Good Lord! The Bishop's Hens Aren't Laying!

This is NOT the Bishop of Salisbury's Residence...And neither is it an entry into Derelict Sunday!"


Little did I think that after a day of recuperating all yesterday, after my mega tiring day in Bath on Friday - HUGE thanks for the amazing response to that Blip! - that I'd end up chinwagging with the Bishop of Salisbury in his back garden on a sunny Sunday!

It was all part of an annual fundraiser for the Salisbury Cathedral with its Secret Gardens of the Cathedral Close. I knew nothing of it, I was half into the afternoon on my way to the Museum's new exhibition and I saw all these people rushing in through big ornate front doors and into gardens beyond - posh, lovely, characterful big, gorgeous, plush, listed, rose-lined - enough! that I so often had seen from the outside but never been able to find the opportunity to go beyond.

After a little negotiating the non negotiable fixed price entry - the price is not even listed or visible anywhere, there's obviously a presumption that a flat £10 is loose change - I was told that I could see all 12 gardens, open for just five hours in one year, in one hour.

Like heck! I managed the first four or five quite quickly, including this amazing mansion that even manages to dwarf the cathedral spire! I naturally took hundreds of snaps, mostly with the Tokina 11-16mm mk2. In this shot, I have obviously and blatantly gone more for sheer power of architecture over anything floral, but would add that on display was also a fabulous old, as in OLD, (wire wheels, those big headlights) convertible 1920's Bentley, in racing green. And their lawn was simply the most perfect lawn I have ever set my dainty size tens upon, as I glided down towards the river at the bottom of their HUGE garden.

Back to the Bish Bash Boshop, his Canonry was also set in lovely grounds with fab old trees but was far more modest, with a real homemade aspect about it, ie. lived in and a bit creaky around the edges (probably like him!) This was where the refreshments and HQ were and the best garden to end up in as the nice man hadn't laid on bouncers to chuck stragglers out and so I was able to stay an hour beyond the advertised time.

Well, he explained to a small group of us that whilst 'his (ultra free range, corner of the garden) birds were in hen heaven' and so couldn't understand why they weren't laying!. I just SO wanted to ask if hen heaven was the same as human Heaven, but for chickens, but felt that in the absence of bruising security staff, a quick dunk in the river might be the outcome....

Got talking for half an hour to a tiny 88 year old lady who walked the entire length of the Andes, for her 70th birthday, a gift she gave herself and rather ironically, if you read all the text I wrote about Bath, that her great (great?) grandfather (I think) was the architect who helped build Beckford Tower near Bath! Partially crippled after a brain tumour in her 30's that she had told me about, she eventually literally pootled off home half bent over quicker than I could! (she volunteered all that afternoon and is a regular voluntary Cathedral guide) 

Quite Interesting Day! (QID)