Left over from the show

I’ve been helping serve lunch at the village hall today and whilst waiting for our visitors to arrive, was looking through some of the leftovers from the village show book stall.

I didn’t have time to establish the vintage of that Martha Stewart book but guess that, as she turned 70 yesterday recently, it’s been around a while.  Actually, what amused me most was the elegant dish she’s serving.  It looks like a peeled orange.  Now, that would be entertaining to eat with a knife and fork, wouldn’t it?

War and Peace at the Circus

My goodness, can it really be a year since we doo-dah-doo-dah-diddlyed around Minchinhampton Common after a night at Giffords Circus?  With a bunch of friends, we were there on the Common early Saturday evening enjoying a glass of Pimms before the show in less than summery temperatures.

One of us had come prepared, having made the mask which came with our mailshot this year.  We were all set for War and Peace!

I’m sure there can be few such beautiful peasants back there in the steppes!

Sitting on the wooden benches in the circus tent, we enjoyed half an hour of clowning around with Tweedy.  The children sitting in front of us were roaring with laughter and in no time at all, we were too.  So clever, so simple but oh, so funny.

Telling the story of War and Peace wasn’t going to be easy, but somehow they managed it rather well and anyway, even if you didn’t follow the story, the entertainment was as brilliant as always.

 

Petrushka and his doll did a fantastic act, tap dancing up and down the steps, first on feet but then, on hands.  Remarkable!

The Pavlovs were a talented bunch – having left us speechless at her ability to perform the most breathtaking gymnastics on a narrow beam held shoulder high by her colleagues, the petite and very serious young woman went on to jump through a hoop of fire.  She then stood bravely in the middle of a frame as the four men of the troupe performed a complex series of high bar swings around her.  Wow!

 

Napoleon (aka Tamerlan Tsoraev) made an appropriately statesmanlike entry and performed an odd knife-throwing act, but we loved his super-slick moves and haughty manner (not to mention his rather fetching thigh-high leather boots!)  We also loved Bibi and Bichu’s drunken juggling act this year and reminded ourselves once again, that there’s nothing like seeing these traditional circus skills performed in such a delightful setting.  We ooohed and aaaahed along with everyone else.  The magic of a live performance cannot be matched and an evening in this particular big top is one of the highlights of our year.

There is always the “awww” moment too.

The after-show supper in Circus Sauce was as good, if not better than ever – great food served in a jolly atmosphere.  We were buzzing!

A  l-o-n-g lunch at home with friends yesterday afternoon was just the perfect way to end a great weekend, but how quickly the time goes when we’re having fun. Here we are, Monday morning and everyone’s gone their separate ways.  The house suddenly seems rather quiet.

Retail Therapy

My tooth – or rather, the space where my tooth was – felt better this morning and I felt a little retail therapy was in order.  Nothing particular, just that instead of going straight to the supermarket, I felt that I had enough time to shop local, to stop and chat and spend time enjoying a Friday morning in Cirencester.  I was out early, as you can tell from the photograph!

 

The greengrocer was busy though, and ten minutes after parking my car, I’d already taken one heavy bag back and swapped it for an empty one.

 

Next stop, my favourite butcher where I crossed sausages off my list and bought meat for the weekend.  Thank goodness, the roadworks here in Blackjack Street are finished and the street is looking really smart again.

Clearly, I usually shop with blinkers on, because I’d not spotted that purple shop further down the street before.  This morning, I took a different route from my usual and discovered Octavia’s Bookshop, a really great children’s bookstore and definitely somewhere to return.

Next, the market, to see what flowers were there (not many!)  I couldn’t resist some of Jacob’s Falafel and, since he was offering samples dipped in Chedworth yoghurt, I paid them a visit too

There remained just two more places to go.

Whilst following the dentist’s advice yesterday, I took paracetamol, something I hardly ever do.  Taking the last of the small box of tablets this morning, I needed to buy replacements in the chemist.  I found Boots own brand “paracetamol plus” on offer at £1.35 with a free bottle of water, but preferring to know what I’m taking, looked closely at the ingredients to identify the “plus” part.  Caffeine.  Thinking that I didn’t really need any extra caffeine (and if I did, I’d take the tablets with a cup of coffee)  I went for the small, plain box of simple paracetamol – the same number of tablets as the first box but priced at 16p.

They’ll last me a couple of years, I expect.

Finally, to Waitrose, which was buzzing by this time, and home for lunch.  Shopping like this is great fun but boy, does it take time!

Feeling sorry for myself

I’ve had a quiet day today.

The evening before going off to New York I broke a tooth.  Not just any old tooth, of course, but one which had been crowned and root filled and was hardly a tooth at all.

Until my dentist tried to get it out this morning, that is.

Having weighed up the choices I decided that there was little point in going through further root canal treatment and suchlike when there was no guarantee of success and though the implant option was going to cost megabucks (well, kilopounds, to be accurate) this is an important tooth (lower left molar) and I’m hoping that I’ll need it for a few years yet.

So, this morning I visited the dentist to have what remained of the tooth extracted.  It really didn’t want to part company with me but thankfully, the result was dentist 1 : tooth 0, together with one surprisingly shaky me, as well.  I hadn’t quite expected to feel quite so wobbly!

It was a quiet and rather subdued farewell to Aussie John at lunchtime, then, and a quiet afternoon spent with a pile of distractions – Kindle, a couple of digital art books, the last of my subscription to Making magazine (don’t bother!) and the £99 tablet I bought at Asda a couple of weeks ago for reading blogs and suchlike.

We have fun planned for this weekend, however, so I shall allow myself just a few more hours wallow and will then get a grip, for heavens sake.  Can’t be lolling around any longer!

Home again

I’ve spent the morning sorting out stuff which we emptied quickly from the minibus sometime around 11.30pm last night.  Imagine a bus-sized lunchbox to empty…  Suffice to say, we have enough snacks to keep us going for a while and when the Three Peaks group reconvenes for a celebratory party sometime soon, there are plenty of leftovers to share.

The “lost property” box isn’t too full, thank goodness.

In the meantime, the (real, Gaggenau) fridge man Rupert has been to attempt a repair on our still ailing fridge.  The (British Gas) man Alan has been to attempt a repair on our now broken – also Gaggenau - oven and neither has been successful. Rupert will return with the necessary spare parts for the fridge shortly and will, perhaps, also mend our oven whilst he’s here.  Funny how we are on first name terms with these chaps, isn’t it?

Aussie friend John is still with us here and fast becoming indispensable for his good humoured and amenable approach to helping us with all these little challenges which occur.  He also makes a mean cup of tea!

Sad news came in the form of a telephone call to say that Mark’s Uncle Tobe, at 98, the oldest member of our family, had died yesterday in the Cheltenham hospital where he’d spent the last couple of weeks.  We didn’t see Tobe – whose name was really Herbert - that often, but he was an ongoing presence at our dining table whenever we had something to celebrate.  One of the first things Edward learned as a small boy was that after just one sizeable glass of sherry, port or madeira, Uncle Tobe could become rather a lot of fun and after two, sufficiently un-PC as to create Edward much amusement and ourselves a fair bit of explanation!  We’ll miss him, of course, but perhaps, for Tobe, it was time.

But the one, all-inspiring topic of conversation in this household today is of course, the marvellous achievement of our friends this weekend and I hope David doesn’t mind my pinching his photograph of the group at the summit of Scafell, taken sometime shortly after dawn on Sunday morning, illustrating the awful weather conditions they endured.  One by one, they called, texted or emailed, each still on a high from the last couple of days. 

What remarkable people they are. What a fantastic thing they have done.

More photos here