April 2023 - Part One - Great customer service and a hidden gem.

 April brought warmer weather still, and easter, and every year Mum tells us we are too old for easter eggs. No worries, I'm old enough to buy myself a bottle of easter wine!

April also saw me provide my best customer service yet. I was re-arranging the flowers at the front of the store as we were inundated with easter style bouquets. I was about to tip a bucket of spare water down the drain, when this lady came up to me and explained she had just been peed on by a dog, and would I be kind enough to rinse her boot with the plant water. Who I am to deny such a request? So I washed her boot down and she left a happy customer, much to my colleagues amusement who was stood watching the entire event. 

Me and Mel continued our tradition of brunches when not working, and this time we were at Trago lounge. I had introduced Mel to caramel syrup in a latte, and for her it was a revelation. You can never be sweet enough I told her, and she told me to...well, it's not polite enough to be put here! I love Mel to bits, we get on so well, always winding each other up and roasting each other. I love friends that you can just bounce off, and we have such a hysterical time together.

I'd also been buying things again (I just can't stop myself). I had seen these make your own candy style things on TikTok, and in a moment of madness bought myself some. I was hysterical, the instructions were all in Japanese, but if you scanned the QR code then you would find a video on how to do it. Except that was all in Japanese too, but we just about managed to work out how to do it. We had a right laugh while doing it, and I was looking forward to trying it, until I tasted it, and it tasted like vomit. Literally. It made my eyes water when I tried it. James saw my reaction, and made an educated guess not to sample it. It was a shame it tasted gross, because the actual design and process was rather fun. But still, you can't have everything!

Meanwhile, it felt like the world was changing, and in a way that seemed to indicate an uncertain future. Finland, a country who had always seemed to be relatively neutral in international affairs, became the latest country to join NATO, increasing the length of the border between NATO and Russia, which inflamed relations between the two, but hopefully in the long run would make Russia rethink it's invasion of Ukraine. In other slightly less disparaging news, Germany became the latest country to become nuclear free with the closure of its last nuclear power plant. The news was a mixed one, as the country, long known for being one rather greener than many others in Europe, would instead cover the electrical production gap with fossil fuels, which was rather surprising. You would have thought a push to renewables would have been the perfect stop gap. But there you are.

Other global news included a mass suicide in the Shakahola forest in Kenya. It followed a similar process to the People's Temple mass suicide in 1979, although in this mass suicide there was some survivors. I've never understood how people can be so deeply full of belief that they could end their lives this way, although after the investigation it transpired many had actually been killed by armed mercenaries. It brought some further debate around the role of religion, and how it is used to control people and cause large destructive events, with no responsibly or remorse from those that create it. Without wanting to sound preachy, I think that religion removes peoples culpability from situations, and there will always be that response of "well god made me do it". Well actually "god" is a concept, a tool used to control people when we didn't understand the world and it's processes. The concept of god was used to explain things like earthquakes, famine, disease & the body, in a time where we as a people had lots of questions, but no answers. Nowadays, we are very lucky, in that most of our questions have answers, and we can explain how things like natural disasters, diseases and life events occur, and by understanding how they happen, we can work to prevent and mitigate their effects. Look at covid for example. If that had happened a hundred years ago like the Spanish Flu did, it would have been horrific, it would have killed tens or hundreds of millions of people. However our knowledge of disease and how to treat it has come on massively, not to mention the skill of our health care systems & staff that can treat people that would have otherwise died from preventable diseases. We are particularly lucky in the western world that we can go to a local pharmacist and get medication that can fix an illness that could kill us in another part of the world. Healthcare inequality across the world is an issue that is particularly pressing in these years after covid put such a strain healthcare provision, and one that I think we need to work on as a global team to prevent happening again. But there we go, I've said my peace and I'll leave it at that! 

Rather amusingly, after writing that I went to check what else we did in April, to find that we visited a rather splendid church! Isn't life funny like that? The church in question, St Mary & St Nicholas church is a fantastic romanesque building nestled into the pretty little town of Wilton.

It's very distinctive in Wilton, but wouldn't look out of place in Tuscany! 

While it's rather dark inside, it's covered in these beautiful mosaics which seem to glow in the low lighting. It's worth having a wander around inside, before coming out to admire the giant campanile (or bell tower if you're not feeling fancy) which I imagine would give you incredible views of the surrounding area, including of Salisbury. But alas, we were not able to go up. You'd think you'd be running tours up it, I'd pay good money to visit inside. But the church is open every day and is free to enter, although I did tip my loose change into the donation box towards it's upkeep. It really is a hidden gem, and one I'd never been to before. It was James that suggested it, along with a visit to the village bakery for a loaf of bread and a tasty pastry. Well, when in Rome, do as the Romans do!