We both love this place - any time outside the holidays, when it gets impossibly crowded. After the weather we've been having there wasn't much chance of seeing anyone beyond a few walkers but for once, apart from one brief heavy shower the sun even came out, the café was open and everyone was very happy. There were no more than a dozen or so cars in the car park, and it was blowing a hoolie as we set out, knowing that once we dropped into the valley we'd be a bit sheltered.

The tin tabernacle in Cadgwith Another wet day in Cornwall - in Camborne they've exceeded the biblical flood by exceeding 40 consecutive days of rain. It hasn't been a huge problem for us down at the southernmost tip except for the lanes - there's only one really main road and the rest are pretty much lanes anyway and they are running with water; some right across and others at both edges but all the puddles are sheltering murderous suspension wrecking potholes.

I've worked in a number of places where making some kind of a judgement about people was necessary. Working in a prison, for instance, I don't think I ever met someone who was fully guilty of the crime they'd been sentenced for. Even those who shared their crimes with me would almost always fail to mention the worst bits. As school governors we got so used to inflated references that we rarely took them into account.

This is the old Lizard lifeboat station which, curiously, was built on Polpeor cove facing into the prevailing wind. Launching a lifeboat into a southwesterly storm must have been extremely hazardous and after 100 years of deliberation the station was moved to the much safer Kilcobben Cove where the drop into the sea is as steep as a fairground ride, giving the crew several minutes to contemplate the heavy seas in which they are about to be lowered.

Rain clouds gathering over Lizard point today The weather in Cornwall has been pretty terrible since we've been here, but we've managed to get out for a walk on most days. So far it's always culminated in rain, and most of the time it's been blown in by storm winds. Last night it was so strong I could make out the somewhat orchestral sounds of the timpani as waves crashed into the cliffs and the shingle harbour below us, then there was what Matthew Arnold called "the melancholy soft withdrawing roar" of the waves retreating from the shingle beach; clattering and sharp, more brassy than soft last night, like a chorus of a thousand stonechats - and then the woodwinds battering and flickering around the windows searching for gaps to whistle in.

It cost us a soaking, but we went down to Poltesco this afternoon to see what we could see and came up with these lovely spring flowers. There were more, but the rain defeated us even though it was glittering in sheets and drifts through the sunshine. Last night's talk at the Village Hall brought back a thousand memories, not least because the speaker was using photographic slides which occasionally found themselves upside down or skipped past by the eager operator.

Full moon tonight on the Lizard peninsula Imagine a world with no calendars and no clocks; how would you cope with the passage of time? When to sow seeds? when to harvest? When to prepare for the long period without much fresh food? when to eat up stored food before it spoils. Of course the answer must be that you'd still have the sun whose day length waxes and wanes just like the moon does.

The advantage of going on an organised field trip is that you can see all sorts of plants and have them identified by an expert. The downside is that the finds are identified by an expert and so you miss the best bit, which is to answer the question what's this plant that I've never seen before called by going through the books and if it's at all rare, eliminating every other possibility.

If you look carefully above the familiar Beech hangar known as the Nearly Home Trees, or more properly Cookworthy Knapp you'll see the glimmer of a wind turbine propeller blade just peeping above the trees. I don't know whose bright idea it was to allow it to be built there but it does little to enhance a view that always lifts our spirits when we return to Cornwall.

The old Serpentine works at Poltesco. The problem when the Potwell Inn goes on tour is that our plans for a break out invariably involve quite a few bits of kit. So a week before we set out, and perfused with optimism, we attempt to stow as many things as we could possibly need into our little (and rather old) car.

But in answer to a question I was asked during the week- "What was the actual millionth word?" - well you may think it was a bit of a disappointment because it was "much". Feel free to develop any metaphorical significance you like; it's Freedom Hall here at the Potwell Inn. The oldest existing version of St Mark's gospel ends mysteriously with the Greek word…

Choices, choices. Should I illustrate the beginning of a new era with a sunrise, or the end of an old one with a sunset? And what should the photograph express? Should it be triumphal? a resolution achieved; or should it be a lamentation for the passing of the moment? In the end I opted for a misty sunrise over the river in spate, with the architectural vacuity of the Crest Nicholson development, the Dredge Bridge and a solitary seagull - because every adventure has to begin where you are.

While Madame was pruning she was joined by a pair of robins Yesterday we finished all the pruning except for a couple of dangerously barbed gooseberries which demand thicker gloves than we had with us. It's the tenth anniversary year of the first allotment - the one where Madame is standing, on the day we were offered it; 14th April 2016.

You've no idea how lovely it is to feel well again; to wake up in the morning full of ideas; relishing each day and going out on our walks once more; a bit further each time. I still don't know with any certainty what was wrong with me but in the end - and by default because they'd looked at every other possibility - I think it all boiled down to iron deficiency anaemia caused by polyps in my colon which were removed by a lovely team at the RUH and then, after a troubled start on iron tablets which initially made me sicker than ever, they were changed for another type and apart from the bother of waking myself up to take them at 5.00am, I feel better than I've felt for around 18 months.

18th March 2017 - River Wye at Hay On the 18th March 2017 at 12.30 pm standing beside the river Wye beneath the road bridge from Hay I watched the water flooding past and realized that it had gone again. It wasn't a great shock. It had been no greater than a ghostly presence from not long before I retired. It was sudden but completely undramatic.

After a day's marmalade making and campervan maintenance yesterday, this was supposed to be a day's R&R, but a fateful discussion with our neighbour Charlie over coffee this morning sent us back home on a mission to cook the last of our stored apples before they became the object of another of my great interests in moulds. These apples still lack a conclusive name in spite of searching all the databases we could find.

When you're as old as me, you'll probably find yourself saying "many years ago; when ...." - rather too often, since that's the point when you realize that your children no longer care about, let alone believe your stories. But I'm not going to be caught out that way. I'll merely say ....... I was on a silent retreat in a Franciscan convent in Dorset and since I was the only man present I was sequestered alone in a cottage on the edges of the estate.

For the most part, over the years, I've seen New Year more as a celebration that the old year is over and done with and that January 1st is no more than a blank canvas. But this time it was different because 2025 was pretty rubbish, what with innumerable health problems and having to spend a fortune getting the campervan fixed.

Hazel catkins on the riverside path Well, this is a new one! At last, yesterday I had my new hearing aids fitted after a six month wait. I mentioned the long wait to the audiologist at the hospital and she looked so troubled I immediately changed the subject. Poor things, they must have had a battering from angry patients. These new ones are a bit of a game changer because they're bluetooth capable and they've also got some kind of wizardry built in that generates faint white noise which subdues the tinnitus noises.

Royal Crescent in a rare peaceful moment To be honest - apart from the tourist guides - this is not a typical moment in Georgian Bath; or at least not during daylight hours. Half a mile East and you might imagine you're in Oxford street, London; the same distance to the north and south would see you at the end of the Cotswolds or across the river, deep fingers of countryside and Georgiana separated by large estates of social housing.

Mistletoe Geoffrey Grigson lists so many myths, folklore fragments and healing properties for mistletoe that after the second dozen I gave up counting them. Many of them were concerned with fertility, citing the similarity between mistletoe berries and what he coyly calls the male part. I've tried to verify that by looking at photos (of plants, of course) but I don't really get that one; unless he had some uniquely blessed male friends with an extra testicle for luck!

Royal Crescent in a rare peaceful moment To be honest - apart from the tourist guides - this is not a typical moment in Georgian Bath; or at least not during daylight hours. Half a mile East and you might imagine you're in Oxford street, London; the same distance to the north and south would see you at the end of the Cotswolds or across the river, deep fingers of countryside and Georgiana separated by large estates of social housing.

Mistletoe Geoffrey Grigson lists so many myths, folklore fragments and healing properties for mistletoe that after the second dozen I gave up counting them. Many of them were concerned with fertility, citing the similarity between mistletoe berries and what he coyly calls the male part. I've tried to verify that by looking at photos (of plants, of course) but I don't really get that one; unless he had some uniquely blessed male friends with an extra testicle for luck!

The dream I like to think of Dabberlocks and Furbelow as invisible friends; but in reality, as solicitors for my superego for my whole life, they've hinted, adjudicated and occasionally forbidden my wilder flights of fancy. Occasionally they'll issue a non-disclosure order on one of my ideas but mainly they just sit in silence and I know what's required. I call it censorship but they refer to it as discretion and normally they win.