I always forget to take pictures!

The loom is on its way - predicted 13 to 16 days!

I used my bus pass (under threat, so I might as well make the most of it) to go to John Lewis to look for bugle beads. There weren't many, and what there was was expensive, so I went two towns along to Hobbycraft, where they had a lot of beads on sale. Not the bugles, but I've got some shaped rose quartz, carnelian, & snowflake obsidian, some smoky quartz chips and some glittery 4mm glass beads for spacing. I think I may do them with dangly bits on earring wires.

Then I got two buses back, both full of school children, so noisy, but I did get a seat. Some of them seem to travel a very long way. I left about 1:15, and got back about 5:15 (the bus stops almost outside home), and most of the time was spent on the buses. Timing of the shopping was critical as later buses get a bit far apart - I couldn't spend much time at Hobbycraft, which may well have been a good thing. I don't need to add to my wool stash.

I went to photograph the phone, but the batteries don't have enough power for the camera I intended to use, so that will have to wait. The market for these phones seems very odd. Some get bids, and some don't. Generally, the ones that don't have higher starting prices, but the ones that do can end up with prices as high. Odd.

On the buses, I read a "history" book from early last century that I picked up for 99 p at Oxfam. It was a hoot, lots of it completely made up fantasy, and errors! My reactions must have puzzled people, and I so wished I had someone to point things out to. The author owned up to having speculated about some things. I don't know why she thought that the Picts were small and brown, the Druids were found all over Europe and Asia, all the Celts were tall and blond, and why, in her interesting bibliography, she did not cite one Caesar, J, as chunks seemed to be from his works. (She did cite Tacitus, Plutarch and Suetonius..) She also cited Layomon's "Brut" with the origins of the British being Aeneas' son Brutus, and the battle with Gogmagog as a real past. In one place she described brass being made from copper and tin, and later this was correctly bronze. The Catuvellani were in one place the Caluvellani. Sandwich is described as near Rye, which it is if you are looking from California, but not if you are making your way across land. There is a full moon associated with a neap tide which damages the Roman ships. And that's omitting the way she suggests that the Druidesses calling on Belisama were responsible for the storms destroying Caesar's fleets.

I'm thinking of sending it to Michael Gove. His idea of history seems a bit out of date.

Penny