Following on from Blog 21, here are some quotations from my diary for 2020. Andrew Nicholl was responsible the publication of the Wainwright books when the author was alive. Great Hallingbury is the village near Bishop’s Stortford where I lived from 1942 until 1950. Harps Farm is where I went to school from 1949 until 1950. Paddy Tom is the youngest of the five brothers who lived in Harps Farm at that time.
Monday, 18th January – Submitted a message to Facebook about the Viewfinder panoramas This is the first time I have made a contribution that is not a reply to something that had been written by somebody else.
Tuesday, 19th January – Noticed that 52 people have indicated that they liked my message in the past 24 hours. I hadn’t noticed similar indications before.
Wednesday, 27th January – Watched a programme about Helvellyn in which Chris Butterfield was featured.
Saturday, 30th January – Had a vaccination against coronavirus at the Furguson Centre in Gillinggate.
Tuesday, 9th February – Bought a torch at Middletons for £16. This is the only torch I have had where I can adjust the brightness and the width of the beam.
Saturday, 20th February – Sent the phrase ‘Curiosity is the first step on the road to knowledge’ to ‘Quote Unquote’ in the hope that they may mention it in the programme.
Tuesday, 23rd February – Received an email from Nigel Rees, who devised and presented ‘Quote Unquote’ saying that he had found a saying similar to but not identical to mine. Usually when I write to the B.B.C. I get no reply.
Wednesday, 24th February – Looked up Nigel Rees on the internet. He has been presenting ‘Quote Unquote’ for 45 years, two years longer than Roy Plomley presented Desert Island Discs.
Saturday, 13th March – Finished watching the television series Aerial America. All the scenes were shot in perfect weather; there are no conversations; and the narrator has a soothing voice. I have kept it all so that I can watch it again.
Monday, 22nd March – Took a photograph of the ivy-covered trees at the top of Maude’s Meadow from Low Fellside.
Friday, 26th March – Read in Footsteps that a thousand copies of my version of The Outlying Fells of Lakeland have been sold since it was taken over by the Wainwright Society last summer, which is more than Clive Hutchby’s Lakeland guides sell in an average year. The stile on the top of Eagle Crag was also mentioned in the magazine, and I sent the editor a letter that I wrote about it in 2005.
Saturday, 3rd April – Went for a walk in Serpentine Woods and found a number of wooden sculptures that I hadn’t seen before, including one of a centipede climbing a tree.
Monday, 5th April – Went for a walk from Helsington Laithes to Warriner’s Wood and Helsington Barrows, where I took a photograph of a group of beautiful larch trees. Came back via Bankhead Pond.
Finished watching the 82-hour version of my selections, much of which I had forgotten. The picture quality was better than in later versions because the scenes had been copied fewer times.
Sunday, 11th April – Explored the area to the south of Scout Scar and took a photograph of a group of pine trees.
Tuesday, 13th April – Went to Wilkinsons to have prints made from my latest iPhone images. The one of the pine trees came out well.
Saturday, 17th April – Looked up ‘Wake me early mother dear’ in the internet and found a long poem by Tennyson that I hadn’t read before.
Saturday, 24th April – Went to Kirkby Lonsdale by bus for a second vaccination. While I was waiting for the bus home I visited Ruskin’s View, where there is a panorama made in 1993 that is still in a good condition because it is made of metal.
Sunday, 25th April – Saw what I think were two hornets on the slopes of Castle Hill. I haven’t seen one of these for seventy years.
Thursday, 29th April – Ordered a timeswitch that can be set up to four days in advance.
Saturday, 1st May – Sent Tennyson’s poem ‘The May Queen’ to Designworks for uploading to my website. I decided to do this before I noticed the significance of the date.
Monday, 3rd May – Listened to a radio programme called Radiolab in which it was said that plants grow towards a recording of the sound of running water, which means that they can hear.
Wednesday, 5th May – Finished listening to ‘Dear Me’ by Peter Ustinov, which I thought was brilliant.
Tuesday, 18th May – Went for a walk to Boundary Bank Lane, where I identified a wayfaring tree, distinguishable from a guelder rose by its simpler flowers.
Sunday, 23rd May – The quiz called the Chase is broadcast so often now I listen to nothing else while I am eating.
Monday, 24th May – Finished my latest blog and then discovered that it was almost identical to one that I had written before.
Saturday, 29th May – Started to prepare a map for a book by Chris Butterfield and found it very difficult.
Friday, 4th June – Bought a 0.1 mm Edding pen at Youdells and found that it was better than any of the pens that I already have.
Sunday, 6th June – Finished the map.
Monday, 7th June – Sent the map to Chris Butterfield.
Sunday, 13th June – Searched the internet for Orchard Lodge, where my family lived before I was born, and found it in Stansted Road, Bishop’s Stortford, which is now part of the A11.
Friday, 19th June – Finished reading the Eyewitness travel guide to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, an area that was completely unknown to me before.
Monday, 21st June – Chris Butterfield called and I gave him his map. Then we went round to Andrew Nicholl’s bungalow at Prizet, where I met Chris’s wife’s sister and her husband. Andrew has some beautiful furniture and a beautiful garden that blends well with the countryside beyond.
Tuesday, 22nd June – Found photographs of Andrew and myself in the Wainwright Facebook site.
Thursday, 1st July – My website has now been visited more than 40,000 times.
Monday, 5th July – Finished remaking the video of scenes taken with my video camera with all the recorded music removed. Incredibly, this took me six weeks, but it doesn’t matter because there is already far too much on my website for anybody to read it all.
Sunday, 11th July – Finished rearranging my video to fit two ten-minute discs, which means that it has now taken me seven weeks.
Monday, 12th July – Took the discs to Designworks and later found the videos in my website.
Thursday, 15th July – Watched my video in the internet and discovered that a lot of the sound and a smaller amount of the picture were missing.
Friday, 23rd July – Chris called for me at 5.0 a.m., and we went up Castle Crag from Grange-in-Borrowdale. I was surprised by how easy it was.
Sunday, 25th July – Started work on a map of the Langdale area for Chris.
Tuesday, 27th July – Finished the Langdale map.
Thursday, 29th July – Finished writing an account of the walk to Castle Crag and sent it to Chris.
Friday, 30th July – Chris called, and I gave him the Langdale map.
Saturday, 31st July – Found the article I wrote about Castle Crag in the Wainwright Facebook site.
Tuesday, 3rd August – Wrote to Tom Streeter of Harps Farm.
Wednesday, 4th August – Found the whole of the Scafell Pike panorama in the Wainwright Facebook site, along with the front covers of the other panoramas. Chris Butterfield called and bought four copies of Happy Memories. He said that John Manning was planning to write an article about my website for Lakeland Walker, which pleased me.
Finished reading Calculating the Cosmos by Ian Stewart, which contains a lot of interesting astronomical information.
Friday, 27th August – Went for a five-mile walk on Whitbarrow with Chris Butterfield using a booklet about geology that I had borrowed from the library. Chris has a mobile phone that shows his position on a 2½-inch Ordnance Survey map.
Tuesday, 31st August – Received a royalty statement from Frances Lincoln. There were no royalties from A Coast to Coast Walk, which means that all my royalties are from the Clive Hutchby revisions.
Monday, 6th September – Received an email from Tom Streeter. He didn’t know that there had been a school at Harps Farm.
Tuesday, 7th September – Received an email from Paddy Tom Streeter saying that he is going to send me some photographs.
Thursday, 9th September – Finished reading the RSPB Handbook of the Seashore, which introduced me to the names of many plants and animals. Why should I bother to go to the seaside to see a handful of species when I could see them all in this book?
Sunday, 12th September – Looked myself up on the internet and read that Happy Memories can be ordered from Kobo as an ebook for £4.
Monday 13th September – Finished re-creating the two video discs where much of the sound was missing and took them to Designworks. The work took four days.
Tuesday, 14th September – Sent an email to Paddy Tom with a scan of two photographs attached.
Friday, 17th September – Wrote to Christine Coultrop of the Great Hallingbury Local History Society telling her about the village when I was living there. Received some photographs of Harps Farm going back to the 1930s from Paddy Tom. Chris called with two maps of Scotland for me to draw. Received a reply from Christine Coultrop offering to publish my description in the quarterly village magazine.
Saturday, 18th September – Bought a copy of the Serpentine Woods Sculpture Trail in the library.
Sunday, 19th September – Found a link from Facebook to a site where people can buy copies of my book from Chris Butterfield. Some people wrote nice things about the book, and Chris said that he had sold my entire stock.
Monday, 20th September – Received a bank statement, according to which I recently received royalties of £622, which was more than twice what I was expecting.
Friday, 24th September – Finally succeeded in ordering twenty copies of Happy Memories from Ingram Sparks after spending four days on the telephone or waiting for them to phone me back. If it hadn’t been for K.T.D. and Home Connect I would not have been able to do it.
Saturday, 25th September – Finished re-creating the video on thirteen discs because Designworks were unable to process the version on two discs.
Monday, 27th September – Took the discs to Designworks for uploading and later found them on my website. There is a gap in the commentary that destroys the sense of it. Listened to an episode of Waggoners’ Walk that hadn’t been broadcast for fifty years.
Tuesday, 28th September – Found that the gap in the commentary has been corrected. There are still some bad joins, but they are not important. This means that the video has now taken me eighteen weeks altogether.
Thursday, 30th September – Finished the pencil drafts of the two maps of Scotland and sent scans of them to Chris with some queries. Half an hour later twenty copies of my book arrived, and I signed them all because Chris advertises them as ‘signed’.
Friday, 8th October – Finished the maps of Scotland. The pens are much easier to use than they used to be.
Monday, 11th October – Sent five panoramas to someone who had read about them on my website.
Tuesday, 12th October – Went to Fred Holdsworth’s shop in Ambleside and was pleasantly surprised to learn that they had sold all six of my books.
Friday, 15th October – Chris called to collect the maps of Scotland. He showed me an article he had written for a magazine about our walk on Castle Crag, and I suggested some improvements.
Monday 18th October – Telephoned the information centre in Keswick and learned that the Keswick Railway Footpath has been reopened, so I sent an email to Chris suggesting that we do the walk from Keswick to the Blencathra Centre next.
Tuesday, 19th October – Sent a copy of the Ben Nevis panorama to the Ben Nevis Foundation, which was mentioned in a recent television programme.
Thursday, 28th October – Discovered that my iPhone could be used as a torch.
Wednesday, 3rd November – Ninety-two people per day have visited my website in the past two days, compared with twenty-seven in October, which means that people have noticed that new blogs appear at the start of each month.
Saturday, 6th November – Bought a copy of the magazine Lakeland Walker including a two-page article about me by Chris Butterfield. If I had known that the photographs he took on the way up Castle Crag were going to be published I would have tidied myself up a bit.
Sunday, 21st November – Went for a walk from Keswick to the Blencathra Centre with Chris and Priscilla and showed them the disused road to the east from Threlkeld. On the bus home I was recognised by someone from Kirkbarrow, so I showed him how to find the on-line description of my walk from there to the shops.
Tuesday, 23rd November – Went to the Wainwright Facebook site and found a photograph of myself near the Blencathra Centre that had been seen by 187 people.
Thursday, 25th November – Sent a sequence from the Antiques Roadshow to Chris for the Wainwright Facebook site.
Saturday, 27th November – I could hear the wind howling all through the night. Bought a copy of the magazine Cumbria that included Chris’s article about our walk on Whitbarrow.
Monday, 29th November – Found the sequence from the Antiques Road Show in the Facebook site.
Monday, 6th December – Finished reading a book called Snowdon by Jim Perrin, which was published in 2012. Peter Crew and William Condry were mentioned, but there was no mention of my panorama, even in the bibliography. The author has been going up Snowdon since 1962 and claims to have seen Criffel from Snowdon, which means that he has seen farther from the summit than I have.
Tuesday, 7th December – Sent copies of the large and small Snowdon panoramas to Jim Perrin. Finished reading a fascinating book about the English language called Words Words Words by David Crystal.
Monday 20th December – Ordered a waterproof notepad and pen set for £9 so that I can write down anything I think of when I am in the bath. Listened to the last episode of ‘Quote Unquote’ to be presented by Nigel Rees. My contribution was never mentioned.
Tuesday, 21st December – Received the waterproof notepad and pen set.
Thursday, 23rd December – Bought a new blu-ray disc recorder for £690 because I can’t get my old one repaired.
Friday, 24th December – Looked myself up on the internet and found that my blog about Universal Happiness was right at the top, with the scans of my books and my home videos not far below. It seems that telling people which blog to read if they only have time to read one has paid off. I also found my article about the little lanes of Aberdeen. I can’t imagine how it got there.
Saturday, 25th December – Looked up Tuscany on the internet and found an extraordinary number of beautiful photographs.
Monday 27th December – Selected two sequences from the Errol Flynn version of Robin Hood using my new equipment. Of course, many wonderful films are shown at this time of year, but I already have selections from most of them.
Tuesday, 28th December – Had occasion to use the waterproof notepad and pen set for the first time.
Friday, 31st December – Finished comparing the maps in Clive’s version of the Lakeland guides with those in my own version. The most frequent change is that many of the recommended routes with no path have become clear paths after ten years of use.
I have received no replies to my letters about the Ben Nevis and Snowdon panoramas: it seems that nobody is interested in panoramas nowadays.