Helen

We're now in that strange limbo period where no one is sure what day it is and you don't know whether shops are open or not. In reality, today counts as a perfectly ordinary Saturday, so shops were open as usual but town was quiet.

It's much colder here today, not quite freezing but not much above either and with a bitter east wind. However, I have ventured out to the Co-op for a few things and popped into the hardware store for rubber gloves. Then I'm staying indoors for the rest of the day where it's warm.

I went to the Co-op this morning to do the final shop for Christmas. I didn't want to do it tomorrow i.e. Christmas eve because I thought it would be very busy. Unfortunately it seemed as though everyone else had the same idea and the Co-op was the busiest I've seen it since the summer. At least it was full of locals. Locals do have a tendency to stand around chatting with people they've just met in the veg aisle, but locals are less of a nuisance than the tourists who wander round in small family or friend groups debating what to have for the evening meal, boggling at the prices and complaining that everything is much more expensive than at [favourite supermarket] at home. Yes, dears, that is one of the downsides of living in a rural area.

Anyway, shopping is done and I'm all prepared for the Christmas period, apart from sending money to the children and grandchildren for their Christmas presents. These days I do it by bank transfer online so it's instantaneous and they'll have the cash to spend when everything gets going again in the New Year.

51/52 for the 2025 Weekly Alphabet Challenge

This week's theme was: Y is for Yule

The local shops all decorate their windows with a Christmas theme. This is one of the windows in a local cafe.

Traditionally at this time of year you burn a yule log in an open hearth. These days not many people can do that, but these teddies have plenty of wood for their stove, so this will have to do for the theme.

We're not yet quite half way through December, but I'm already starting to feel end-of-yearish. I've started working out my goals and plans for next year and I've just been through my photos and failed to find 10 that I felt were special enough to feature in a "Best of the Year" album. I could only find 6 which can be seen here...

Which brings me to yesterday's photo of trees silhouetted against mist. There was mist down where we live, but after doing the Co-op shop and driving up to see my friend M, I discovered that up where she lived was clear. If I'd had time and a better camera with me I could probably have got some really interesting shots, but I was already a few minutes late so could only trot quickly back down the hill a little way and grab a phone shot.



In other news...

I am still struggling with the video about the Quaker locations around town. To be honest, if I hadn't told so many people that I'm doing it, not to mention having done the walk and spent time shooting video, I'd just quietly forget all about it. However, I've cut the voice-over script drastically and will have another attempt at pulling the thing together, making it much shorter.

49/52 for the group 2025 Weekly Alphabet Challenge

This week's theme was: W is for Wire

I recently bought some wireless bluetooth earbuds, but they don't work with some things, so these are still useful. The bluetooth earbuds are great with the tablet for listening to audiobooks. I can wander further away without losing the sound. They even work if I'm upstairs and the tablet is on the kitchen table. However, they didn't work properly with the laptop, so I still use the old earbuds for Zoom.



This was something of a desperation shot. I had had vague ideas about photographing some barbed wire, but the weather had been so bad this week that I didn't get out for a proper walk. However, this photo did give me a chance to try the new phone's camera on something close up.

Also I'd wanted to post this yesterday, but there was something wrong with Flickr's login so I couldn't upload the photo. All seems well today though.

Finally, I've just noticed that the 2025 Weekly Alphabet photo group has been created, so I'll be taking alphabet photos for another year. :-)

Our weather has been very pleasant for the past couple of days. Warm, but not too hot and with a cool breeze from the west. There is more rain forecast for the weekend, but I don't mind a mixture. It's when it gets stuck on one type of weather for too long that I start to moan. So we had perfect weather today for a walk to the coast. As usual we drove to the tiny car park by the Mawddach Trail and set out to walk to the seaside.

We know from experience that if the tide is high here, then you need to take the inland route to Fairbourne rather than following the track that runs beside the estuary along the base of the cliff. Today it was safe to take the coastal route.



We followed the footpath sign to the right. The bridleway is the track that leads to the whimsical sentry boxes and then onwards to join the path to Fairbourne. ( More photos here... )

We didn't walk all the way to Fairbourne because I'm trying not to eat snacks so I declined G's suggestion of buying ice creams. As it was, the walk out and back was 5½ miles and if we weren't going to buy anything, the extra distance along the sea front was pointless. We had reached the sea and enjoyed the pollen-free sea breeze.

I had this poem on my website, but Demon stopped doing email, we changed ISP and so the website eventually disappeared. I thought it might be useful to have it available online again, so here we are...

Marriott Edgar wrote a number of humorous verse monologues in Lancashire dialect, the most well known of these is probably "The Lion and Albert". I remember hearing this regularly on the radio when I was a child. It was while I was doing the OU's Shakespeare course back in 2003 that my attention was drawn to The Skinhead Hamlet. Until then I hadn't really been aware that humorous versions of Hamlet existed. I'm not quite sure what happened then, but something clicked in my brain and I just knew that if there wasn't already a version of Hamlet done in the style of "The Lion and Albert", then there ought to be one. The story of Hamlet is just as tragic as the tale of a little boy eaten by a lion on a visit to the zoo and would perfectly suit that dry Lancashire way of telling a tale. As Google couldn't find me the monologue I longed to see, I decided that I'd better write it myself. (N.B. I have posted this back in 2021 to LJ, but I didn't have a DW account at that time, so it's not been posted here.)

Here's the original poem: The Lion and Albert

With profound apologies to both William Shakespeare and Marriott Edgar, here is Hamlet in the same style...

One dark moonless night on the ramparts,
Two sentinels standing at ease
Saw summat extremely peculiar,
A ghost, large as life, if you please.

The poor blokes were horribly frightened,
The ghost was all haggard and wan,
But before it could say owt t'purpose,
The cock crowed -- and then it were gone!

When Horatio happened to mention
The ghost they had seen in the night,
Young 'Amlet became quite determined
To see it himself, come what might.

Now 'Amlet was a trifle unbalanced,
His father was dead, and his Ma
Had married his dead father's brother,
Which he thought was going too far.

It were perishing up on the tower,
The air it were biting and cold,
When the ghost at last condescended
To speak, what a story it told!

( The poem is very long, so the rest is behind this cut... )

I was still not feeling 100% after the shingles jab and a busy week, so last Saturday I drove us to the car park near Ganllwyd and we did a favourite walk in the forest that doesn't commit you to doing a particular distance. If I felt wobbly, we could turn back at any point. However, after walking for a while I felt much better so we walked up one side of the Afon Gain and back down the other side.
( More here... )

The Afon Mawddach which enters the sea at the spectacular Mawddach Estuary is much smaller nearer the source. This is looking upstream and shows the first signs of autumn colour.



And this is looking downstream. Both shots taken from the same bridge.



( Continue reading... )

Today was sunny and almost warm and I have done what I hope will be the last cut of the front grass for this year. I didn't rush, but it only too 1½ hours, including getting the mower and extension cable out and putting everything away afterwards, including emptying the wheelie bin onto the compost pile at the bottom of the garden.

I'm hoping there'll be a dry day or two next week so I can strim the back garden, then I'll be able to focus on getting rid of the brambles we don't want.

I have done virtually nothing today. I had the second dose of the shingles vaccine yesterday and felt very cold shivery in the night. I had to get up to put an extra blanket on my side of the bed. Then a couple of hours later I was boiling hot and had to push the blanket off again. Due to the disturbed night, I feel tired and my temperature is only just now heading back to normal.

However, the woolly headed feeling has more or less gone and there's still a couple of hours left to do a few useful things -- things that don't take any physical effort or much brain power!

So a miserable day, but I'd rather have 24-36 hours feeling under par than end up with shingles . I should be back to normal tomorrow after another night's sleep, though I will take things easy.