Hey Blog! I’m back again. It’s just past the end of May, and as always, we have been doing No Mow May, or rather Too Lazy And Crazy To Mow All The Daisys, or whatever you want to call it. We like the garden messy and natural, but generally cut the grass in March and again in September, to get rid of the dead stuff and let the lawn grow. However, over the Summer, we leave it long (unless perhaps we have visitors coming to stay…).

We generally get a “crop” of Dandelions once in April and again in June; and while this is of some annoyance to the neighbours who have pristine gardens with no weeds that dare grow and perfectly planted flower beds, we love it! You may be interested to know that dandelions are named from the French Dent-de-lion, lion’s tooth, for the shape of the leaves. The real French name is Pisenlit, which when you know that lit is bed and en is in, reminds you of the laxative properties of this plant! There are a few clover plants that grow in the lawn, an endless summer attraction as you get to search for hours on end to find a four-leafed clover. I never have, as yet. In the former rockery, now an overgrown slope where primroses and wild strawberries fight for dominance and the right to show their flowers, we have the aforementioned flora, as well as several sapling birch trees, a large green bush which never bears fruit and we should probably remove in favour of a berry bush for winter birds. The Home Ed Shed takes up a portion of the garden, but even on the flint chippings we have three neat planters where vegetables might or might not grow, and a very large and heavy pot containing a rowan tree given me by Grandad, which is nearly as tall as I am and expected to grow even taller by the end of the summer. At the top end, there is a pond containing tadpoles from at least four clumps of frogspawn, surrounded by pea gravel and both natural plants and introduced native flowers. What was the area of bark chips when we moved in is now a large veg bed and an extraordinarily overgrown wild space, the one deliberate addition of which is a pine tree which for a few years was the Christmas Tree – before we moved on to mediaeval decoration and had holly and ivy branches up in bunches instead. At the final corner of the garden is Mum and Dad’s shed, with all the tools in, and the compost bins. As you can see, we have a “variety of habitat”!

However, there are a few flowers which we have not planted and have come into the garden later. There are five which are particularly beautiful, and these are they, in turn.

Flower number 1. The Orchid

This beautiful flower appeared last year in the lawn, underneath the bird table. It has long, pointed, spotty leaves, and a cone of flowers on the single stalk. The flowers are pinky-purple, and have three shallow lobes on the bottom part and a curving one on the top part. We think it could be a Common Spotted Orchid, but as they can easily hybridize with very similar species like the Northern, Southern or Early Marsh Orchid it is hard to tell for sure. It could even be an Early Purple Orchid. As the flower itself has not appeared yet this year, the picture is of the leaves.

Fun fact – ding ding – orchids rely on mycelium for vital nutrients; they cannot grow from seed without this symbiotic partner.

Flower number 2. Fox-and-cubs

This member of the dandelion family resembles its common cousin, but has a smaller flower head with squarer ends to the petals, and a thin hairy stem rather than the smooth, hollow stem of the dandelion. It is bright orange, and has several flowers on one stalk. The first flower to open, the largest and at the top, is the “fox” and all the smaller ones underneath it are the “cubs” – which is how they got their name.

Flower number 3. Cuckoo flower/Milkmaids/Lady’s-smock

This is a pale pink to creamy white flower, standing upright in the lawn, and has multiplied rapidly since we discovered it growing a few years back. It’s pretty to have in the garden, and is growing all over the place!

Flower number 4. Yellow Pimpernel

This relative of Scarlet Pimpernel looks almost identical except in colour, with small flowers on low-growing stalks which just brighten up the entire area. It has bright yellow flowers on pointed green leaves, and is a beautiful flower to cover the corner of the garden near the vole holes and around the pond.

Flower number 5. Granny’s Bonnet/Columbine

This flower migrated from next door, coming through the hedge and currently flowering all along the low wall where the small mammals live. It has blue-purple flowers on branching stems, which do vaguely resemble an old-fashioned lady’s hat. Flowers can be different coloured, especially as garden escapes. A quaint flower to decorate the garden border outside the window!

If you want to identify and learn about different flowers, I recommend Harrap’s Wild Flowers by Simon Harrap. This book is, in the words of Chris Pakham (nice job on Springwatch, by the way!) “an essential, concise, comprehensive yet accessible guid to our flora”  – and it certainly is just that!

Hey Blog! Yesterday I sat an exam of a kind I’ve never done before, but have been studying for for nearly a year. I actually sat the Environmental Management exam I have told you so much about, so here is how it went.

In How to Manage the Environment, 19^th Feb 2024, I told you about the course, and the impending exam. I said last week that I had both papers upcoming. I have now done the first of these, the In Theory paper. This is as opposed to the second, In Practice paper, which is a case study. I have never done a GCSE or equivalent before, and as this was an IGCSE it was my first go at anything of the like. There are a dozen or so rules, some of which are very specific, which prevent people cheating. For instance, no phones, watches, note-inscribed handkerchiefs, opaque water bottles or anything that could be used as information to help you pass are allowed. Personally, I think the easiest way to cheat would be to write notes on your hand with ultraviolet ink and then take a UV torch in with you to check the notes, as they do not ask you if you are carrying UV torches. However, as I didn’t want to cheat the system, but be happy that I had done well without cheating, I did not use this method.

The papers are locked away in “paper jail” for a year after the exam, so they can be used as mocks by schools for the year after the first sitting. Therefore, it’s best if I don’t tell you what was contained. I can, however, say that there were two units from the textbook with no associated questions in the paper, which gives a good chance of them being key topics in paper 2; and that it was relatively doable. Hopefully the mark scheme will not be stupid like one of the past papers I’ve done; that mark scheme gave barely anything for sensible answers and what they wanted was not the same as what the question implied.

I was finished about five minutes early, which gave me time to check through the paper properly rather than being finished in a mad dash at the end which is what I have done for almost every mock. This is good as it means I can both make some educated guesses about the next paper and relax during the process of writing the answers. I came out of the building first (closely followed by everyone else except for those with extra time) and had an enormous smile on my face. I think it went well, and am hoping (as always!) for an A*. I think I’ll probably do quite well.

I have paper 2 not next week but the week after, so wish me luck! I’ll get the results in July/August, and be sure to tell you what I got then. In the meantime, I have to go and revise so see you next week!

Hey Blog! I’m so sorry it’s been so long since I was doing weekly posts, life has got in the way and I wasn’t up to speed. I hope that even with my Environmental Management IGCSE Paper 1 Exam next week and Paper 2 Exam two weeks after, I will remain on top of my workload and continue posting. However, this post is about a natural phenomenon I saw last week for the first time – it’s the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borialis!

The Northern Lights are not to be confused with The Northern Lights by Philip Pulman, which I reviewed last year. The book says they are where the world is thin, made so by the solar wind, so you can see parallel universes. The scientists never mention the ability to see these other worlds, and though I looked, I couldn’t see any. Ah well. Still, they are amazing, with brightly coloured green, purple, and occasionally reddish, yellowish, and blueish lights covering the sky. They can be seen from space, from Earth, and they even occur on other planets. But why are they here in the first place?

Apparently, they aren’t light shining off the armour of the Valkyrie warriors coming to pick up Viking dead; spirits being taken to heaven; people engaged in a battle in the sky; a premonition of the French Monarchy being overthrown; foxes brushing mountains with their tales; or the fires of a deity; but instead a storm of solar wind. It occurs when a discharge of plasma through the Sun’s coronal holes draws some of the Sun’s magnetic field with it; this portion of solar wind (the continual plasma ejection which shines out of the Sun) amplified by the magnetic field around it then collides with our own magnetic field, Earth’s magnetosphere, the shield around Earth which protects us from solar radiation. The particles of plasma are deflected away from Earth, which makes the magnetosphere into a teardrop-like shape, but there is one small hole where solar particles can enter – a point where the magnetic field doesn’t ring around the Earth but flies outwards (look at a diagram of the force lines on a magnet), too far away to shield us – the poles! Particles are channelled down through the sky towards our poles, not poles in the ground like Pooh though, but rather magnetic poles. As the energy-rich particles hit our atmosphere, they ‘excite’ oxygen and nitrogen in the air; the electrons of these gases go into a higher orbit (a ‘hiccup’ one of my science teachers called it!) and as they come back down, they release the excess energy as light.

The light is coloured according to the gas, oxygen being most commonly green, and nitrogen being most commonly purple. The other colours are less common, but do occasionally show. A strong solar storm like the one just passed, which showed lights far south, only happens about once every 22 years, when the sun’s magnetic field ejects a large storm of charged particles – so watch out in 22 years for another showing of the northern lights!

All you need to make an aurora are:

• a magnetic field
• a stream of plasma
• and an atmosphere!

So, time for HEIAS Q&A:

• Why don’t we see it when we look at a magnet? We don’t have a plasma stream! (To all those people who have plasma cutters out there, I would love to come and put a magnet in your machine and see what happens!).
• How does it affect the poles? The equator gets hot, the poles do not, but you’ve just told me it only happens at the poles. The magnetic field only repels particles, not waves. Heat and light are electromagnetic radiation waves, not particles (although they’re also photon particles, really confusing and I do not understand them, but then no one does!). Particles are funnelled to the poles, whereas waves are not interfered with and so hit the equator.
• Could the magnetic shield be used to combat climate change? No, it only repels particles, not heat, and climate change is a change in heat. Awesome story idea though – Magnetic Protection, a climate change story!
• Would it occur if you held a lightsaber near a magnet? It depends. Some sources say lightsabers are made of plasma and therefore it would, yet some say they aren’t plasma swords but laser swords and therefore it wouldn’t. You haven’t got a lightsaber to test it on, have you?!

On Friday I managed to see the lights for the first time ever – it was the first time for Mum and Dad too, and they have been alive for a lot longer than I have! I was up till 10 hoping to see them, and then jumped out of bed at 11 to the news that they were very bright in the back garden! The lights shining over the shed was magnificent, green and purple and stripy across the sky; it was worth the late night even if I did sleep in in the morning! Picture quality was awful, so I can’t show you what they looked like, but the best description is a watercolour on the sky that never stayed in the same place for five minutes, constantly fading and reappearing, but so slowly you would never have known it had changed if you hadn’t looked away! I hope to see them again one day.

Hey Blog! Second post on sailing; and it’s my ship’s log!

Day 1 – 7^th April 2024

·        Come aboard. Tour the vessel – she’s a lovely boat!

·        Safety Briefings – what to do in the event of various emergencies: Flood, Fire, Man overboard, and Abandon ship. The general rule is alert the crew, grab your lifejacket and get on deck!

·        On deck safety briefings. E.g. in rough weather, clip on to the safety lines that run along the deck with the harness on your lifejacket; don’t get hit by the boom as it comes across; and don’t slip on the slippery skylights!

·        Lifejacket safety – the lifejackets we had were self-inflating in water, but if for whatever reason they failed to inflate, you could pull the red cord at the bottom to manually inflate. They came with an harness to keep you attached to the vessel in the unlikely event that you were washed overboard.

I am PORT WATCH & PORT AFT CABIN (bottom bunk). There are two watches on a boat: port and starboard, after the left and right sides of the ship. On this voyage there were five members of starboard watch and six of port watch, along with the four sea staff – Dan, the captain or skipper, Becky, the 1^st Mate, Reggie, the 2^nd Mate, and Harvey, the 4^th Hand.

·        Dinner cooked by port watch, so I helped.

·        We start the game of Boat Murder. This is a tradition on the JL. At the start of the voyage you draw pieces of paper naming a place, a person, and a thing from three cups. Over the course of the voyage, you have to hand that person that thing in that place, which ‘kills’ them. Kind of like active Cluedo. This is a brilliant game but may lead to everyone on board being distrustful of each other and not accepting anything from anyone without them putting it down first! For the rest of the evening we played card games, till it was time for the story and bed. Tonight’s story was about the search for the perfect coffee bean!

Day 2 – 8^th April 2024

·        Wake up and have breakfast. Swab the decks and get a theory lesson about how to use the sails and other sailing equipment. Make sail and cast off!

·        Motor out the harbour. We hoist the staysail, to balance the steering. Gybe up the Tamar river and anchor under the bridge for lunch. We have a knotting session down below, doing Figure of 8, Round turn and two half-hitches, and Bowline. All of these I know, so I got through this with ease and helped to teach some others who were struggling. [See How long is a piece of string (with knots in it?), 2^nd Nov. 2023 for more knots.]

·        We get back under way and motor down the river. Back at sea, we have a game where we race around the deck to find whichever object the skipper called out. Then we have a man overboard drill – luckily no one has to take a dip, we use a black buoy with a bucket tied to it as the casualty. Thankfully we are able to recover this substitute and then motor back to port, where we spend the rest of the day playing games and having fun. This evening’s story was a recitation of The Charge of the Light Brigade, by Tennyson.

Day 3 – 9^th April 2024

·        After the daily shipkeeping tasks, we go ashore for showers as the weather is horrible. I haven’t got off JL since I stepped aboard on Sunday – it feels strange that we haven’t been outside of our ‘house’ as it were, yet we’ve gone so far and seen so much!

·        Showers over, we have a Rules of the Road at Sea session. This is less who has right of way and more who should give way to whom, though all vessels have a mutual responsibility to prevent incidents. I would recommend the Flip Cards on marine subjects (I have Rules of the Road, Code Flags, Lights and Shapes, and Buoyage system) to learn more about them. There is a long list of rules, but it would be too long for this blog!

·        Look around the engine room. The engine on JL is not fast but has a lot of torque, so it will still drive her in very heavy conditions, even if quite slowly. If all fuel tanks are full, she can be motored from Plymouth to the Isle of Wight before refuelling, but that would empty all the tanks. We must be careful not to set the fuel on fire, as that would look like you were on the losing end of a game of battleships and result in a sunk boat.

·        The final thing before we set sail is to climb the bowsprit. As you can see from last week’s picture of the boat, the end of the bowsprit is a good length beyond the bow, and is above only water. So going up it is quite scary the first time. However, I manage it and get all the way up and then back on the opposite side.

·        Set sail again. Once out of the harbour, it is very choppy and there was a swell running. We spend the afternoon tacking around the sound, before anchoring out in the bay just across into Cornwall.

·        After the sails and anchor chain go down, we put the ‘anchored light’ up. This is a single black ball, made by two interlocking circles, with a single white light under it. To all vessels, this means “I am anchored”. Useful if you want to prevent a collision with a moving boat after dark!

·        Dinner. We have cake for pudding as it’s someone’s birthday! Party games and stargazing after dinner, the sky is marvellous, and we see several constellations. Finally, we go to bed.

Day 4 – 10^th April 2024

·        Wake up, breakfast and deck scrub

·        Points of sail lesson (the various angles at which a boat can be sailed according to the wind).

·        Sails up and tack out, heading for round the headland and to the next town. Far too big a swell and people seasick and throwing up. Turn back. – n.b. If you are not seasick, but sea-nervous, like me, you should have a ginger biscuit, look at the deck or the horizon, and recite a poem, or a passage of a book, over and over again. Trust me, it helped!

·        Once back past the breakwater, we have some lovely sailing. The swell is less, but the waves are the right size for learning and the wind is nice. However, I still get hit right down the nose by the port outer jib sheet when trying to readjust the sails! We sail around for a bit, then head back up the river we had gone to two days before. Have lunch.

·        Tack and head down the river, sailing back for last night’s anchoring spot. I get the inner jib down and stowed, which requires going up the bowsprit again! Less nervous this time, I had the job of stowing the sail to think about. By the time we get to the bay, it is too rough, so in the end we go back to the marina for that night.

·        Games, dinner, more games, then all ashore for showers. The ground keeps rocking and whenever I close my eyes, it has waves in it…!

·        Story and bed

Day 5 – 11^th April 2024

·        Wake up, breakfast, wash up, make sail and cast off.

·        VERY foggy. Good lookout needed, especially as there are a cruise ship with an entourage of taxi boats to transport visitors from ship to shore and vice versa, and several ferries off Plymouth shore. On four sails we make pretty good speed, and get out quite quickly. Because it is so foggy, and the visibility at Very Poor, we are Out Of Sight Of Land – VERY COOL! It’s rather fun. Even though we could have seen the land if the visibility was Good, I would count it as being away from any terra firma.

·        Brunch, and lunch. Sausage rolls and jacket potatoes, respectively.

·        I take the wheel. Long stint, tacking during the duration. So fun! Standing at the wheel, you have the whole ship at your command, save for the sails; you do need to turn the wheel quite a way for the ship to turn, but she will come.

·        Get the lower square sail, the coarse, up. It is hoisted by three pullies, one which also holds the staysail, and two which are also used to move the dinghy. Only used when sailing downwind, it is the second largest sail on board, and is very effective. However, you don’t feel you’re going fast, because you must take into account the speed of the boat downwind as well as the apparent wind speed.

·        Sail back to land, downwind. Sails down and anchor the same as two nights ago. Dinner, Clear up, games, story, and bed.

Day 6 – 12^th April 2024

·        Wake up, breakfast, general tidy up as we motor back to harbour. Clean the whole boat. Get everything ready to disembark, and finally leave the Johanna Lucretia at 12:00.

But this isn’t the end of the story! I intend to go back, sometime next year, and have more fun on the ocean wave. So “farewell and adieu to you readers of my blog” * and see you soon! ARRRR!

*See Spanish Ladies, the sea shanty

Hey Blog! A few weeks ago I went on THE BEST VOYAGE EVER and therefore it needs to be related on this blog!

The Island Trust is simply brilliant. They run voyages for young people on three sailing ships – Pegasus, Moosk, and Johanna Lucretia (JL). The first two are smaller ketch or yawl rigged vessels; I haven’t sailed on them however I expect they are very nice. The third, JL, is a topsail schooner, large enough to accommodate 16 people, and a brilliant boat in all regards. From Sunday to Friday three weeks ago, I was sailing around in Plymouth Sound on her, and luckily I kept a ship’s log – which is now the Ship’s Blog!

As a schooner, the JL has two masts, a mainmast and a foremast. The mainmast is slightly aft of the middle section of the boat, and the foremast is – you guessed it – forward of the mainmast, quite close to the bow. She has a mainsail on the mainmast which as she is gaff-rigged, that is with a spar at 45° up from the mast, has a throat and peak halyard. These are at the mast end and opposite end of the gaff, and have to be hauled up by two teams at once. The foresail is likewise gaff-rigged. She also has three headsails – a staysail, on the forestay, which has a boom; an inner jib, in the middle of the bowsprit; and an outer jib, at the very end of the bowsprit. JL also has two yards on her foremast for carrying square-rigged sails. These are only used when sailing downwind. She has three hatches; we only used the one amidships as the others go into people’s cabins. Down below, it is not very roomy. We could just about all squeeze round the table in the saloon, but after a few mealtimes we got on pretty well.

At first, the motion of the boat was slightly confusing but not unpleasant. My brain did not expect a solid room to keep moving, as it clearly was via the spirit level-like organ in my ears – but my eyes didn’t see the movement, as I was sitting static compared to my surroundings. However, as time got on, I started to see the boat moving with my eyes, not just the spirit level in my ears. I realised this was because I had started moving in motion with the boat, so my perspective moved in the opposite way! At least I was not seasick on any part of the voyage – some of my crewmates were unfortunately. Sea-nervous, yes, especially when the bowsprit points up into the air and then crashes down on the sea, pointing into a wave taller than a grown man and sending some of the wave sliding along the deck. That was rather terrifying. However, most of the time, the sea state was not rough, but slight – and that I could handle! We had at least one day of perfect sailing weather – well, if not for the fog it would have been. But I enjoyed every minute of it!

I should point out here about a few terms I mentioned in the last paragraph. Sea state is a term used in the shipping forecast among other things. It is described as Calm, Very slight, Slight, Moderate, Rough and Very rough. I also mentioned fog – that would be described as Very Poor on the Visibility scale. It goes Very poor, Poor, Moderate, Good, and Very good. Other things, like the Beaufort scale – a measure of wind strength, named after Admiral Beaufort – are also used. It ranges from 1 (calm, glassy sea, smoke rises vertical) to 12 (hurricane, utter devastation). Luckily we never experienced anything the boat couldn’t handle – and she has crossed the Atlantic, been in multiple TV productions, and on the voyage I sailed on bore the brunt of 11 mad trainees shouting “damn it Harvey!” whenever something had gone wrong *.

On the whole it was one of the best times of my life. I had been worried about making friends for a long time – I take ages to become friends with anyone generally, but if I make friends I will remain friends with them for life. However, it seems all I need to be friends with somebody is to spend 5 days living on a boat with them – I got along very well with the other crew members, and we have a tentative plan to go sailing together in the summer – don’t know when yet. I also plan to go on another Island Trust sailing adventure sometime soon – probably next year – to keep up my skills and gain more experience; perhaps the weather will be better and I will be able to get my Competent Crew Certificate, as I was only able to get Start Yachting on this trip! Additionally, my big sister’s fiancé wants to get his Day Skipper certificate this summer, so hopefully the whole family will soon be able to charter a ship and go sailing at some point in the future. Who knows?! Whatever happens, I’ll be sure to keep you updated.

Next blog, I will be relating a day by day account of my voyage. Stay tuned!

*“Damn it Harvey!” was the boat’s catchphrase after the 4^th Hand made a very small mistake on day 1. One of the other crewmates shouted “damn it Harvey” for fun and it spiralled from there. We said it even if it wasn’t Harvey’s fault. It is now the voyage group chat’s name…!

Hey Blog! This week I’ll be telling you about a fun craft I’ve only recently got into!

A few months ago, I was offered a lathe from a friend’s dad. It was in their car boot and was going to the tip. However, I salvaged it. We have a habit of skip-ratching (liberating useful items from skips), especially Dad, but this didn’t need to go to the skip in the first place. All it needed was a new gear belt. Having acquired that and borrowed a set of turning chisels, we started work on a few pieces of wood.

Some of the wood we have is crooked, some is pounded and splintered from my *awesome* strength at sword fighting with sticks, and some is in the firewood pile. However, there are a few good-sized logs and blocks of wood used to support pallets disassembled to build The Shed, and these were what we started with.

Perhaps I should explain what woodturning is and how it works. Well, woodturning is making a round shape out of wood, by means of a lathe: a framed machine, powered in the olden days by a string and a pedal to make it spin, or in the modern day by electricity. Either way, the wood is spun on the lathe, and a chisel is carefully applied to the outside surface of the wood. The sharp edge of the chisel cuts away a little of the wood at a time, so by taking a little while over it you can make a perfectly rounded cylinder, the centre of this being the axis you spun it on. Once you have a cylinder, you can then use finer chisels to make ridges along the cylinder, to look like a chair leg, or a tool handle; when a little more advanced you can also alter the position of the chisel and make bowls, or wooden balls, or little wooden mice.

The chisels themselves are very varied. The preliminary chisel to use, to get the wood down to a cylinder, is the Roughing Gouge. This is a broad, thick-headed chisel; ideal for taking large amounts of wood off in one go. We broke one of these trying to do something too heavy for the thin join to the handle, but with Dad’s welding skills, it is now shorter but perfectly serviceable! Next, you need different types of chisels for the different shapes you try to cut. Be gentle with these. The finer the groove you cut, the finer the chisel head you need. The more detail, the finer the head likewise. A bowl chisel looks like a normal turning chisel (thinish, round head on a thick shaft & handle), but has a very long shaft to reach into the bowl, and a long handle for stability. There is also another type of carving tool, but this is not a chisel – it is a piece of wire, preferably held between two pairs of pliers as it can get VERY hot. This cuts a very fine groove, and burns it as it cuts, producing a thin, black line. Right, I think you get the idea. Enough about which chisel is used for what, you want to hear about what I’ve made. Here goes.

I began carving by making a bowl out of an old pallet block. It was very much admired. At the time of writing, it is on my bedroom windowsill next to the random objects and probably containing a penny or two, a couple of interesting rocks, and maybe a scrap of paper. This gave me good experience using most of the different tools and prepared me for the next craft. This was a second bowl – the function of which is still secret as it is Mum’s last Christmas present and is as yet unfinished! However, I progressed better with my latest batch of creations – mice! I have been inspired by my Grandad on my Dad’s side (who I unfortunately never met); he made a wood turner out of an old washing machine motor and a few planks of wood, and then went on to make a lot of different items, mice among them. I have been following in his footsteps and have made many mice of my own! Some I will keep, some I will give as presents, and some I will probably sell if there is a village fair on this year. I’m looking for more ideas to create, so watch this space!

Hey Blog! It’s that time of year again, and the HEIAS book review is coming in! This book I said I’d “have to do one about” later. Finally, it’s being delivered.

This post is about The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, which is a very good book indeed. Regular readers will know I have a very high opinion of The Dark is Rising, which I reviewed a few years ago, and in the back of my copy there were a list of recommendations for other books I might enjoy. One was The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. I thought this sounded good – for reasons I’ll explain later – and Mum bought it for me. The tale goes something like this.

In the ancient halls of Fundindelve (near Alderley, Cheshire) 140 knights lie magically asleep, never aging and completely safe. Their purpose? To defy the spirit of darkness when he arises, and destroy him. Watching over them is the wizard Cadellin; guardian, watcher of the sleepers, and keeper of the Weirdstone, Firefrost, which holds the heart of the protective magic over the caves. Each of the knights is in fine armour, and each has a perfect horse. But when the sleepers went down into Fundindelve, there was one horse missing – and on the day that horse was brought to the caves, its owner stole Firefrost. For many centuries the magic stone was not known to be missing by the wizard, but when this was discovered a race started between him and the servants of the spirit of darkness: if Cadellin finds it, all is safe, but if the dark lord finds it, he can destroy the sleepers. It is into this situation that Susan and her brother Colin arrive at Alderley. Susan happens to wears a bracelet with a crystal in it – which isn’t recognised until it’s too late!

A few observations: the dark spirit, conquered by a mighty king, sounds like Sauron overthrown by Elendil and Gil-galad before the events of The Lord of the Rings (only there is one king, not two!). The sleeping knights are reminiscent of Arthurian legend, and the Sleepers woken by Will Stanton and the Golden Harp of the Light in The Grey King from the Dark is Rising sequence (more King Arthur!). The wizard Cadellin looks remarkably like Gandalf the Grey (tall staff, long beard, etc.) and is very good with fiery magic; Cadellin is also a name invoked by Culhwch for a boon from King Arthur in the Mabinogion. Yes Grandad, I have read the Mabinogion; it’s very good. I should probably make that my next book review! Also in the Mabinogion, Arthur’s sword Caledfwlch (now known as Excalibur) is a blade with two brilliantly glowing gold serpents along the blade; and the king’s sword in Fundindelve is the same. In yet another book I’ve read, Eragon (I’m stacking up the books I need to review now!) the name brisingr means fire in the Ancient Language. Brisingamen = Firefrost. Brisingr = fire. The Brising necklace, made for the Viking goddess Freya, was crafted by fire dwarves. A connection, maybe?!

I like this book. It’s got a handful of Arthurian folklore; a dollop of magic-stone-and-quests-to-get-it-back; a large spoonful of risk and good-evil conflict, a sprinkling of tight places (literally and metaphorically!), several unusual creatures, and a good-sized portion of spells and other magic! It has a respectable place on the bookshelf under my bed.

Very recently, I found a second book by the same author featuring the same characters, The Moon of Gomrath, in the library. It turns out that a bracelet given to Susan in replacement for the one containing the Weirdstone is the second magical bracelet she is given. The Marks of Fohla, a set of moon-magic bracelets owned by Susan, the Lady of the Lake, and the Morrigan (a shape-shifting evil witch) and representing the waxing, full and waning moon respectively, cause a lot of trouble when the Wild Hunt wakes up! What could possibly go wrong?!

Hey Blog! I have recently moved up from Scouts to Explorers, so in this post I’ll tell you the latest on this subject.

I have told you a lot about Scouts before. However, I have not moved up from one section to another while I have been with you. Now, I have moved up twice and down once – more on that later. If you have not read it, check my post Be Prepared! (4^th Feb. 2022) and maybe some of my more recent posts on camps for information on Scouting.

In Scouting, there are several age groups, or sections. The first is Squirrels (4-6), then Beavers (6-8), next Cubs (8-10½), after that Scouts (10½-14), even older is Explorers (14-18), and finally Network (18-25). I joined in Cubs, then moved on to Scouts, and am now in Explorers, after having my last Scout meet a few weeks ago. Luckily, I had got all the requirements done for the first badge I ever wanted in Scouts and the last badge I ever got, the Top One – The Chief Scout’s Gold Award. Explorers however is a little different to Scouts, inasmuch as while there are badges we don’t do them in the meetings and it’s the members, the young people, who plan the activities not the leaders. However, it seems to be going well. I have now been to three explorer meetings. At the first one we played dodgeball for the evening (most fun!); the second consisted of going indoor climbing in Derby (also a lot of fun!!) and the third, last night, was wide games (e.g. capture the flag, sardines) out at the local Scout campsite and recreation ground Drum Hill (yet more fun!!!). I am looking forward learning everyone’s names and doing more activities with the group in the future.

That is the first move up. Now for the second. In the Explorer age category there are three options: Explorers itself, Duke of Edinbugh award (DofE), and Young Leaders. I have decided not to go for DofE at present (though it remains an option for the future) but am doing the other two options. Explorers proper I have just related about, but I have not told you about Young Leaders. This is where Explorers help the adult leaders to plan, prepare and run activities for younger sections. Very luckily, Mum was in contact with our acting Group Scout Leader for 1^st Belper and we have been able to negotiate me a Young Leader place at 1^st Belper Beavers (the move down).

Doing Young Leaders with Beavers, attending Cubs, Scouts and now Explorers means rather nicely I have been in every single section other than Network, and as I’m not old enough for that anyway I can do that later. Young Leaders is also nice as in that my former Patrol Leader from Scouts is the other Young Leader for the same Beaver group. On Wednesday I went to my Young Leader Meeting, where we did modules G&H of the YL program. This was about planning for sessions with our age groups. I have already decided to focus on the challenge awards, the badges you need for your Chief Scout’s Awards, with my planning; maybe doing the Outdoors Challenge Award first as this ties in with my personal interests and is a good thing to do with very very small young people. I look forward for doing more with both Young Leaders and Explorers, so look out for more info on what I do with them in future!

Hey Blog! A couple of weeks ago, I took part in the closing day for a project. I told you about the start of this project last year, so here is the sequel and conclusion!

In Midlands Makers (16th Oct. 2023), I told you about the Midlands Makers Challenge. “An initiative which has run for a few years now, with the aim of getting young people to think about climate (in)action and come up with solutions for problems,” I said it was, and it has certainly delivered. After the opening day at the old library last year, we interpreted the brief for ourselves and developed several ideas. By the time we had to whittle them down to just one, we had four good ones: Slope farms, where the water that ran down the hill was pumped back up and none was lost; Self-Cleaning windows, where rainwater washed the glass clean; Composting Astronaut toilets, where no water was used to flush; and water-saving toothbrushes, preventing you from wasting anything while you brush your teeth. The slope farms were good, but we didn’t know how to arrange them or where the energy would come from to pump the water. The toilets were funny, but didn’t get the required three votes, so we abandoned that idea. However, we thought the toothbrushes were relatable, fun, and useful, so we decided to go with them.

Presentation. We had to write a presentation on what we had done over the course of the challenge; this included how we started the brief, our focuses, our design, any challenges we encountered, how our models worked and any plans we had for the future of our product. We didn’t have much time for rehearsals. By the time we’d chosen our final design, there were only three days to go, so we had to have an extra meet to decide what we were going to say. We were still practicing on the ground floor of the museum before going upstairs to the room! However, when we did it for real in front of the other teams it went perfectly. We had prepared a slide show as well, which was helpfully clicked through by Mum at the points needed. All in all, though we are still waiting for judging, I think it went very well and I’m glad I took part in the project!

Hey Blog! A couple of weeks ago I participated in a volunteer project at a local youth club, so that’s what I’ll tell you all about!

The Old Farm Bus is a local youth club space where I go most months to the home-ed club they run there. However, the volunteering project was different. Volunteer It Yourself (VIY) – an organisation which goes about the country helping in restoration projects and involving young people – came to the site to help. The space, I should probably mention, is a farmyard with five buses – of which three are double deckers – and a horsebox, all of which have been transformed into friendly spaces for play. For instance, the D&D bus (see Welcome to the world of Dungeons and Dragons, 05/08/23, for more on this fab roleplay game) had, before VIY came, a set of wooden seating downstairs, a bench upstairs, and a lot of floor space. During the project, we have made it better and it now has additionally: a long shelf downstairs, a desk and wooden seating upstairs, and brightly coloured handrails. Other buses have been augmented in slightly different ways; the graffiti bus has had wooden seating added at the far end and a couple of planters made to go outside it. This is an account of what we did.

We were mostly using wood to build things. One person could have done all the work, but it was easier with a bunch of us. First step was using a tape measure to measure the space where a plank was needed, then give the measurement to the cutting station. At the cutting station, if you were on duty there, you cut the plank/s to size, sanded them if needed, and returned them to wherever they were required. Back in the buses, you then put the plank/s in place and screwed them in. However, with a lot of people working, we could have some in the buses doing measuring and screwing, and some at the cutting station doing sawing and sanding. I was mostly at the cutting station, sanding the long planks for skirting boards and bench covers, and swiftly cutting through the planks. Some people were slow but accurate in this, some were slow and inaccurate, and a few were both. At the cutting station, we had three saws and two sanders. We also needed a set square to cut at right angles (this could have been done by the saw but would have taken a bit longer); a pencil, to mark the cuts; and elsewhere a set of screws and a couple of drills (fancy names combi-drill and impact driver, the former to make the hole for the screws and the latter to push the screws in), to attach the plank to the support. However, we did not work only with wood. I saw some people using rope to make a seat in an old tyre, and a few tins of spraypaint were also in business. The wooden seating we made was varnished, and the walls of one bus were coated in some kind of felt to make a warmer and friendlier atmosphere! I did not help with these particularly, but they did add to the site.