Gwyneth's personal blog

Tuesday 28th February, grey and still morning. Days of mist clearing to blue, a scoured, dry April feeling to the weather for our February trip to Stratford on Avon where we saw three kingfishers darting along the river at Tiddington, numerous swans and geese, and crowds of amazing tropical butterflies in a sort of big hot humid plastic shed called Butterfly World; oh and a good play, with the added value of young Ebenezer (Raymond Coultard) from The Muppets Christmas Carol playing a lovely bishop in wonderful ivory satin robes, (who unfortunately turns into a baddie) oh and a good meal, fine dining enough to please Gabriel the Masterchef addict, but free of furniture polish icecream. Stratford on Avon, we were suprised and pleased to find, still has Closing Time, and curfew on the town centre streets by midnight is almost complete. How unlike our own fair city, and what a good idea!

Inspired by a true story, wonderfully staged and not much constricted by facts, (to my relief, says Helen Edmundon, or words to that effect, I discovered that the life history of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz has plenty of gaps*) The Heresy of Love is a highly charged, cracking good show. Except if it had been me, I'd have given the soliloques to Sor Juana herself, rather than the aforementioned lovely bishop. Who only said exactly what any naughty bishop would say, when succumbing to the temptation of flirting with a beautiful, intellectual nun. Whereas Juana, the mystery woman, could have told us a lot...

I saw the male blackcap yesterday, singing madly from the peak of the cypress tree. No frog activity at all. (This is general, apparently. Frogs should be breeding now, and they aren't) There has to be a year when the decline is over and there is nothing left. I don't think it will be this year, but who knows.

And that's the end of Occupy St Pauls, finally evicted. Occupy smouldered, but it did not catch fire at least not over here. And despite the horrible cost of living with this truly shameless and destructive greed is good government of ours, we'd be worse off if there was more accelerant around, I have to admit. Because look at Syria... Look at Eygypt, indeed. Or Baghdad.

Look what happens to the women after the revolution, or the forced regime change, and you know everything.

I have pickled the red cabbage.

*likewise her online presence. Looking for resources, I found mainly start-ups