I show you some things

It is raining in Montreal today. Winter's coming, even if the odd improbably-coloured leaf is still hanging on for dear life, and even though the temperature is still a reasonable 7 degrees. It'll drop to -3 tonight and that is what tells me that it is time to out MonkeyMother's "Special Cocoa", which is 60% cocoa and 40% Cognac (or rum, if you're feeling piratical).

 There will be snow soon, that much is sure, and it will soon be so cold that going outside without mittens (not gloves, mittens) would mean your hands would just snap and fall off on the floor, like that, leaving you looking like the chap on the left there.

When we were away on our grand tour (which I know so many of you followed, your loving mouths open with amazement and joy), my friend Miss Li stayed in our flat. She left it (far) more tidy than she found it, and left (amongst other things like a fully-stocked fridge, homemade biscuits, fruit and chocolate) a present so strange and so lovely that I keep looking at it and wondering if, secretly, it might be the best present I have ever been given.

So it makes sense, here is what she wrote on the card (and warning: the photo doesn't do it justice - phone rather than camera):

"From my heart to yours ... vintage watch part containers filled with a watch part and star ... in the Chinese Origami world these are lucky stars ... watch gears represent time ... three different sizes of containers represent big to small moments in your life ... all together, wishing you luck all the time and any time."

And here is another lovely thing I am happy I can look at every day.  I bought it in Hastings with my dear friends L&S.  L says he knows that the poem is without looking it up; I haven't worked it out yet - if you do, let me know, and no cheating; you can work out "roseate" which would probably be enough to find it online, but that would be cheating, deffo.  (I can't remember what these are called - L knew but I didn't write it down.) Anyway, it was made in 1842, and I particularly like the first picture of the little carriage going through the arch.

There we are then. Pretty things for a rainy day.  

In other news, I made some Apple and Banana Bread out of the very dusty, very 80s Cranks cookbook I found on my shelf last night.  It is quite amusing if you make it in a cake tin; cross between banana bread and real bread. Toasts well an' all. Yes. (I used pear instead of apple and added a chopped up pear. Nice.) Bit out focus, this, and the sugar monster is making itself known in the background, but still, you'll get the gist:

Pip "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" Pip

NWM

I observe some local attractions

You are very lucky! You know it and I know it. Why? Because I have decided to share with you (via the power of the photograph) some of the amazing attractions available to me, my husband, the inhabitants of the village in rural Quebec we call our "occasional home", and any visitors to the area.   (I am hoping to photograph the ostrich hotdog at some point over the next couple of days. And the face in the bush.)

If your French is not 'up to snuff', I am happy to reveal that this sign translates as "The Squash Interpretation Centre".

In other news, today I am 41.   Things do not appear to have changed much since 2008; I still find myself puzzled that my belly button is where it is and not where I thought it was. So far ageing is going OK, i.e. I do not care about it as am already saggy, and I've only got one grey hair (in my right eyebrow).

There are few wrinkles, but I must confess to being very troubled about one thing, and that is the apparent emergence of a crêpey bosom, esp. the skin above my enbonpoint and in the bit in the 'crevasse of pleasure', as Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen once called it (in my dreams).

It is worse in the morning when I have been sleeping on my side; I think the sheer weight of bosom sort of pulls it about a bit. Anyway, apparently Botox is good for it so although I won't be stuffing Botox in my forehead, I may be stuffing it down my cleavage - unless you, my adoring readers and/or fans, have any homegrown tips. I am already:

- putting sun block on my exposed chest (and face) when strolling around outside in the sun;
- putting moisturiser on my neck and chest now instead of just my gurning monkey face;
- wearing appropriately supportive 'underwear', costing about twelve million pounds per rigging.

Come on then! What have you got?

So. Middle age. Here it is, properly, looking at me in the face and lightly suggesting I invest in an anti-ageing eyecream. I suppose the days of chewing gum in the ladygarden are well and truly over. Instead I must turn my fading blue eyes to the future: a future full of mystifyingly thick black hair (on my face, despite over one thousand pounds spent on laser hair removal), wrinkled bosoms and teeth falling out on the floor unexpectedly.

On the other hand, I wouldn't be 20 again for all the bloody tea in China. What I have lost in elasticity and memory function I have gained in the sure knowledge that:

1. No amount of watching the phone, self-criticism, plucking hair, waxing, hairdos, new dresses, fancy sex-moves, not eating too much in front of someone else, analysis of every word said, in-depth discussion with friends for over 12 hours with 12 bottles of wine, pretending you like music you don't, pretending you like films you don't, new pants, etc makes much difference. If it's going to work it's going to work.  What you said last Wednesday isn't why he hasn't called. He hasn't called because he doesn't want to. One day someone will want to _____________(fill in the blank as appropriate) even if you are having a bad day, smell slightly of hamsters and are sitting in your pants watching "Location, Location, Location" eating fishfingers and peas.
   
2. I am not sure that this stuff about not sleeping with each other on the first date is true.  It has not, shall we say, made much difference to me and about 65% of the loved up peeps I know. Horses for courses mind you, but you get my point.
   
3. 99% of the time 99% of people are thinking about themselves, not you, so don't worry about it so much (whatever "it" is), as it is unlikely that anyone else either noticed or cares.  This is not to say the world is uncaring and awful. Anything but.
   
4. If in doubt, just ask yourself if it (whatever "it" is) makes you happy.
   
5. And finally, and most importantly: if you can stay non-working in your heart, do it.  Your life will be immeasurably better.

Pip pip!

NWM

I am still back in Canada, but am thinking about Cambridge (and a bit of Bedford) and London

I am dragging my feet.  "The only thing I really regret", I say, looking at my feet rather than at the keenos in college scarves, "is not applying to Oxford or Cambridge."

"Would it really have made such a difference to the course of your life?", says my sensibly rational uber-qualified 5-degreed research scientist husband.  "Well, I'd have had different friends, for starters. Which would have been bad, come to think of it.  And it's prettier", I say, waving my arm at King's College Chapel.  "You've seen York campus.  Hideous compared to all ... this".   "Prettier", he says, adjusting his knapsack*.  "Is that a reason to choose an academic institution?".  "Yes", I say. "I like pretty things."

My best friends from school went to Cambridge. I didn't work hard enough and only** got 2 As and 2 Bs in my A-levels, so I probably wouldn't have got in even if I'd tried. I didn't get into Durham which, to this day, remains a vast and often forgotten blessing ("Do you play hockey?" "No". "Are you happy with the idea of being in a womens' college?" "No". "Are you quoting the notes from the Arden edition?" "No"), so I ended up at York and was stupidly happy for three years. I  still remember very clearly, aged 18, picking up the phone to call home and thinking: I am miles away from everything, and everything can start again. It did and it didn't, but I made friends I still have and I do not regret a second of it and even though (yet again) I didn't work hard enough, I remember writing something about Astrophel and Stella and chewing a pen until it exploded on my chin and thinking: Oh. My brain works, how nice.

It didn't last, of course.  These days, I earn money (when I am working) doing advertising and marketing type things which, despite the  protestations of all the young people doing degrees in Communications Media Jizz and Celebrity PR at the University of the West of Arsebiscuit are not (I repeat not) 'academic' subjects.  Still, it is amusing, and it affords me enough time to lie on the floor wondering if it is too late to do an MA in Biscuit Theory at McGill.  (So saying I dislike the opinionated young, so it is probably better if I stay away.)

Anyway, Cambridge.  Pretty.  Very.  You have seen it all before a million times.  King's College Chapel quite extraordinary and very secular; more Tudor than God.  Quite small, though, is Cambridge, with a very high scarf-per-inhabitant ratio.

You may not have seen Kettle's Yard, though.  It is lovely, lovely, lovely and worth the trip to Cambridge to see.  Smallish gallery, but much more interesting (to me anyway) was the house of the chap who set it up, Jim Ede, who was a curator at the Tate in the 50s. I can't begin to describe it but do look at the site and the link; suffice to say (assume Estuarine twang) that I will never think of pebbles in the same way again.

After Cambridge, we went to Bedford to see our friends and their children, our godchildren. Puppy cake was eaten and there were not enough candles to say 'Happy Birthday', so the cake said "Yipy" instead. Much better.

The next day: to London. I drove my husband to the airport and spent a couple of days in London up to no good, making ham sandwiches in Battersea and eating preposterously nice food and watching The Inbetweeners (finally) and sleeping.  It was nice.

Then Friday came, and with it an oddly pointless Premium Economy seat behind two ghastly children who shouted and played with the lights whilst their stupid parents sat, slack-mouthed and headphoned, in front of "Sex and the City 2", oblivious to the tuts and furious stares of the successful small-to-medium-sized entrepreneurial businessmen around them.

Anyroad up, that is it. I am back in Canada and my travels are over (for the time being).  But before I go, let me ask you: have you ever noticed that people in Business Class often wear jackets a bit like this?  And have strange hair? And also: do you want to cry hot tears of rage when you see  a CHILD in business class? I know I do.

Pip "Yipy" Pip

NWM


*It had cognac and faine waine in it
** It was 1987 and I went to THAT sort of school.

I am back in Canada, but still thinking about my holiday (in this case, York)

Yes. It is Sunday. I returned from the Britain, place of my birth and holding-centre for most of my 'loved ones', on Friday night. I drove nearly 1,500 miles in 9 days in a Ford Focus Titanium 1.6L (whatever the shit that means) and did not break it.  My companion was the ever-magnificent French-Canadian veterinary pathologist to whom I am married (today is our first anniversary!): he responded well to being in Britain, saying "pretty!" regularly and, by the fifth day, asking to "stop for a nice cup of tea" unprompted. Progress indeed.

We went from Inverness to Skye (v. lovely drive), from Skye to Glasgow (v. lovely drive, apart from the sudden-death risk of windy too-narrow roads down the side of Loch Lomond), from Glasgow to Windermere (efficient motorway, nice finish), and from Windermere to Yorkshire through the Dales.

I love Yorkshire so much that all I can do is put pictures up for you to look at with your eyes, because if I write about it I will start squirting inappropriately on my screen, and it is still a new computer that I would not like to break.

Here we go then.  (NB: sensible combination of Wensleydale cheese and fruit cake; Poppy the puppy; the house, which was our v. excellent B&B).

As excellent as mosaics are, however, there are some things that need to be in the 'close up'.  The photograph I am about to share with you, my loyal and adoring readers and/or fans, is of a man who sat in the window of Starbucks near York Minster for at least two (2) hours. No, I don't know either.

Talking of  York Minster, I spent more time there on our holiday than I ever did when I was at university (in York, obv).  It is GREAT. I spent a lot of time looking at the gargoyles, some of whom were surprisingly cheerful, and an inordinate amount of time looking at these memorial stones (is that the right word?).  I would very much liked to have know the last lady.  She sounds ace.

And to round this splendid post off, here is a Fat Rascal. What used to be called Taylor's - a place where I would have tea with unsuitable suitors who were either on army scholarships, double-barrelled and Christian or future Telegraph journalists -  is now Little Betty's, which annoys the tits off me, but no matter: the only thing that matters is that Fat Rascals exist, and they have almond teeth, and that I can eat a whole one with butter and a pot of tea and feel that really, all is right in the world. 

Pip "I wish I were in Yorkshire now" Pip

NWM

P.S. I know this is pathetic but I can't help it. Here is a photograph of some chickens talking about whether to cross the road or not. I laughed so much when I saw them I nearly drove into a pair of matching old ladies in tweed hats.

I interrupt my amazing Travel-Blogue

Yes it is true. Despite focusing all my attention(s) on delivering to you, my adoring readers and/or fans, the finest details (with pics) of our 21-day cross-continental cross-country 'holiday', I must also rest my brain and look at super things to keep myself fresh and alert.  That way, I will stay thrilling. 

One of the things that keeps me thrilling (and thrilled) is this most lovely of blogs, Topinambours. I cannot explain it, but it is excellent. And it contains things like this: 

I hope you like it too. 

Tomorrow: Yorkshire!!!

Pip "Pudding" Pip

NWM