July
On Sunday 2, Jay took Clyde to Allens Hill for the first One Day Event of the summer. Jay was thrilled to beat 14 other entrants to win. Clyde had good dressage marks, putting him in fourth place, but, as usual, proved his worth by going clear in both show-jumping and cross-country, with no time penalty, so running out a clear winner.
At school, the emphasis was on preparing for university
applications – an informative evening had been arranged for parents on Monday
3. On 4, Jay went off for a course at
Eton College. The famous public school
runs a number of summer courses for pupils from the state sector, and Jay was
lucky enough to be selected for one of them.
Eton does this, of course, to make a contribution to the community and
preserve its charitable status.
For Jay, it was an
opportunity to spend ten (heavily subsidised) days in that prestigious
establishment, and at the same time receive assistance in preparing for
university applications (for that is the purpose of the course), getting help
on the process itself, and also tutorials in her own subject (biology).
Jay didn’t see it quite
like that, of course: it meant missing
the start of school work on the A level syllabus and she did not enjoy the
social side. However, she said the
subject teaching had been first class, and she made a good start on aspects of
her university application. On balance,
a valuable experience, though she felt it could have been done in a week,
rather than a ten-day, course.
More about Eton
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Helen visited 14-17
July. Our little outing for her this
time was to Snowshill, where there is a specialist lavender farm. The purple, blue and white fields around
are quite spectacular, though the scent is only evident on bending down to
crush a flower |
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All the lavender
products on sale are produced on the site.
The picture of Jay on the right shows where the lavender crop has been
harvested. On a busy, very warm,
Sunday, we kept our visit short, missing the ‘distillery’, where you can see
the extraction and processing of the lavender essence, and the café. |
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Jay
had a week back at school after the Eton course, then was off again for work
experience at the Sanger Institute near Cambridge. This meant a fortnight in digs in Saffron Walden – the first time
Jay has been away from home alone.
The Sanger Institute is
world famous for its work on the human genome, but also undertakes a wide
variety of other biological research, and Jay was fascinated by this experience
and the work involved, which was concerned with the mapping of proteins in animal
and human tissue (Team 86).
More about the
Sanger Institute
Roger’s bowls continued in the much warmer weather conditions, and, in addition to Worcestershire league matches, included friendlies against clubs in Blockley, Chipping Campden, Gloucester and Painswick.