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This website provides an archive of all 200 Editions of the Berrynarbor Newsletter, as circulated from August 1989 to October 2022. It provides a rich tapestry of over 30 years of social history and local knowledge. We hope you enjoy exploring the content.
February 1998 - Edition No.52
EDITORAL
Another Christmas over and 1998 certainly came in wet and windy! I do hope that everyone is now over the loss of power, telephone, roof slates, tiles, trees and other 'flying objects'.
Wind and rain we have had in abundance but a lack of sustained cold weather has produced some strange happenings in the gardens - trees are budding, bulbs are well through, daffodils are flowering in the Valley and my yucca has been struggling to flower since November - it doesn't know whether its late or early!
With spring in our thoughts, I must thank Helen Armstead for her delightfully fresh and topical cover. Whilst chatting over ideas, she brought to mind the rhyme to help, children in particular, remember the number of days in each month, but neither of us could complete the last lines about February. On consulting the quotation books, I was intrigued to find two versions:
Thirty days hath September
April, June, and November,
All the rest have thirty-one
Excepting February alone,
And that has twenty-eight days clear
And twenty-nine in each leap year.
Anon [c. 1555]
Thirty days hath November
April, June and September,
February hath twenty-eight alone
And all the rest have thirty-one.
Richard Grafton [c. 1552]
I wonder how many other slightly different versions there are!
In thanking Helen once again, I must thank so many of you for the kind donations received and everyone who has contributed to this issue [which at this point looks like a real bumper edition] - keep 'em coming and please let me have items for the April/Easter issue by Wednesday, 18th March, at the latest.
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