am from the Royal School of Mines, I am from Welsh minning stock how could I not go in? This question arose when buying the tickets as Lionel has injured his foot and was using his crutch and had sandles on.

A discuession with the lady on the desk about exactly what the mine was like had Lionel not going but me more determined to go. Jean unfortunatly was wearing sandles so would have to be carried for sections of it but would be ok as long as she was ok with the dark - we were more concerned that we wouldn't be able to keep the hard hat on her!

I have been known to go into mines on crutches - I really can not resist them!

We had to wait for our guide for a while so looked around the shop - I was I have to say impressed. They had been really ingenious with the products they where making from the mined stone - not all of it slate. I thought it all looked a bit odd though and there was definatly some interesting stuff going on in the rocks. It didn't quiet look right as slate to me and there was some interesting flow and flame structures in some of the non-slate. It is lovely stone and if I ever have enough money to do things properlly in the house I shall be getting the stone from that mine.

There is a lovely bluey/green quality to a lot of it.

The dude arrived and gave us our hard hats and battery packs which reminded me so poniantly of going caving I almost backed out but then realise what the problem was.

Jeany initial struggled over the hat until she saw that we were all wearing them - she didn't have a heavey battery pack as she had basically an LED head torch. To my suprise she noticed this - 'I have blue light, special light, you have yellow!'

We clambered into an orange landrover thing and trundled up to the mine.

Outside the entrance we stared at the landscape and low! It had once been a sea flow with volcanics going on on it and then been uplifted etc... and then had glacia's move through it all carving the characteristic u-shaped vallies - these give you a nice cross section through the formation - so in staring across the valley we basically had a mirror image of what we were standing on - this was cool and gave us a much better over veiw than was could have hoped to gain any other way.

I was just a bit chuffed that my guess had been right.

We could see the layering of the ancient lava flows and slate - the slate higher up was the greener colour. Slate normally occurs from say eustry mud which becomes mudstone - this is then folded due to tectonic action and the pressure causes changes so that you get an alinement of say mica along the fold axis - this is the cleavage and is what the slate is split down. This slate looked so odd to me becuase it was not made from mud - instead it was origonally volcanic ash!

This also means that it has more griss - this is the amount of sort of large fragments in it that stop it having a smooth break down the cleavage - therefore this slate breaks into thicker slabs compared to other slates ie welsh or scottish slates. But it also means it is stronger!

The guide dude was called Fred and he was the father-in-law of the guy who set the business up - again I was really impressed as the guy had bought the mine and re-opened it when he had initially known nothing about mining - his grandfather had asked why was the mine closed and he'd just seen the potential and gone with it!

They even went and got a special rock saw from the Itialian marble quarries - this looks like lots of lumpy beads, or sort of an articulated spine of some sort - it is beds of steel or something embadded with industrial diamonds that as Jean point out glittered.

They now mine safely off course but when the mine was origonally open (from the 1700's I think he said but am not sure) they used dangerous tequniques which have resulted in what are known as rate traps - these are rooms where so much of the slate has been removed that the overlaying rock is in danger off coming down on top of the minners if they continue - this was actaully an inefficient way to do it and they get far more out and intact than they used too. Also the range of products they offer now will hopefully buffer them from economic crisis - these are what always closes slate mines as builders stop buying the slates.

One of these rat trap chambers turns out to have great acoustics and a jazz dude has been in there recording this has given me an idea - ok Clare, Ella and Charlee what about us doing something similar - I'm thinking medeaval chants with some electric guitar thrown in would be cool - Becca could even play some flute and Carina how's your guitar playing - infact Becca you play too don't you?

I think we could call ourselves the Mining Babes?

What do you think?

Anyway cough we had a look at the history and stuff and after me rabbiting on about why I thought the cieling of the place worked so well our guide thought that we were musicians but Al and Simon blew my cover and asked me questions about the geology of the place - I was highly embarassed but then it turned out Fred was a Steel Engineer and on top of that I found out that there may be something there that will help me with my MRes project. So I may be going back there sooner than later.

I really love this and Jeany announced that she likes tunnels 🙂 Talking of which there where a few really cool tunnels there that had been in the old days, shored up with the waste stone - this is done with no key stone and is similar to the ancienct burial mounds in Scotland and places. Jean told me off for touching the walls and braeking them which I thought was sweet 🙂 Somehow she ended up getting buscuits out of the other people on the tour :/ How does she do it?

Again photos coming soon hopefully 🙂

Old McDonald had an Alpaca (by sarah)

On Saturday we started our outings in the Lakedistrict by going to see the Alpaca's - these are cute little camelids from Pure or somewhere and they are so lovely - I never thought I'd find something I liked more than the Llama.

I have decided that even though they are like £7000 each or something I want to bread them when I retire, I already want Llamas when I retire - I hope they'll get on with goats:/

Jean loved them too - they were a variety of colours from white to carmel brown to dark brown and grey - there where mixed ones too. In the shop they had lots of alpaca rugs which looked suspicously like the pelts skin and all but they where so soft and in lovely geometric patterns. For £30 there where teddies made out of the stuff which was soooo soft - I got Jean a little knitted alpaca from Peru for £3 instead - she has called it Paca/Packer and has not stopped carrying it around with her.

We asked the ladies what sort of noise it made as Jean was asking for Old McDonald - apparently they hum so we now have a verse that goes:

Old McDonald had a farm e-i-e-i-o And on that farm he had an alpaca e-i-e-i-o with a hmm hmm here and a hmm hmm there her a hmm there a hmm everwhere a hmm hmm!

(we already have verses invovling such things a Llama's and dinosuars, tractors and chainsaws)

I will post the photos shortly though they aren't very good due to where the sun was in the sky and the fact that I only had a phone camera to use.

Journey to the Lakedistrict (by sarah)

Alaric's Dad and Step-mother Lynne are in the country at the moment and took us on holiday to the Lakedistrict - Penrith to be precise. Unfortunatly it is like a five hour car journey and I managed to have a back spasm Thursday night.

This ment that a car journey that would have been very uncomftable for me was not really very pleasant but I managed to get some reading done on the Moon and thanks to Lynne had a great time teaching Jean set theory in the back of the car with some Gruffolo stickers. After the first hour and a half of counting and catagorising stickers and off course sticking them I asked Jean if she was bored of counting and numberrs - 'No want more' was her answer - followed by a belated, 'please'. Great as this was it did mean that I had to keep thinking of new ways of looking at the stickers and which groups could over lap and things.

How many owls are there? Owls are a type of bird, what other birds can we see? Woodpeckers - how many? Oh and there's odd birds too? So how many birds do we have? Oh look there's a damsely fly - how many? Oh look it can fl, yes so can the butterfly - they are instects - whow many insects? Some of the insects can fly but not all - how many can fly? So if the birds fly and some of the insects fly how many things are flying?

And on and on and on.... there was fungi arithmatic to conjur with too!

(to the last question Jean answered 'all' which was true as well due to the way she'd stuck the stickers to the page :/ But once I said which ones would we see in our garden flying she answered the question correctly.

After this it was time for a rendition of Old MacDonald and the like.

I was exhorsted by the end of it.

But there was a lovely cottage with baconies and everything - not to mention a pool at the accompanying hotel! Jean was transfixed by the swimmers. We had a lovely meal in the hotel resturant which has these lovely blue and turquoise ceramic abstracts up all over the place. I mad the med veg.

We then went back to the shalleee and watched a film.

After that I stayed up to await the arrival of Al and Simon (Al's step brother). I read alot of my moon book whilst doing hot and cold treatments on my back - the pain was affecting my breathing and had affected my eating as swollowing had become supremely painfull 🙁

At about 2 am they arrived consumed Jeans leftover tea and was all went to bed.

Pooey Betsy (by sarah)

At lunch we were sitting eating falafels when Jean's looks down at her hands and says, 'I know Betsy's dead.' This was very quiet and subdued for Jean. 'She's in a hole, a bigger hole.'

'Yes Jean that's right,' I said.

Jean stared down for a while and then said, 'Betsys a silly pooey, pooey, poo.'

She was looking at me seriously with no mischief in her face - this is very unlike Jean - I said calmly, 'No Jean Betsy's not silly she was just very sick and died. It's not nice to say that she's pooey.'

Jean's face crumpled (that is the best descriptive term I can think off), 'But she's gone, in hole but gone, all gone?'

'Are you sad Jean?' Little forlorn nod, 'About Betsy?' nod - she then flung herself into my arms for very clingy cuddle.

This is the first time that an entity she has grown up with and interacted with has died but she has known of the concept of death for a while - not because of all the funerals as they are a bit far removed from her comprehension but because the cats kill mice and birds - something she tells them off for (well only when its a mouse actually she doesn't seem to mind the bird getting the chop).

I don't know if we handled this correctly but death is unfortunately a part of life and I hope this will help her come to terms with things easier than if we hide it all from her - still it was heart breaking to see her little face as she realised that Betsy really was gone. I think the pooey Betsy bit was her going through the angry stage of mourning.

A tail of two cats (by sarah)

I have received two messaged whilst being in London this week about the cats back at the Mill - Poor Betsy, Barbara's old black cat who looks like Minnie, our black cat, was off colour - not eating and the such like but still purring away and sitting merrily by the fire. Just to make sure she was fine they took her to the vets and it turned out that the strange coughing she was doing wasn't hair balls but lung cancer 🙁

So Betsy is no more :'(

They buried her this morning and Al says he took Jean to see her to explain but not overly labour the point. Jean initially asked when Betsy would wake up. It was explained she wouldn't - Jean has apparently spent the day mulling this fact over.

The second cat message is on a slightly lighter note - Mystery Cat was harassing one of the kittens so Alaric picked him up and tried to throw him gently to the other side of the stream so he'd have to walk to a way to get back to where the kitten was cowering up a tree. However Alaric slipped and accidentally dropped the poor cat into the stream - it instantly leaped out and instead off running away padded wet and miserable over to Alaric - meowed pathetically and rubbed up againt him - just to make sure he felt completely responsible and guilty.

Alaric was mortified - my dad is always threatening to trebuchet the cats Mystery Cat so he has named Alaric the Cat Soaker!

Al feels very guilty.