Chocolate Heaven! Musical again,

A PS to last Tuesday's post; we also visited Choccywoccydoodah's in Covent Garden, Amy with her interior design hat on took some good photos now on her adventuresfromthehouseonthehill. I was too enthralled by the chocolate art, maybe they do classes. The chocolate truffle milkshakes were perfect, not spoilt by over-sweetness as they often are, but I'd already chickened out and ordered coffee.  I wonder if they're enjoying them. 

I nearly forgot to add part 2! Our  school (ex-school, Amy left 5 years ago) puts on a fundraising Musical-over-a-weekend each year, initially it was for SNAP, our special needs DofE scheme, this has now folded as a local special school runs it on the curriculum. It was such fun that we carry on, this year it's Disney-style Beauty & the Beast, to raise money for shootingstarchase, a fantastic Children's Hospice Charity. I hope anyone local seeing this will support us. It's a fun evening, I've helped with costumes from the first one, The Wizard of Oz about 10 years ago. Grease, Bugsey Malone, Return to the Forbidden Planet & Little Shop of Horrors have also challenged us. I'm looking forward to the Beast's mask, but time is a little limited as our final show is only a couple of weeks before this.

DofE, Mother's Day, 39 Alice

I have no idea where the week's gone, studying takes a lot of time, evenings disappear into drawing, making, thinking, and writing about animators with intelligent comments. We had a good bronze practice DofE, the girls found it a little cold&wet. The tents turned into igloos overnight with frost, but it warmed up fast.

Sunday was Mother's Day, I hope no-one forgot/was forgotten. Our girls are very well trained, I got home to find extreme cookery going on. Hand-made ravioli with three different fillings and a garlic-lime-butter sauce, with salad, including avocado. For Pud we had RaspberryandApple crumble with ice-cream, roll on next year! Katie&Jamie joined us all so we had pink Katy cider.

Finally, yesterday was an expedition to London, starting a bit later than planned due to iPhone problems. L&A did fun things, I went to the rather disappointing Ray Harryhausen exhibition at the film museum, it was good to see his models but the whole thing looked as though it was done in a great rush and on a teeny budget.

The evening however was a triumph! Enjoli had got tickets for Alices-Adventures-in-Wonderland-Royal-Ballet-Covent-Garden, another New Thing, I've never been there, it was stunning, many brilliant costumes and fantastic use of technology in projected images. L&A wanted to keep the (human) hedgehogs as pets, as one might expect. It was Laura's first ballet, so we'll now find more. Thanks Enjoli!

Cotswolds, Gargoyles

Another week past, no time to do anything! We had a walking weekend in the Cotswolds, staying in the YH in Stow-on-the-Wold, one of many beautiful Cotswold stone (oolitic limestone for the geeks) I suspect it's horribly crowded later in the year, the central square is a carpark rather than a market or giant open air cafe, much prettier! The weather was perfect, and paths easier to do a total of 45Km over 2 days.

It's also a treasure trove of gargoyles, some splendid chimeras, and unusual figures apparently supporting a lectern, not something I've seen before.

DofE, Haiku 37, Found at last!

Yesterday was the DofE training day in the Brecons, a chance to show the girls some hills. It's a long way for 5 or 6 hours walking, but most times enjoyable. After a long gap another Haiku sprouted, in good haiku fashion from the conditions at the time. it was as you can see, near freezing with 50mph+ gales, enough that we had to divert off the path which was a bit close to the edge of Pen Y Van & Cribyn. The girls walked clinging to each other laughing outrageously each time they were blown over, but not a single whinge, so this one's for them!

37

needlesharp gailhale

fingerburning aftercold

hotchocolatedream

Last May WWA went to bag some munros, I photographed several unidentified flowers, one I found was the creeping azalea. I stumbled on a not-very-precise drawing that could have been one of the white ones in Richard Mabey's "Food For Free" ukwildflowers confirms that it's Cornus suecica, the  Eurasian Dwarf Cornel. It dosen't seem to be very common, so pleasing to have found and eventually identified it.
Here's a reminder,

          

                           


and the last unidentified one.

 Any ideas?