Saturday, July 19, 2003

Greetings,

Today was Kerith's birthday, Bill Pogue's last day in Weardale and he starts a new job on Monday plus we had the pleasure of Lindsay and Tricia Greenbank and Ralph Sutcliffe later in the day.

Kerith opted to stay at Burnbrae and rest and do some laundry and bake cookies and some last minute shopping for the BBQ this evening.

I joined Byron up at the Rogerley mine and we moved all the large blocks from the plate he brought down the day before opposite the Dipper Pocket -- call it the Dipper Extension. A half dozen or so very pretty plates mixed with aragonite up to 2'x2.5' in size with some very nice crystals on them. He set up the saw and went at them. I continued my two day long project of working on the three large blocks that sat dangerously like teeth over the entrance to the aragonite cave zone between the two West Crosscuts. About noon I was successful and had brought the three most dangerous down -- quite an experience in close quarters knowing you will have about .5 seconds to respond and jump left or right when a 500# block drops. Their dropping exposed a very nice small cabinet sized plate of white aragonite with small clusters of stalactites and an upright nearly 1.5" gem twin stuck at one end. I think we'll take it home as is and work on it in Fallbrook.

I came back for lunch around one after making a quick stop in Stanhope to purchase some groceries on Kerith's list, I was lucky enough to get there about 10 minutes before everybody closed. From 1 Saturday afternoon to 8 Monday morning forget buying groceries in Weardale you best not need that last quart of milk or pound of butter or it entails driving 18 miles to Consett to the Safeway there.

Ralph Sutcliffe arrived about 2 p.m. and we sat and chatted about minerals and antiques. He is in the antique trade and has an associate in Riverside, California whose outlet is Mr. Beasley's which has been in business over 30 years. In that time he says he has shipped over 5000 (yes!) containers full of antiques to Riverside. He is just one dealer of many doing the same, gives you some idea of the strength of the American antique trade. As an aside for those of you who don't know. Ralph built the finest English mineral collection in modern times and it was purchased by the Greenbanks who kept the Northern English portion and sold off the rest and added to their area of interest. You can hardly pick up a book on English or Scottish minerals without seeing a specimen one or the other owned.

The Greenbanks arrived about 6:30 p.m. and we had a grand BBQ. In fact, the first I can remember in five years without rain. Bill Pogue did a extremely tasty job of marinating and cooking the chicken and steaks. A long, tiring and fun day had by all.

Best Regards,

Cal & Kerith

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