Sheffield's Bear Pit

I'm still exploring our new area! One day this Spring I paid my first visit to the city of Sheffield. First of all to its Botanical Garden (which are absolutely excellent for anyone with an interest in plants):

It has one of the oldest glasshouses still standing (1830s) full of scary flowers like this triffid thing:

It has a fossilised tree-stump, discovered in a local coal seam:

It sells the strangest looking tea ever:

And it has a BEAR PIT!

This dates from Victorian times and no one seems terribly certain whether actual bear-baiting took place in there - it was probably just a zoo enclosure. The bears got moved out after a child fell in and was savaged, it's said.

From one of the oldest glasshouses then to a very modern one, and one of the largest in built here in the UK within the last century: the Winter Garden in the town centre:

No bears though...

Burne-Jones at the Tate

In the Depths of the Sea
(the only picture where anyone is smiling!)

Since I spent a day in London last week, here are some photos I took in the Tate Britain exhibition of the work of Pre-Raphaelite Edward Burne-Jones (1833-98) - which is on for another month: if you want to go, get there EARLY and allow yourself lots of browsing time.

The Annunciation

I'm just sorry that my photos don't give you a proper idea of the SCALE of many of the pieces - which were huge in most cases - nor of the richness imparted by the colour and gilding.

The Wine of Circe

The Pilgrim Outside the Garden of Idleness

The Wheel of Fortune

Love and the Pilgrim

Portrait of Amy Gaskell

They had the whole Perseus Cycle there, in various forms

 -  though some pieces were unfinished

And the whole Briar Rose Cycle too:

 

Burne-Jones and his ilk are wildly unfashionable with critics, but OMG the beauty...

Spirits, or The Uninterrupted Dream

Greatly recommended, for anyone who has a chance to go.

Playing hooky

I spent yesterday in London rampaging around as many museums as I could in a day!

I saw this at the Tate Britain:

Which was just GLORIOUS - Burne-Jones isn't even my fave Pre-Raphaelite, but this collection of paintings and tapestries was just beyond amazing. I will post more photos later...

I went to the British Museum

for this:

And this:

And I finished off at the delightful Wellcome Collection of historical medical "objects" collected by a Victorian philanthropist -

for this kinda thing:

Birthing model for trainee doctors

A bourdalou - a chamber pot for ladies!

Roman votive offerings

and for this:

A BEETROOT LATTE :O

Then I went home and watched Bandersnatch, just to balance out my aching feet with an aching head!

When I was 51...

... I hefted a golden eagle!

Every year, soon after my birthday, I like to take a look back at stuff I've done for the first time EVER, in order to ensure that I'm not too deep into my middle-aged rut.

Here goes with this year just past ... when I was 51:

For the very first time IN MY LIFE:

• I drove a BMW Z4 35is convertible sports car (bright red, of course)
• I got a photographic driver's license instead of the tatty old paper thing I'd had since a teenager
• I acquired a smartphone!
• And bought a blu-ray player (not yet plugged in, I admit)
• We moved into a house that's actually big enough to hold all our books. (This is it, Peak House ... next stop is a nursing home)

• I thus became the owner of some chandeliers. Still getting rid of them...
• I stained my deck. It took 4 days and lasted less than 4 months, so I'm pretty pissed off about that, believe me
• I used a supermarket scan-as-you-shop handheld device. It's like Star Trek, I tell you!

• I ate a fortune cookie
• I visited Uzebkistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. 
• I attended our local Parish Council meeting ( which was one of the most horrifically poisonous, bitter, unpleasant public exchanges I've ever seen. Jesus Christ on a bike...)
• I visited Intensive Care in a hospital ... in fact I spent a lot of time hospital visiting 😔
• I delivered a eulogy at a family funeral
• I used Discord to play new-to-me RPG Numenera 

• I reviewed a Thesaurus - and got my quote on the back cover!

• I was commissioned to write a professional RPG scenario
• I went to the Edgelit convention, which may be my favourite now
• I had three dark fantasy stories published! (That's more than my erotica count this year ... the house move and family obligations really slowed me down I'm afraid)

• I picked the stories for a Sexy Little Pages anthology:

Now the hard editing work begins...

• I joined FreeCycle and the National Trust
• I bought a hanging basket for the front door, and a rotary dryer for the garden
• I hand-sewed some curtains
• I lit a Yankee Candle ... 

Shit, what was that about a middle-aged rut?!
I'm DOOOOOOOMED 😱😱😱

The HU

The HU are Mongolian folk rockers, and the best thing on Youtube right now 💖💖💖

Who's a Big Boy then?

I have made a pilgrimage to what must surely be my spiritual home, and paid respects to my totem god.

Can you see him over my shoulder there?

It's the Cerne Abbas Giant, who is official possessor of the Biggest Dick in Britain - 36 ft long!

He's actually best seen from the sky:

Photo from Wikipedia, CC License

Carved into the chalk hillside above a Dorset village by hands unknown (but probably sticky), the Giant is ancient (at least early 17th Century) and may possibly be Romano-British or even older. No one knows. He's a big hit round Cerne Abbas. Apparently spending the night on his knob is helpful if you are trying to get pregnant - or so they say!

We  ate lunch in this nice pub:

Where we drank this beer:

See - travel does broaden the mind ;-)