The Way of the Wombat

The past week has been TT Race week - and I haven't got a single bike picture! Mainly I saw the spectators as we plied them with tea, coffee, pasty and cakes - I reckon I made 140 small cakes or squares of large cakes - and I was only one of the people baking - others had an even bigger output.

However - the pictures start with two I took when I had to go and buy a new food processor in a hurry...

( click for rather a lot of pictures )

We had a good time in Sunday School this morning, doing a lot of rhythm stuff with the theme of psalms and praise - with shakers, jingle bells, and lots of clapping on the table - great fun. In a couple of weeks we are having a sponsored 30 minute silence in aid of Water Aid ... that might be quite an achievement for some of the boys.

I have just posted the sixth chapter of the newly smartened up Ten Years After over a Twisting the Hellmouth, if you are re-reading, or possibly reading for the first time.

Also - we are definitely going ahead with another Where I Live weekend in July - so even more excuses to take pictures!

This week's pictures are a bit restricted. I managed to twist my knee early in the week and so have not really walked any distance form the car all week, except to 'do' my Christian Aid envelopes. (Actually I put them out before I hurt the knee, and when my sister and I went to collect them in, she did the houses with steps and I did the easy ones.)

Today I consulted a friend who is a physio, and we don't think I've done any severe damage - certainly not the cartilage, possibly strained a ligament, but rest, elevation, warmth and ice, then tubigrip for work, seems to be working so just keep going. It's a good excuse to sit around and do little, anyway!

So most of the pictures were taken in the garden, apart from a couple of close-ups of the Celtic crosses in Maughold taken last week, and a very old one of D-d.

( here be flowers, and a couple of other bits )

I did the children's chat in church today - I took in a whole lot of gadgets from the kitchen and asked the children, and adults, to identify them - some were easy - the potato peeler or the pizza wheel, but others were more difficult - some were very, very, specialised - like the gadget for stoning mangoes. Then we considered that we all have different uses and talents, finishing with the idea that the church is full of people with different talents and roles, some read the Bible out in the service, some mend the toilets, some do the flowers; all equally important to the life of the church. Then I introduced the idea of a 'scavenger people hunt' - the children all had lists of jobs, and had to find three people who did each thing - this caused great fun after the service finished - and means they know the names of more of the congregation than they did, and vice versa!

But the high spot of the morning at Sunday School was Eilidh's tooth - which was wobbly. And she wobbled it, and wobbled it, and then it suddenly flew out of her mouth, hit Daniel in the chest, and disappeared under the chairs! My teenaged helper took Eilidh to get a glass of water, Daniel and someone else crawled around to find the tooth - and those are two jobs we certainly hadn't thought about on our list, I can tell you!

Before I get to the pictures, was I the only person to be not at all surprised to hear airline representatives basically saying the following on the news?

"We agreed it was unsafe to fly through volcanic ash, because we know that it can stop all the engines working. But now that there have been no flights for four days, and we are losing money, we think it is really not that dangerous after all and want to know why we can't start flying again straight away."

I almost expected one of them to say "After all, no-one's crashed at all in the past four days, so it's obviously safe..."

Anyway - the pictures for Sunday this week have flowers, the under-gardener, pole dancing, dead people and a bit of Archibald Knox.

If you are curious, click ( here )

I did manage to replant some of the garden tubs - with any luck they'll be worth sharing in a few weeks.

Yesterday it snowed. D-d and I drove to Peel, about 11 miles, for her dental appointment, in a howling gale and snow! But today it was calmer and sunnier. So I took advantage of having the day off work, and the nicer weather, to visit another of our island parish churches/graveyards.

This time it was the Parish church at Santon, St Sanctan's. Each time I do one of these posts I think of the beautiful English parish churches that keswindhover posts pictures of - and realise that ours are very, very different...

This one is particularly suitable for Maundy Thursday as the stained glass window (yes - in the singular) shows the Last Supper. (With a very spiffy bit of carpet...!)

Although there has been a keeil on the site since about 500AD, the current church was built in 1774, and is just a typical Manx parish church with its plain rectangular shape, whitewashed walls and wooden beamed roof.

So - under the cut are pictures of the inside and outside of the church, a few interesting grave stones, and a couple of wild-flower pictures - and a close-up of the window with the spiffy carpet -

( St. Sanctan's )

I have been to church this evening for the quiet, solemn, Tenebrae service - a series of readings and silence, which starts with nine lit candles, one of which is extinguished with each reading, followed by an equally quiet communion service and the re-lighting of the Christ candle.

I'm afraid that I was very distracted to start with by the first reader somehow managing to read totally the wrong thing! You'd have thought it might have occurred to him that he'd written it down wrongly when he realised he seemed to have the passage where Jesus walks on the water when the first reading should be of the last supper...

We've had a wee bit of snow today. Only about 1" or so, but unusual for us. The main problem is that the island is so hilly that if the roads get slippery-slidy a lot of us can't access the main roads, and so are stuck, from the point of view of using our cars.

So I didn't actually take a picture of the snow - today's picture shows what the nativity in church is like when you do it by the seat of your pants, using whoever is there!

( It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... )

I have been busy writing cards for the past hour or two - a mixture of home-made, Hospice, and 'really nice ones from M&S which are nicer than the home-made ones' - to be honest, if I'd seen the M&S ones earlier there may have been even less home-made ones!

Anyway - with any luck most that need posting will be in the post tomorrow. And I've got a lot of the baking ready to start putting into bags - just got to get the decorations more or less done before D-d gets home on Friday.

But I have a bit of a back-log of things I meant to post here - so under the cut are some pictures of the wonderful flowers in Church for Christmas.

( Church at Christmas )

Tomorrow I have a few 'churchyard' pictures to post - can't beat a good churchyard to get you in the festive mood... or maybe not!

40 weeks down and only 12 to go - how fast the time is going!

This week I've been quite busy - you have got to click to see the wonders of ( cakes, cards, Little London, the elephants' graveyard and the world's most psychedelic gingerbread snowmen - ever! )

A number of children went home with green tongues...

The week has gone by quickly. It has included at least one of those meetings where you find yourself thinking 'Well that's an hour and a half I'm never getting back...' a lovely meal out, changeable weather.

The pictures reflect some of this, but not all of it. There is one which will gladden hesadevil's heart, remembering her post about 'guys', and there is quite a long bit about Remembrance Sunday as well.

( confused flowers, a rainbow, and some children doing something traditional - all under here )


And now I must go to finish off dinner - there is a casserole in the oven, I just need to do potatoes to go with it - and be grateful that I am here, and I have food to eat, in peace.

I said, in the 365 project post on Sunday, that I had visited another of our church yards and taken some pictures. The church in question is Andreas, in the north of the island. Like some of our other churches it houses some early Christian, and pagan, crosses and slabs. I mainly took pictures of two of the norse crosses, and a few out in the church yard which may be of interest to Canadian and Australian friends.

( All under here )

In other news - D-d phoned home last night and we talked for over an hour. She is really looking forward to the course, has met some nice new people, a couple of others she already knew, even if not well, and the new house is really good. She is enjoying driving around York - it holds no qualms for her at all. Which will amuse anyone on my FL who have tried to drive in and around York!

All in all, I don't think we need worry about her.

This is a very image heavy post - the pics are all under a cut, and are beautiful, but there are quite a lot of them, so if you are on dial-up, and not all that bothered with flowers, pass by!

( here be flowers! )

Today was Tynwald Day - we didn't go anywhere near all the ceremonials - but D-d and I went to visit my Mum, taking a gift of a bag of worms from my compost bin as hers is slower to compost - it seems to not have any worms!

I did take some pictures of my own backyard today - I seem to do this every Tynwald, and it is becoming an interesting comparison year on year. I'll post them tomorrow.