Oct 8: Fair: Dogs and Pigs

I have never seen so many dogs at a fair before. Dogs of every shape and size, dogs everywhere. There were several dog shows there, a "lurcher and terrier" show (is a lurcher a greyhound? Does anyone know?) And also a mutt show, and an agility course. But whether all the dogs there were in a show or not, I don't know. I think it's just one of those things people take a dog to. I saw dogs I'd never seen before. Unfortunately I didn't get a lot of photographs, as it was pretty crowded and I didn't get a chance to talk to any of the dog owners. I could have spent the entire day doing nothing but photographing dogs, had I been so inclined (A.R. you would have gone insane here with the plethora of odd looking dogs). :-)

Certainly not rare, but such a pretty dog!

Lots of these hairy guys, what are these??

This cutie was tied to a horse trailer.

Lots of these!

It was interesting to me what types of livestock were there versus were not there. There were cows and sheep on display in the rare breeds barn, but none competing. There was a pig show though. Whoa.. The pig shows I've seen at CA fairs are always market shows (where the pigs are all muscle but not really huge), I've never seen any of the breeding stock competition, so maybe big pigs are normal but I was astounded at the size of these things.


I don't know what breed this is but that's the funniest pig face I've ever seen!

Oct 8: East of England Autumn Fair

For most of the nights in London we stayed in a hotel, as D&D's place was a tad on the small side for an extended stay. The hotel was nice, the room was very modern and extremely small. They don't use washcloths over there, I thought that was quite odd. Apparently they are hard to find at all.

I had decided, before we left, that if I was going to be on another continent in a CITY for a week (I'm really not a city person!!!) that I darn well needed to see a poultry show. Finding one proved somewhat challenging, since it's a bit early in the season for the big open shows. By following a maze of links I did eventually stumble onto the East of England Autumn Fair, and was able to confirm with one of my British poultry connections that there was indeed a nice poultry show at the fair. So I insisted we go see it. The idea seemed to be meet with a bit of confusion (after all, can't I see all the chickens I need here??) but in the end I think a very good time was had by all.

So Sunday had nice weather again, though a little more overcast and a little more breezy. We drove to Peterborough, which was 90something miles from London.

I'd have to say this was my favorite part of the trip. :-)


It was VERY different than a fair like we have around here. While a place like the CA State Fair has a tendency to bring every white trash person in the state out in the open, the English fair was nothing like that. People seemed much more normal. Lots of tweed, lots of berets...just like you might imagine!

There were lots and lots of vendors there, but again, unlike a CA fair there were no mops, no salsa-makers, no sunglasses, none of that ultra-commercial stuff. It was much practical. Lots of clothing (coats, boots, sooo many socks!!), livestock equipment, pet supplies, hardware, artwork, kitchen items, specialty foods, and THREE vendors selling portable chicken coops!! How neat!

I had a Cornish Pasty for lunch (pastry filled with meat and potatoes) which was excellent. Apparently this is one of those traditional foods. Very hearty meal... And later in the day a bit of Turkish delight, which is candy, and wonderful.

I took so many photos I'm going to break it up into sections and talk about each thing separately. But for starters here's Mom (hiding on the inside row), me (YES I'm riding the giant rooster, of course!) and DJ on the really neat old steam-powered Merry Go Round.

not done yet

I still have a bunch more photos and stuff to post on here, just haven't had much time this weekend. One month til deadline. 6 drawings to go.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can......

I'll try to get a lot more pics on here tomorrow, I have to get through that so I can get back to commenting on my normal (boring) life! ;-)

Oct 7: Bath

After Stonehenge, we proceeded onward to the city of Bath, home to the ancient Roman bath (hence the name). This is a major tourist town, and it's amazing to see the ancient ruins.

Looking down over the Great Bath (sorry, bad shadows):

The Great Bath:

One of many ancient statues, with Bath Abbey in the background:

The set of a movie being filmed in Bath (no idea what movie):

A park in the city of Bath, which is quite picturesque:

I believe this is the River Avon:

No, the boat doesn't go down the steps...


The Bath Abbey. Flying Buttresses!!! Yay, finally get to bust out with some art history terminology! (Flying buttresses are the support columns that stick outward and down from the upper part of the building, they "fly" versus normal buttresses which are completely attached to the building. In this pic they look a bit like a sideways "V" shape. Buttresses help distribute the weight of the building, so the weight is supported by the ground rather than other parts of the building.)

I guess this is where you take your mineral water if it gets sick??

Oct 7: Stonehenge

Getting out of bed on October 7th was NOT easy, since I was not adjusted to the time change, so even getting up at 9am felt like 1am... ugh! We finally left the city around 11am and headed out into the country. In my mind, getting OUT of the city was the best part of the trip! :-) They sure don't make it easy though, I'm not sure how anyone manages to navigate a way out of London.

The weather was gorgeous that day, sunny with big puffy clouds, not too warm, and not too cold. Much better than the day before!

It amuses me that familiar things have different names. Well, then again sometimes things are a little different. What we would call a "rest area" they call a "welcome break." And it's not just the ole toilet-and-vending-machine stop, it has a restaurant, shops, gas station, and hotel! Lots of other things have different names, let's see if I can think of a few...

elevator=lift
detour=diversion
exit=way out
yield=give way
chips=crisps
fries=chips
cookies=biscuits
biscuits=scones

Anyway, back on topic... so we left the city that day, and the first destination was none other than Stonehenge. The countryside is SO beautiful, and SO green! Right here right now it's brown and dusty, so it was pretty amazing to see all that green. And I saw some horses! No Gypsy Horses (darn it!) but a Belgian and some ponies and several regular size horses (no idea what breed, they were far away anyway).

A few views along the motorway, taken from the car.




This made me laugh... yes, those are cows crossing an overpass! An overpass made just for the cows!


These cows looked happier than the happy California cows. Saw a lot of nice looking cows in lush green pastures. No idea what all the breeds were.


And here are some sheep.


So we made it to Stonehenge, it's hard to imagine that the whole area used to be surrounded by trees. DP says much of England used to be forest, and it was cut down for firewood hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Some has regrown (naturally or otherwise) but there is a lot of open space. There were a fair amount of people at Stonehenge, but I can imagine it must be a lot worse at times. You can't walk right up to it anymore. It's amazing, even from a distance. I can't imagine that it would be like to walk through it, I think that would be some sort of spiritual event... and I don't tend to say stuff like that.

Nevertheless, Stonehenge from all angles...





And to prove I was there:



Next stop: city of Bath. More later...

Oct 6: London

*note* I am not going to give a lot of history on things, though there is certainly a lot of history there. I'll put in links where I can, so if you want to know more, check the links!

We arrived at London Heathrow airport around 7am London-time, on no sleep. I was feeling fairly miserable, and I got increasingly zombie-ish as the day went on. It took almost an hour to get through the passport check because there was a huge line. Customs was a breeze.

DP met us at the airport, and we took a train to Paddington Station, and then the tube (subway) to D&D's apartment. I was feeling completely lost by that point, how does anyone find their way around?

The architecture is quite different. For one thing there are a lot of OLD buildings, and they are often fairly elaborate (and gorgeous). But things tended to be tall and narrow, very square, with pointy roofs. And close together! Like everything's attached to something else. Lots and lots of and lots of brick. And then in the midst of all the beautiful old buildings there would be a horribly tacky mid-1900s building. DP said that means the OLD building got bombed in WWII, and they put a modern building in its place. Makes for an odd mix. You can see bomb damage on a lot of old buildings.

All I wanted to do was sleep, but unfortunately for some reason I couldn't manage to fall asleep in the half hour that we stayed at D&D's before leaving again. Ugh, I felt quite awful that day, missing a whole night of sleep! We left around noon, took the tube to the Westminster station, and wandered around London for HOURS (OMG my feet and legs hurt so bad by the end of the day!).

Big Ben (1858) and the Houses of Parliament, as seen from a few points along the Thames River.




This is from the other side:

A gargoyle on the Houses of Parliament:


On the other side of Big Ben is Westminster Abbey (13th to 16th century) which is amazingly impressive. The line was long, we didn't go in.

The back:


The front:

And then we went other places I don't quite recall, saw lots of old building and pretty things, and darned if I know where we were, but here are some scenes from some park. Yay, geese!



While walking down some totally random road the way to some other place (did I mention I was TOTALLY exhausted that day?) I spotted a little gallery showing work by the Society of Wildlife Artists. WOW, there was some amazing work there, and this is just the sort of thing I would be a part of if I lived there. It was purely by chance that we ran into it, but I'm glad we did!

Walked, walked, walked...

We went to the National Gallery. I wish I had been more awake, I might have gotten more out of it! It was amazing to see originals by Michelangelo, Van Eyck, Da Vinci... The highlight for me though was seeing George Stubb's Whistlejacket. I had no idea this was still on exhibit there, I could have drooled over it for quite some time (so I bought a little poster print).

Trafalgar Square as seen from the front steps of the National Gallery.


Onward to an outdoor bazaar, where we finally sat down and relaxed while watching some street performers and eating wonderful chocolate chip cookies from a little cookie shop.

Walked, walked, walked....

At some point we went to the car rental place and DP picked up the car for the weekend. Most people in London don't have cars. It's expensive and parking is scarce. I could NOT drive there. Not just that they drive on the opposite side of the road, but the roads are insane, they are little and winding and appear and disappear and don't tend to be too straight! London was a city built for horses!

That evening we walked over the London Bridge and got a nice view of the Tower Bridge (1894) at night. I'd thought London Bridge would be pretty (since there's a song about it after all, "London Bridge is falling down, falling down...") but it's not too interesting. Tower Bridge is the famous one, it's quite spectacular. I really like this photo! :-)


We had dinner at a pizza place, which was quite yummy, then went back to D&D's, hit the hay, and was asleep in probably about 5 seconds, if that.

Oct 5

By the end of this series of postings, you may be sick of my photographs. I took a zillion of them. I'm trying to narrow it down a bit, but that's tough, so many are so nice! There will certainly be multiple views of the same thing though... It's not the same as really being there, but I'll attempt to take you on a virtual tour.

So Mom and I left on Thursday October 5th, to spend a week in London visiting DP and DJ and seeing the sights.

Thursday was a blur. We left here early that morning, and took a short flight on a propeller plane to San Francisco, and then boarded a seriously enormous jet bound for London. I've never been on a plane that big-- it had two stories, and three sections of seats across the plane (two aisleways). What it did lack though, was knee room, so it was a thoroughly uncomfortable flight, particularly when the person in front of me put his seat back (gah! I hate that!) and it also didn't help that the couple in front of us had a baby that screamed darn near the whole flight. Grrrrr. Why on earth do people travel with little kids anyway, it's not like a baby is going to remember the trip! Ugh!

So I didn't get any sleep on the ~9 hour flight, and the food wasn't fabulous. They called it pot roast. Ha. Meat loaf maybe, possum loaf perhaps.

No pics from Thursday.

Somehow we went through a time warp or worm hole or something. It was nighttime for part of the flight, and we arrived at 7am Friday the 6th. Time changes confuse me. It's 8 hours ahead there.

It'll take me a while to sort through the photos and get everything posted, bear with me!

More later.........

I'm back!

My gosh, have you nothing better to do than sit around and read my blog?! ;-)

I am back. England does indeed exist. I took several hundred photos but will not subject you to all of them. It'll take a few days to get that sorted out.

I don't know why my email address is often not working.

I had a good time.

I'm EXHAUSTED.

new stuff

"The First of Spring" is now available on a multitude of items in the CafePress Store.

well that's weird

So you've heard of a partridge in a pear tree. Well today I was rather surprised to come home and find a pigeon in a Japanese maple (a very tiny maple, I might add!). Seems an odd resting place. I went out to have a chat with it (pigeons are NOT encouraged to hang around here....) and it flew away, so at least it wasn't sick. Weird.


In other news I hung ten art pieces at a real estate/home loan office in downtown Sacramento. It's in this super cute old Victorian house, and the art looks REALLY nice there. There are two other artists showing also-- a photographer and a painter. Everyone's styles are extremely different, so that's fun.

The day was a blur.