Just got back from Stroud Book Festival where we went to “Dweller in Shadows” celebrating Kate Kennedy’s biography of Ivor Gurney. Those of you who know me well will know that I am fascinated by Ivor Gurney’s story. It is a poignant tale of a man who went to France in 1915. He loved the Gloucestershire landscape, and it features in his  poems and music, often written while at the Front. Kate was joined on stage by fabulous singers and a pianist sharing some of Gurney’s compositions. The evening was an excellent mix of discussion, poems and music. His story always moves me particularly with him being incarcerated in a mental hospital in Dartford for the last fifteen years of his life a man who yearned to see the Gloucestershire landscape yet only coming back to Gloucestershire to be buried.

We did our first Winter Square bird survey for two years because of the pandemic this morning (an OS map square). We always enjoy doing these squares because we are always allocated a square in a place where you would normally think of going for a bird watch- today we were only five miles from home by the Severn.