The Dun Cow (@ithilienorthend will recognise!)

Started today pretty tired on 4 hours sleep as my lovely neighbours decided that between midnight and 2am would be a great time to install flooring. Tap-tap-tap... Tap-tap-tap...

5 hour meeting on residential care this morning and afternoon, then a dash to collect my daughter's Christmas present (which came in 2 packages, one of which weighed nearly 50 lbs), carry that up the four floors to my flat - pictures of that later once I've assembled it.

Then a dash down to Durham to attend a rehearsal for my Masonic meeting on Friday night. The Masonic Hall in Durham is right next door to the Dun Cow on Old Elvet. I was tempted to go in for a pint but may have fallen asleep with my nose in the head of my pint.

The Dun Cow is named after a legend about the founding of Durham. St Cuthbert's coffin was being moved around the north east trying to avoid Viking raids. It had come from Lindisfarne, to Ripon and Chester-le-Street but when the monks saw a dun cow at the peninsula in Durham the cart carrying the coffin became immovable so the monks took that as a sign to build Cuthbert's shrine there. Absolutely nothing to do with the lovely defensible peninsula... On the north wall of the Cathedral on Palace Green there is a carving of the dun cow - and the road leading from that side of Palace Green to the Bailey is called Dun Cow Lane.