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Hello journal. I've been on holiday for the past week, and I've done many delightful things. We went to St Ives in Cambridgeshire to visit friends on the first weekend. Our friends' beautifully kept cottage garden backs onto the River Ouse, with an unoccupied mooring platform perfect for fishing. We spend the entire weekend outside, eating, drinking and going for walks. Humuhumu found ample motivation for crawling in the form of enticing green beer bottles.
On Monday we dropped Humuhumu off at nursery so we could go into Birmingham for retail therapy and sushi. Both of these things worked out rather nicely. We acquired, amongst other material pleasures, a copy of Skyfall and two miniatures of whisky, the Glenfarclas 21 and 25 year olds. We enjoyed these together in the evening after Humuhumu went to bed.
On Tuesday we watched tennis and replanted the pots in front of our house, which were full of dead things and beheaded dried-out tulips. We are now keeping up appearances properly in our village, for which I imagine our neighbours are greatly relieved ("for the greater good..."). We also found our local cider man and stopped by to pick up a couple of litres of Tardebigge Cider, which I can recommend highly. Then we went to visit some local friends and were fed an excellent chicken and leek pie.
On Wednesday we went to the dentist for the first time in [mumblety] years and got our pearly whites cleaned. Our new dentist is our neighbour, which could have been really awkward but she's so professional that it wasn't. Then we packed a fancy picnic, including some teeth-spoiling merlot, and traveled to Worcester to watch one of the Ashes warm-up tests between Worcestershire and Australia. We had visions of being able to spread our blanket on the grass to let Humuhumu crawl around while we watched the match. This turned out to be entirely wrong. (See: Warm-up test for the Ashes.) The place was packed. We eked out three hours with Humuhumu's good graces - and a long nap - and then we had to leave. The bloke hit on the excellent idea of ending the day by sitting outside with wine and a fishing rod by the canal.
On Thursday we had planned to go to Bristol to hunt Gromits. Eighty Gromit statues have been placed throughout the city and as an avid fan of street art treasure hunts, I simply must go. Sadly we were all suffering badly with the cold we'd been ignoring for five days and thus confined our adventuring to Droitwich. I plan to take a day off work to hunt Gromits in August instead. We consoled ourselves with a selection of cheese from Waitrose and fishing by the canal.
On Friday we got dressed up and, with our local friends A and baby S, we went to the Warwick Races. It was Ladies' Day, so there were plenty of outlandish hats and party frocks tottering around on high heels. Being the only people with children under one and with Daddy carrying Humuhumu in a sling, we attracted a lot of attention. Also, we won on three of the four races on which we betted, thus breaking even on the day's expense. It was glorious out, too. We wound up the day with - you guessed it - drinking wine and fishing by the canal.
Yesterday we managed to attend both the Hanbury Country Fair and our local beer festival. We admired beautiful horses and well-trained (if rather hot and bothered) hunting dogs showing off their tricks and then we drank real ale and perry all afternoon while lazing in the sunshine. All in all, a highly successful day. Rounded off by...do I even need to say it?
On Monday we dropped Humuhumu off at nursery so we could go into Birmingham for retail therapy and sushi. Both of these things worked out rather nicely. We acquired, amongst other material pleasures, a copy of Skyfall and two miniatures of whisky, the Glenfarclas 21 and 25 year olds. We enjoyed these together in the evening after Humuhumu went to bed.
On Tuesday we watched tennis and replanted the pots in front of our house, which were full of dead things and beheaded dried-out tulips. We are now keeping up appearances properly in our village, for which I imagine our neighbours are greatly relieved ("for the greater good..."). We also found our local cider man and stopped by to pick up a couple of litres of Tardebigge Cider, which I can recommend highly. Then we went to visit some local friends and were fed an excellent chicken and leek pie.
On Wednesday we went to the dentist for the first time in [mumblety] years and got our pearly whites cleaned. Our new dentist is our neighbour, which could have been really awkward but she's so professional that it wasn't. Then we packed a fancy picnic, including some teeth-spoiling merlot, and traveled to Worcester to watch one of the Ashes warm-up tests between Worcestershire and Australia. We had visions of being able to spread our blanket on the grass to let Humuhumu crawl around while we watched the match. This turned out to be entirely wrong. (See: Warm-up test for the Ashes.) The place was packed. We eked out three hours with Humuhumu's good graces - and a long nap - and then we had to leave. The bloke hit on the excellent idea of ending the day by sitting outside with wine and a fishing rod by the canal.
On Thursday we had planned to go to Bristol to hunt Gromits. Eighty Gromit statues have been placed throughout the city and as an avid fan of street art treasure hunts, I simply must go. Sadly we were all suffering badly with the cold we'd been ignoring for five days and thus confined our adventuring to Droitwich. I plan to take a day off work to hunt Gromits in August instead. We consoled ourselves with a selection of cheese from Waitrose and fishing by the canal.
On Friday we got dressed up and, with our local friends A and baby S, we went to the Warwick Races. It was Ladies' Day, so there were plenty of outlandish hats and party frocks tottering around on high heels. Being the only people with children under one and with Daddy carrying Humuhumu in a sling, we attracted a lot of attention. Also, we won on three of the four races on which we betted, thus breaking even on the day's expense. It was glorious out, too. We wound up the day with - you guessed it - drinking wine and fishing by the canal.
Yesterday we managed to attend both the Hanbury Country Fair and our local beer festival. We admired beautiful horses and well-trained (if rather hot and bothered) hunting dogs showing off their tricks and then we drank real ale and perry all afternoon while lazing in the sunshine. All in all, a highly successful day. Rounded off by...do I even need to say it?
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FWIW one can't have a "warm up test". One can have a warm up match for the test series but a test is, by definition, a match between two of the ten test playing countries. As an American you could be forgiven for such an error but since you are now a Brit it just won't do.
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The tabbies are pretty fascinated by the small plastic pond in my courtyard. I suspect a canal of their very own would be heaven to them.
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Telstar loves the canal. He knows how to cross the locks and the overflows and everything.
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HAHA! I admit that had not crossed my mind in all of your village-life posts. I'm glad that you, the bloke, the fish, and the cat are well-informed of the local risks. :P
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