Cut grant?

Just under a week ago, we went to pay our respects to Brading Roman Villa.

Careless start to the day, with a car coming the other way in the narrow part of Brading High Street clipping our wing mirror and taking its plastic cover off. Park in the pub while BH walks back to recover it, three of the little plastic lugs which hold it in place now snapped off. Rather to my surprise I am able to clip it back on. One would not know, apart from the scuff marks. It is still there, some hundred or so miles later.

Onto to stroll around the villa, still good for an outing into Roman Britain, despite our previous visits. There is always something to see or notice which one has not seen or noticed before, or which one has forgotten about.

Sadly though, the additional exhibition, what they are now calling the pop-up exhibition, has been downsized, with this year's offering just being some display boards from, I think, the Museum of London, and about the great fire. A bit thin in the absence of any artefacts in cases to peer at. Not like the gay pot of reference 1 at all. Maybe the government grant for the Villa has been cut back, along with everything else.

Overcast, but quite warm enough to take tea and cake on the veranda, with its fine views over the country to the south and east. Cake fine, apart from thick layer of soft white icing. Luckily, I was able to roll that off without much damage to the sponge underneath.

On the way out, practised interacting with a group of pensioners, against the day that we are old enough to go on outings - holidays even - on coaches. I associate now to the way that young people interact so easily with other young people of their own age.

Surprised, further on the way out, to find a post for charging our electric car, the sort of thing which is now popping up all over the place in central London, but which I had not expected here. Perhaps it is a condition of getting any kind of a grant at all.

From there onto Culver Down to picnic inside the old gun emplacement on the top (not the 19th century fort, a little further back). Further confusion of crows and buzzards, resolved on this occasion by a passer-by who happened to have a small pair of Zeiss binoculars in his pocket. He thought maybe carrion crows. Confirmation of a sort, in that I learned afterwards that nursing carrion crows will see off any hunting buzzard they might see.

Wound up the proceeding by admiring the Yarborough Monument, recognising, inter alia, the contributions to the science of naval architecture of the Earl of Yarborough, a science which I had intended to study when I was in my early teens. According to the National Trust, who have its management: 'it was originally built on the slightly higher summit of Bembridge Down. But this massive granite obelisk on its stepped ashlar stone plinth was painstakingly moved, stone by stone, in the 1860s. It was to make way for Bembridge Fort, which was built as part of the island’s defences against invasion'. Bembridge Down being the western continuation of Culver Down.

PS: the pot is known as the Warren Cup. I feel sure that we subsequently went to visit it at the British Museum, but annoyingly, I can't find any trace of it in the blog. I even had to resort to Bing to get the name of the thing, all to no avail.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/roman-villa.html.

Group search key: bva.