snail nosh
more snail stories – lynda also sent me this picture of snails eating a banana. she said she watched them for ages. apparently it was a complete banana when she put it on the ground …
May 2004
danger falling objects
some of my favourite signs are ones that warn of falling material
this one was sent to me by our friend lynda. it’s very good.
i imagine this poor chap will go home and his wife will say “what’s that indentation on your head” ?
and he’ll say “it’s an exclamation mark”.
lynda is very keen on accurate spelling and punctuation so maybe it’s a home made sign giving me a gentle hint to get my english up betterlier.
it reminded me of this pre-blog picture of jane and a very little kezia. you probably haven’t seen it, so here you go:
metal fatigue
here are uri geller’s front gates. they are made of metal. surely that’s asking for trouble ?
sonning
it was sunny today so after the car boot sale and the county show we went back to look for more scarecrows in sonning.
sonning is a very pretty village on the Thames:
here are a couple more scarecrows:
a long wait
we found this on the floor by our car this afternoon. i think the answer is quite bored. and seeing as it was a field used as a carpark for this day only, i’d probably also have been run over by a tractor.
oh deer
sign and reality rarely match. the sign promised red deers. we got muntjacs
archery
the southern county show is definately one for the country folk. you can buy guns and other scarey things that only country dwellers really need.
one of the less violent / pointless animal destructive things was this game of archery. the most vulnerable creature he was the woman working behind the counter when esther had her go.
she was quite good actually and the only real damage done was to my wallet.
a lost bird
county shows are great for random chatter. the announcers feel obliged to talk non-stop for hours on end. this man told us for 10 minutes how he was about to let his bird of prey fly off in to the crowd and added “I haven’t got a clue what he’ll do as he’s not trained”.
very reassuring.
after 10 minutes of talking up the beast he let it free. it flew straight at where i was standing with the girls, narrowly missing kezia who was standing on a hay bale. it then stayed the rest of the afternoon in a tree looking at the man.
the man said “i thought that might happen” and tried to tempt it down by swinging a bit of chicken round on a rope. it didn’t work and he said “i didn’t think that would work”.
classic non-entertainment entertainment.
esther looked at me and said “i came here to see animals and entertainments, not people talking”. “fairysnuff” i said.
esther and kezia looking for the bird:
a pile of dogs
at the show they got anyone with a dog to enter the ring and race them all in one go. there must have been about 40 i guess. it was quite amazing to watch. here are the front runners.
animals
a pile of ducks:
a mussled dog:
characters
after the car boot sale we went to the Southern Counties Game Fair. there were some fantastic characters there.
this bloke was watching his steam engines:
and this bloke was poking a pack of beagles with a stick:
car boot
we went to a traditional bank holiday monday car boots sale this morning. we made sure we were in by 8.45am to catch the early bargains.
on the way out we saw this children’s car on top of a hedge. i recon it was bought at the car boot sale by an irate parent. when their kid didn’t stop nagging they probably shouted “shut up, or we throw your plastic car away”.
he didn’t so they kicked it on to the hedge. a different type of car boot.
a meeting
we knew we had a tight intinery today. i wasn’t surprised that esther had set her favourite toys up to discuss a game-plan.
soggy sonning scarecrows
there was a fanstastic scarecrow hunt in a lovely thameside village called Sonning this afternoon. unfortunately it chucked it down with rain and i hadn’t brought the girls’ rain coats or wellies (i admit it, i’m hopeless). we met our friends there and they got wet too.
before it got too wet we managed to spot a fair few of the 70 scaregrows on display. here are a few photos.
it’s on tomorrow so if you are in europe you could probably get there in time.
uri geller lives just off the main street in sonning so you could pop in to see him too.
update: more pictures from the next day here
rusty spring bed
in a skip in a posh village:
cat head in formaldehyde (sort of)
as you may know lots of Saatchi’s art got accidentally burnt in a fire in a storage facility. Many of this was stuff by the YBA (young british artists).
the most famous of the YBAs is arguably damien hurst, famous for his shark in formaldehyde. esther thouht she’d have a go at that and produced a cat head in a little pot of water.
is this the first piece in the new ‘even younger british artists’ movement ?
doorstep
today’s mystery doorstep food stuff is a bit of bread. a doorstep when referred to bread is generally a massive thick slice, but this is a chunk of french stick i think.
party
classic british birthday BBQ this evening for jane’s friend lynn. Untypically the food was excellent. here is the birthday girl and her cake (and husband and mother-in-law).
I took a few other photos with the flash which turned out better technically, but this one captured the mood more accurately.
football
we don’t really do sport in our house. especially not football. which is probably why esther didn’t really get the hang of the stickers for this football chap which appeared in her cereal box.
she’s very pleased with the elaborate design. the chap looks more like a morris dancer (as seen as at the other May bank holiday – where the weather was also rubbish)
