French Lieutenant's Woman

 An elderly resident of Llanfyllin wrote this book about the known romance between a French prisoner of war (Pierre Augeraud) and the local rector's daughter in 1812. Pierre was sent back to France in 1814 (mostly orchestrated through the efforts of Marie's father), but he eventually made his way back to Llanfyllin to marry Marie (her father had died in the interim) in 1817. They settled and lived in France till their deaths.

'The French Lieutenant's Woman' written by John Fowles, was a work of historical fiction and was not connected to this true tale.

Whilst paroled in the town council house, Pierre painted a series of murals, which remain to this day and are on show during town festivities.

 

Caterpillar up Close

This is the front end of an elephant hawk-moth caterpillar (Deilephila elpenor) - one of the rewards of working in the yard is getting up close and personal with all manner of creatures.

It's one of countless species that appear to have enormous eyes, but these are merely markings, not functioning eyes

This larva will transform into this beautiful pink and gold moth

Photo from Wikipedia

NHS Shout-out

The NHS is the U.K.'s publicly funded health care system. We've heard so many people expressing dissatisfaction with the organization (it IS overloaded), and I had such a comforting and satisfying experience last week that I thought I should share. Granted, my experience is only one data point. 

We have a local surgery/GP in our town that is a short walk away, right next to our landmark St Myllin's church.

I've had a resurgence of allergy-induced asthma for the past 5 weeks or so, and have been using medications I already had on hand to control it. It has been almost 20 years since I'd had an attack (I'd had the 4 years of allergy shots in the U.S.), so at Dale's continual prompting, I decided to inform my GP of my breathing struggles so they'd be able to provide meds when needed. I described the situation on their online form, saying I had it under control and wouldn't need an appointment, just wanted to give them a heads-up about the meds I'm taking.

Within minutes of submitting the form, I got a phone call to say they would like to see me that day at noon, just 2 hours later! Now I was regretting sending in the details - "there's nothing really wrong with me, I'm not really sick, I don't want to make a fuss, I know what this is, I have this under control, others are more sick than I am .....blah, blah, on and on." 

The doctor I saw said my reaction is exactly the same as happened to him when he moved from Scotland to Wales, which caused him to suffer too. He was knowledgeable and sympathetic, and listened to our input. Of course, he could also hear the wheezing with each breath. So he recommended 2 medications to bring it under control (he didn't seem familiar with the serum-injection method we had in the U.S.), with a follow up in about a month with the asthma nurse. Now I'm glad I went - I really needed that prodding - the following day, after beginning the meds, I had the best breathing I'd had in weeks.

Oh, and all prescriptions are free of charge in Wales!☺

Severn Rivers Trust

 We went to our second invertebrate ID workshop run by the Severn Rivers Trust last week.

I saw a lot of things that looked like this - these are the freshwater shrimps found in our local river

And this is one of the mayfly larvae

Lots of bodies and exoskeletons to examine and count