Roger’s Rambles

St. Thomas [Aquinas] had a sound mind, and it was he who really taught us to distinguish without separating.
Jacques Maritain, in The Peasant of the Garonne.

This post concludes the ruminations on the theme of differentness I began here. I look again at racial matters and at vocal and genealogical language.

This posting is long and wordy, so I’ll quite understand if you skip some or even all of it. I’ve split it into three numbered parts.

1. It’s them effnicks, innit?

The adjective, “ethnic”, originated in the 15th century, when it referred to nations that were neither Christian nor Jewish but gentile, heathen or pagan. It comes from the Greek word for nation.

The modern meaning, first recorded in the 19th century, is to do with race or specific to a race or nation — ethnological, to give it a scientific name. Note that it doesn’t say it’s to do with a specific race or nation or religious affiliation or skin colour.

In other words, WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) are just as much an ethnic group as are, say, “BAMs” (Brown African Muslims). WASPS are, of course, the main ethnic group in Britain, so its members’ use of “ethnic” to describe people of other groups is just a way of pointing up differences.

I was recently talking to a friend of a friend, who described her part of a northern city as having a large ethnic population. I was tempted to say, “Yes, 100 per cent”, but decided for once to keep a diplomatic silence. She might as well have said it has a large human population, yet this person is no racist.

This is not a new habit of thought. Over 1,500 years ago, the WASPS (in this case, White Anglo-Saxon Pagans) who invaded and took over England forced the existing Celtic inhabitants out to the borders of the country — Scotland, Cornwall and Wales. They even gave the last group its modern name, calling them Wealas (i.e. Welsh). In Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons, it means “foreign”. Nothing changes much.

Some immigrant organisations and publications collude in the misuse of the word, in a sort of linguistic Stockholm Syndrome. For example, Ethnic Now proclaims that: “Our goal is to be the most valued UK ethnic information resource for our users; keeping mainstream and ethnic media in touch with forthcoming ethnic events and news stories.” You can be sure they’re not paying a lot of attention to matters involving only white folk.

Fish and chips are ethnic food, too

The confusion over the term, some of it honest, some of it disingenuous, has also affected supermarkets. It’s common to see shelves offering “ethnic food”. This, in Orwell’s term, is doublethink. Not only is “ethnic” being misused in the ordinary way, it also ignores the presence of Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Mexican and other foreign (or pretend-foreign) foods on the shop’s other shelves.

It’s good that the selection of foodstuffs should be so eclectic — I grew up in the days of food rationing, when bananas were a rare treat — but sad that their retailers should abuse the language so.

Sainsbury’s in Christchurch, Hampshire, takes muddled racial thinking a step further. It has adjoining sets of shelves labelled, respectively, “Asian Foods” and “Oriental Foods”. Now there’s a fine distinction. Oddly, there was nothing from, say, Turkey, Mongolia or Laos in the first set.

But then what can you expect from a firm that thinks “Five items or less” is acceptable English, that “instore” is a recognised term and that broadcasts “colleague announcements” over its loud hailers? That last always make me smile at its Hyacinth Bucket-like pretentiousness.

The other day, I laughed aloud — and got funny looks — when someone at the Dorchester branch of Waitrose asked over the public address for a cleaner to go to “the ethnic aisle”. I wonder if that’s what the bride and groom walk down in a “mixed” marriage (another term redolent of racism).

2. We all have accents

Accentless English whisky over chocolate

This is how a chap called Richard Knight describes his voice here. I’m not sure what an inebriating and fattening voice sounds like but it is the “accentless” I’m concentrating on.

There’s no such thing as accentless English. (I expect the same can be said of many languages.) What Mr Price, and many other people, probably mean by the expression is what’s technically known as Received Pronunciation. “Received” here means accepted, as in “received wisdom”.

When the term was coined in 1914, it was defined as the pronunciation of “the great public schools, the universities, and the learned professions”. Other terms for it are Received Standard, BBC English, Oxford English (which must infuriate well-spoken Cantabrigians) or simply Standard English.

Received Pronunciation was originally the kind of English spoken by educated people in the south-eastern Midlands. About 500 years ago, it migrated to London and the Home Counties, effectively becoming placeless in the late 19th century. If someone’s an RP user, you wouldn’t know if you’re listening to a Scot or Cornishman. (Should a bit of local accent slip through, that person is said to speak modified RP.)

Moving up in the world

The RP accent is also, of course, something of a class indicator. From being the way of speaking found among pupils at preparatory and public schools and among professional people, it turned in on itself to become the sort of accent you needed if you were to progress in those spheres.

Many’s the person who changed his or her early way of speaking to fit into a school or work setting. You’d never guess, for example, that Joan Bakewell originally spoke broad Lancashire, that Melvyn Bragg is a Cumbrian and that Noel Coward was a lower-class boy from Teddington.

A few weeks ago I bought the DVD of Sexy Beast, one of my favourite recent films and one in which the characters are nearly all Cockneys. Among the ‘extras’ on the disc were interviews with the main cast. Except for Ray Windsor, who’s a working-class Londoner, the rest spoke right proper. Yet among them were an Indian, an Australian and a Mancunian (with a Scottish father).

They were all, of course, also actOORS, whose vocal armoury normally includes RP. It was once a professional necessity, as were the variants of it, such as ‘county’ English.

Forty years ago (was it really that long?), a popular book on pronunciation appeared. Called Fraffly Well Spoken, it guyed the sort of English spoken in the expensive parts of London. Its author was an Australian, Alistair Morrison, aka Afferbeck Lauder. He previously wrote the equally popular How to Talk Strine.

Morrison’s examples of West End speech included: “Meddier boy, youm snofferget her femmlair are Bocksher people, enchies fraffly clefferetter renching flozz.”

Read aloud, this becomes: “My dear boy, you must not forget her family are Berkshire people, and she’s frightfully clever at arranging flowers.”

The taimes they are a-changin’

What constitutes ‘proper’ English moves with the times. Only the Queen and some of the inhabitants of Tetbury speak the same Queen’s English as was common 50 or more years ago. Even “BBC” English is not what it was, which is just as well. Here is a recording of newsreader, Alvar Lidell, in 1945. How ornate and antique it sounds.

In 1926, John Reith, the Beeb’s first managing director, set up a committee to regulate pronunciation on the airwaves. During the Second World War, this became the BBC Pronunciation Unit, which survives.

Reith sought “a style or quality of English that would not be laughed at in any part of the country”. Any newsreader today who spoke like Lidell would indeed be laughed at, as being too posh.

It is, in part, the fear of being thought too posh, or ’stuck-up’, that has led to the rise of Estuary English among young people and older people who should know better. To my ears it’s hideous and slovenly but I’m neither young nor worried about trying to sound ‘cool’.

This inverse snobbery is nothing new. Mick Jagger, Nigel Kennedy and Jamie Oliver, for instance, were all thoroughly middle-class lads before they decided to step down a rung or two vocally.

There are bastions of high-RP that persist, though. My wife and I were at Covent Garden a few years ago to watch that wonderful dancer, Sylvie Guilleme. In front of us sat some chap talking to his friends in the plummiest of accents. At one point, he referred to Anthony Dowell. At least, I assume it was he — what came out of this chap’s gob sounded more like “Anthony Dahl”.

You have to feel sorry for people like that. Their inability to speak English properly is not really their fault; it’s a combination of background, education and peer pressure — no doubt literally in some cases.

Which brings me to…

3. Ancient families

All families are old. It’s just that mine have lived in the same place a long time and happened to write things down.

Well said, Tilda Swinton. She did, however, neglect to point out that such families typically also own, and hang on to, large lumps of countryside and a similarly large house or two from which to view it. I don’t blame them — I’d do the same in their shoes — but it bears mention.

This ancient families folderol is the last of my three false distinctions. It is one that people seem willingly to embrace or submit to. Even the otherwise admirable Andrew Marr refers to these in his racy and entertaining A History of Modern Britain.

As Ms Swinton says, we all come from old families. Pretending that poor or lower-class people do not is another way of showing one’s supposed superiority, of reminding them of their place. It’s like saying Columbus discovered America. All those millions of unrecorded Indians — there for tens of thousands of years — don’t count.

A history digression

Arthur Marwick, the late professor of history at the Open University, used to advise students to distinguish between witting and unwitting testimony.

I was reminded of this some months ago when in Dorset. Visiting Tolpuddle, I naturally went to the “martyrs’” museum, set among some 20th-century homes for retired trade unionists.

The victimised labourers were extremely poor people, which is the point of their story, and left few artefacts for later generations to view. The museum therefore consists mainly of written information about them.

This is colourfully set out in posters and banners, some of them stridently propagandising. Yet there is no doubt that a great injustice was visited upon these six men. Wikipedia says more, as does this modern Australian account.

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The instigator of their persecution was a well-off local landowner and magistrate, James Frampton. He lived at nearby Moreton, where he had a large house with an adjoining church.

While I was in Dorset, this church (which is well worth visiting, especially for its modern engraved windows) had a flower festival. Greeting visitors was a pleasant woman, with whom I fell into conversation. (I won’t name her, to save possible embarrassment.)

“I’m a Frampton,” she told me, so I asked her about some aspect of distant family history (not the ‘martyrs’). She closed her eyes momentarily and said, “I’m just remembering portraits.”

It was a perfect Marwick moment. How many of the six labourers’ descendants could do likewise, except perhaps recall pictures of their transported ancestors?

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It’s in the genes

Modern science reinforces the notion that all families are old, regardless of station in life. In fact, it takes the idea many millennia past such trifling concerns as whether one’s great(^n)-grandfather or whoever came over with the Normans or was sired out of wedlock by some randy monarch. More than that, science makes clear that human descent is through the female line, which is contrary to most British, indeed most European, conventions.

The science involved is that of microbiology, specifically that of the human cell. We are composed of roughly 100,000,000,000,000 or 10^14 of these. Every cell contains up to a thousand small energy generators called mitochondria.

(The word comes from the Greek for thread and a grain, because they look somewhat like a grain of rice with a piece of string folded inside, if you can visualise such a thing. This is all Alice in Wonderland territory.)

These tiny ‘organelles’, each about a thousandth of a millimetre long, convert the sugars in our bloodstream into ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which powers the cells in our bodies.

(There’s not much more of this science stuff. It is relevant.)

DNA counts

You’re no doubt familiar with the initials “DNA” (deoxyribonucleic acid, in case the question comes up in a quiz). Its structure was discovered as recently as 1953. This is the spiral messenger for the information cells use to reproduce themselves. It’s each person’s chemical inheritance.

Most human DNA is packed into molecules called chromosomes. These sit in the cell’s nucleus, the largest of its organelles. It is this form of the substance, sometimes called genomic DNA, that activities such as forensic science and disease research pay so much attention to.

Not all DNA is in the cell’s nucleus. A different form occurs in mitochondria. Unlike genomic DNA, which merges information from both your mother and father, this comes only from your mother’s cells. She got it from your grandmother, who got it from your great-grandmother and so on, for thousands and thousands of years.

Knowing of mitochondrial DNA’s persistence, researchers have gone back in time to try to find out more about human ancestry. They believe they can trace it to an African woman who lived roughly 200,000 years ago.

This idea is at first incredible but has persuaded many eminent scientists of its validity as a theory. They have even given her a name, “Mitochondrial Eve”. (The reference might perhaps puzzle anyone not brought up in a Jewish, Christian or Muslim society. Ethnic bias again.)

There’s a clear summary of the method and its findings on this BBC page. Scientific American gives a more detailed account of our current knowledge of human origins.

Both the method and its implications are disputed, but that’s the point of science. Out of those arguments comes better knowledge. (It’s the reverse of what lies behind such pseudo-science as Creationism and Intelligent Design. These start from a desired conclusion and select, or bend, the evidence to fit.)

If the researchers are right, every person alive comes from a very old family. Also, his or her descent is through the female line; it’s matrilineal.

Bringing us back to our starting point, this practice is found in many ethic groups. The largest of them is Jews. If your mother is Jewish so are you, irrespective of your father’s identity or religion.

Although the original reasons for this are lost to us, it’s a practical approach. Even if you were fathered by some marauding Amalekite, Crusader or Cossack, you would probably still be raised in a Jewish household and thus learn and, in turn, pass on your religion.

And, despite what many tellers of bad jokes believe, you would speak in one of a large variety of “Jewish” accents.

Selah

Isn’t it funny how one ‘tunes in’ to a place? Devon, which I left at the end of July, has magnificent scenery, some lovely churches, interesting towns, good pubs and other things I like. The site I was at was nigh-on perfect, with a superb view and an air of tranquillity. Nearby Kingsbridge was very pleasant (see here). While in Devon, I met three friends, separately, for an enjoyable lunch (in different pub each time).

Viewed objectively, it was an excellent place to be, yet I never really felt engaged with it or at home. I can’t explain why. I do know I found the architecture, domestic or public, generally unexceptional. Also, constantly driving down narrow lanes was a real bore. But are those enough to explain my reaction to the place?

I’d been to South Devon several times before, on holiday and for courses at Slapton Ley study centre, and felt nothing amiss then. Perhaps it was my being on my own this time or else it was just me. Oh well.

Gloucestershire was different. I immediately felt relaxed there and found so much to explore that I came away after six weeks wanting to go back soon. The county is full of geological, historical and architectural interest, with wide roads (hooray!), canals, a great river, many old mills and some lovely scenery. It joins Northumberland, North Yorkshire and Dorset as one of my favourite counties.

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Nailsworth

This is a welcoming little town, population about 6,000 souls, wedged in a narrow groove in the Cotswolds formed by the passage of the Nailsworth Stream. The road north takes a steeply winding route to the 600-acre Minchinhampton Common, an attractive expanse of pastureland, much of it owned by the National Trust.

Although the centre of Nailsworth is not as pretty as those of, say, Painswick or Tetbury, it has a better range of shops. The other two places are primarily tourist destinations.

Nailsworth has, for instance, an efficient launderette (The Little Launderette), which first drew me there some weeks ago, a good secondhand bookshop, a small book & CD shop and plenty of places selling food and other staple goods. The town council encourages trade by providing free short-term parking near the shops.

I also like Leonard Walker’s butcher’s shop, which sells an excellent game pie, and William’s Kitchen, a delicatessen and fish shop, where I got a pungent local goats’ cheese. There are several highly-rated restaurants, which I did not sample.

Less impressive was Hobbs House Bakery, part of a small chain. I had seen about it on the Web, where its home page proclaimed it as one of Rick Stein’s “food heroes”. (What’s one of those — a person who dashes into a burning kitchen and saves someone’s bacon?)

I bought from this shop two small loaves of three-seeded bread and, as a Friday treat, an iced coffee and walnut cake. “£7.70, please.” “Crikey,” I thought, “it had better be bloody good!”

Well, the bread was. The cake was another matter, being squashy and structureless and with the expected flavours swept aside by a flood of sugar. If there were walnuts, I didn’t notice them. I threw it away after trying it twice, for the sake of my teeth and blood sugar level.

I then went on to the Internet and checked the prices of similar goods as delivered by two supermarkets. Waitrose wanted £4.86 and Tesco, from memory, £4.27. Surprisingly little to choose between them on price, then, although experience suggests Waitrose would be the superior on quality. Its bread, I know, would be nearly as good as that from Nailsworth. If its cake weren’t better, I’d eat my hat instead.

So, can Hobbs House justify its extraordinary prices? Not in my view. Charging nearly 60% more than a large multiple store for bread slightly better and cake definitely worse is, frankly, indefensible. You might have a less polite term for it.

Incidentally, I was amused by the resemblance of this shop’s name to the fictional location of the old Hammer film, Quatermass and the Pit.

A good eatery

My Gloucestershire gustatory experiences finished on a high note, fortunately. Last weekend, my son and his girlfriend came up to Cheltenham for a couple of days. Their Saturday was sunny (jammy devils) and they toured around some of the villages in the north-eastern Cotswolds. They’ll be back, too.

That evening, we met for dinner at The Village Pub in Barnsley. Despite its name, the village (which is lovely) wasn’t far away, being near Cirencester. There were no whippets, flat ‘ats or flatter vowels in evidence, therefore.

I won’t bore you with a lot of detail but the Imam Bayildi I had cold as a starter set the tone for the rest of the meal. Unlike the usual presentation, with the eggplant halved and filled, this was chopped and served as a mould, with a spoonful of yoghurt on top. Mouth watering and full of delightful flavours!

Service was erratic and the chairs were hard but these matters did not detract from an excellent, and reasonably priced, meal. The Entre-Deux-Mers we had with the main course was just right. I’d go again tomorrow.

In the Marches

I’m now in Herefordshire, not far from Kington, with my caravan parked outside a friend’s 16th-century farmhouse. Once I’d pitched the van, I went into Kington. It’s small but I found a large public park. Jenny enjoyed zooming around that after a day cooped up in car and van.

Yesterday I went to Leominster, which was quaint and busy. The staff at the tourist info office were helpful, even though Jenny tried to make off with a fluffy toy from a display shelf.

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Then to Weobley, a pretty ‘black and white’ village with a good bookshop selling new and secondhand works together. I came out well laden. (The two places are pronounced “Lemmster” and “Webbly”, by the way.)

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After that, I went to Yazor, four miles away from where I’m staying. This sounds as though it belongs in the Levant but its name derives from Iagesoure, which means “Iago’s ridge” (as in the Welsh first name; nothing Shakespearean). There’s a fine but redundant — and rather neglected — Victorian church there that I spent some time photographing. There are more pictures of it on Flickr.

Lots to see and do!

On Wednesday, I drove the 9 miles to Nailsworth to visit the milling museum at Dunkirk Mill. The enterprising and energetic Stroudwater Textile Trust runs this. Although I was late arriving, the two volunteer guides — Terry and Anne — each put aside plenty of time explaining to me the background and techniques of making woollen cloth.

The museum consists of a single ground-floor room in one of a set of mill buildings, now converted into flats and houses. The room nonetheless contains enough machinery, with before and after samples of work, to show you the basics of making West of England cloth. I recommend visiting it or some of the Trust’s other properties if you’re in the area.

If you can’t get to one of the mills, there’s an explanation of a similar process at the Web site of the Cotswold Woollen Weavers, based at Lechlade, 30 miles to the east. You might need to read it twice to get to grips with the terminology.

Origins of milling

Like that of many settlements on this side of the Severn, Nailsworth’s history is bound up with cloth milling. It is a simple story. Start with limestone countryside and cover it with extensive sheep pasture. Benefit from a mild climate that encourages the growth of both grass and animals.

Shear the beasts occasionally and spin the fleece into wool. Dye it or bleach it. Weave the wool into fine quality cloth. Sell it in Britain, especially for military uniforms, and all around the world.

Repeat for centuries, first using manual methods, often in workers’ homes, then harnessing the power of the water flowing through the local valleys and, finally, steam. Become rich, until other countries better your prices.

This is why there were at one time 170 cloth mills in Stroud’s ‘five valleys’, in one of which Nailsworth sits. Those mill buildings that remain are mainly the larger and later examples. They are handsome structures, tall and many-windowed. Most of them were made of the same limestone that the sheep lived over.

Cotswold stone ranges in colour from greyish white, through deep honey to brown. Industrial and domestic buildings made with it are not only attractive in their own right, they look as though they belong in their landscape.

Mill buildings were typically tall because land in the valleys is scarce — building upwards allows expansion. Just run more belts (see picture) to the floor above and install drive shafts to power the new machines.

This was how one distributed the power that drove the later stages of the industrial revolution. The small alternating-current electric motor, which we rely on today, was not widely available until the end of the 19th century.

Like those elsewhere, the Gloucestershire mills have many windows so that workers can see better what they’re doing. Spinning, dyeing, weaving and finishing demand close inspection. The human eye and hand are still the best quality control tools in producing woollen cloth.

Nearly all the old mills are redundant. They are now used as offices, warehouses or flats, all of which saves them from being neglected or knocked down. One working mill remains. Milliken & Co continues to make West of England cloth for snooker and billiards tables and for tennis balls. (To show it is a really, really modern organization, it even presents Web visitors with this fine example of corporate speak.)

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There’ll be more on Nailsworth and Gloucestershire next time.

I spent the first three weeks of my stay in Gloucestershire at Standish Court Farm, near Stroud.

The 20th-century farmhouse is part of a cluster of buildings, all contained within a radius of a couple of hundred yards. The oldest building is the church of St Nicholas, built around 1320, whose needle-sharp spire you can see from miles away. (The picture left is from the farm drive.)

Next to the church is Standish Court, again 14th-century and originally one of the houses of the abbot of Gloucester. It was divided into several separate residences in the 1950s. Also adjoining the church is a 16th-century village hall, at one time the almonry of a priory. All are in the local Cotswold limestone, as is a half-ruined gatehouse, again built in the 14th century.

An almonry is the place from where an establishment, such as a priory or royal court, would distribute alms to the needy. This was often in return for some duty, such as praying for a local benefactor or benefactress. A derivative of the word, “almoner”, comes down to us today as meaning the welfare officer of a hospital, although that term is also on the way out.

The church is plainer inside than I expected. According to my 1970 edition of the Pevsner for this part of the county, any mediaeval plasterwork was stripped away by a Victorian ‘restorer’. They were such vandals at times.

There are nevertheless some interesting features in the church, notably a colourfully-repainted memorial to Sir Henry Winston, lord of the manor from 1556 until his death in 1609.

Winston’s daughter, Sarah, married a barrister, John Churchill, and gave birth to a son, Winston Churchill. He in turn fathered the Duke of Marlbough, one of whose late-19th century descendants also bore the name Winston Churchill. You might have heard of him.

According to the church’s guide book, the corpse of King Edward II rested there one night on its way to burial at Gloucester in 1327. Unverified but widely-believed history relates that Edward was murdered by a painful form of colonic irrigation while imprisoned at Berkeley Castle. Berkeley is about 10 miles south of Standish, which is the same distance from Gloucester.

(The guide book is by the splendidly-named Bonham Bazeley, whose day job was as the director of a nearby plant nursery. He was also the author of a standard work on growing fruit trees.)

Once again, Britain surprises with local links to national events. Who would have thought such a tiny place as Standish would have intimate connections with the death of a monarch and the family of two great wartime leaders? And what fine buildings to have next door to where you’ve pitched your caravan!

Happy birthday, darling. You are and ever will be dimidium animae meae.

Hooray! I have at last finished the reference pages. And it’s only 13 months after I started this blog. Just call me hyperactive.

I’ve handed out laurel wreaths in the page on Shopping. Linked to that is Where to find the multiples. I hope they help, whether you’re a caravanner or not.

This weekend I’ve completed the penultimate set of reference pages — Equipment and, enlarging on that, For caravanoraks. I hope you enjoy them and find them useful.

The next, and final, reference pages, will be on Shopping. They’ll be ready in a day or two, after which I can concentrate on telling you about where I’ve been and what I’ve done. Thanks for your patience.

Jumping on the bandwagon

In a supermarket last week, I saw that an enterprising brewer is offering a “carbon neutral” beer. Do we care? Is brewing a major consumer of fossil fuels or emitter of so-called greenhouse gases?

I’d rather know what it tastes like.

Despite the miserable sodden weather we’re having this so-called summer, I’m enjoying myself here in Gloucestershire. I’ve been here a week and have done some exploring, which I’ll tell you about soon. (There are a few pictures from the area on Flickr, with some from Devon.)

I visited here before, with my wife and son, but it was over 20 years ago and I remember almost nothing of where we went. As a result, it’s as though this were my first visit. And all the more enjoyable for that!

Keeping me busy has been, as promised, completing some of the supporting pages for the blog. In particular, I have now finished the list of the sites I have stayed at and my assessment of them. Not only has this called for large measures of Solomonic judgement, it has also meant a great deal of Web page tweaking.

Brilliant as it is, WordPress, which this site is made using, doesn’t cope well with tabular material. I’ve therefore had to use a couple of other programs for this. As you’ll see, if you click on Site details (normally reached from within Sites), the appearance of the page differs from the others. I hope you don’t mind.

The next targets are Equipment and Shopping. They should prove less demanding.

Now I’m going to have a late dinner and, over it, watch the rest of The Godfather Part II. I might not have TV but I can watch favourite old films on DVD. They’re so cheap these days that they cost about the same as we used to pay for a day’s rental of a videotape.

It won’t be long before some little tot — a grandchild, perhaps — says to you: “What was VHS, Grandad/Grandma?” Will you be able to answer? Can you do so now?

PS In a slight change, for the sake of tidiness, you now get to Background via Hello….

I’ve been fettling the site with the help of Sadish Balasubramanian, who designed the theme. The new layout is even better than the previous one, I feel, and just needs a bit of work on the fonts at the top, so they’re readable against the new background picture.

That photo, by the way, is one of mine — see here for the whole thing. (Click on “All sizes” to see it larger.)

[A few hours later] Done! I can now concentrate on content.

Last week I changed the Internet service supplier for this blog. The previous supplier’s standards have slipped. This prompted me to update the blog’s design. It was a year old and needed refreshing.

I hope you like the result. It’s not finished yet; I need to iron out a couple of details with its designer (see “Technical bit” in Hello…). Also, I need to restore all the old entries.

You can now comment on entries, so perhaps you’ll let me know what you think of it so far.

Also, you now log directly on to the Blog at www.rogersrambles.org. I’ve dropped the “/blog” at the end, which I’ve been wanting to do from the first but couldn’t for technical reasons.

I’ve finally got round to filling in some of the supporting pages and hope you find them useful or at least interesting.

Gloucestershire beckons, so I’ll start making travel entries again once I’m there.