Friend's Weekend

It's the annual Friends' meeting this weekend. Graham will be presenting an update on what's been happening this year & what's planned for the future. Joss Radmore will be speaking on Corn Dollies, & Ralph Harvey on 'The Realm of Fairie'. Levannah Morgan will also give an overview of the new Friends' Charity. Carole (from the museum) & her partner Martin will be playing some festive tunes at the Wellington Hotel on Saturday Night, so come along if you're around. Watch this space for reports on how it went over the next few days.

I go away for one week......

Good grief! I go off to New York for a week & I come back to mice, gigantic holes in the ground, yellow dots & a cat who seems to have forgotten how to go outside for a wee (and worse). The museum is looking even more like a building site with a 30 foot hole right outside the front door. Today they have put up a big blue metal building, to have cups of tea in I presume, in front of the door so we've put more signs up to let people know where we are. We've also had an influx of mice, probably disturbed by all the goings on, & Graham has humanely caught 9 to date. Here is a photo of Hannah letting one of the mice go in the woods. You'll notice a photo of some yellow jacketed chaps placing dots on the exterior of the museum. This is so surveyors can take an accurate measurement & check if their works are causing the building to wobble/crack/fall down. I've also included a photo of my good friends Roger Pratt, Billy, & Kathy (not pictured) from New York who I had dinner with last week. Roger is becoming very helpful by going through the internet photos of our artefacts & helping to identify some of the ones we're having trouble with. His photographic memory is coming in handy. He's the hair-free one, by the way. Oh yes, if anyone knows how to re-house train a cat, let me know!!

December Update

Well it's been a bit rainy the last few days but that hasn't stopped some hardened museum lovers from coming to visit. Obviously numbers aren't at August levels (hardly) but it's worth opening for those tourists who don't take holidays in the high season. There's been a massive amount of work outside the museum, with 30 feet holes being dug and cables being moved. I've attached a few photos for your viewing pleasure. Here is a lovely view of a hole for a pumping station and the view across to the museum with diggers in sight. Very attractive!!

With all the work, the builders have uncovered some interesting bits of history. An old culvert has been discovered running from outside the museum down as far as the slipway. Graham thinks this may harken back to the old pilchard press days and may have been a way of removing bits of fish back to the sea by slooshing them down to the slipway. Here's a picture of it. It's a little larger than a foot square. Rather interesting I think.

Graham has also been busy inside the museum working out how much we spend on electricity in a bid to reduce consumption & do our bit for carbon emissions. It seems we spend £3,600 per year on electricity, £1000 of which is taken up by dehumidifiers since the flood! So if anyone knows of any low electrickery dehumidifiers please let us know!!

Correction to Winter Opening Times

OOPS! I made a teeny mistake with the winter opening times. The museum will actually be closing at 5PM not 6PM as I mentioned in the previous blog. It has since been corrected. Sorry if this has caused any inconvenience. I have also been told that Graham did the actual carving of the happy smiling Halloween pumpkin and Carole had the lovely job of hollowing it out. I'm screwing up severely here. Anyway on a lighter note, thanks for the well wishes for Mavis. I must say she's taken to this recuperation lark quite well & has been glamorously tucking herself up in my bed under the duvet. She'll be expecting her pate in bed next. (Note to self: Must remember to iron pillow cases before next photo session)

Glass Knitting Needles

The museum is now selling replicas of the glass knitting needles on display in the Spells & Charms Section. Theyb prived very popular at the Halloween Festival in London a couple of weeks ago and have been selling well at the museum. I'll put some photos on soon.

Happy Samhain

Happy Samhain to everyone and apologies re the break in blogging. The re have been a few problems with blogger.com but they seem to have been fixed now. Mercury is retrograde after all! We have a rather fabulous pumpkin outside the museum which was expertly carved by Carole our resident crafty person. It looks so good we're loathe to remove it. Here it is in full beauty.