Bad new: My luggage fell over very gently, and the MacBook's screen broke very daintily. I didn't know it had broken until I took it out at Joy's house in Llanharan.
Good news: It still works. Bad news: To get a new screen here would take until Monday and cost £450 and take until Monday.
I took a few photos in and from the train. Nothing remarkable yet, but it does look different and greener and hillier than Norfolk. That will surprise no one, I guess, but still it was beautiful for me to see it for the first time.
Joy and I are going to go out for box tape to stabilize the glass in a while, and I might need to upload the other photos later.
My friend Carolyn Pihl, whom I first knew years ago as Carrie Braithwaite and have known ever since, is hosting me wonderfully at her place. We walked around town twice today, with a break to come home and rest because I'm old. :-) She showed me her Swedish passport with a cool Egyptian visa sticker/stamp/something, and gave me two BEAUTIFUL photos she took and we've had fun visiting.
There are some problems with this set of photos that I'd like to work on later, but I'm really sleepy so I'm sending the imperfect upload and might get to improving it in a day or two. I quit putting captions because I need to upload the whole set again bigger.
It's July 30, the sun is shining and I'm cold. Possibly it's because I'm getting old. Maybe it's because I'm not used to my hair not drying in fifteen minutes as it does in New Mexico. Should I buy a shawl? Am I that old? :-)
Yesterday Schuyler, Linnaea and I went to Diss. Why a town around here has a one-syllable name like "Diss" is a mystery. Well, there's "York" (not around here exactly). I will look it up for you (and for me, too). " The town may take its name from the Saxon term for lake, or from an old Viking word meaning 'village of the dancing horse'." Okiedokie then! Someday if I run out of things to think about I'll wonder why there's a one syllable Norse word for "village of the dancing horse," but not today.
One of these panarama photos glitched interestingly. I think it cut Linnaea out because it couldn't make her face right, maybe. They're made with three photos that the camera builds into one. The first one was only two photos, and the third, intentionally three with Linnaea, is ghostly there in the middle.
This is a nice building for the Carphone Warehouse, I thought. I've left both photos because one shows the top and the other shows the neighboring shop, partly.
Diss has a lake, beautiful streets and buildings, and half a dozen charity shops, it seemed. I think we went into four, maybe five.
Later, David made Yorkshire pudding with sausages in it for dinner last night and I wish I had taken a picture. It was beautiful and tasted WONDERFUL. David Waynforth is a great cook. I'll put that here in case anyone's ever googling for David Waynforth. Great cook. Nice man. Good driver. Generous guy. They'll find the other things about him at other links.
Because of the train strike today and tomorrow, I came to Bishops Stortford Wednesday night instead of Thursday, but I'm glad there was a train after dinnertime so I didn't miss the Yorkshire pudding.
Here's a little of the train ride. This was around 8:30 pm I think. It doesn't get dark very early. It was dark by 9:30, though. I didn't notice when it happened.
I'm adding this a few days late. I had meant to upload it and forgot.
Carolyn's home. We're out not to explore and eat. Coming soon: Stuff I Saw in Bishops Stortford
From Scientific American, June 1909 (in the "100 years ago" section of a recent issue):
Moving pictures are exhibited in about ten thousand theaters and halls in the United States. With the rapid s[read of this new amusement has also come a marked change in the public taste. Spectators were once quite content with a view of factory employees going to and from their work, the arrival and departure of railway trains, and similar scenes. Nowadays, a more or less coherent story must be unfolded, for which reason the makers of moving pictures have been compelled to write plays 9or at least to conceive them) and to have them acted before the camera.
I have three comments, some more related that others.
Below is a movie without a plot. The arrival and departure of railway trains is being hampered in the part of the world for the next two days because of a strike. I have tickets for those very two days. So I'm leaving for Bishops Stortford tonight, which was unplanned, and my journey to Wales is not quite as set as it was.
And it's Kirby's birthday, so I have been a mother for twenty-three years.
This car was in London. It kept changing color as I was walking by, from a goldish metallic yellow to green and blue and purple. The movie won't really show it. But it definitely doesn't have a plot.
If anyone knows I would be curious: What color would be on the automobile registration forms? It's a Cooper.
I first thought this say Holly, but I think it says "Boll's," maybe. Veterinary something or other.
It was on building to the left of this sign:
Just past that, this wall, which was twice as long as shows. Very nice. Simple. Just a wall between a house and the street, but I really liked it.
Ghost signs collected by various people. I think one certain blogger created that term but I don't have her blog address on this computer. I had another one, in Socorro, New Mexico here, and three in Bemidji (or another town near there) here, from when the Traaseths still lived in Minnesota and Kelli took me sightseeing.
In Schuyler's yard I found two odd things. No leaves, just a long, strong stalk. I showed the photos to a plant guy at the Norwich Castle museum and he said wild arum or jack in the pulpit, and that the flower is like a leaf and it was gone already, and these were the seeds. And poisonous.
The trip to Norwich:
Some interesting museum bits. We were in on the "Pop in for a Pound" rate. If you go an hour before closing, they let you in for a pound, but you can't do dungeon or ramparts.
American food with commentary:
We didn't go in. I was curious, but we were trekking with a schedule.
They also had "Lemon meringue with a ribbon of lemon curd." There weren't 31 flavors. I think there were twelve, and two of them particularly English. Didn't taste. Sorry, can't report. I bet the lemon one was really good. Tea and scones doesn't sound good to me.
Between the McDonald's sign and the mall entrance where I was standing is a church and a graveyard.
This first thing is a question about a bird song. I could hear it but you can't, so I sang it just in case. Good thing.
It's a woodpigeon. Thank you Alison for knowing, and for the link. Yesterday near Norwich Cathedral I heard one in a tree and David recognized it.
Yesterday David took me to see Grime's Graves, a neolithic flint mining area that was in use for a thousand years, and then became a mystery when people would guess what they thought all those holes were. It's interesting.
[There was once a slide show of the photos of that day, but it's obsolete.]
"Grime's Graves is the only Neolithic flint mine open to visitors in Britain. A grassy lunar landscape of over 400 shafts, pits, quarries and spoil dumps, they were first named Grim's Graves - meaning the pagan god Grim's quarries, or 'the Devil's holes' - by the Anglo- Saxons. It was not until one of them was excavated in 1870 that they were found to be flint mines dug over 5,000 years ago, during the later Neolithic and early Bronze Ages."
"Grimes" would've been the possessive form of "Grim," the pagan god in question, but it wasn't a grammar museum. When there's an apostrophe to show possessive, the letter that's left out is the "e" of that once-pronounced syllable, so it would've been, to the Anglo Saxons, the holes belonging to Grim, or Grimes (two syllables) holes. Few people care, I know.
More of Schuyler's house and garden, cat, flowers, neighbors to the left (hay barn) and right (formerly low-income housing the term for which I have forgotten [Estate flats?]). This property, Fornost, is built into a corner between those. Only the driveway touches the road, at a bend in the road, and behind the house is wheat.
[Another slide show bit the dust, but the gallery below will have all that and (maybe too much) more.]
Sorry my camera isn't great with close-ups of flowers, unlike Holly's she's been taking photos of the false sea onion as it blossoms at home. I put the new ones here: 100 species challenge
I have some more I haven't put up yet, from London on Sunday, but I'm hungry and I smell food.
That includes a trip to London (we stayed in Kensington), then I went to Llanharan in Wales to stay with Joy K's family, then to Julie's (and Windsor) before coming home. These photos were added in 2023 to make up for the loss of those slideshows.
Usually I get to see her art as it's happening, but this time I only got the finished version. I know this was quite a bit of work, to take out all the backgrounds from the chat icon and such. I'm so glad Holly knows how to do these things.
Thanks, Holly!!!!
The lower right corner is empty because that's where the publishing info and ISBN go.
We didn't go in. I was curious, but we were trekking with a schedule.
Between the McDonald's sign and the mall entrance where I was standing is a church and a graveyard.
