Yesterday, as I trudged along the sandy track to our social club in sticky forty degree heat, I found my imagination wandering back to my beloved Peak District hills. I pictured myself rambling about the Goyt Valley to the north west of Buxton in the High Peak - a breeze buffeting me beneath a moving sky. And I imagined these scenes - snapshots from my picture library. Walk number fifteen:-
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| The Spanish Shrine, Errwood Estate |
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| View from Shining Tor to the Cat & Fiddle road |
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| Signpost at Pym Chair |
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| Tumbledown moorland wall and view to Goyt's Moss |
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| View of Errwood Reservoir from Goyt's Lane |
Slightly homesick, what could I do? There were supposed to be wild parties in this social club with Bob Brague standing on the bar guzzling yards of ale with the rest of us clapping and cheering. Earl John Gray crooning endless Matt Cardle numbers on the microphone. Jan Blawat performing the hula hula dance she learnt in Hawaii. Jenny in her zebra print bikini doing her Paul Daniels magic tricks and Libby lapdancing in front of the lascivious Arctic Fox and slavering Shooting Parrots as Lord Mick of Bristol regalled us all with tales of military life and pipe smoking. Helen and Katherine would be by the pool giving quilting and art lessons respectively while simultaneously topping up their tans and comparing the virtues of their antipodean homelands. Maudlin, I guzzled five pints of Tetley's bitter and watched edited highlights of the Manchester derby match - Manchester Ferraris versus Manchester Lamborghinis. Oh, it's a hard life!
The photographs and place names of your beloved country seem straight out of C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia. I suppose it's really the other way 'round, though, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteYou come from a very ancient place and now have -- my apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien -- the opportunity to establish the Elder Days of your very own new Middle Earth there in the Andaman Sea. You should be anything but maudlin.
Just keep gazing at Arctic Fox's last photo for inspiration of the more immediate kind.
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ReplyDeleteglad to know I've been of SOME service at least/last!!
ReplyDeleteWell, the day you see me in a bikini, zebra print or otherwise, YP, hell will have frozen over (or the diet will finally have worked!) However, enjoy the baking heat, secure in the knowledge that over here, it's rainy, windy and generally horrible.
ReplyDeleteForty degrees!!!! I knew it was going to be hot. No wonder you are pining for the Peak District. Far too hot for quilting and Katherine's oil paints will go all runny and her water colours will dry too quickly. Blogland is losing its appeal.
ReplyDeletecheers
Consider yourself lucky to have been watching the match on your own. We experienced it in a 'British pub' in Vegas. Not the most pleasant atmosphere!
ReplyDeleteRHYMES WITH...Thank you for your kind and wise support based upon your vast catalogue of human experience. So vast it makes "The Lord of the Rings" look like a birthday card.
ReplyDeleteARCTIC FOX Yes - that would have been your role in Blogland - lasciviousness, crude remarks and romps with serving wenches.
JENNY Sounds like Wales is the same as always then. Okay if you don't like bikinis, how about a rhinoceros suit from the London Marathon?
HELEN Just checked the thermometer. It was faulty! It's a pleasant thirty two degrees after all!
SHOOTING PARROTS What the hell is a "British" pub? There's Welsh pubs, Scottish pubs, Northern Irish pubs and English pubs but I have never heard of a British pub. That was a well-taken goal from Kompany and I guess you'll agree that City were the better team. As a neutral that's what I thought anyway.
I'll just have to use acrylics watered down and mixed with lots of extender for my plein air pieces, and have a generator and aircon for other work. Helsie, would you like to share a nice, cool art studio?
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