Hey Blog! A few weeks ago, I went cycling on the Monsal Trail with a friend, and this week went around Carsington Water, and that’s what I’ll be writing about today!

I met this particular friend last year, and one of the first things we found was we had the exact same birthday – which was a good starting point! A little while ago we hatched a plan to go cycling on the trails in the Peak District, and decided on the Monsal trail as a good place to go, seeing as we had met there before, so we met at the café near Bakewell where the waxwings were last year. Thus the plan was formed.

The Peak District trails are really old railway lines. In the early 1800s, after the first steam train, Stephenson’s Rocket, was built, everyone wanted a railway line. They were fast, efficient, reliable, and the best mode of transport at the time. When, later, these lines across the Peaks were decommissioned, they became walking and cycling trails – ideal, because they are flat for ease of travelling! The Monsal Trail, which we went on, ran from Bakewell to Chee Dale, and passes through a fair few tunnels on its northern section. A little spooky at the point on the curve where you can’t see daylight – but amazingly cool! We went from the old station where we met, all the way to the far end, and then back to the station, talking all the while; before cycling the other way and getting to the other end, then turning round and going back again! In total, therefore, we cycled the entire length twice – once each way – which was rather fun!

The second meet was at Carsington, this last week. We had conspired another plan to go around the lake, and almost decided on going paddleboarding, but unfortunately that had to be postponed until we had more time (that is probably going to be the next meet or the one after!). After meeting at the visitor centre we waved farewell to parents and set off again. Once again, we did not pause for breath to stop the conversation all the way round the lake (well, except when we couldn’t stop laughing!). With wind flying past as we sped along and the lake sparkling below, we got round the lake quite quickly. The lake, it may interest you to know, is not even a natural lake. It was built as a reservoir in the 1970s into the -80s, before being opened in 1992, and on some old maps you can see “reservoir under construction”. When flooded, it drowned an RAF bombing training tower from WWII, a large amount of farmland, and created a recreation spot (I did my RYA levels 1 through 3 on the lake, and the cycling was another example), a store for the local water company, and the nearest place where you can go on a boat which isn’t on a river. In all, perfect!

We are in the process of constructing more plans, including a paddleboarding one, some more cycling, and possibly something else too. In all, I’m glad we met, and I look forward to more similar days out in the future!

Hey Blog! This week it’s another book review, and this time I’m going to the Lake District through the ever-expanding bookverse of my library!

One of my favourite series of books is the Swallows and Amazons series, by Arthur Ransom. Top notch books, these are some of the most exiting adventure novels ever written. All the more so because they could be done by any group of children and teens interested in desert islands, sailing, birds, gold mining, and exploration. I have been mildly obsessed by these books, to the extent that I once turned half a blue oil barrel into a tiny boat and sailed around the garden, before actually going to the local lake for real sailing. And then going back the next year for more, and the year after that, and then out at sea on Johanna Lucretia earlier this year. If you read the first few pages of Swallows and Amazons and want no more, call a doctor – as someone reviewing them once said!

The whole storyline starts off with John, Susan, Titty and Roger awaiting the go-ahead for using the dinghy in the boathouse to get to the island viewable halfway down the lake (which resembles both Coniston and Windermere). These four are the Swallows – Captain, Mate, Able-seaman and Ship’s Boy – named after the dinghy Swallow. Arriving on the island, they find they are not alone: ‘natives’ have been there, evident in the white cross on the stump in the harbour and the neat pile of firewood in the best spot for a camp. Then there is the man on the houseboat, who carries a cannon on its foredeck – and “ships with no secrets do not generally carry even one”. All seems to be going well, and then the strange dinghy Amazon with two girls sailing it and a pirate flag at the masthead sails round the island, a chase begins, and an arrow with a green feather is fired into camp – and so begins a treaty of offence and defence between the Swallows and Amazons, an alliance against the houseboat man Uncle Jim/Captain Flint, and a war!

Aside from getting me into sailing, it inspired me with exploration of islands, waterways, camping, boats and having a gang of friends to go off on adventures with. Unfortunately, I have never been able to explore the local lake and land on the islands; but I have been camping. Not on an island in a lake though. The worst thing, however, is I don’t have a bunch of nautically minded friends who wish to make our own voyage of discovery. Still looking though!

If you read the first book and like it, there are others waiting. Next up is Swallowdale, which involves a shipwreck (one of the finest pieces of writing – even knowing what is going to happen whenever I read it, it still feels like it could have not happened!); Peter Duck, which includes an old sailor from clipper days and a race across the Atlantic for treasure; and Winter Holiday, which includes two new characters, the Ds, and a journey across the ice-bound lake for the North Pole. And there are more! I am currently part way through Pigeon Post, and the Swallows, Amazons and Ds are gold mining. I am proud to have these books on my bookshelf – and will certainly be reading them long into the future, perhaps when I have a boat of my own!

Hey Blog! This time it’s about the library!

I have a thing for books. Having bought two and borrowed five the past two weeks I have spent nearly every morning so far with my nose buried in a book. Most I buy, from my selection of bookshops near me. However, recently I have got back into borrowing books, from the local library; I have started meeting friends there most weeks now, since it is a nice place to go, so I will be telling you about it later in the post. But first, some more on me and libraries in general.

When I lived in Barbados, I was small and raring to read. Once I had started reading, I wanted books all the time, and I was a regular at the public library. Unfortunately at that time, a child library card only borrowed two books, so I had to use Mum and Dad’s cards as well, if I wanted enough books to get me through a few weeks. Later, when we had come back to the UK, I started using the Belper library, which was a small cozy place, very serviceable for an eight-year-old’s imagination, and allowed me to borrow a lot more books! This is when I made the big shift from mostly reading factual books to mostly reading fictional books. But there was never much space in the library, so there was not as much to choose from. I found the delight of having your own books which you can read whenever you want, found Scarthin Books and the Oxfam Bookshop, the library closed to relocate a little down the road, and then came covid.

It took longer for the new library to open than planned, as it was moved to the same building as a care home. It wouldn’t be good if every Tom, Dick and Harry marched in to borrow books while transmitting deadly viruses. However, even if it took a while, the library is amazing. It is tall, airy, full of light and books, with much larger sections of different genres. Even better, it has a café attached, so we often go for lunch or a coffee and then to the library. When I do, I mostly read several books and then frantically borrow them just before it’s time to go, as I can’t read them all! This is the trouble with me and libraries/bookshops – I read most of the book before I borrow/buy it!

I can definitely recommend the use of a library. It is free – if not for the lunch at a café – and doesn’t clutter your house with hundreds of books (our house is nearly full, from my purchases!) because you return them before they get annoying by taking up too much space. I am glad there is one so near, and I look forward to using it still more!

Hey Blog! The weekend before last, I was attending an archaeological dig with the Scouts, this time as a Young Leader, and the Saturday before that, I participated in another dig with my Young Archaeologists’ Club, so those are what I’m going to talk about today!

I have, in the past, told you about archaeology, so I will only do a brief recap. Look for previous posts on this subject if you want more. Basically, archaeology is the study of things left by people in the past – THINGS PEOPLE PAST is the general chorus at the beginning of every Scouts dig. Trenches are sections of a site which you carefully dig up by scraping back the soil with the straight edge of your trowel. In your trench you may find finds, which are small, portable discoveries like clay pipes, coins, or pottery shards. You may also find structural evidence, such as walls, post holes, or charcoal from burning. Now on to the digs I did.

The YAC dig was at Castleton again, but not on the same site as last year. We were looking for an early mill, pre-1700s and possibly connected with the mediaeval hospice which was situated a couple of fields away. The geophysical survey shows a filled-in mill-lade, at an odd alignment to the 1700s mill and perfectly aligned to an older building, which the experts guess is both the cottage mentioned in a document where it says a lead-miner family lived and a totally undiscovered mill. The chance it might be connected with the Hospice of Blessed Mary in the Peak is what drew the archaeologists, because it is that site they have been looking for.

The dig was interesting; I found a few small bits of pot and a lot of mud and tree roots. The walls of the supposed mill had already been found, so we didn’t do much in that context, which is why I was digging in the ditch for the mill stream, and then a little bit at the upper end of the building. Our session was only one and a half hours long, so we didn’t get as much as we would have if we had stayed the entire day. Still, the background for the dig was intriguing, and I hope they find their mill over the next couple of weeks the dig is on!

The second dig was only two days long, but I was there for all of it. This dig was at Willersley Scout Campsite, which is slap bang on top of the ruins of a ‘Georgian’ country house. It was demolished in the 1950s; blown up with gelignite – it took them five tries to flatten it completely! And even then, it wasn’t fully successful, as you will hear. A few years after demolition, the Scout Association acquired the site, and it is now a neat, flat, grassy area, perfect for camping on. Few campers realise they are sleeping on top of a Tudor manor house, a Georgian manor house, and possibly an earlier house as well!

The weekend’s activities consisted of Dig, where the trench was; Detecting, where the metal finds were found with a metal detector; Geophys, where you could have a go at “electrocuting the ground” as the scouts called it, to find features under the soil; Finds, where dating and cataloguing went on; and Investigation, where you could research the history of the site. I was helping as a Young Leader with the dig, so I didn’t take part in the other activities, but was talking to the younger ones and telling them what counts as a find and what to do with it (put it in the finds tray if it could be interesting; if it’s a plain old rock, ignore it!).

The dig was amazing. On day one, we found the front wall, and part of the facing slabs. I found a pipe stem – c. 1700s – and was assisting the County Lead Volunteer for Scouts when he found a rare and significant shard of Tudor Green Glaze pot – c. late 1400s. By the end of the day, the doorway was clear, and we could determine by the size of the bricks in the wall that they were all Tudor! It was clear this was more than a Georgian stately home; there must be a Tudor house which had been renovated by the addition of a façade about 300 years after it had originally been built. On day two, we extended the trench and found even more – the slabs around the entrance, where roman-esque pillars would have been added as part of the façade, much more pot (mostly 17- and 1800s, but with a few shards of Midlands Purple Ware from the 16- to 1700s too), a multitude of nails, loads of slate flakes off the roof, and about 50 modern tent pegs from metal detecting across the site!

The last task of the dig was to fill in the trench – but we have agreed that what we found is too much for just a single two-day excavation, and we will have to go back sometime – so we put down a layer of plastic to show where we got to, which will help us start quickly in our next dig.

In all, both sites are interesting, and I hope to return and do some more archaeology very soon, so I’ve got my trowel kept at the ready!

Hey Blog! Three Saturdays ago, I attended the annual Humanatees Notaprom, so that’s what I’m writing about in this post!

My tutor Jake runs Humanatees (i.e. he teaches the humanities subjects, but spells it like manatees) and once a year, he invites his GCSE and iGCSE students to an evening get-together. It’s not a traditional school prom, but is a chance for all the students to meet each other and have a fun night out. I have been keeping you updated about my studying and exams over the past year, and this is the party at the end. I had got to know one person very well online, and was looking forward to meeting her and the other people from the class, as well as those who had done other courses. Jake has several hundred students, and I don’t know how he manages them all, but many live overseas, so there were thankfully less than a hundred at the Notaprom.

The dress code was “crocks and socks, fancy frocks, shirt and tie or tie dye; anything goes!” – so I decided I would wear my waistcoat. Then I realised that if I wanted to be able to take my phone, I needed an extra pocket of the right size in the right place. Therefore, I designed, embroidered, and hand sewed my own pocket on the inside of the left front panel of the waistcoat; this took a while, so I will need to rewatch whichever Sewing Bee episode it is in which you are shown how to make welt pockets before I make my next waistcoat! Still, it worked. One person brought a large quantity of flat caps like the one Jake wears for every lesson, and was distributing them at the Notaprom, so by the end of the evening I had acquired one of them too!

From the beginning of the evening till the food had arrived and the pizza bar was open was a couple of hours, so a lot of conversation, balloon games and table tennis took up the first half; then after pizza and chips, a lot more talking, many, many laughs and a spot of dancing. This was my first time dancing. It’s most enjoyable, for anyone who hasn’t tried. Another student had written a new song along the lines of an old tune, especially for the evening, so there was a little karaoke session where everyone danced to the spoof song “Just Jake”. We had so much fun over the evening, and I don’t think I’ll forget it. I made some new friends too, so I’m looking forward to seeing them again next year or sooner than that. It’s a pity there isn’t something like it every month, but Jake would probably go mad if he had to organise it so regularly! We all had a great time at the Notaprom, and I will most certainly be going next year!

Hey Blog! This post is all about running.

Mum and I have recently completed Couch to 5K, the running programme where from never running you can run for 30 minutes. It starts small – from 60 seconds of running and 90 seconds of walking, repeated 8 times – to 30 minutes of running and no walking. We didn’t think we could do it when we started – or at least, we’d need to redo a few weeks when we got to 20 minutes of running in one go. However, we decided to trust the programme – and we did it!

One problem with doing anything by foot, bike or any other form of non-motorised transport in Derbyshire is that there is almost never a flat spot. There is one hill after another hill after another hill, so it’s difficult to run without feeling exhausted in the first five minutes. Luckily, not far from us is the Cromford Canal; and canal boats don’t like hills any more than runners – so canals are generally quite flat. This is therefore where we run, and as we have got faster and run for longer, we have got further along it. From just to the first bridge being a long way about four weeks ago, to nearly halfway to the next village this last week!

I decided a while ago that I wasn’t feeling fit enough. This is most likely just delusion and that I a. can’t quite keep up with friends with longer legs who are 16, b. I had started comparing to adult stamina and c. I was reminiscing about all those long walks back in lockdown. However, I certainly wanted to see how good I was exactly and make myself better that that. If something is bad, wrong, poor quality, etc. then I need to be/make it better (or at least that’s the idea). Mum also wanted to get more exercise – so the running plan was born!

A few facts: running is a very complex process involving moving multiple muscles in the legs in sequence. Muscle pairs help with this – one relaxes while the other contracts, pulling the limb one way, then they switch to pull the limb the other. Now imagine that around your ankle, knee and hip, on both legs, and then realise you do all that instinctively. Then look at your breathing; this gets faster as you run, because of an increase in the energy your body needs and therefore an increase in the amount of respiration required. The balanced equation for respiration is: C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂ = 6CO₂ + 6H₂O (glucose + oxygen = carbon dioxide + water), and this is one of the most important formulae in all biology. However, this takes time to produce the energy required, and uses a lot of oxygen, so your breathing becomes faster to get more oxygen in. Simultaneously, a faster, albeit lower-power reaction starts, to get smaller amounts of energy quicker. This produces lactic acid and energy, which builds up in your muscles and can hurt. The good news is that the lactic acid undergoes a second reaction which restores it to CO₂ and H₂O again. All well.

We noticed a marked improvement in our running capabilities; I started off sprinting rather than jogging, so I was exhausted and not feeling at all well when we finished the first few runs. As time went on, I ran slower but was less tired. In the final few weeks, when we were running for 20 minutes, then 25, then 28, and finally 30, we got faster and faster, and further and further. But this improvement is not the end of the story. Even if you run for 30 minutes three times in one week, you won’t be fit at the end of the year. If you do this every week, however, you will – much happier, healthier, faster, stronger, and tireless. Which is where I leave you – I will need to keep running, three times a week, for 30 minutes – 90 minutes a week, 360 minutes a month, and over 4000 minutes a year. That’s a lot of running!

Hey Blog! Goodness, finally all that election malarky is over and we can get back to the “new normal” (i.e. the new government). Covid phrase, I know. Ah, the (good?) old days! But the problem is I can’t choose who steps in at Number 10, as I’m only 14. But there is some good-ish news at the end, so keep reading.

If you live in another country, or on another planet (hiya alien readers!) you probably haven’t had an election today. You might well have had/are going to have one this year, as there are a lot of countries deciding who should lead them currently. However, if you don’t know much you may be wondering why we even need all this speeches, campaigning, over-four-pieces-of-paper-from-one-party-in-one-day-through-the-door, and what the fuss is about which person gets let in through the ministerial front door. Well, it all started back in Greece with a few pieces of pottery and a bunch of male citizens of a city called Athens (or at least, that was the first major democracy).

Athens decided that every adult male who was of local lineage and a free man (in short, a ‘citizen’) should have a say in what the country did. Whenever a decision, from minor ones like who owned which field, to major ones like should they attack Sparta (they did), needed making, all citizens would decide what to do by putting a piece of pottery in a particular pot. These pots were then counted out, and the pot with the more pottery shards in would be the pot of the decision which was made. Bingo – the first ballot, ballot box, and direct democracy! The idea spread to other parts of the ancient world, including Rome: before the emperors, the Roman Republic was a type of democracy, but not identical to Greece. This seems a good point to explain how Roman democracy was different. You may have heard the terms “plebian” and “patrician”. The plebs were the common people, the patricians were the wealthy ones. A system of checks and balances made sure that while the Consuls who the patricians in the Senate elected could make new laws, the Senate had to pass them, and Tribunes from the plebians could veto anything from above. The most important difference between Greece and Rome was the former, a ‘direct democracy’ was ruled by all the eligible citizens, whereas Rome was a form of ‘representative democracy’, where chosen people made the decisions, but the general population chose those people – complicated, eh?

The current British parliament is slightly different again. Citizens choose representatives, who campaign for seats in parliament. Most (not all) representatives and wannabe representatives (candidates) belong to parties, who are groups of people broadly in the same area on the political spectrum and who support each other (mostly). Some parties are large – e.g. in the election just passed, Labour won a whopping 2/3 of the seats available; and some are small – last parliamentary term, the Greens had only 1 representative in parliament. Independents are candidates who do not support and are not backed by any party, and the Speaker of the House (the person who all Members of Parliament address and who chairs debates) is a post kept strictly apart from any party so the Speaker does not favour any party more than others. The party with the most seats in the House becomes Government; the next largest the Opposition. The leader of the Government becomes Prime Minister, the Head of Government, as opposed to    the King who is the Head of State. The two offices once used to be the same, but over time democracy reduced the powers of the monarch even as the power of the people went up.

One interesting thing to note about the UK is that it has a ‘first past the post’ system, or a plurality; where the person with the greatest number of votes wins the seat. This is true even if it is 1 more than the next highest, and you don’t need over 50% of the vote. Majority systems are where winning candidates must get over 50% to win, or else the candidate with the lowest number of votes is knocked out (metaphorically!) before going on to the next round. There is yet another kind of representation – proportional representation (PR), where the share of votes is exactly shared with the number of seats as a whole. This both makes sense and doesn’t at the same time – it would be difficult to achieve, but would prevent a result where a party with a low vote share can win most of the seats due to other parties squabbling (example: one party has 32%, another has 27%, a third has 26% and one has 15% – the 32% wins 100% power in plurality, but only 32% of power in PR). This is what just happened with Labour taking over – even though it got a smaller vote share than it did when it when it lost the election a decade ago, it has taken nearly 2/3 of the seats and been called a “landslide” win. This is a result of the system.

Who would I have voted for? Well, that’s a secret. Ballots are designed to be secret, so that no one need know who you voted for unless you tell someone. But judging how the country has been run for the last few years… The good news is that unless a snap election is called before February 2028, I will have a say in the next one. Which does unfortunately make me kind of responsible for whichever leader becomes PM – unfortunately that is if it’s a bad one! Still, I have four more years to think about who I’ll be voting for – or to decide if I want to stand as a candidate! Watch out in years to come, and don’t forget to vote for meeeeeee!

Hey Blog! Two Fridays ago, I went to the Big Bang Fair in Birmingham; and last Friday we went to the National Stone Centre, so that’s what this post is about!

The Big Bang Fair is a yearly gathering of scientists, teachers, innovators and other people involved with STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths). It is run in the NEC at Birmingham, and attracts visitors and stallholders from across the nation. We have looked at going to it before, but have never actually gone. This year, we decided to go with a couple of friends who we took part in the Midlands Makers Challenge with. We took the train down to Birmingham International, and then walked into the NEC and found Hall 12, where the event was stationed. After quickly getting a coffee and checking we were ready, we walked in and presented our tickets, where we got a returnable lanyard to certify we were permitted to wander around the fair.

There are a lot of stalls at the BBF. Some are about developing new technologies – I was interested especially by one showing how superconductor magnets can be used to help transport and a different stall showing how they can be used to generate green energy via nuclear fusion. Some are about how we can combat climate change. Others still show medical developments and analysis of your body – one showed you whether you were still growing by ultrasound-scanning your wrist (I am still growing 🙂 !). I went around quite a few, but unfortunately I couldn’t see them all as there was not enough time available to see everything. It was all very interesting and I learned a few new facts and ideas on how to do things.

Last Friday, I went to the National Stone Centre to visit the Mary Anning exhibition. Mary Anning was the first influential female fossil hunter, whose work, it is said, inspired some parts of Charles Darwin’s On The Origin Of Species. She found some of the first ichthyosaurs and pterosaurs, (ichthio saurus fish-lizard and ptero saurus wing-lizard), many ammonites, and other fossils from the Jurassic Coast in Devon. Living on low pay from the fossils she sold, and unable to attend any scientific institutions to learn more and put her views across because of the systemic sexism of the day, she is still remembered as an important early female palaeontologist. We’d be much more appreciative of her today! While the exhibition was rather small, it did include a few things I hadn’t known about her – e.g. she was almost struck by lightning as a baby!

The two days out were different, but both gave me a bit more information on our world, both the history of palaeontology and the future of technology. What a good rhyming sentence to end on!

Hey Blog! On Saturday, I had a stall at a sale, so I’ll be telling you about that today!

A few weeks ago, I explained about my wood turning. I told you what I have created and that I would possibly be running a stall at a sale this year. Since then, I have taken part in a class called the £5 Challenge. This is where you are given a fiver by your parents when they sign you up, then you build a business with this £5. People in the class did everything from baking to jewellery, and I chose to do my wood turning. With the £5 and another £6 I had made through an early sale of four mice at a lower rate, I had £11 to work with. Because the wood from the log store is free, the chisels were borrowed, the stain and varnish we had in the garage and I could use them as I liked (responsibly!), I had no expenses and thus could use the money to pay for a stall, as and when I ran one.

Last Saturday, I did just that! Dolly’s Fabrics in Heage (not actually run by someone called Dolly, in case you were wondering) was having a courtyard sale for local makers to come and sell their wares, and I decided to participate. I spent the two days before the sale mostly down in the garage making more and more mice, sanding them, staining them, varnishing them, and then carrying them up to the house for eyes, ears, tails, and mouths. I also made coasters featuring Heage Windmill using a pyrography tool, also known as a wood burner tool. Pyro – fire, graph – writing, so pyrography literally means fire writing! I was finished just in time on Friday night, and had 20 mice and 14 coasters ready and waiting for the morning.

Luckily, tables were quite cheap at only £5. I have known them to be £15 or more at other events. With the money I had from the starting investment, I paid for the stall and simply waited for the customers to arrive. This is what made it so fun. You get to make fun things in the garage, then talk to a bunch of people while they give you money! Over the sale, I sold nine mice and four coasters, and made a whopping £42! (This is impressive only as it was my first sale; if you talked to a multibillionaire, this would be pocket money or less than, but for me, it’s quite a lot). I plan to save most of this, perhaps spend some on materials and another stall so that I can multiply this cash. After that, I don’t quite know. I might even become one of those multibillionaires!

Hey Blog! This week is a book review, and it is by a classic author I’ve never read before but really like!

Thomas Hardy, novelist, was a 19^th century author and poet, famous for romantic novels, stunning word-created imagery, and in-depth characters depicting the contrast between rural life and wealthy life. He is very much a writer of his time, yet speaks across time and can be understood today and beyond. The book I am reviewing is called Under the Greenwood Tree, an early work of his, exploring first time love, among other things, and much influenced by Shakespeare, even in the title – ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’ is a song sung by the forest court of the deposed Duke Senior in As You Like It, which I studied recently. But enough of Shakespeare, more of Hardy!

The story takes place in a Wessex village, and is introduced by the arrival of the quire, or choir; the village and church band. One member is the protagonist, Dick Dewy, the son of the local tranter, or general carter. If you are daunted by the unusual and forgotten words, don’t stop here but continue on as they will get easier to understand. There is a party thrown, and during the course of the evening Dick becomes enamoured with the village schoolmistress, the beautiful and highly sought after Fancy Day. Seemingly either ignorant of or unconcerned by the sudden adoration from Dick, Fancy continues with life, but Dick tries several long-winded and complicated ways to woo her, culminating in a direct conversation during a drive in a cart. However, what the outcome of this conversation is I will leave you to find out, as it would be no use me telling you the full story!

It is unlike almost anything I have ready before. It is a romance novel, and while some books I have read have touched on this, it has never been the full focus, only a side quest for the main character or someone else’s obsession. It is set in an area I have not read anything else set in – indeed, it is set in Hardy’s own birthplace under the different name of Mellstock rather than Stinsford. The language is very unusual for modern times – Hardy “deplored the dying of old dialects” according to my copy. Finally, Hardy is a classic author who I’ve never read, which is exceedingly unusual, and therefore the nuances of language particular to Hardy are unknown to me. However, I like it! It is a fun and friendly book, serious and comedic, and I’m eager to read more from Hardy.