A sad day

A pile of stones..... An unusual subject for today’s Blip, but taken today for a good reason.

Today we heard some very sad news that a much loved member of the school support staff had passed away this morning. Although she had been ill nobody had ever expected this and it came as a real shock to all who knew her. She was an extremely hard working, happy and conscientious member of the Maintenance Team and partner of the Maintenance Officer and a lady with a great personality. She will be greatly missed.

I remembered a while back that among her hobbies was to collect interestingly shaped and coloured stones. She brought some of her finds from various holidays in one day to show us and I remembered this today.

With the exception of the two at the very back of the picture, all of these are stones that I have collected myself on various trips and holidays to date. The front left hand pile are all flints from various places. Some are from the South Downs, while most are from the heathy commons west of Pulborough away from the chalk. These flints were carried there at the time of the Ice Age I believe. They are often coloured red from the iron in the surrounding sandstone, while others have a soapy or waxy feel which I haven’t yet been able to find out why, but come from that same area. The second right hand pile at the front are all pebbles from the beach at Visby on the Swedish island of Gotland. The rocks these come from are much older, as there are a couple of pieces of Granite. Some of the others are probably from the Silurian, which consists of some sandstones and a lot of fossil bearing limestone. You’d have to go to Shropshire and the Welsh Borders to find rocks of a similar age in the UK. The back two rock specimens I have borrowed for the picture from the school rock trolley as I felt they were relevant to today’s Blip. The left hand piece is Basalt from the Isle of Skye, and the other spotted piece is Biotite Granite which also comes from Scotland which is quite colourful. When she brought the stones in to show us, they had just come back from a well earned holiday on the Isle of Skye and I felt it was appropriate to have a piece not just from school in the picture, but from Skye where they had enjoyed a good holiday together.

The next time I pick up a stone that looks interesting or colourful, I will remember her.