I suppose you'd describe it is bright here - the sun breaks out from time to time but the rest of the time it is cloudy.
Still, earlier on I managed to identify a few microshells while sat outside in the summerhouse!

We are going to have a look at a garden centre, Southdown Nurseries, is it called? PW or Martle, have i got that right?? The Mrs wants to go there. I wouldnt mind having a walk today as well, say the Undercliff walk down in Brighton, definite Martle and PWs territory!! Have a nice bank holiday people!!

Hmm -I don't think I'm going to answer that, Milly. But they got their comeuppance, didn't they? Pity that you finish up doing the work, though, but I don't expect that's new.

I've got an Oreck, quite expensive, but good because it's very lightweight so easy to carry upstairs. It's getting rather old now. I have a cylinder Moulinex as well, again rather old. I quite fancy a bagless one. I rather resent spending money on such boring things, but I suppose they're necessary.

We had an Oreck upright, Mary. Good for a few years then started going wrong and not worth repairing. Now have a Bosch pet hair remover which is quite good but I have heard, Milly, that Henrys are excellent, so might go for one of them next time. The Bosch bags cost a fortune. I sometimes try to empty and reuse the bag but what a dirty, horrible job pulling out all the dirt with your finger and thumb - you end up with dust all over you and up your nose even when it's not a windy day!

Did anyone watch the programme last nght on the medieval mind, following the story of Christina in Codicote, just outside Snorbens?  It was a marvellous programme.  What a feisty lady she must have been - to survive at least to her sixties for a start!  She lived through civil war, famine and the plague, married twice and had two children which both survived to adulthood.  I was lost in admiration for that lady!  What was very interesting was showing the same market today, with the stall site that she would have used!

It was BBC4 and called Christina: A Medieval Life
BBC Four Monday 5 May 2008

 If you go to the BBC4 home page you will be able to see how you can watch it now on BBC iPlayer.


Historian Michael Wood delves through medieval court records to follow the fortunes of a village in Hertfordshire and, more particularly, the family of peasant Christina Cok.

The 14th century was a perilous time in British history, shot through with famine, plague and war. It was a time of climate change, virulent cattle diseases and, above all, the Black Death. But it was also the time when modern mentalities were shaped, not just by the rulers but increasingly by the common people. It was the beginning of the end of serfdom, the growth of individual freedom and the start of a capitalist market economy.

Michael chooses an everyday story of a medieval country family through which to illustrate the bigger picture of how the character and destiny of ordinary British people was being shaped. It is history told not from the top of society but from the bottom - and especially through the eyes of the forgotten half of the workforce, women.

Michael brings to life the story of a 14th-century extended family: peasant Christina Cok, her father Hugh, estranged husband William, and her children John and Alice. Michael shows us that though their lives might at first seem quite alien, you only have to scratch below the surface to find uncanny connections with modern-day Britons. In them, you can see our beginnings as a nation of shopkeepers and the roots of the British love affair with beer and football. Perhaps more importantly is the triumph of that sturdy and cussed streak of individualism that has been a characteristic of 'Britishness' down the centuries.

Oh bugler! 

Hmm.  Dunno then.   It will maybe come out on dvd later.