The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago

Envy

Postcard received from my mother this week, caravanning in the north of Scotland.

*sniff*

Chipmunk Hobblings on Ice

Okay, so indy beat me to it (if only it hadn't been for those pesky dvds), but I'm still going to do a proper blog report of the day anyway. The photos will feel all lost if they haven't got some friendly words around them.

So...for me, the meet started at 11.15am on platform 10 of Bristol Temple Meads station, where biped had a moment of non-recognition of me and my new hair. How very ego-squishing. But all was then well as we exchanged dvd boxsets and headed out of the station (past the Belgium Waffle Co, who should not be allowed to make public spaces smell yummy when people are hungry). We hadn't realised that indy would be at the station at the same time (thanks to him posting that information on the board at a time when both of us had already left to catch our trains...ah well) and so managed to completely miss the tall man in a hat until he actually walked up and started talking to us.

We then proceeded into town, mildly amused by the bar near the station called The Reckless Engineer, blindly following the hat that knew the way, and...well I can't actually remember any topics of conversation from this ten-minute-or-so walk. I guess that means they were dull. Oh, I do remember complaining I was hungry several times. See? Dull.

In the centre of Bristol, we spotted Hobblings waiting for us in front of the Hippodrome. When we first arrived, though, we could only see two, and for a brief moment we speculated on Sky having dived out of a moving car on the way to Bristol just so that she could avoid us, but then a suave sunglass-wearing person walked up to join them and turned into her. Greetings were cut short by the fullness of their bladders, so we walked down (past some fountains, wssh wssh) by the river and sent them into some public building in search of some. Our search for food basically was not a search at all as it consisted of us going in the first place we came to, the Chicago Rock Cafe (oh yes, classy. It had a slight smell of stale beer). The food was good, however, and proved (as always) the only sure way to achieve Hobbling silence.

First photo - Sky, Indy and I, the side of the table that couldn't watch Scooby Doo to take our minds of the fact we were meeting people from the internet. It is anyone's guess what the hell is going on on the screen behind us.

So, after much eating and even more loud conversation and laughter (they even brought in a man with a properly evil laugh just to give us some competition), we paid (requiring more counting ability than you'd think) and departed. I insisted everybody went over to investigate the steps with water running down them, and then when that investigation lasted a whole five seconds I invented the need for a group photo as another thing we needed to do. No, Sky isn't that short, she was just standing down a step. Or possibly two. And biped's hair didn't achieve lift-off seconds after I pressed the shutter although you'd be forgiven for thinking that it might.

We then proceeded ice-rink-wards, but clearly had to stop for another group photo (whereupon biped forcibly took the camera from me) here:

and eventually arrived at our incredibly salubrious destination.

I didn't take my camera out onto the ice with me for most of the time (hence the lack of tinfoil hat photos - sniff) but at the end it managed to capture a few crazy shots (i.e. ones where I was skating and the person I was trying to take a picture of was skating and...well. Myo and her birds had nothing on me) and a few shots which were technically normal but in content...I think I'll just let this one speak for itself.

After two and a half hours of clinging onto the side (all of us, to begin with at least), foot cramps (biped), an annoying ability to stop on demand (Em), inability to breathe (me), choc pots (everyone but me), many attempts to scare other Hobblings into falling over (mostly Em, occasional aiding and abetting by biped and myself), a disinclination to skate anywhere near the rest of us (Ash, who can blame her), a retirement to the sidelines to take pictures (indy), far too much grace for someone on ice (Sky), being too warm in t-shirts (everyone), scary canoodling (Bristol teenagers), plans to eat small children (biped), decrepitness (bip- no, sorry, I meant the roof), disco lighting (I kid you not), mistaking Pussycat Dolls for Muse (Em, I really kid you not), icy impressions of Jubal Early (biped - if there had been small children to crash into in space that story would have ended quite differently), dehydration (everyone who took two hours to discover the cafeteria) and basically an awful lot of skating round and round in anticlockwise ovals until our right legs hurt a lot...we stopped. And went to the pub. 1970s cops would be so proud. This pub, to be precise. It seemed like the sort of place a Hobbmeet should frequent.

In its beer garden, we supped fair alcoholic beverages and ate Nobby's Nuts. And Finnish chocolate. There was some chatting, some tree knowledge superiority and also some being crapped on by a bird sat in said tree (pride comes before a fall). I shouldn't have brought my mp3 player out, as it totally distracted us from normal conversation, but on the plus side it did mean I got a photo of what happens if you feed Going Through The Motions directly into Hobbling ears.

During this time I also furtively ate the one remaining choc pot. And Sky found a non-hat-related use for tinfoil...and we captured her doing so. Lesson learnt, though, that I should probably keep my camera at the same angle when taking successive photos of someone if I later want to combine them into a little lopping animation. Oh well. It amuses me. Photobucket made it totally miniature, though, but that is probably a good thing so that Sky doesn't hunt me down and kill me for posting it at all.




So after the pub there came the walk back to the train station, complete with biped, Em and I very immaturely and repeatedly kicking a drinks can at Sky and Indy because they were being too grown up to play. Walk turned into more of a run at the end when we realised what time it was, and finally we were treated to the spectacle of Sky, Em and Ash totally failing to understand the 'right' concept in 'go through the barriers and turn right.' A short debate ensued on which of the many trains was the one they were trying to catch, and when they all pulled out very shortly thereafter we held our breath until we got a text message indicating successful public transportation of Hobbling.

Biped and I had another hour and a half until we needed to be catching our trains, so we wandered back into town with Indy. No more exciting group photos now - just a few pretty pictures of Bristol. This one is even exactly the same as one Indy has, but I include it for the sake of the dialogue:

me: Oh look, it's an open air church.
biped: that's what we call a ruin.

Then we have the leaning tower of Bristol, which actually looks quite straight in this photo but really wasn't. Filigree!

And so finally back to Temple Meads station, as the sun set on a gorgeous day...that we mostly spent indoors at zero temperatures. Clever internet people.

Yup - I have no more to say. Photos always make me run out of words.

Because everyone should know...

... how an obese superhero Keppet would look.

Green and Pleasant Land?

The weather has broken - temporarily at least - and we are back to business as usual in the good old English summer. 18C, wind that hums across the chimneytops and occasional deluges of fat, cold drops of rain (known to BBC weatherpeople as short sharp showers - three cheers for institutional alliteration).

And that, more than anything else, has prompted me to ask what just happened? Now, I am inexperienced in English high summers, as I have always spent July and August primarily in Scotland (where if we get above 20C there is national rejoicing). But even the newspapers agree (Cor, wot a scorcher) that the last month has been pretty impressive. Week after week of heat, with the occasional thunderstorm wandering through just to up the humidity level. We are a country generally lacking in air conditioning - my workplace has it but by no means all do, and a few weekends ago I got a headache just from standing in Forbidden Planet for 20 minutes, reading comics (I'm a martyr to the cause). Even walking from my car to the office, at 8am in the morning, it was too hot to be outside in a t-shirt and trousers. Nobody has been sleeping well - every single dream I woke up remembering last week involved thunderstorms. (They also included my mother, Faith, Batman and the Israeli prime minister, but never mind that.)

The internet agrees - I'm not sure it's official yet, pending data collation or whatever, but almost everyone seems to be agreeing that that was the hottest July in England since records began (1659). (It may well have been the hottest month since records began in Scotland.)

The photo at the top was taken last Saturday. Remember my rainy walks out from Markeaton Park earlier this year, with the double hedgerow dripping with rain or snow? Well, this is the field on one side of that hedge as it stands at the moment. Harvest has come early this year, with forecasts of grain shortages, and green is not the colour of the English countryside, not even here oop North. More worryingly, not only is the grass everywhere withered and yellow, but a goodly selection of the trees are too. Trees line the verges of the dual-carriageway along which I travel my 15 miles to work each day, and I would say the leaves of a quarter of them (verging on a half in the worst areas) are withering or already brown and dead.

Now, I know an average temperature of 19.8C won't seem like much to some of you. Even a high of 36.5C probably doesn't. But we don't have the lifestyle or the wildlife to deal with it - English reaction to the midday sun is to go out in it, remember? And so the countryside has sweltered and people have even been observed seeking shade outdoors.

And does anyone else remember how, back in March, the winter felt neverending? Yet now I welcome the windy greyness and cold, heavy rain as long-lost friends. Amazing.