Monthly Archives: August, 2023

Ottery St Mary

We were passing Ottery St Mary, Devon, on our travels, and were pleased to see a sign to a pottery. Yes, there’s a pottery in Ottery. I started to consider its likely back-story…

There once was a lady from Ottery
St Mary, devoted to pottery.
If she saw a vase,
Wherever she was,
She’d say, “In my collection that’s gotta be!”

Well… you don’t expect anything too deep while I’m on holiday, I hope?

I like to think that the pleasing name comes from there being a lot of otters around, so making the area particularly ottery, but in fact the town lies on the River Otter. Confusingly, there’s also a River Ottery in Cornwall, but I can’t discover that either waterway is particularly known for its otters… in fact, the River Otter, according to Wikipedia, is unusual in having the UK’s only known breeding population of beavers.

They probably settled there just to confuse people.

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Watching the clock

I’ve written several times about my enthusiasm for the Apple Watch, but even eight years after getting my first one, I’m still discovering uses for it.

We’ve spent the last few nights in our campervan on a delightful small campsite in Devon.

Picture of campervan in a bucolic setting

There are loo and shower facilities in a nearby building but, unusually these days, you do need to insert a pound coin if you want to use the shower. It’s a fine shower, and I didn’t mind paying, but since the meter is outside in the corridor, you don’t get any warning before the water shuts off suddenly after six minutes, possibly leaving you rather soapy…

So even in this low-tech environment, where we treat an electricity supply as something of a luxury, there’s great benefit to be derived from a waterproof watch which can be instructed, with a couple of clicks or a spoken command, to warn you shortly before your shower is going to finish!

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Maiden Voyage

We have a new toy: an inflatable kayak. We had one of these before and had loved the versatility: you can launch them almost anywhere. But the one we had was really designed for white water and surf… not much call for those in the East Anglian fens, where something that travels longer distances in a straight line was more desirable!

Regular readers will know that we also have a little sailing dinghy and another inflatable which we use with an electric outboard. So you might well consider that three boats for two people is a bit excessive! But they all have different roles, and there’s something delightful about getting on the water in something that needs as few accessories as this does.

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Some are more equal than others

“Not all cottons are equal”, says the label on my new John Lewis shirt. “We use Supima cotton because it’s one of the most superior types of cotton in the world for creating strong, comfortable and colourful fabric.”

Oh, for heaven’s sake! One of the most superior types in the world? What do they teach kids in English lessons these days? Before you ask, this does appear to be a label printed by that old English retail partnership itself, not by the Bangladeshi factory from which the shirt originates.

Still, perhaps I’m being too fussy. At least they are only claiming it to be one of the most superior types, and, in any case, if I am going to wear a superior type of cotton, I should probably be grateful that it’s not one of the least superior types.

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