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Frank

Michael Gambon played/stared in many plays, cine films and TV films and series of course.  The press’ habit of linking every personality in the news with a work most readers will remember. i.e. the name of the entertainment, if not the actor, means that the Harry Potter films get most mention. 

I note that John Harrison made many of his early clocks using oak and lignum vitae, but nobody ever mentions which type of oak, of which there are many.  I’m wondering if it was holm (UK)/holly(historical)/evergreen(USA) oak, Quercus ilex, which is extremely hard and heavy, for clock parts rather than a much wider planked oak for the outer casing.  I’m prompted because a couple of months ago a chap who’d attended a tree talk I’d given asked me to identify a dying tree in his stackyard.  I identified it as Quercus ilex of which we have quite a few alongside the A road through our village, and which had a ‘mast’ year this year with catkins turning the trees and the ground below into a golden carpet (see photographs).  Then this week he handed me a bit he’d cut from an aged branch from said tree.  I couldn’t believe how hard and heavy it was.  I night try cutting a spindle.

One of my regrets this year was seeing two cases of lawn bowls belonging to my neighbor, who was being taken into care, and her late husband, lying in the skip being used to clear her property and my not liberating them.  You can bet your life they were old enough to be lignum vitae, which would have cut up into excellent samples for talks various.  DaveP

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