May Day Posies for Styling Spring At Mine

So in continuation of my previous post about attending the workshop at Homemade London, we also had the opportunity to make a May Day Posey and were given the cutest jar to put it in which came from the very generous Rose and Grey.  I didn't want to take too many flowers as I was afraid they wouldn't make the train journey home. Knowing that I had bluebells and forget-me-nots in the garden I have added and changed it to make two posies, one for me and one for my neighbour.

my posey in the cute jar from Rose and Grey

There are many traditions around the May bank holiday, all dating back to pagan and Roman times.  The Little Green Shed company told us about how on May the first you should gather spring flowers and hang them on a neighbours door.  And so I did ...

The festival of Flora, the Roman Goddess of flowers, heralds the beginning of summer. Many customs are still observed, however we decided to swap maypole dancing for tea and macaroons.

And heres my neighbours flowers with some of her collection of perfume bottles. I love to add cow-parsley in with the flowers at this time of year but it can be a bit smelly so I also put a few springs of mint in there.

To see how my other compatriots got on with their posies you can find us all on instagram under the #stylingspringatmine hashtag.

If you fancy having a go at Styling The Seasons the topic set by Lobster & Swan for next month is Treasure. 

I shall have to put my thinking cap on for that one. 

Enigma, Colossus, codes and Bletchley Park

It was my great fortune to be taken on a guided tour of Bletchley Park by the author of a book based there.  Andy Mellett-Brown has just published his first book called The Shelter, using his extensive knowledge of the place to set part of his story there during the war.  My tour was personalised to show me the places where, the main character - Harry Stammers - worked and operated as a BP employee and amateur sleuth.

Vintage fans, particularly for WWII will love BP as much of it is set up as it would have been back in the day of the code breakers. If you are unaware of the history then please have a thorough google, basically, here during the war, code breakers de-cyphered the codes of the enemy, a breakthrough which helped us win the war eventually.  Inventions in code breaking lead to  the first computer and on the site of Bletchley Park is a computer museum which houses the most famous of all machines, The Colossus. So if you are motivated to go then please don't forget to find Colossus which is round the corner. 

an Enigma machine, one of many portable code generators

The American Bombe - on of the many code breaking machines developed at the park

Lorenz Cipher machine, a large non portable code generating machine 

Andy Mellett-Brown the author of The Shelter

most of the staff at BP were women and its great to see the huts furnished with clothes and handbags

not authentic war time food, more like school dinners.

the whole place became derelict, as some of it still is, but with the perseverance of dedicated volunteers, the park was saved, although there is still plenty more to do and they need your help

sculpture of Alan Turing soon to be played by Benedict Cumberbatch in a new film about his life called
The Imitation Game 

Colossus

If you like a good detective story then get yourself over to Amazon and order a copy of The Shelter