Five aftermaths

[shewhomust]

After the funeral,

immediately after I completed the previous post, we went down to the hotel restaurant in search of a light dinner, and found a couple of cousins just finishing their dinner. We asked for an adjacent table, and had company while we waited for our sharing mezze platter, and enjoyed our wine, and admired the brilliance of the sun on the trees against the darkness of the sky, and oh! look! a rainbow... Which strengthened until we could see the complete arc, and part of another, fainter bow outside it. I know that this isn't a sign, it doesn't mean anything, but it felt like a fitting end to the day.

Second thoughts (about Nottingham)

When I wrote the previous post, I was a bit shell-shocked by the driving around Nottingam and trying to find places; hence the comment about Nottingham being a big city, which does not say the half of what I was thinking. On the other hand, even while we were careering through traffic, trying to find the drop-off parking, we had time to be impressed at the station's red-brick splendour. Leaving town the following morning, there were more buildings to admire: were those arches really half bus-station, half Wetherspoons pub? (Yes, it was.) I knew Nottingham had medieval remains, but clearly it doesn't stop there...

The return journey

We had agreed that we would break our homeward journey with a visit to some National Trust or Historic England property, somewhere we could make use of our membership cards, but it wasn't until just before we set off that we settled on Nostell: house and gardens, in the vicinity of Wakefield, that sounds about right... In other words, we had not done our research, and we got away with it very much better than we had any right to expect. More details when I've sorted out the photos; for now I'll say only that they have some magnificent trees:

Still earwormed by Eurovision,

which surprises me, since I thought all the entries were pretty forgettable. Most years, I become randomly partisan for one or two of them (the song or the presentation, I admit). This year the most I could muster was a mild amusement at the Game of Thrones flavour of Norway's entry, and I note that it did better in the popular vote than at the hands of the 'expert' panels. What I did feel was a solid dislike for a couple of entries - which, to no-one's surprise, came first and third. I don't know why I didn't dislike Finland's song in the same way: not that I liked it, but it didn't get under my skin.

Is it a result of watching the semis as well as the final that makes me ultra-aware of how repetitive all the songs are? Or is this a genuine trend: one verse, one chorus, repeat for as long as necessary. Congratulations to Italy, anyway, for a song that did something a bit more complicated than that - though still very much a Eurovision song.

Aftermath of the accident

Further progress: builders arrived this morning, and have placed the nice new coping stones on top of the wall. Just one more step to go: we await the arrival of railings...