Bluebells

 It being a slow Sunday, Judy and I decided to get the bus out to the spot near Huntercombe where she used to work, to view the bluebells in the forest out there. We walked down to Huntercombe, the old adolescent prison where Judy used to work, which is now a holding centre for illegal immigrants awaiting deportation. Judy struck up a conversation with a guard who was attaching leaflets to a notice board out the front. He said he's been working there for 20 years and remembered Judy. Since we had just missed the bus back to Wallingford, we went to that old pub on the Henley road near there. It's now a craft centre/coffee shop cafe and they're having a bit of a festival at the moment. There was a large open workshop and among many other crafts people, ther was a white haired old bloke was busy carving wooden spoons. He had a large pile of them heaped up around his workbench while he diligently whittled away and at the same time engaged about 4 or 5 people in conversation. Now I'm in the market for a carved wooden spoon since the one I had didn't cope at all well with the modern dishwasher experience. So I picked out a suitable replacement from the pile and in a gap in his conversations, asked him how much. He said that none of the spoons were for sale as he hadn't finished them yet.