We've also spent time entertaining and traveling locally. Last Friday we had John and Eve, one of the couples we met on the Manchester trip, over for dinner. Both were retired teachers and John had accepted an assignment from the military to teach on the Island of Cyprus. He had several other military posting and lots of stories.
Just this last week the BBC had a program on the fate of the children removed from their families and sent to the country from the major English cities during the WWII Blitz. Eve was one of the kids affected in this program and thought that the TV show had captured the experience fully.
Saturday we traveled with Ruth to the Forest of Dean in search of an "Open Studio - Art Show" http://www.forest-of-dean-openstudios.org.uk/. For those of you not familiar with this concept - a bunch of artists in an area select a date and all open their studios to the general public. This is sort of like an Easter Egg Hunt with the prizes being the view of art in a working studio. The brochure for this event included a hand-drawn map, a brief description of the artists, photographs of one piece of the artist's work and a one-line narrative on how to find the place. This should have been easy, but it wasn't. Many of the road signs in the Forest of Dean are missing, the map was vague and the UK has some rather strong prohibitions against any temporary roadside signs.
The Forest of Dean fits into a box about 12 miles to a side. During Saturday's quest we were only able to find four of the 35 artist sites and one of them may not have been on the tour. In all fairness: we started late, had a nice lunch and quit by 6:00 PM. I know for a fact that without Ruth's intimate knowledge of this area, we would have found none. Of the sites we did visit one was of great interest to Nancy and Ruth and another an outstanding find.
After a really pleasant lunch at a pub overlooking the River Wye, one of the studios featured fiber-arts and had spinning, weaving, knitting, felting and all that fiber stuff. I brought a good novel and read while the ladies had a long and windy exchange of pleasantries with the studio personnel. Common interests transcend all barriers.
There is one phenomena here that has caught me by surprise - Plant Nurseries. When we visited B&P in the Midlands, Pam had pointed out that the nursery near their house had a tearoom and was always busy. When we went to Manchester we stopped at a large nursery for one of our "driver's breaks" and were amazed at the size of their nursery, tearoom and banquet facilities. Since then, I have become aware of rural plant nurseries and am astounded. Nurseries tend to be destinations. One of the major hobbies in the UK is gardening, so it is not unexpected to find that nurseries do a thriving business. What is interesting is the number and types of ancillary enterprises. On our trip to Devon we spied a very large nursery with its own campground - both tent camping and caravans/motor-homes.
After the fiber-arts venue, we stopped for tea at one of these super-nurseries. Not only did they have a full café, but also several art galleries, a do-it-yourself pottery shop and a souvenir shop. We did have tea and cruised the galleries as well. After tea we took one of our more adventuresome forays off the main roads to find the studio of Nigel Cann http://www.stonerainbow.com/. Nigel's work had been featured at the Chelsea 2001 Flower Show.
After the stained glass place we headed home. We stopped at the large grocery store, Tesco, and bought some heavy stuff and Ruth dropped us at the flat - it was a good day.
Nancy met another internet friend who found our site from the Blacksheep Handweavers site. Bea and Bartek moved to Bristol from Portland, Oregon. Bartek has accepted a six-month contract with Aardman productions as a claymation cartoonist. Aardman is the company that produced "Chicken Run," and more recently, 'The Curse of the Were-Rabbit." Aardman is based in Bristol. Bea used our website for advice on moving to Bristol.
They just moved here from Portland a couple of weeks ago and we invited them over for dinner on Sunday. We met them at the Bristol Industrial Museum near the City Centre and walked the far side of the Floating Harbor down to the Locks stopping at the infamous "Pump House" Pub for a little libation.
After the Pump House we wandered home for a nice dinner and swapped stories about the challenges of living in a new country. Bea is a weaver and works in a yarn shop in Portland with Bartek's mother. They are super nice and we are looking forward to exploring Bristol and the area with them. They have ordered bikes and will be exploring with them. Bartek will bike to work every day.
Sunday was the start of a heat wave. The daytime temperature has gone as high as 35°C (~95°F) with nighttime temperatures in the high 60?s (°F). All the temperature records are being broken - the UK brags that it has never seen a temperature of 100°F.
The nice thing about living in a brick building is that when its hot outside, you just close everything up and the buildings thermal mass is great enough that the flat stays cool. Or, that's the way it was when the hot spell started. The problem is that after a couple of days the bricks start to heat up and cool goes away. The daytime temperature within the flat started at about 74°F and increased by about 2° every day. After the last warm period we bought an electric fan and the fan has run almost continuously during this hot spell. During the day the fan is used to circulate the air in the closed-in flat and during the night to bring in as much cool outside air as possible.
Once the outside air temperature drops we open every window in the flat as wide as possible. English houses do not have bug screens and so the lights in the apartment bring in bugs. None of the bugs appear to be mosquitoes or anything that bites, but it is a little disconcerting to look up and see hundreds of bugs on the ceiling around the light fixtures. The good news is that once the lights are turned off and the windows left open the bugs all fly away. The worst of the heat ended on Thursday, but the temperature stayed in the mid- 20's (25 = 77°F) and the humidity when up so we had very little relief.
Thursday night we had tickets to the theatre at the Bristol Hippodrome. This was our first time in this theatre and we were very impressed with the decor and it was air-conditioned. We saw Cole Porter's "Anything Goes." We are big fans of American musicals but don't remember ever having seen this one. Compared to Rogers and Hammerstein, Porter's work is more opera than musical. The lyrics were quite complex but a more simplified version of the songs were easily recognized. That being said - the production was Great! The cast had considerable depth, the voices were wonderful (a little loud sometimes), the dancing (including a full cast "tap" routine) enjoyable - we really liked this one.