Neolithic stoneware fragments

How exciting, a few months ago the boys appeared with some pieces of broken pottery that they had found in the sand down on the beach.   We never gave them much thought except agreeing that they were quite unusual.   In fact we just let the boys play with them and then left them on a shelf.   Anyhow, curiosity got the better of me and after a little bit of research on the internet I discovered some archaeological reports of an archaeology  dig done in the 1960s by HK University and blow me, there are pictures of nearly identical pieces of pottery found in Man Kok Tsui that were dated back to the late Neolithic and Bronze ages.   That means the boys have stumbled across pottery that is some three or four thousand years old!!!   Any one know what we should do with the pieces we have found?

Percy Thrower shows off the garden

River Silver (Mui Wo)

A quick walk around the garden in Man Kok Tsui, before the typhoon came along.

Typhoon Signal 10 and Eagles

A real bumpy night of wind and rain.   Trees down all over the shop in the morning.   The tide was surging too.   Luckily Man Kok Tsui seemed to weather the storm and the beach remained intact.   Last time the beach was trashed and covered in debris.   I suppose this time the winds must have been from another direction.   5 in the afternoon and not much happening but by midnight it was a very different place.

When Nuch and I took the boat round to Man Kok Tsui to check the house we counted six or seven kites soaring over the headlands.   As we looked closer we noticed the birds seemed to keep diving down onto a slightly larger bird with broader, wider and fingered wings and a distinctly rounded tail.  The bigger bird seems to be about 25% bigger than the kites.  The kites seemed to line up and take turns to mob the bird, occasionally locking talons and tumbling over and over before letting go.    Too far away to properly ID I guess it was a stranger to the shores that had been blown off course by the typhoon winds that had swept up from the Philippines.

Matthew turns 7

   
A birthday celebrated with a party on the beach is always fun, especially when there is an home made cream cake involved.   How we managed to serve it up without sand in every mouthful is beyond me.   Succeed we did though.   The cake was gone in less than five minutes; his new bike we hope, will not be so quick to disappear!  It is hard to imagine that seven years ago, on 4th July, we (that is Nuch and I were getting a free helicopter ride to the hospital.)