The onset of Winter

Dear Blog readers, as ever I have been remiss. However, this might turn out to be a bit of a mammoth post however, as I catch you up with the excitement that is ... the British Weather!

This story starts about 10 days ago, when Millie and I were out for a walk in Wythenshawe, enjoying the beauty of a sunny day in the "Rhody Walk". I was snapping some pictures, including catkins in the sun and Millie was largely ignoring me, which is the Jack Russell way.

The weather had been very "on and off" before that. That is to say, it had been raining and then nice and then rotten again, all in one day. As we walked along I remembered that just by the Rhody Walk there is a fallen tree which has had some seats carved into it (just flat parts that one can sit on, nothing too clever) and I thought I'd take a picture of that.

Millie, as usual, had better things to be looking at. But as I took this shot I thought, "well what's that hanging from the tree?". Closer too, it became obvious .... someone had left their umbrella (or "brollie" to a Brit).

When I got close enough I realised that there were actually TWO umbrellas hanging there. It was so easy to imagine two people (a guy and a girl, jusdging by the brollies) coming to the tree at a moment when the rain had abated and having a sit, a chat, perhaps even taking some pictures themselves, and then eventaully carrying on with their walk. I wonder how long it was before they realsied they LEFT THE FLIPPING umbrellas! Ah me.

Of course, I left them too. For all I know they're still there. We haven't been back to Wythenshawe this week as the weather has taken a turn for the chilly and it hasn't seemed worth driving over there just to walk through ice! So, on Monday, we went to Worthington Park, which is much nearer to home - and of course we took some pictures whilst there. (Oh, ok Millie doesn't take many of these, truth be known).

This park is just beside the place where Annie goes to do voluntary work and so is another good place locally, to go for a run around (ok, you know who runs, right?). And I was struck by the beauty that a good frost can bring, with leaves outlined in ice, lying prettily about the place.


Worthington Park also features a number of "chainsaw sculptures" where rooted trees (I think, I hope, already dead) are used to carve a sculpture. Perhaps the most striking of these is "The Wizard" and for once my pup even agreed to pose by this. Prettily, I know you'll agree.

Here's the credit. He's done an eagle and a snail thing that is also for the kids to play on and both of these are worth seeing too. However, there were other dogs and owners over towards those this visit, so I didn't trouble Millie with going in that direction. Instead we struck off, into the quieter parts of the park.

And discovered that Tim appears to have been at work pretty recently. This, as yet untitled piece, is still surrounded by sawdust, so I'm not even sure if it is finished, or indeed who is expected to move in!

Cute though, well Millie and I liked it, anyway. We'll go back and look in a while, I promise - with camera.

Today the frost is more serious and tomorrow they promise blizzards. . Anyway, we did pop out to the local water park today and just have this one picture to show for it. The birds are all flying, which might be to keep warm, or might be because Millie has just run at them - she did that a bit today!

So, wish us luck with our blizzard and I'll keep you posted on the latest effects of "global warming".

The Haunted House

On Friday we had my sister and her partner, my nephew and niece and my Mum over for our very own haunted house evening of fun. Annie dressed as a spooky cat. Very scary, I'm sure you'll agree.

I went for the witch-look, but sadly still thought I should smile when a camera was pointed at me! Games included spooky word-search and apple-bobbing. Food was more pizza than terra, though we did have a cauldron in the centre of our table.

And meanwhile, outside the house we had some lil ghosts and our haunted house sign. The local T or T'ers truly enjoyed Millie's evening greeting (it translates roughly as "Get away from my house!") though the candy went down well.

Happy Halloween!

Well it has not been the best couple of weeks here, with bugs and coughs and ... well that might be enough detail . Hey ho, we appear to be on the mend at last and my lovely niece is coming tomorrow to celebrate Halloween with us.

I am no sort of an expert in this matter, so I have left the pumpkin carving to the American contingent. Hope you like it too ;-)

The Fens

So, now I'm going back a couple of weeks to our trip down towards the south east. I needed to go to Cambridge to do a talk about the book for some very lovely young women at Cambridge Rape Crisis. Being a coward I insisted my entire pack came with me, so we booked a weekend away at chapel lodge, near Wisbech (that's it, above, another converted chapel, just like in Durham in July) and I left Annie and Millie at the holiday home, whilst I went to talk on the Saturday (www.chapellodgeholidays.com).

First of all though, we drove down on the Friday, through parts of the country I don't get to very often (and yet, they named a petrol station for me!) , and detoured a little to take in Bourne Wood and Deeping Saint James, which is my Dad's Mum's part of the country.

We only drove though, though we did stop for a run in the woods, which you can see that Millie enjoyed (note the muddy feet!) and I was very happy to think of a part of my ancestry living in this charmingly chocolate-box place called Deeping ...

The Saturday event in Cambridge went as well as possible, so far as I could tell and hopefully the group will get a lot more support from the publicity they worked hard to generate (www.cambridgerapecrisis.co.uk). Afterwards Annie, Millie and I had a lovely quiet evening, eating, drinking wine (ok, not Mill) and watching dvds. Then, on the Sunday we had a day of pure vacation and headed off to the coast in Norfolk, and a beach in Hunstanton. We made two stops there, one for Millie and I to scamper about a bit (ok, I walked) and one for all of us to look at the cliff tops and the lighthouse plus St Edmund's Chapel. Look at that for photographic composition, a dog a lovely lass, a lighthouse and a chapel ruin, all in one! lol

And - that lighthouse is FOR SALE! Imagine .

We decided to drive around Norfolk some more after this and Millie always likes to make sure the car keeps on the road, by taking a turn in charge - she knows my skills are pretty limited you see.

Next stop was Brancaster beach, for some more walk/scampering and then we found Bircham windmill! Isn't that a fine sight. You can see that it's September in these pictures, already the light is not truly summery, but we did have a memorable time down there, looking around and seeing some different places.

Sing with The Halle

Yesterday I went to a public event at the concert hall in Manchester, called Sing with The Halle. It turned out that I was one of around 700 people who had bought a ticket for the day, to rehearse and perform Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony, with the symphony orchestra. Needless to say, I was not together enough to take a camera and so have stolen the gif above from the website (www.halle.co.uk) of this, Britain's oldest symphony orchestra.

I haven't heard them play often; so have little more to add about the band, except to say that yesterday they seemed to me to be fantastically good sports.

We all arrived at the Bridgewater Hall at around 10 am, for piano rehearsal in the morning, orchestra rehearsal in the afternoon and concert early evening. The hall was opened in 1996 and the website says it holds 2,400 people. I'm pretty fond of the place already, both because it is stylish and smart and also because of good connections. I have been there a number of times to classical and other gigs, but also to graduations, since MMU holds those there, each summer. That also means that I graduated there myself, in 1997 and again in 2005, with Mum and Dad in the audience, both times. The picture above is from their website and doesn't seem to work nicely if much bigger! However, you can see lots more on their site, www.bridgewater-hall.co.uk

Yesterday was something else though. Being part of such an enormous group of people, all trying to make one musical endeavour work, was a fabulous experience. (Realising that I can still read music well enough to manage to keep up was pretty ace too!) The performance in the evening was a lovely round-off to a great day out and I will watch out for something similar in the future. It was a bit like those moments in the musicals, when everyone suddenly starts singing - and mostly we could actually do it too ;-)

And then I came home to my lovely Annie and pup, and dinner. What more could anyone ask!

America

So then, as usual, we went over to Michigan for a while during August. we had some fun taking pictures this year as we were aiming for a calendar for gifts this Christmas (you were warned here first! lol). Anyway, these are a few that might not get on that publication, but give some notion of how flippnig lovely the weather was in Kalamazoo. As ever, the Brit obsesses over a bit of sunshine. The first picture is of Grand Haven, on Lake Michigan which has a pair of lighthouses and then the one below is of South Haven, nearer to Kalamazoo, but still on the lake, with its own iconic red medal house.

That was an early morning trip, annoying the guys out fishing! We must have still been seriously jet-lagged at that point, as that's when we get out early on the road!

This time we were driving a rental car, so here's me (looking very portly!) with the ford focus and standing in front of the condo, in Kalamazoo.

This is the Radisson in town, which is a new building but one I quite like the shapes of, and this is evening lighting which suits it somehow. The trip was perhaps not one of our best, since Mum as unwell whilst we were away and some other things got a bit stressful too. However, we've been back 6 weeks now, so we're already quite nostalgic!

Flint, Wales

So this is serious catch-up time! I'm going to try to put up a few posts to say where we've been lately and now that I see how long it since I did any work in here I think I'd best get some cheesecake made too!

We start of with a day trip to Flint, in North Wales. This was one of the rare sunny days this summer, in early August.

We had a picnic lunch at Flint Castle, an amazingly beautiful ruin, with no tourist development whatsoever around it. There are houses across the road from this castle, where you could sit in your front room and simply castle watch!

After lunch we headed off to the beach, as you can see, Millie was not at all keen! Sadly, I was sporting the mafia look with a raincoat and sunspecs - so it can't have been that warm!