Tuesday.

On Sunday we drove to our friends' house near Lavenham, climbed into their car and all four of us (driven by Keith) went to Hartley Wintney in Hampshire, where an annual meeting of the Antique Metalware Society was being held. The journey took nearly three hours, but we'd left home at 6.45 a.m. , so we got there at around ten a.m. Various interesting subjects were spoken of by various experts, then after a sort of indoor picnic lunch (ours put together by Ann and Jill, and a very nice lunch it was, partaken of by eight of us in all), several examples of early metal ware were shown by their owners and discussed by all. Crowbard may be interested to learn that I took along the bronze sword that I've shown recently on blog (Friday 23rd September) and that it raised considerable interest. It was eventually decided that it was indeed made in the Luristan area (now Persia), and that it is rather earlier than I'd realised, i.e. somewhere between one thousand and two thousand years B.C. It's always reassuring to have your judgement confirmed by 'the experts'. We eventually hit the road about five, and got home by about half past eight. It had been a lovely (and thoroughly educational) day out.