JRT,

Thanks for those chilling statistics. It is still un-naturally mild with the odd icy wind here and there - you may guess where - despite my green moleskin birdwatching trousers.

Yesterday we ventured to mid Yorkshire on a wasted trip. A fine bright day but with a rising wind which kept the smaller birds down. On the way back I experienced a rising wind of a different nature when the results of the previous evening's curry and lager excess produced the inevitable back-pressure. We had however spotted the elusive Hawfinch earlier at Cromford.

In 1771 Arkwright built the world's first water powered cotton spinning mill at Cromford which went on to make mucho dinero. I started there in 1777 on my sixth birthday as an apprentice Spinning Jenny greaser and thread joiner, back-scuttle governer assistant, pushrod adjuster and cog differential timing brat. Yes - Arkwright spotted me turning back and re-setting the 'clocking-in' mechanism one morning when I was late and correctly deduced that there would be a place in his expanding empire for a mechanically minded lad. In my ten minute dinner break I pulled coal barges up the Cromford Canal. We worked 18 hours a day for tuppence a week with two hours off for Christmas Day. Arkwright was a generous old cove and his terms of employment so reasonable that I referred to them when establishing rules and regulations for my own estate which still hold good today.



'Find your enemy and shoot him down - everything else is unimportant.'

Manfred von Richtofen
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