Anniversary of Anne Boleyn's arrest

On this day, 2nd May, in the year 1536 Anne Boleyn was arrested on the orders of her husband, King Henry VIII. She must have known the writing was on the wall. Her nemesis, Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had died at the beginning of January, and Anne's position went from precarious to hopeless when she miscarried the child she was carrying on the very day of Catherine's funeral. With Catherine dead, and many believing that the marriage to Anne was a sham, Henry was free to marry another without any question-marks hanging over the new union.

At the time the Imperial Ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, remarked of Anne, "She has miscarried of her saviour".

 She must have known all of this at the time. She'd already seen evidence that Henry had his eye on her lady-in-waiting, Jane Seymour. A clever operator like Anne would have realised that she was fast falling out of favour and quickly becoming expendable.

Hever Castle in Kent, the childhood home of Anne Boleyn

Celebration of Spring Bunting

In honour of the season – and in the hope that it might inspire the weather to play along – I’ve been working up some spring bunting in the lighter shades of pale. I’m using Costa Brava Knitting's 4 ply organic cotton range – colours Rose Blush and Honeysuckle, which are so very subtle together. I've knit on size 11 (3 mm) needles to a tension of 26 stitches x 36 rows on a 10 cm x 10 cm square. 

Happy Earth Day 2016 !

They've been celebrating Earth Day, 22nd April, since 1970. It all kicked off in response to a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California in 1969. At first it was a bit of a fringe event, but by 1990 amidst rising concerns about global warming and the detrimental effect we were having on the environment, Earth Day went mainstream. Now about a billion of us do something on this date to mark our support for environmental protection.

It's co-ordinated globally by the not-for-profit organisation Earth Day Network, and has become the largest secular celebration on the planet. You can find out what's happening in your area on their website: http://www.earthday.org/.

I know there are lots of climate-change doubters out there, and folk who challenge the science on all of this. I'm not really qualified to argue with them, but it seems to me to be an issue that's just too big for us to gamble on. The downside of getting it wrong, for the sake of our children and the world we leave behind, is just too terrible to think about.

So for Earth Day 2016 here's my own little collage of favourite moments from the last 12 months, by way of celebrating Mother Earth and her rich bounty.

All the best for now and Happy Earth Day!

Bonny x

Ode to the Costa Brava poppy ...

If there's one flower that really makes my heart sing it's the wild field poppy. Here on the Costa Brava there are millions of them, all over the shop, dancing in the breeze, and looking splendid in the warm spring sunshine. To me they represent pure joy.

The Platja de la Fonollera i Mas Pinell ... a heavenly beach

The other day Emi and I were in Pals. We hadn't gone there for anything in particular. It had just occurred to us that it would be a good place to take the WonderDog for his afternoon stroll. As it happens Pals is the most amazing town you could ever hope to visit, but the thing is once you're there, inside the town, you tend not to look beyond its walls. Everything inside is stunning, so why would you? Well I was standing on the terrace by the 11th century Torre de les Horres waiting for Emi to finish buying a (toy!) sword in one of the tourist shops when my eye was drawn to these amazing islands, sitting on the horizon, just off the coast.

They were stunning in the afternoon sunshine. I was amazed as to how I'd manage to miss them before. I've been to Pals more times than I can count. I've wandered around with my camera clenched to my face taking photos of everything, but I've never actually looked outside of the wonderful little town I was visiting. And just look what I missed over there on the seaward horizon!

Emi and the WonderDog were amenable to going on a wild goose chase in search of the islands, so we all piled into the car and headed off in the direction of Platja de Pals, the official town beach, which is some little distance removed from the town itself.