Benchmark

It has been such a gloomy day.

A very brief excursion this afternoon. This is the west door of St Oswald’s church. Visible to the left of the door is an ordnance survey benchmark, one of over 500,000 carved on buildings and structures across the country, and used to determine OSN - ordnance datum Newlyn, or the height above mean sea level at Newlyn in Cornwall. The benchmark marks the position for a bench to be placed, on which a levelling stave would be located by a surveyor. The last benchmark was carved in 1993 - they are all now superseded by GPS systems.

It is Ash Wednesday. We have had some pancakes, a day after Shrove Tuesday. And for the second day, part of an ice cream Christmas log we had forgotten about. I think we are catching up on festivals.

And …. my sister sent photos of the donations to the Ukraine appeal which have arrived at the arts centre she manages. Extraordinary - there are a lot of kind, generous people out there, notwithstanding the bad ones.