Confusing cliffs

I’m afraid there was no blog last week because I was in deepest Dorset with a somewhat eccentric internet connection. I had decided that since I was on holiday I’d just post a few photos with captions, but things didn’t go according to plan. I tried to upload some pictures, without success, and then couldn’t get into my blog at all. I was worrying that I’d crashed the site completely, until it occurred to me that those photos hadn’t made it anywhere near my blog and were tumbling blissfully around the ether, while my website remained pristine and untouched. Thankfully.

My technical skills are definitely not up to restoring a website and I’d be forced to bring in the big guns, ie my daughter. I’m convinced that she could have sorted out the recent worldwide problems with Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram in no time at all if they’d only thought to ask her. I know I’m her mother, but I do think women are pretty good at sorting things out. Look at all those brilliant women who developed the Covid vaccine. Probably while picking their children up from school and volunteering at their local brownie pack.

I’m sorry, I seem to have got side-tracked – what I really planned to talk about was Dorset. How can I describe it? Very green (it does rain a fair bit), hilly, full of charming little towns and thatched cottages, with a truly spectacular coastline known as the Jurassic Coast. It’s a world heritage site with enough rock formations spanning 185 million years to delight even the most jaded of geologists. I am not a geologist (or even jaded), but was reliably informed that all these geological structures are the “outer ripples of the Alpine storm”. I am fully aware of my limitations and accept that I will never know what that means. Somehow, I don’t think it has anything to do with skiing.

Rocks are all very impressive, but the photos I like the most tend to be on a more modest scale, showing evidence of human habitation rather than the spectacular forces of nature. For instance, two of my favourites are below, showing nothing but a vine that needs trimming and a door that needs painting. I can relate to such lethargy. It’s hard to find the time to work in the garden or get out the paintbrush when there are more interesting things to do, like taking photos of the resulting neglect. And of course there are blogs to write. Remarkably, this is my 100th, so I do occasionally get something done.

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