what i did on my holidays

...um...well...not a great deal, if i'm honest...

bearing in mind, though, that we haven't been away for a year, not doing much doesn't really matter, as we were too busy just chilling out.  of course, the rain didn't help all that much, either...  but it was nice and, forthwith, some pictorial representations:

first stop, the Headland Camping and Caravan Park, Tintagel, where the peace and quiet know no bounds.  you can just breathe in the tranquility.

that's Talulah at the back of the row - she has her roof up.  we hadn't been there ten minutes before the guy on the pitch next to us was taking pictures of his kids giving the VeeDub wave and saying "Duuuuude!" in their really tiny little voices.  sooooo cute!

then we headed off down the coast path and around the headland to Tintagel Haven.  it's one of my favourite places in the whole world - i would sit and watch the sea there for hours if i could get away with it...

as you can see, the tide was in.  the large cave in the centre of the picture is called Merlin's Cave (natch!).  when the tide is out, you can scramble over the slippery rocks in there and come right out on the other side of the headland.  this is the place hubby taught me to skim stones when we first came here about 12 years ago.  i'm pretty good at it, if i say so myself, and still ridiculously proud of being able to... *grin*

when hubby finally managed to drag me away from the border between earth and sea, we toddled off up to the cafe on the headland to have those cornwall essentials:  a pastie (for him) and a cream tea (for me).   oooh - heaven on a plate! :D

Talulah's bed, by the way, is totally awesome!

behind me you can see Mango The Rat's cage.  yup - she comes too!

later that evening, we discovered that we had a stowaway...

this handsome fellow is Spot The Spider.  a well-travelled fellow indeed, we found him in all sorts of unlikely places around Talulah, and he stayed with us for a day or two.  however, one night, he mysteriously disappeared, and hubby woke up feeling suspiciously fuller than he had when he went to sleep...

it also rained fairly hard that night.  as you can see - Squeaky is a genius when it comes to sorting out a leaky skylight...

the following day was beautiful, if extremely windy.  the pixie hat became my constant companion on this holiday - i rarely took it off, hence spent most of the holiday looking somewhat silly.  but then - there's really nothing new about that.

next stop:  St Ives. 

and the sun shone for our arrival.

(that sign we're making with our hands, BTW, is the VeeDub wave i mentioned earlier)

however, the following day...

it pissed it down. ALL DAY!!!  D:

at times like these, you make your own entertainment.  what we made was pouches for the magnets to hold Talulah's curtains up (which i'm still sewing on, BTW. a minimum of six on each curtain.  four curtains done, eight to go...*groan*).  it was a really lovely way to spend a rainy afternoon, and the time flew.

the following day, it had, thankfully, ceased to rain like the end of the world was nigh.  Talulah is lovely to spend time in but really, even i was getting cabin fever by the end of the day!

so we took advantage of the break in the weather and hotfooted it along the coast path to St Ives. 

 

...just...

...gorgeous!

there were many lovely things to be had in this ancient fishing village / haven for artists, the deli we found was quite heavenly (homemade brownies and gingerbread, delicious goats cheese, and charcoal biscuits - all organic and totally nommy!), but the little details of the town (which i believe is getting on for 700 years old) are utterly delightful.

seriously - how many places could this door lead to?  on this plane or any other?

this one delighted me beyond measure, being such a tea-obsessed slurper.  really, they ought to rename it Squeaky Street.  or possibly Teabelly Alley (a personal favourite)

*snigger*  no comment.  none whatsoever.  no cheap jokes, either.  ;)

following our days in St Ives it was, sadly, time to start making our way homewards.  but Talulah is an old girl, and needs to take her time when she's ambling around the country.  so we had to pick a place to stop for the night on our way home.  hubby, genius at picking new places to go that he is, picked a tiny little end-of-the-road place called Brean, on the Somerset coast - right at the edge of the levels.  the geography and scenery around there is awesome, but i don't think you can really appreciate its stunning beauty until you get yourself up high, and can see the whole world spread out beneath you.  we only discovered this when we climbed up Brean Down - a great chunk of turf-covered rock that thrusts up and into the sea between Brean and Weston-Super-Mare. 

look!  there's Talulah on the beach! :D

the vast expanse of sand was utterly breathtaking, and the land is just as flat for miles around, glowing with a million shades of green.

and the sun shone all day.

:)

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Inception

Just come back from the cinema. This film surprised me. Seeing the trailer, i expected it to be blow-your-hair-back spectacular and, well, yes - the SFX were, of course, excellent. But pretty much of a muchness with so many other big budget spectacular movies. Can't actually say they were anything other than a bit Meh, to be honest, though the freefall scenes were very well executed, and pretty impressive. The thing that most caught my attention was the story, and the concept behind it. The fact that there actually *was* a story, and a good one at that, was a very nice surprise, i admit. And so beautifully constructed, too. Simple, yet very complex. And the concept was always guaranteed to get my attention, having spent so many hours as a child pondering the differences between dreams and reality, and how one could really, *really* tell one from the other. And if that telling would be right. So glad it really *isn't* just me. And the guy who played Eames? Hot damn! *thud*

camper porn and other news

so the last time i blogged, i believe i mentioned something about a bit of a catch-up.  really, it's just that there are one or two minor things i meant to blog about and just never got round to it.  what can i say?  i'm like good pastry - flaky.  however, i'll start with things uppermost and see where i go from there...

continuing the love affair with Talulah.  *sigh*

something we never thought about before we bought Taulah, something that never even crossed our minds, is that VeeDubs are rather special creatures.  yes, they are beautiful design classics, and iconic in their own way. yes, they are veeeeery fasionable (as, of course, they damn well should be - there are, after all, some people left in the world who have taste and discernment... ;). and yes they are, of course, camper vans.
and that's what we thought we were buying: a camper van.  a very pretty and well looked-after camper van, but a camper van, nontheless.  and, of course, we did.

however, stealing over us a little more every day since we bought her has been A Realisation.

Talulah is a Classic Vehicle.  one of those things you see at shows and on driveways, being polished to within an inch of their mechanical life.  and now, we've got one.  by default, yes, but we have one.

now we have to look after her.

oh, gods - we have to put fuel in her!

something we never thought to check is the rate at which these things drink fuel.  oh, my - Talulah is a thirsty girl!  she did 22 miles per gallon....  when she was brand spanking new!!!

ohmyjesusgod! 

so the plan was to use her in much the same way we used Isobel.  *cough*   kinda not really practical.  notwithstanding the cost in fuel and maintenance (hubby drives 40 miles a day on a filthydirty road that's caked in salt in the wintertime - EEK!), we don't want to wear out her poor engine.

Enter Plan B (no - not the band - do keep up)

there is a very nice old lady a few doors down from us that was my beloved and much missed Nana's best friend for over 50 years.  she's agreed to rent us some space on her driveway.  we are also buying a runaround from some good friends.  this little thing is about as generic as you could get as far as cars are concerned (therefore extremely cheap and easy to maintain) and, moreover, does about 60 to the gallon.

result!

so when the weather gets shitty, we will tuck Talulah up on her lovely cozy Tarmac (with a cover, natch), and use her only on weekends - to keep her ticking over.  and now, despite the fact that the vehicles in this family will soon outnumber the humans by a factor of 1.5 : 1, i don't feel the sliiiightest bit guilty about that.  no siree bob, i do not.  because sitting on that driveway a few doors down is all of our holidays for at least the next three years.  hopefully much, much longer.  and she is a work of art.

ok, i'm done now.  i promise i will try veryvery hard to not post any more pics of our baby.

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and so - in other news or, as it's more accurately known....

Random Stuff. *checks pic folders for Stuff I Have Done Recently*

several weeks ago, we went on a work outing to Stratford-Upon-Avon because...  well, frankly, it was a cheap day out, and we thought it would be interesting to go there and see how well we could avoid Shakespeare.  we did pretty well, actually, we did Pub, Shoe Shopping, and....

Making New Friends.

Hippy Hubby talkin' to teh animals

Squeaky and friend (look at the butterfly - not the face!  aaargh!!! *hides*)

The Art Of Disguise

seriously - how cool is this little dude?!

t'was quite a jolly day.  didn't do much, but it was relaxing.

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even more weeks ago, on a miserable, drizzly saturday, we went to Derby musem.  haven't been there since my grandad used to take us as kids, 25 years ago.  ever wondered what 25 years' wrth of dust looks like...?  nope, me neither.  i found out, though, as some of the exhibitions really were the same ones i used to look at as a kid.  there was some stuff in there that i was dreadfully bored by as a kid that was fascinating now, but that's to be expected, right?  oddly, though, and slightly worryingly, the most fascinating object in the entire place was part of an exhibition of stuff that was found in an old chemist shop before it was demolished recently.  viz, this:

i have a low pain threshold, and i hate having injections, but for reasons i have not examined too closely, i found this absolutely fascinating, and very beautiful.  i actually spent a good ten minutes with my nose pressed up against the glass, trying to imagine what something this delicate would feel like, sliding into my flesh...

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lastly (i'll tell you about the curtains and the slightly haunted sewing machine another time...) there is a new addition to our interior decor.  finally, finally, i have bookshelves of my very own.  my wonderful and clever hubby made them for me, and i cannot express how happy it makes me.  seriously - i actually cried when i saw them all finished and mine all mine.

*happy sigh*

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homecoming

she's here, at last - Talulah hath arrived! :D

look!

gawd, but saturday was a loooong-ass day! 

it started at 6am.  we had to get the bus to derby, catch a train to st pancras in london, a taxi to fenchurch street station in same, a train to stanford le hope, then richard (the lovely guy who sold Talulah to us) came to pick us up and take us to our new baby. 

then we spent a couple of hours alternately cooing over her loveliness, and loading her up for the journey to her new home.

yup, loading her up.

she came with a spare engine.  and sundry other spares that are, frankly, almost enough to half-build another camper.  result! :)

it took us four hours to drive home.  we made it at about 7:30pm.  then we had to get everything back out of Talulah, and up the stairs into the spare room.  hubby had to carry the engine block up on his own! \'o'/

but she's home, now, and soooooo shiny! (as you can see from the pic).

i would talk about the delightful day we spent at some friends' house yesterday, but the internet and my laptop have been playing silly buggers tonight, and it's nearly bedtime.  sometime soon, i'm gonna have to do a long catch-up post.

but not tonight.  so i'll leave you with a pic of richard and Talulah.  oh, and some strange woman who snuck into the pic and grinned like an idiot.  no idea who she is, but we only just managed to patch up the crack in the camera lens...

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