#ThrowbackThursday - where we were on this date in Augusts past

Original Theatre Company
Three Men In A Boat

It's been a good August with Torquay feeling properly summery for most days and I love looking out across the valley from our flat to see white and pastel painted Victorian buildings reflecting the sunlight back to me or the stunning sunsets in the evenings. My memories for this date in Augusts gone by start indoors though, unsurprisingly in dark theatres. I can't remember which of two plays I saw closest to the 25th of August 2012, but it was either Original Theatre Company's Three Men In A Boat at the Devonshire Park or Bootcamp Theatre's The History Boys at The Underground, both in Eastbourne. The History Boys is one of my favourite plays ever and I remember Bootcamp making a great job of it. Three Men In A Boat was very funny and inventive too. I wonder if Original Theatre Company ever visit the South West?

August 25th in 2013 was a Sunday and I was harvesting fruit from our Polegate garden. Can you believe this display of blackberries? Our orchard hadn't done so well though - I wonder if the new owners have kept the fruit trees? This year's blackberry crops are apparently not going to be good anywhere in the UK and that's certainly true for the ones I've seen in Torbay. The GBBOers will have to find a different ingredient for their crumbles - here's a recipe they can use! It's such a worry that I even got an email from The Woodland Trust about it last week asking for observant folks to update their Nature Calendar with ripe blackberry sightings so they can track the arrival of autumn.

August 2014 was a strange time as we were selling our house, but by the end of the month the conveyancers still hadn't exchanged contracts as expected and we were getting very frustrated. On the 25th I had a couple of weeks remaining of my temp job at Wealden Council and was getting a lot of reading done, having published two book review trio posts back to back! I gave five stars to a brilliant novel, The Long Song by Andrea Levy, which is set in 1800s colonial Jamaica. It'a powerful and disturbing read which I thought managed to be far more than another novel about slavery and gave a fascinatingly detailed view of the plantations at that time.

On this day last year we were in our caravan in Wales and had (just about) conquered the Llandovery one way system. I loved this sculpture of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd Fychan of Caeo who was hung, drawn and quartered in Llandovery in 1401 for refusing to betray Owain Glyndwr to Henry IV. Llandovery is absolutely crammed full of history so I found it to be a very interesting place - and it had good little shops too. I also remember making a fuss of a small dog who wanted to play - and then getting a lengthy lecture from its owner about what a special dog it was. I forget which rare breed he claimed it to be, but I was assured that this little Scottie-like canine was worth about £800!

As for now - we finished furnishing our new flat yesterday as Half Price Bedz finally managed to deliver our bed. It's taken over four weeks and their communication skills are practically non-existent so we are not happy with them as a business, but fortunately the bed itself is nice.

I'll put together another ThrowbackThursday post for next month. It will be reminiscing about the last four years of the 29th of Septembers!