Sunday January 29th 2023

11:15 Lois wants to attend her church's communion service this morning at Ashchurch Village Hall, Tewkesbury, so we drive over there with a couple of packed lunches, and (sadly) a lot of the delicious peanut-butter cookies that Lois made yesterday - her idea is to hand several of them out. This is a bit of a blow to me, but I suppose I mustn't be greedy!

flashback to  August 2021: we first visit Ashchurch Village Hall

where the church's local services are held

11:45 We arrive at the hall during the between-services lunch-break. We take a table at the back and eat our lunch. Normally there are a lot of Iranian Christian refugees in attendance, but not today: on the last Sunday of every month the Iranians always gather at a café in Gloucester and hold a Farsi language service there. 

This means that today the hall at Ashchurch is a lot less crowded than it is normally, which is nice -  I counted about 20 people and 4 dogs, so one dog for every 5 people. The dogs are well-behaved, however, and they all know each other well. Unfortunately, during the service, a stranger-dog starts barking somewhere outside the hall, so the 4 dogs inside the hall answer with their own chorus of barking - I suppose they think they have to do this to protect us humans, so that's quite reassuring in a way!

When the preacher starts his exhortation at 12:45, it's still possible to see an instantaneous Farsi translation of his words on the screen behind him, which is interesting. If you look at this picture that I took during the lunch-break, you can already see some Farsi on the screen, if you look closely.

during the between-services lunch-break, local church elder Andy

is seen here chatting to Lucy, wife of this week's preacher

a close inspection of the screen on the wall behind the "platform"

shows a piece of Farsi script left over from a previous lecture

Lois's peanut-butter cookies  - she hands out several of them during the break - prove very popular, and there are numerous requests for the recipe.

The recipe is actually from Lois's hand-written collection that she compiled during our 3 years of living in the US, from 1982 to 1985. The recipe is entitled "Derek Walters' favourite peanut-butter cookies", and Derek Walters was the kid next door, same age as our elder daughter Alison: the two were great buddies during our time over there. 

excerpt from Lois's hand-written collection of recipes

that she compiled during our time in the US, 1982-1985

flashback to July 4th 1985: our daughter Alison with Derek Walters, 

the next-door-neighbour kid, watching the local Independence Day parade 

as it files past the end of our street: this was Alison's last chance 

to see the parade before we moved back to the UK

The recipe has US measures, so Lois will have to convert these for the benefit of all those who asked for a copy of it, but she's happy to do that.

flashback to yesterday: Lois's delicious peanut butter cookies

as they looked when fresh out of the oven - yum yum!

14:00 We drive home to Malvern. 

20:00 We relax on the sofa with the Radio Times crossword and watch the latest programme in Alice Roberts' current series of "Digging for Britain", which surveys the most significant results of archaeological excavations from the last twelve months, region by region. Tonight we're in the south of England again.

For Lois and me the stand-out item in tonight's roundup is the discovery of a huge Roman camp in Cornwall, the far south-western area of Britain that we both love. Till now the westernmost known Roman remains were in the neighbouring county of Devon.

Late last year archaeologists who were called out to investigate the site of a new road-building project near the Cornish village of Roche were surprised to find traces of a huge 500 x 300 yd Roman military camp, with its characteristic shape of rectangle with curved corners, the shape that the Romans loved, which is exciting! It's a huge encampment, and could have accommodated up to 10,000 people.

the plan of the huge camp - about 500 yards long by 300 yards wide

Within a few years of the Roman invasion of 43AD, almost all of southern Britain had been conquered. And the team excavating the site believe that this camp in Cornwall was part of the original invasion force under Emperor Vespasian in the 50's AD.

Another characteristic of Roman defensive ditches that archaeologists have found on the site is the so-called "ankle-breaker". This was a square-cut slot, designed to catch and twist the feet of enemy soldiers and horses. Only the bottom 12 inches of the slot survive today - it would have been much deeper 2 thousand years ago!

Yikes!  

Fascinating stuff!!!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!!!!