Arts in Homes

Visited the Wirksworth festival on Saturday with Julie, this is Arts and Crafts festival with the emphasis on Art.

Ariving late morning we were greeted by an elderly gentleman who was serving two other people as we arrived at his table and exclaimed you will have to wait a moment I have a rush on, and he meant it, was flustered by having to serve 2 people.

We then proceeded to wonder around Wirksworth following the trail guide, which took us to the town hall, parish rooms, shops, café’s, churches and most oddly peoples living rooms, kitchen and gardens, where their artistic goods were on display. All the houses where signed with numbers and marked with purple and white balloons, so you did not wonder uninvited in to strangers living rooms, some even opened up their toilets to the public.

The art was interesting consisting of sculpture, painting, photographs, fabric, sewing ironwork etc, but mostly not the sort of stuff I would buy mainly due to its cost, but some cases too surreal, uninspiring or just too big for a normal sized house, saying that the majority was good.

[View below looking out over Wirksworth from one of the trail sites]


By the time we had walked the hilly streets visiting two thirds the exhibitors we were both numb to seeing any more, so left around 5pm after homemade cake from the church.

I’m told by a fellow at worker the evening was extremely busy has the bands and performance artist took the streets in number to entertain the crowds, and people did not close their front rooms to art inspectors until late into the night.

On Sunday I was invited out by Ste and Deb photo below to have lunch and tea with them and visit a massive Garden, craft, outdoor wear centre with them. The centre was a disappointment as it seemed to have changed hand since they had last visited and the craft area was filled with other high street traders such as the Works, Yeoman’s, plus pet products and some other clothing brands you see everywhere. My friends did not have a good word to say about the place especially the coffee shop which was now serving in cardboard cups rather than nice china cups.



Just outside the centre we went to the farm shop which was up to scratch and I bought some Banana and Pistachio Ice cream for us to eat when we got back to their house, it went down a treat after the lovely Tai green curry Deb made for tea, after I turned my nose up at a Indian curry.

A good weekend overall out and about.

Photo 37 of 52

Gargoyle

Fried Fey.

On Saturday I had friends Leslie and Samantha stay over, Leslie was unfortunately caught up in the railway chaos and arrived much later than expected.

Both Sam and Leslie have fussy diets, Sam’s being wheat and a few other things free and Leslie being a vegetarian who does not like eating, so while I did offer in the end I left them to cater for themselves which meant in Sam case lots of fried food which made my house smell for several days.

During the evening Sam caught a sight of my copy Sapphire and Steel an old surreal, spooky sci-fi TV series from the late 70’s early 80’s .We put in the DVD player and watched 6 half hour long episodes of the first series. While the sets, special effects and even some the acting is dire, the atmosphere and mood they create with music, lighting, and long pauses is excellent and while not always making sense, the plot/storyline I still find interesting a quite gripping. It’s reminded me I should order the 2nd series if it’s available.

Jasmine has discovered she likes climbing into bags see photo below.

Sunday was the latest Ascendancy battle; AndyL pitted his wits against RichS who had lots of help (or hindrance) from about 10 other players, see photos below.

The game gave AndyL all the initial tactical advantages in deployment which he used to good effect, while RichS had a 15% points advantage after his initial losses which were written into the scenario and not counted, RichS also could only really react to what Andy did since he was on the back foot from the start. The battle ended in a draw with 7 victory points each side, although Andy was 2 points ahead until very last move.

A good if very tiring couple of days.

Photo 36 of 52

A big rat or Capybara

Ham roll compalaint

This is not my normal post since I don't use this blog to moan however this time I have.

I bought a Ham salad roll (Ham salad cob if your from around here) from a mobile delivery van and found for the second time in less than a week it had very little filling, at least by my standards see the photo below it, the piece of ham covered half the surface, a tiny bit of lettuce tucked near the visible edge, some thinly sliced tomatoes, onion, cucumber and a thin scrape of butter. (Note there is no ham under the tired looking cucumber)

I was annoyed so sent the supplier a fax saying I wanted my money back £ 1.60 and that they needed to improve or I would not be buying any more from them.

The supplier however did not take criticism well, he rang me up saying he relied on word of mouth and nobody else complained, and said they would no longer deliver to our company since I would apparently bad mouth him and no one would buy. So instead of dealing with the complaint in a sensible way he’s lost his half a dozen customers totally, needless to say he kept to his word and the van has not turned up this morning and unfortunately I’ve not got my money back and I’m very disappointed.

Polling the building I’m in by email, it would seem other people had already stopped buying anything but crisps, cakes and sweets and did not rate his food anyway and nobody seem bothered the van will no longer turn up, so not feeling guilty for being the person responsible for loosing our delivery service.

On the plus side it will stop impulse purchases of food and the down side I will need to drive to the nearest shop if I need anything for lunch.

I somehow feel the supplier won.

Twycross video

Compilation of video from my still camera taken during my visit to Twycross Zoo, only watch if your really bored.

Day out at the Zoo

Spent the day with the primates at Twycross zoo yesterday, 3 of which you can see below.




Julie (centre) as already posted on her blog about various things such as the Guanoco getting a bit feisty and the banging of windows when it says please don't!, she also got some nice photographs, so I will leave you to read her blog about those items.

I took lots of photos, most of the enclosures, other members of public, awkward position of subjects and reflective glass screens made it incredibly difficult to get good shots, particularly of the apes and monkeys the zoo specialises in breeding, so a lot of my photos did not come out well.



As can be seen below the new 3 and bit week old elephant was very popular and I could not even get to the fence, I did eventually get a shot from the other side by going down a closed off path.




The zoo has plenty of apes but not much else, we have Capybara the worlds largest rodent, about the size of pig (see below).



Meercats and Prairie Dogs which were fun





I have a couple of cat photos one of a Scottish wild cat which is about the same size as Charlie and a leopard which I edited away the bar from.





We all had a good day out Dave left some ice cream which was too sweet for him and after a few mouthfuls too sweet for me.




We arrived not long after opening and left as the final gift shop was closing so I would say we got a good days entertainment out of the zoo. Julie fed us, Dave provided drinks and I did the driving and even the roads managed to be not blocked by heavy bank holiday traffic, apart from not being able to get off at my junction on the way home due to the road works.



I didn't wear sun block so my exposed arms are a little red today.