M0KEO

Photograph by Alistair Pryde of Words & Pictures,

Ask not for whom the hound roos; she roos for thee.
(From: "Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." John Donne, 1624)

WE HAVE COMPLETED THE SIX-POINTS TOUR OF GREAT BRITAIN!
See the travel blog in the Adventures section for full details.

We are delighted to announce the engagement of our daughter, Hannah, to Ben Steele.
They are planning their wedding for October next year.
Further details to follow as they emerge!

Ben is a teacher and Special Constable, orignially from Newcastle and now living and teaching in County Durham. Hannah and Ben met at Edinburgh Napier University and have been together for a few years now. We're genuinely delighted and very excited to have Ben join the family.

With it being the school holidays, and with us being retired, we stayed at home this month. As it happened, summer didn’t really start and we went from a bit of nice weather in July to autumn in August; certainly the weather thought it was autumn, with lots and lots of rain. Mind you, it stayed quite warm so the garden went berserk and it was possible on a quiet day to hear things growing. Luxuriant is probably the right word!

In Court, we both picked up new mentees and Ian met them all at the Magistrates’ Swearing-In ceremony where he appeared as King – well, kind of ... as Deputy Lieutenant he took the place of the Lord-Lieutenant. See what I mean?

We spent a lovely long-weekend in Oxford looking up Lois’ cousins who we hadn’t met before. Lots of traffic in Oxford! We made use of the buses quite a lot, which Tara kind of enjoyed. We also visited Diddly Squat Farm Shop, made famous by Jeremy Clarkson’s Amazon programme “Clarkson’s Farm”. We thought we’d go early to miss the crowds that we were sure would turn up around lunchtime and early afternoon; but we didn’t expect the crowds of people that we came across! It was absolutely rammed full, with all the car parks full and hoards of people walking from where they’d abandoned their cards by the roadside into the farm. The queue to get into the shop looked like something out of a Disney theme park. We elected to miss this particular attraction! We also (we think) saw Harry’s Farm (from YouTube), but that was more of a locked gate across a road – no crowds there. During our stay we made use of Travelodge, which was excellent and which Tara really did enjoy!

A-level results came and went, as did GCSE results a week later. I was great to go into the UTC as governor to see the students get their results and to have confirmed where they would be going next ... or in some cases making new decisions because they did worse or better than they’d thought. Always lovely mornings.