Very old and very young

Goodness me, what a meagre month for posting, as Daughter 2 has pointed out to me. We've been either away or busy.

To continue: there was one snag for Mr L about our cottage - see above. But it was otherwise lovely.

Herefordshire is very interesting - full of old and picturesque towns such as Ledbury (above). This is the Market Hall, which, as it says on the town website, "was not built until many centuries after the Market Place was established in 1122". The building of the Market Hall began in 1617 - more or less yesterday... .

There are lots of splendid places to visit, including Hay-On-Wye, which is famous for its bookshops - oh dear - guess what we did there... and Elgar's birthplace, above, which is surprisingly humble.

On the way home, we had a couple of nights in Liverpool, where we visited the exhibition of some terracotta warriors, lent from China. There were only a few of the estimated 8000 men, 500 horses with 130 chariots and also 150 cavalry horses -  most of which are still buried. It's all pretty astonishing - all that work, all that skill, two and a half thousand years ago.

Evidently they were once brightly coloured, as recreated above.

We also visited the Museum of Liverpool, with its cast of a 5000-year-old footprint found not far away. It's much the same size as my foot, though wider. It felt as if this chap had only just passed by a few moment ago, which is somehow quite touching. Or spooky. Or something. It made me think, anyway.

(As I type, at 22.58, Littlest Granddaughter, who's visiting, has woken up and is wailing piteously. Poor little scone; not that there's anything wrong except that she's awake. Daughter 2 is trying to persuade her to go back to sleep.)

When we got home (or to be precise, the day before we got home) my brother and sister-in-law arrived with an American distant cousin and her husband. A is an aerial dancer - it's hard to believe that we share any genes, since I'm not known for my dancing or my love of heights. In fact, we probably don't share many at all, since my great-grandmother was her great-great-grandmother. But she's a lovely girl. One beautiful day we all went to North Berwick and walked along the beach.

We've been having such hot, dry weather for weeks now - until today, when it's rained quite a bit. It's good for the gardens but I hope August isn't too wet, since that's Festival time and the city will be FULL of visitors.

And then we went up north for a few days.

(Littlest Granddaughter has fallen silent. Oh - no she hasn't. Oh dear.)