A Peak Behind the Scenes…

John has been working really hard sifting through and editing all his bird pics, then making CDs for me to download for the blog. It then takes me some time (time rather than skill) loading them onto the blog and titling them all, especially when we don’t always know what the birds are called.

I am also hoping in the next day or so to write a bit more about our time at Shiwa Ng’andu, staying at ‘Africa House’. John also has some photos which I shall add to our John’s Photos gallery.

 I have also started transposing – if that is the word – my Great Grandmother Grace’s diary of 1870

(my Great Grandmother and of course Great Great Grandmother to all the Hall, Cragg and Fuller-Sessions young). So far I have been struck by how ‘modern’ she sounds, 145 years ago. 

But the whole of yesterday was taken up with a trip to Manchester to see a matinee performance of Inala at the Manchester Opera House. Inala is a Zulu ballet, described as ‘a dynamic marriage of contemporary dance and choral music’ – intricate rhythms and singing by the Ladysmith Black Mambazo and very dramatic dancing by members of the Rambert and Royal Ballets.

 

It was an excellent, most impressive performance, very different from the usual and one which we both throughly enjoyed. We rather overdid but but did not regret the rather late pre-matinee lunch and very early post-matinee supper, and arrived back feeling we had had a most indulgent day in many senses of the word!

 

We drove to Buxton station where we left the car and took the train to Manchester Piccadilly so the whole day was totally pleasant and undemanding! The train ride itself is rather charming, as long as you are not in a hurry, which we were not. It chugs along very slowly through mostly beautiful countryside, stopping at mostly very rural stations every few minutes along the route.

 

Finally – house-hunting… We are so happily ensconced in our rented cottage it is hard to feel very motivated, but at the back of our minds always is the need to find somewhere of our own. Every so often we make an attempt to view possible homes, but find on the whole that our aspirations far exceed our budget. The ones we could afford are often quite delightful, but reasonably priced only because they are in the middle of nowhere, not in Parwich, Bakewell or Ashbourne!