September blues or should I say moos….

Well it has been a funny old month what with Claire Ross leaving and all! I am now by myself in the shed/office and its quite lonely, was thinking of inviting some of the cows over for tea (see Jo’s previous blog) Should I to offer them milk with their tea…hmm cow etiquette!

 Anyway, the events over August have gone well, the Bat Day was very exciting although we had to call off the Bat Detecting walk due to poor weather conditions. It has been re-scheduled for Friday 25^th September at 6.45 pm, if you would like to find out more about our local bats and see how a bat detector  works give reception a shout (01736 788662). We are hopeful of finding bats but it is very dependent on weather conditions i.e. rain/wind = no insects flying= no bats… but we shall see!

Just before Claire Ross left we had the chance to go down Victory Shaft (2^nd time for me!) I took one of our hand held camcorders with me and have produced a 4 minute film of our experience. It certainly gives you an idea of what is was like down the mine. Bill kindly took us down some side passages with water so deep it up to my knees (and well into my wellies!) the moment was captured on film

Pictures can be seen at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geevortinmine/

All very exciting. Looking forward to having some school groups back on site where we get the chance to run some of our new workshops……… I am still keeping an eye on the cows though.

The fog

Have you ever seen the film the fog? I’ve been half expecting pirate-clad skeletons to emerge from the sea and take over the mine for the last two days. The fog has been so bad. Even the cows are starting to look sinister… As I type I cannot see the top of Victory Headgear which is about 25m from my office. Where has the sunshine gone?

For July and August my main responsibility was to ensure that our rather ramshackle ‘what’s on’ board was kept up to date daily with events on site. I have decided that as it is being used so often I shall invest some money in at least trying to make it look good. It is the first thing that visitors see upon arrival – after the toilets that is! My lettering techniques using a white board pen have come on enormously. Some days I even added flowers or butterflies….

As well as holidays and guiding, not a great deal else has happened in the last two months except for record numbers of visitor, clearly a good thing. We are not normally open Saturdays and we experimented this July and August with opening Saturdays. So, for three summer Saturdays, I gave up my Saturday-morning newspaper and coffee hallowed time to come and work and talk to people all day. The sacrifices!

The Interactives in the new museum have taken a hammering this summer and we are now down to our last spares….It is difficult to decide between what has broken due to poor design and what has broken due to inevitable wear and tear….but generally things have been Ok. Our handdrilling sessions have been very popular and on one occasion our Geevor talks normally attended by about 15 people had over 70.

Rebecca and I have spent a lot of time planning for September and October – events and exhibitions but for now I am just glad to get my head down and clear some things in my inbox. One of those outstanding projects is to hang some more art around site. I have accumulated several lots of work for reception and outside the café and about to take on some more, so watch this space for some interesting work appearing around site.

Claire Ross left us in August and it was really sad to see her go. Consequently I have had to do Geevor’s twitter all week. Got quite into it actually, so good job my turn only comes round ever 8 weeks! The new geevor.com website is super and sparkles. What an improvement. Well done Claire. We are all determined to maintain the high standards of web presence you established for us.  We miss you already!