When you wake up to BBC breakfast telly warning you intently about the oh so deadly and underestimated dangers of artificial tanning even I have to reluctantly admit that the summer appears to be on its way. People around me completely unprompted screech “yay summer isn’t it luffffly” to which I force a smile upon my aching face and sort of agree “yes?”
I am a big fan of winter clothes. I love scarves and jumpers and boots and tights and woollen hats. Where are those now? I prefer the common cold to hay fever, blue fingers to red shoulders and mulled wine to ice cream. Furthermore why do people suddenly smell so bad? Is there any excuse for smelling really, really bad while travelling in the packed tube? I remember the signs in the busses saying “no smelly food” can we have the same for people? And what on earth are summer clothes anyway? I prefer the general public neatly wrapped up and muffled by layers and layers of fabric.
I am not really a fan of summer. We have been through this before. I despise swimming. Seriously, what is it with swimming? Why??? My going-south-towards-even –higher-amounts-of-heat has to be carefully planned around a film festival. I want the option to escape to somewhere where it is cold, dark and more interesting than the beach.
Literature gets a very bad deal out of summer. Why are beach-reads a genre in the first place and why are they what they are? Now I have nothing against some mind numbing romantic reads that make Jane Austen look like Thomas Pynchon but why would anyone ever consider reading them? This once you have time to really spend time with a book, more than your twenty minutes hanging from a public transport rail and those ten minutes fighting sleep with the book on your pillow at night. Now I am really lying my way through this argument because I am not a great reader and I walk to work. Not a great reader is a bit harsh, I am a very slow reader. So if I ever wanted to read Infinite Jest or let’s say Gravity’s Rainbow (just to stick with Austen) I would do that on my holiday.
I can still picture the last time I was at the lake side with my family. There are my sisters in bikinis bathing in the sun, there are my parents drinking coffee in the beach cafe and that in the shadow under the tree with the clothes on reading Midnight's Children that’s me. Leave me alone I did my half hour alibi swim and I promise to do another before we go home. I spoke to Chuck Palahniuk that summer so I won the coolest holiday person award in the end. (The golden blue plastic cow for coolest holiday person it was, obviously!)
Thursday, 18 June 2009
Thursday, 26 March 2009
Tea at the Darcy's
I am back in London. Town sans backpacks and wellies. So far my brain goes “Why?” I miss all the sheep and the little cows living next door and Mr Darcy’s estate. I stayed at a farm and every morning I was greeted by a bunch of adolescent cows staring at me. Real cows mind you, not little blue plastic ones.
The Peak District is fantastic, mainly due to the absence of the general public and its replacement with countless sheep. That works oh so well for me. And the buzzing (as if!) city life fades quickly. We had the wire thingy but the mp3 player ran out of battery and the sun was shining all week long so no need for wellies either! So what?
On the first day we went to the Chatsworth estate for cream tea with Mr Darcy. Me and my mother often lock horns on the question of who is the one and only true Darcy? She thinks it’s Colin Firth. It is obviously Mathew Macfadyen. My sisters are taking my mother’s side in this. So are my aunts. I am tempted to hide my brand new Little Dorrit boxset from them as a form of punishment. I tried using it as a tool of persuasion but all they had to say was “oh he gained weight since Pride & Prejudice hasn’t he?” Sadly I am rubbish at girly arguments so I have retreated from this dispute after my last contribution was “well but he isn’t married to Keeley Hawes is he! And she is so cool!” I really have to work on my debating skills, maybe I should take some classes in that.
How did I get here?
Yes Chatsworth. We weren’t allowed in the farm bit because it had gotten later than we thought. I was disappointed, I wanted to see the farm! Then I remembered that I am staying on one so I just went home and said hello to the cows who were joined by a grumpy pony.
Next Castleton. Now it might sound exciting to sit in a boat and be shipped through an underground tunnel but sadly it really is not. It just isn’t. Nothing to ad. But the “Remember the guide on your way out, thank you” was a very nice little send off to our next stop which was Hadfield. There we took endless amounts of pictures with the war memorial and the man in a shop asked us if we’d agree that we might be 10 years too late wandering through the streets of Royston Vasey. He was right but we were happy. Unfortunately we couldn’t find Bernice’s churches. Apart from that I was in League of Gentlemen - nerd heaven to be perfectly honest with you.
The next day we went to Crich and Matlock where trams and cable cars were closed so off to the Snake Trail it was and that was heart rendering! So beautiful!
Now I have returned and what have I brought back from my holiday? Have a guess! Yes indeed twelve new pens. One of which says “Pauline’s Pen” and another that looks like Shakespeare.
The Peak District is fantastic, mainly due to the absence of the general public and its replacement with countless sheep. That works oh so well for me. And the buzzing (as if!) city life fades quickly. We had the wire thingy but the mp3 player ran out of battery and the sun was shining all week long so no need for wellies either! So what?
On the first day we went to the Chatsworth estate for cream tea with Mr Darcy. Me and my mother often lock horns on the question of who is the one and only true Darcy? She thinks it’s Colin Firth. It is obviously Mathew Macfadyen. My sisters are taking my mother’s side in this. So are my aunts. I am tempted to hide my brand new Little Dorrit boxset from them as a form of punishment. I tried using it as a tool of persuasion but all they had to say was “oh he gained weight since Pride & Prejudice hasn’t he?” Sadly I am rubbish at girly arguments so I have retreated from this dispute after my last contribution was “well but he isn’t married to Keeley Hawes is he! And she is so cool!” I really have to work on my debating skills, maybe I should take some classes in that.
How did I get here?
Yes Chatsworth. We weren’t allowed in the farm bit because it had gotten later than we thought. I was disappointed, I wanted to see the farm! Then I remembered that I am staying on one so I just went home and said hello to the cows who were joined by a grumpy pony.
Next Castleton. Now it might sound exciting to sit in a boat and be shipped through an underground tunnel but sadly it really is not. It just isn’t. Nothing to ad. But the “Remember the guide on your way out, thank you” was a very nice little send off to our next stop which was Hadfield. There we took endless amounts of pictures with the war memorial and the man in a shop asked us if we’d agree that we might be 10 years too late wandering through the streets of Royston Vasey. He was right but we were happy. Unfortunately we couldn’t find Bernice’s churches. Apart from that I was in League of Gentlemen - nerd heaven to be perfectly honest with you.
The next day we went to Crich and Matlock where trams and cable cars were closed so off to the Snake Trail it was and that was heart rendering! So beautiful!
Now I have returned and what have I brought back from my holiday? Have a guess! Yes indeed twelve new pens. One of which says “Pauline’s Pen” and another that looks like Shakespeare.
Highly Efficient Holiday Preparations
Holiday Time! How exciting! I am about to embark on a week in the Peak District and I am SO excited. Far far away from the general public. “You need two things” I told myself. Wellies and a nice little backpack. So I left the crowded house I live in and went into town one early morning only to walk through streets of closed shops. It was Sunday and shops open shockingly late. So disorganised me and a lot of perplexed tourists clutched coffees in paper cups and went window shopping. Then I came upon an utterly frightening sight! Hordes of general public members stacked up in front of Primark. As if that wasn’t enough I then realised that Primark had already opened its doors to avoid traffic chaos I presume and the crowd was slowly moving like a large insect. Primark you will be surprised to learn is the only shop I did not expand my quest for a backpack or a pair of wellies to.
I spent hours combing through the shops on Oxford Street. Hours! No wellies, no backpack. That is wrong I found one backpack which was pink and flowery and actually quite horrendous. As well as expensive. I got annoyed. Yes, again. I do get annoyed with London often. Then I realised it wasn’t London’s fault really, why not just wait until arriving in the Peak District, surely there are wellies to be bought there.
Then David called and asked me to get “one of those wire things to connect an mp3 player to the car radio.” With a new sense of purpose I marched into next hmv and bought one. Despite the underachievement in the shopping list department and a shocking overachievement in the buying-random-other-things division I was in the best of moods enjoying my outing into sunny London and the begin of my holiday. But as usual a slight panic grabbed hold of me while manoeuvring through Piccadilly Circus probably aided by the absence of breakfast.
So, as it happens, I found myself a few minutes later in the Haymarket Cineworld with a large coffee and a bag of Revels watching Bronson. Why Bronson? Well it was the only film showing at that time...and ... and that is my only excuse. I was rewarded with utter underwhelmedment (yes I know that that isn’t really a word!)Well to be fair I liked Tom Hardy a lot, he’s just fantastic! There just should have been a less self-congratulatory film around him. Or maybe just a better balanced one, there are some truly great scenes in this and many more that were unbearably not so good at all and worse.
After the film I carried all my shopping (!) to the bus stop only to find a text from David telling me he found that wire thingy for the car and that I could return the one I bought. I will forgive him, he also found my wellies.
I spent hours combing through the shops on Oxford Street. Hours! No wellies, no backpack. That is wrong I found one backpack which was pink and flowery and actually quite horrendous. As well as expensive. I got annoyed. Yes, again. I do get annoyed with London often. Then I realised it wasn’t London’s fault really, why not just wait until arriving in the Peak District, surely there are wellies to be bought there.
Then David called and asked me to get “one of those wire things to connect an mp3 player to the car radio.” With a new sense of purpose I marched into next hmv and bought one. Despite the underachievement in the shopping list department and a shocking overachievement in the buying-random-other-things division I was in the best of moods enjoying my outing into sunny London and the begin of my holiday. But as usual a slight panic grabbed hold of me while manoeuvring through Piccadilly Circus probably aided by the absence of breakfast.
So, as it happens, I found myself a few minutes later in the Haymarket Cineworld with a large coffee and a bag of Revels watching Bronson. Why Bronson? Well it was the only film showing at that time...and ... and that is my only excuse. I was rewarded with utter underwhelmedment (yes I know that that isn’t really a word!)Well to be fair I liked Tom Hardy a lot, he’s just fantastic! There just should have been a less self-congratulatory film around him. Or maybe just a better balanced one, there are some truly great scenes in this and many more that were unbearably not so good at all and worse.
After the film I carried all my shopping (!) to the bus stop only to find a text from David telling me he found that wire thingy for the car and that I could return the one I bought. I will forgive him, he also found my wellies.
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