Tags
airport mistakes, aragorn, awkward morris dancers, can you not, cats, children kicking my seat, circle scarf, dogs, evil puppet, geese, goose, Kenilworth Castle, Llandudno, making friends the awkward way, Manchester, me and my nan, narcissistic self shots, North Wales, ribena ice, Sailor Moon, skeletor, sloths, Warwick Castle, wearing armour like a buffoon, what am i doing with my life?, whitby, whitby abbey, you embarrass me
So I haven’t been posting much lately since I’ve been a bit lazy but…
A lot of things have happened since I went to Bristol. I went to Castle Ashby with mum, thinking it would be an actual castle, but it was a stately home (inaccessible) and a yard with some shops in old stables. I bought some sweet hunting socks with tassels, and I finally found a Ribena ice, which I haven’t had since I was very small, probably on the Pitsford Reservoir, which we actually went to later.
I made a tulip skirt out of my American Apparel circle scarf. I felt a bit like it was a kanga throwback, since mum gets annoyed with me if I try to pull of kanga/batiki here and makes me change into something else, since she doesn’t want to be seen with me in public wearing a swath of material that says (in Swahili) “MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.” There was also a cute goose, who was very friendly.
I took a sweet selfie in the car too, since I’m an unrepentant narcissist.
I also forgot to mention the two adorable dogs that my cousins have at their house (where Nan’s afterparty was). They’re a bit loud, but I like them. I walked them a few times at night with Steve, which was nice. I’m glad for the opportunity to talk to my relatives more closely. It’s been too long since I saw them.
Mum in all her kindness and love remembered that I wanted to see a castle, so we went to Kenilworth Castle and Warwick Castle one day with Nan.
I wandered around the ruins myself, since Nan couldn’t come around with the wheelchair. Mum stayed with Nan for the most part. We had lunch in the tea room – I had soup and cream tea, since I’m a greedy person:
Mum and I found a series of helmets and a not-totally-pleased-but-warming-to-my-childishness man who was attending them. I tried a load of them on at mostly my mum’s… oh who am I kidding, I wanted to try them on. So I did. And mum took photographs.
I also took a nice photograph with Nan:
I took a self-shot by balancing my camera on a ruined wall, though I look a bit grumpy. As usual.
After Kenilworth Castle, we went to Warwick Castle, which was slightly less pleasant, mostly because it’d been completely commercialised, and was sort of a theme park for children. It was a bit weird. I had to always shoot up and crop out all the touristy stuff.
The day after we went to the castles, I went up to Manchester to see my cousins. I had a nice Italian dinner with Chris at Gusto. The day after, I went to Old Trafford with Alan, with whom I was staying with. I was happy to see Frank after lunch and have tea with him – the end of the day led us to Alan’s partner’s house, where she had made chili con carne, which was quite nice. The day after, Alan and I went to North Wales, to Llandudno.
We had a lovely drive home along the coast road. The next day I boarded a train for Middlesbrough to meet a friend, and we went together to Whitby. Whitby is a seaside town on the other coast – at Llandudno, I put my feet in the Irish sea, and at Whitby, I put my feet in the North Sea (I think? worst geographer ever…). We had fish and chips from the Magpie café, which were pretty good, though the portion was about two times too big for my little stomach. After we wandered through the town with the ultimate goal of going to Whitby Abbey, which we did, though it was really windy and I couldn’t see much because my hair was in my eyes until I sensibly stacked it all on top of my head.
I did also see something very strange that I wasn’t certain about. When we left the train station, we saw a group of people surrounding some Morris dancers. I was confused by them and soon learned why – they had sort of blackface on. I think it was a pirate themed thing, but I’m not really sure. I just was miffed the whole time. They roamed about the town so we kept running into them…
I went home the next day to Wellingborough station, where we had lunch with Alan, my mum, and my Nan. We did a bit of a drive round the countryside after, where I found a bust of my great, great, great Uncle, Sir Alfred East, and remarked on how similar we sort of look (Mum’s got the photos of me standing close to him, so I’ll post those later.)
I also found the ultimate thatch cottage, which falls into line with the penultimate part of my life plan: live in an adorable thatch cottage with a rad stone wall:
That’s pretty much it for what I’ve been doing, though I have a bit more to write about… but I’m lazy, and I only get 45 minutes of wireless in Heathrow… Since I’m going to Finland.
I’m hoping I don’t have the same situation that plagued my flights from Dar and Dubai…
Then when I’m like
Everyone acts like I did something wrong. Though I’m pretty much thinking
Because I’m fabbity fab fab fabulous
Emily