[ Nov.2018 ] On the last day of our short holiday in Lincoln, the city in the middle of England, we went into a jewellery shop that had interested me during our stay.
The reason why I was interested in this shop was because on their window, we saw a pendant with a beautiful stone called ‘Blue John’.
I love semi-precious stones but I had never come across Blue John before.
According to the explanation on the window, it is found only in Derbyshire in England.
Derbyshire is two counties away from Lincolnshire, still in the middle of England, so you can say roughly that it is a local stone.
This stone has a purple pattern on a whitish background, which is lovely.
In the shop, they showed us a variety of Blue John jewellery.
Usually I like jewellery with large stones, but because the small one on the window had the most beautiful pattern, I bought it.
They gave us a leaflet, ‘The History of the Blue John Stone’.
According to this, this stone was discovered by the Romans nearly 2,000 years ago and the hill in the west of Castleton in Derbyshire is the only deposit.
The Roman naturalist, Pliny the Elder, who wrote ‘Natural History’, mentioned this stone.
In those days, vases and goblets made of this stone was highly praised.
After the Roman era, it seemed that people forgot about it, but in the 18th century, a businessman called Matthew Boulton rediscovered it and, again, the vases were made with the stone.
The 
leaflet says that nowadays, the mines are largely extinct and it is impossible to make large items like vases, but still, they can make small things like pendants or rings.
I am very happy that I got to know this historical stone.
After shopping, we had a light lunch and it was time to go home.
We went down the slope for the last time.
Fortunately, the weather was fine, so we took many photos until the end.
Before taking the train, the last thing we did was my husband’s haircut.
As I have said many times, he has his hair cut often during the holiday.
This time he did at the shop in front of the railway station, called “Italian Barber, Gregorio”.
Apparently, 5 brothers came to live here from Calabria, southern Italy, in 1959 and one of them started this barber shop.
The one who was there at the time was his son, whose mother is English.
So the brothers have been in England for nearly 60 years, but not only the name of the shop but also the fact that they 
had the map of Calabria in the shop, suggested that their hearts are still close to their homeland.
This son made an effort to speak Italian with a strong English accent with my husband.
After that, we took another one car train, which delayed us quite a lot.
We were worried that we would miss our connection, but in the end it was OK and came back home without any troubles.
