This week’s Spiral Sunday post is appearing rather later than usual as we’ve just got back from a weekend trip to Lancaster to see my son Patrick.  It was nice to be back in the north and in the homeland of my paternal grandfather’s family: my father’s family hailed originally from Lancashire before his father migrated to the north east in about 1900.

At the top of the street where Patrick’s house is located is a building that used to belong to a local Co-Operative Society store, a fine organisation with its roots in Lancashire.  Above the doorway is a beautiful stone carving of a skep, a traditional honey bee hive made by coiling straw in a spiral to form a dome shape, and the traditional symbol of the Co-Operative Society.  The spiral is not obvious from this, so you’ll just have to trust me!