Lake District: Day 4-8

Day 4
Muncaster Castle today - because who doesn't love a castle!  I certainly do - including the World Owl Centre with some amazing owls.  I mean, I knew there were a lot of kinds of owls in the world, but still not this many.  There were noble owls, noisy owls, intimidating owls, owls that looked like Muppets, owls that had clearly been coloured in by a children's craft class.  Loads of fun.

Clapped for a performer who can do an escalator (a diabolo move that is insanely easy but very effective on unknowing crowds) but who did have some amusing jokes, and toured a haunted castle, bumping into the owner too.  Later that night is Uno gone mad, ruleless Scrabble and some very weird dance moves.

Day 5
Half hour car ride to Whitehaven and the sea.  It's good to see the greeny-blue deep again, stretching out from the little town harbour to the horizon.  Leicestershire is a land-locked county and I couldn't actually remember the last time I'd seen the sea.  I like things that make me feel my proper size... the ocean, the sky, vast landscapes.

Had lots of fun in The Beacon museum with my sister, stroking plastic dinosaurs, tying sailors knots and playing Roman (Roman!) draughts.  Fish and chips with the Grandparents and then home for a pub quiz.  We came 5th, which was actually a pretty respectable position.

Day 6
Today was the challenge, the big one, Scafell Pike - England's highest mountain at 978m of walking straight up.  And up, and up.  Me, Mum, Dad and Emma - my youngest sister- made it to the top in 3 hrs 15 mins, and then 2hrs 30 mins more to get back down again.  I was spared the backpack in case my leg cramped up like it did when I attempted Scafell last year.  My right foot has always turned out and now that I'm older it seems to be making a different to how my weight is distributed on that leg, particularly when I'm carrying something heavy.  But with only my own weight and a walking stick to even it out I made it to the top! 

It's weirdly like walking up the flight of stairs in your house and then back down again... and then doing that repeatedly for 6 hrs.  But the satisfaction when you reach the top is well worth the effort.

Day 7

Recouperation day.  In a house containing four flights of stairs.  The longest walk I took today was down to the end of the garden, where you can slip through the fence and down the hill to the Santon river.

Day 8

Today was the journey home, but I took a different route to avoid the Liverpool and Manchester traffic jams.  Instead I took the A595 north and then cut clean across the country on the A66 from Cockermouth (where the big floods were in 2009) and Penrith, over the empty stretches of the Pennine hills to Middlesbrough to make my way down the eastern edge of Britain.  It's over a 4hr drive but now I've more or less circumnavigated the upper half of England, which is a good thing to be able to say.

Now, off to put the laundry in :)

Lake District: Days 1 - 3

Day 1
Yesterday I travelled up over the A595 from the Midlands to Santon Bridge.  You know you're in for a fun time when the A-road you're on roams and loops like a country lane, up over the passes with the Lakeland mountains to the right and the gleam of the sea on your left. But today, after an easy morning, we have gone out to Wastwater, the deepest of all England's lakes at 79ft.



Quick sketch of Great Gables from Wastwater

That said, it looks deceptively narrow when you gaze across it.  We paddled a bit, chasing tiny fish into herds, and watched brave folk on dingies and would-be swimmers mess about in the cold water.  We see dogs, a wedding, and a chance for a quick drawing with a 10-pack of petrol station colour pencils.  The shifting colours of the mountains are, naturally, impossible to get down no mtter how hard I try.
My youngest sister and I are living in a little side cottage while the rest of my family, including grandparents, take up the main house.  Fine by me as it puts us nearer to the walk that leads down to the green Santon river under the trees.  The holiday so far is beginning to take on a distinctly Roman-British feel with my current reading list including Rosemary Sutcliffe's The Eagle of the Ninth and The Lantern Bearers, a book on the geology and history of my home county East Anglia, of which the current chapter covers the rise and fall of Rome in Britain, Dad's recent return from walking Hadrian's wall with my uncle, and the prospect of Roman ruins later in the week.  It's all coming together.

Day 2
Another easy morning, then continued the Roman theme with a visit to the ruined Bath house at Ravenglass.  We tried walking out the paths of the soldiers from Hardknott Fort as they would have entered, changed in the sight of their statues and gods who niched in the walls, and sat around scraping the grime and sweat off themselves with thin metal strigils.  Strange to be standing in the same place of hundreds of men before us, tracing the paths of their ghosts going about their everyday patterns.  We are not so far apart from our past as we like to think we are.

Went on the little steam train through to Boot village and looked over the old mill there.  On the way my sister tried to take pictures of passing sheep while my Grandma told me about her two evacuations during the Second World War, when she was just a girl.  The first time she was sent away and then brought back, but in the final year of the war she was evacuated again.  It strikes me how lucky I am to be able to hear about these things first hand.

We ground flour with a millstone and turned the handles of mechanisms long lost to history, the mangle, the winnower.  I wonder what happens if we ever forget the old times, and how we used to be.  The people who worked these mills were us, just a little earlier, and yet it's so easy to forget they were ever part of our lives.  All the same, I feel somehow that as long as these little nooks in the hills survive, and there are quiet, wild places in the world some of it will get through, we might be alright.

I've been reading... The Eagle of the Ninth

I'm subtitling this 'This Curse of the Bromance'.  Contains spoilers

 I fell onto Rosemary Sutcliffe's The Eagle of the Ninth after watching and very much enjoying the recently released movie adaption The Eagle.  Sutcliffe wrote a short series of book during the 1950s which are all based around the invasion, occupation, and hurried departure of the Roman Empire from Britain.  The Eagle of the Ninth is the first in the series and follows a young Centurion, Marcus Flavius Aquila, through his first command on the dangerous frontier of Hadrian's Wall and subsequent dismissal from the army following an injury.  Marcus has spent his entire life working towards a military career in order to regain the lost honour of his family following his father's shameful defeat in battle, and is forced to consider a new life as a crippled civilian.  Hearing that the bronze Eagle standard used by his father's former legion has been spotted in the hands of the northern barbarian tribesman, he resolves to try and steal it back with only his British-born slave Esca for help.  Either version of the story makes for a good Swords-'n'-Sandals adventure with a more personal touch, and although it won't win any Oscars I found it very enjoyable.  I'd highly recommend either the book or the film, but that's not really what I want to talk about.

The main point of this blog comes from when I sat down to watch the movie with my housemate.  I'll need to give you an idea of the two main characters first and the book and the film are set out slightly differently, mainly because of their different audiences and times of writing, so bear with me and I'll be fast:

Book version:
Book Marcus is quite different from Film Marcus. He's more enlightened (almost too enlightened to be realistic in some ways) about the nature of a slave. He saves Esca mainly out of sympathy and frees him before the quest even starts, so the story here really is mainly about the search for the Eagle. There is never any question that Marcus and Esca are on the same side, and even towards the British tribes who currently hold the Eagle Marcus has no real enmity, saying that if the tribesmen are able to keep the Eagle from him they are welcome to it. His aim in finding it is not to regain his honour so much as to prevent it becoming a trigger for further bloodshed. Still, the companionship between the two is central - in contrast to the film in which no women appear, in the book you meet a grand total of one woman, which was very much the way of the times. Men and women had different functions in society and operated in very different worlds, rarely seeing much of each other until a marriage was decided upon, and even then the union was often financially or socially driven. Esca needs less explaining as he is roughly the same in both the book and film: prickly, reserved and determined to cling to the sense of honour that is all he has left to him after being snatched away from his former life. I think this idea of being honour-bound is very interesting and something we've lost in our culture, but that's a pondering for another day.

Film version:
In the film Marcus subscribes very much to the view of Roman law and sees his slave as nothing more than a piece of property.  While he and Esca are able to work together well enough, the course of the movie revolves around the testy relationship between the two of them.  Esca, honour-bound into Marcus' service after the Roman saves his life on a self-pitying whim, rails inwardly against the master who represents the nation that killed his family, invaded his home and forced him into slavery.  In the meantime Marcus drags them both relentlessly through the Scottish Highlands in the hope of bringing the pride and glory of Rome back to his family, and cannot comprehend how anyone could despise the empire he has dedicated his life to.  At the start neither of them understands the other at all but by the end of the journey each has come to recognise that neither of their nations is purely good or evil, and their forced reliance on each other turns into a strong and trusting friendship that is tested when Marcus finally frees Esca from his enslavement and Esca in turn helps him defend the Eagle rather than running to safety himself and leaving his former master behind.

The Main Point:
The point of all this back-story is that I jokingly described the film to my friend as a "bromance" (that is, a slang term for a very close but non-sexual relationship between two men, such as between brothers - hence the "bro" in bromance.  If you're not sure what that looks like, think of the friendship between Frodo and Sam from Lord of the Rings, JD and Turk from Scrubs, or Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson.  For some reason there doesn't seem to be a female equivalent).  It's true that The Eagle is a bromance, if only by necessity due to the lack of women, but mainly because of the depth of the friendship that evolves between Esca and Marcus.  But for some reason my friend has taken this to mean that the two main characters are gay, and cackles with laughter every time she finds a line in the movie or passage in the book that she feels backs this up.

If that's how she wants to see it then that's down to her (although if she did turn out to be right surely it ought to be worthy of a neutral shrug rather than hysterical giggling), but I think it does a great disservice to men in general to immediately assume that two male characters are sexually or romantically attracted to each other simply because they care about each other.  The author would be extremely unlikely to write two gay main characters into a book for teenagers and get it published (one of her adult books does allude to a relationship between two male characters, but it is very underplayed).  Additionally both the twenty-something-year-old actors and the director of the recent film have said that the characters weren't written or played gay, so where is this idea coming from that they are romantically involved?  Why is it that the behaviours they read as a bond between brothers are being read by others as signs of a sexual attraction? 

Much of it may be just the way our social conduct has changed over time.  Since 'coming out of the closet' has become more common and accepted over that last few decades there seems to be a pressure on both men and women to define their sexuality in a way that wasn't there before, and so any behaviour that could be interpreted ambiguously has been cut down, such as in this case showing signs of strong affection for another man, even if that affection is platonic.  So of course, any time we see those rare signs of affection they are jumped on, and mountains made out of molehills.  The excellent Charity Bishop has noticed a similar trend in female duos, with fans clamouring for relationships within the space of a few episodes.

It may be partly the fault of us women too.  We go on and on about how men are so much more insensitive than us and can't express their emotions that I'm afraid we're all actually starting to believe it -even to expect it.  Being masculine apparently now also implies being callous, crude and emotionally shallow, and so if any man does decide to be vulnerable with his friend it is seen as being far too forward or feminine compared to what is socially acceptable.  The trouble is, I don't think that's the truth at all.  I firmly believe that all of us, men and women, are capable of much more
humanity than that in the way we act towards each other, and that it's not the potential for sex but our belief in the value of other human beings that drives us.

The ability to be emotionally open or close with another person doesn't make you a wuss or determine your sexuality, it shows courage, trust and strength of character on both sides!  To assume that any man who genuinely cares about his friend must want to be involved with him romantically is demeaning to the great and noble hearts of the men around us, and if we don't want them to lose that ability to care then we'd better stop laughing at them for it.

So guys, it comes down to this.  I believe that you are capable of great kindness, selfless genorosity, and emotional depth.  And it appears there may be scant few of us left that think so.  Don't let us down.

Two tasters

Just today I got back from a well-earned holiday in the Lake District, so the next few posts will be updates on that.  In the meantime here's a taster...

A sunny day at Wastwater, about 10 mins away from where we were staying.  The day may have been hot enough to leave our skin pink and peeling, but the water was absolutely freezing!

...and a less sunny day on the side of Scafell Pike, England's tallest mountain.  That's my Dad sitting in front of that cloud bank, into which we had to trek as part of our climb.  Fortunately we passed through the cloud layer and were treated to amazing views from the summit.

And below, a taster of another kind.  I have recently discovered how to make meringues!  Far yummier than the shop-bought ones, crisp on the outside and chewy in the middle, and much easier to make than I expected, I've been having them with piles of strawberries on top.  However, having no electric mixer and being something of a stubborn food masochist, I had to whisk them all by hand.  Ridiculous? Unnecessary? Yes, maybe, but totally worth it!

Who we are

On a roadtrip with my manager she got me talking about my future career, what I intended to do, if I planned to use my degree.  I don't think it's always as easy as that but it did get me thinking.  I ended up rambling on for ages about the nuances of illustration and it's place in the world... but have I really drawn anything lately?  Sure, I've been insanely busy during term time and getting used to work but nevertheless, why didn't I draw?  So I got home, broke out the paints and wandered off into doodle-land for about 4 hours...

Originally I drew these two side by side, and they make more sense that way, but blog layout tool says no :)

And the rain rain rain came down down down

It's been throwing down rain all day.  Spent my lunch break staring out the window at it pelting the river, pencil in hand.  Time for all sensible birdmen to roost up for the day.

(The longest part of this drawing process was hiding my company's logo that was on the notebook paper!  Copyright laws and all that ;) )

Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel...

Last week I picked up a new habit that has already begun taking up my attention - the drawing of celtic knotwork.  You know, those woven patterns you get on all things Irish where there doesn't seem to be a beginning or end to the line.

In a moment of boredom I decided to find out how they worked and now I'm hooked in the same way other people are hooked on sudoku.  Anyone who has seen me draw knows I normally steer clear of repeating patterns and straight lines so knotwork seems like an odd choice but I think the pull comes from the intricacy of it and the fact that you never know what you're going to end up with.  It's a different result every time.  Although now I'm starting to be able to predict my patterns really all you can do is set up the grid size you want to draw on, insert your 'breaks' (the markers that show you where there you will create gaps in the weave) and start drawing, hoping for the best.  I might try set up a really interesting set of breaks only to begin drawing and find that that particular configuration doesn't work and I'm stuck in an infinite loop (naturally I only make this discovery half way through the drawing!), or then again it might work out perfectly on the first try.  One of them confused me so much I had to draw it out 3 times before I got it right!

I've been doing them at home, on trains, on the phone, at my work desk, embossed onto the backs of foil wrappers, down the sides of my conference notes, over dinner, basically at any time when I should have been concentrating but wasn't.  Below is my current collection of knots I have drawn over the past week or so.  Most of them were drawn very small, and are wobbly and scribbly so they've been enlarged and some given colour to help you make out the patterns.

Now someone knowledgeable will tell me off because most of these involved more than one line of weave, but I don't mind that so much:) 

I've got up to a speed now where I can set up a new set of breaks on a grid pattern and knock one of these little scruffy ones out in about 15 minutes.  But then I went through them again, picked out a favourite and copied it out on big A2 paper, geometrically correct, with a ruler and a set square and everything.  It took me about an hour, not including the colouring.  The paint that looks ochre is actually metallic gold.

So, next challenge, circle-patterned knotwork!

Oh, and on a slightly related note of other people with obsessive hobbies, check out the blog of my friend Magical Mark Watson.  He's already a very capable performer of juggling, magic and pantomimes (plus a really nice guy to be around - I defy anyone to spend more than a minute in conversation with him without smiling), but as part of a rather impressive plan to do something useful over his summer he'll be performing and posting a new juggling trick every day.   This was Day 4:



 "But surely!" I hear you cry "Surely you can only juggle so many tricks!  How many can there possibly be?"  Well we have 103 days to find out - roll on summer!

Tilting your head

One of the nice things about my current job is that I'm out of the office quite often, going to meetings and housing schemes around the country.  Already I've been to Guildford, Warwick, Birmingham, Coventry, Middlesbrough, and Liverpool several times now, and when I have a little time before my train home I like to go for a wander and see the sights.

A while back I visited a sceme which has the awesome Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral directly outside the door.  It is a gorgeous traditional-looking building, roughly based in the gothic style even though it was only started in 1904, and finished in 1978. 

Now I love a cathedral.  Love the dedication it takes to make one, particularly before modern building techniques came in and sped up the process, love the sense of history and tradition, love the architecture and the skill of the craftmanship, and most of all I love the light.  Light is one of the major things that makes a scene for me, and the Anglican Cathedral is brilliant for it.  It was in there about 3pm and got to see this dancing display through the coloured glass windows.

The northern sandstone is a lot darker than the cream-coloured stone you get where I'm from, but the darker backdrop just shows up the light even better and makes for some brilliant effects. 

I also managed to accidentally acquire a tour guide near the Mary Chapel, so I got to hear a bit of the history of the place as well.  It was designed by a man whose father and grandfather had designed churches but who had never made anything on his own before.  But Giles Gilbert Scott was a guy with big ideas (his cathedral is still the longest cathedral in the world) and won a competition to design the massive structure.  It just goes to show what you can do when you combine your dreams, your talents and a decent amount of hard graft - what emerges is truly impressive.

On my most recent visit I walked back to the train station by a slightly different route, so as to visit the Catholic, or Metropolitan Cathedral instead, which is a completely different affair altogether.

It's a very modern building, going completely away from what you's expect a cathedral to look like (more on that in a bit).  Everywhere are fantastic examples of sculpture, coloured glass, tapestry, painting, textiles and collages.  The room is circular rather than a long corridor, with rooms around the outside that are intended to help you focus on different aspects of the life and message of Jesus.  Each is different from the last, with it's own atmosphere and message.  It's also in a room of this magnitude that the panoramic function on my camera really makes sense!

Some of these artworks are genuinely stunning.  Each of them has been clearly thought about and uniquely and skillfully made.  Some of the smaller wall sculptures in particular are very raw and moving.  They really make you stop and look again, and consider what they are about rather than passing them over out of familiarity.  Even if you're not a Christian yourself, I'd highly recommend a visit if you're in the area, just for the level of artwork in there.

This kind of constant creativity is something I definitely approve of, particularly in churches.  Tradition can be a fantastic thing, it imbues our actions with meaning and reminds us of our history and how we have come to be where we are, but our faith should also be relevant to our everyday lives in the present.  Every generation - every individual - will connect with God in a slightly different way to everybody else in the room, so as much as I love the hard work and splendour of the old-style cathedrals, this one seems really appropriate to it's purpose.  This place is up to date, so it makes sense to people, they can see how it relates to their own lives rather than boxing their faith into someone else's package of what it should look like.  In the Bible we see that the first thing God did in the universe was to create, He made us to create new things too, and the Bible is constantly re-applying itself to the new cultures it encounters (one of it's great strengths, in my opinion) so we should always be expecting and looking for new ideas.

Lately I've been reminded that this certainty of change and development is true of faith, and also of life.  Rather than be afraid of change it might be an idea to begin cautiously embracing it.  Yes, new ideas need to be closely monitored as they bring with them their own challenges and insecurities, but they can also bring amazing opportunities for growth, for a change of perspective, and a new understanding of the endless posibilities that you had never considered before.

Stop. Look. Listen.

At the end of April myself and three friends, laden with food and canvas, bundled ourselves into a car and drove down to a very picturesque part of the countryside to visit the Art Exhibition of our friends Rachel and Darren Allwright.  They are an amazing and very creative couple, (just check out their blog All Things Allwright, where they display all these wonderful creations) and it had gotten to the point where they had so many works of art in their house that they were beginning to get in the way!  So they put on a fantasic evening of live music provided by Darren and friends, tastey homemade food (including some very amusing Kate and Wills cupcakes left over from a street party to celebrate the royal wedding.)  It was a lovely evening, and great to meet up with past friends who also knew Rach and Darren, as well and new ones from their lives before and since I've known them. The atmosphere was so warm and friendly, there was a real sense of connection between everyone, but of course the real focus of the evening was the art.

Rachel was 2 years above me in the same course (and in fact I remember her showing me around the floor of the building used by the final years and offering me some of the tea she kept stashed up there) and I've always loved the brightness and thoughtfulness of the pictures she creates.  Darren I will always associate with boundless enthusiasm and a vast array of woolly jumpers, but he has been bitten by the artsy bug too (as well as being a musician.) and it was great to see what they'd been up to since they were married and to support them by buying some of their art!



We had a silent auction, and I saw a piece I loved very early on so I put in a bid, but it was only in the last 10 minutes that a bidding war started between me and another guy!  We kept driving each other up by a couple of pounds each time, but just as I reached the limit of how high I could bid he switched to another painting in the series.  I won!!  It turned out he'd liked both and hadn't been able to make up his mind so... I helped?  That's the version I'm sticking with anyway!  Anyway, I got my painting, and it's now installed on my bedroom wall.  I look at it and wonder if the figure is coming or going.  The house on the horizon is home, a place of warmth and safety and freedom, but he's standing on the edge.  Is he admiring it?  Is it his or someone elses, and is he hesitant to approach?  Is he coming home after a long jourmey or taking a last look before embarking on a new one?

It's said that art is supposed to make you think, and I like that it does.  I get the feeling I'm going to see this painting different ways a time goes by, and I look forward to finding a place for it when I get a home of my own someday.



Jubilee Woods in Blue

I know I'm overly fond of blogging photos of my walks in the wood, but how could you possibly resist when your favourite trail is looking like this...

The bluebells are out, and stunning is the only word for them.  I spent a good hour wandering through the woods entranced on such a lovely spring day, admiring the blackthorn blossoms and the catkins.  As usual all the photos will shortly be appearing on Flickr.

In love with your sound

I believe what C.S. Lewis said in 'Mere Christianity' is true when he talked about emotions. He was describing how our feelings rise and fall, and how it's impossible, even ridiculous, for us to feel one thing all the time. We can't be constantly ecstatic, or constantly sad, but instead we go through phases and seasons. Equally, we can't be completely in love all the time: most long-term couples I know have attested to this. Sometimes you're madly in love... and sometimes you aren't. We're just humans, we wax and wane like the spring to the autumn, and it takes more perseverance than we'd really like to trudge on through the winter months.
This is what it is for me anyway. Although I don't think I could ever go back to a place of denying God's place in the universe, sometimes I'm not as in love with him as I think I ought to be. Some days I think about the wonder of God's creation and all the joy I take in it... and some days I don't. Some days I wake up and I can't wait to talk to Him, just nattering away all day long, and sometimes I don't. Or I spend the day thinking about Him and spending time where He is. And other days I just don't fancy it. I can't explain it other than admitting that I'm not the faithful person I wish I was – I don't always stick out the rough patches or the dry spells in order to be with Him. Sometimes I feel like I need a break from the relationship.

It worries me whenever this happens, because I know I'm ignoring Him, and I never want to do it but sometimes a break feels better. There's no moral standard, no voice of conscience or distracting conversation, no need to make time for someone else, I can just get all my own stuff done... I'm stubborn too, and I know better than to try and force even myself to do something when I feel like resisting it. It's that sense of 'I don't need you. Look, I can do it all myself.' I can't of course. I find I like who I am a lot less when I cut God out of my life. My patience shortens, I'm uncharitable and mean towards others, if only in my head and not out loud, I lose the sense of underlying joy that sustains me from day to day. And why? Because I'm intent on keeping him away, I don't want to be dependant, I don't want to surrender, at least until it really comes down to the wire.

At the art show of two friends of mine today I had been feeling that way for a few weeks, not abandoning my God but certainly not giving Him the attention He deserves. I couldn't see the point in it, why not just take care of my own business? It was an excellent show, I bid on a painting (more on that later), ate some delicious food, met some great people and all seemed well. But in the quieter half of the evening when night had come on and the band had played, I found my feet moving without permission as one guy played a guitar and sang at the front of the hall. For some of the songs, not all but some, I found myself wanting to dance, to be graceful (which I'm not) and to express something. As I listened more closely I realised the songs that were having this effect were all worship songs, all sung heartfelt to God. I went, and sat, and listened, letting my mind run, and felt that strange sense of longing you have when you remember the house you used to live in, or the friends you used to know. I wanted what I'd had before. I'd been unfaithful, cold and distant, but God's great love and wanting for me had never changed, never faded. He loved me as much as before, was as wonderful as He had ever been. Where had I been? What had possessed me? I looked forward to the next time I could see Him and begin to rebuild the parts of our relationship I had let slip.

I think I may be ready to fall in love all over again.
 

In love with your sound - Spoken Groove

Two in a million

I was so lucky to get this shot, you almost never see these in the wild any more...

Spuggle and Jin

So it's over for another year; the British Juggling Convention 2011 has come to an end.  Oh but it was glorious.  There was dressing up, an awful lot of undressing too, sunburnt noses, fresh waffles, dream catchers, barefoot frisbee, wild tales, regular defiance of gravity and several other laws of physics, folk instruments, spontaneous dancing, twister, bed hair, cardboard box robots, sleeping on the floor, food cooked using minimal amounts of cutlery, feet so dirty they looked like their own shoes, showers with no doors, dreadlocks and weed, baggy trousers, singing, drinking, spinning into the wee hours.  And of course juggling, which is a topic all it's own.

The weather was gorgeous -it really is April now and I spent my entire time there in shorts.  It feels great to get my legs out again after months cooping them up in the warm.  For some of our group it was thier first ever BJC - or even their first convention so it was great to see how much everyone enjoyed themselves.  The older ones among us tend to be a bit more sedate but no less enthusiastic.  I've started drawing down all the tricks I can do or need to work on with a hula hoop just so I dont forget any of them!  They are tiny drawings but already they cover 3 A4 sides and I'm still only counting single-hoop tricks.

Of course, being me, there's always time to take a few pictures of a passing tree.

As usual the rest of my photos (the good ones anyway) are on Flickr.  And now, thanks to the Easter holiday, I have 4 whole days to sit and draw, and watch all my camping laundry dry.