Mission

Before we left North Wales, there was something that I just had to do. This involved a sixteen mile drive south to the scenic inland village of Betws-y-Coed on the A470. Fortunately, Shirley agreed to my proposal.

Many years ago, we bought an original landscape painting at The Great Sheffield Artshow and then three or four years later we bought another picture of what appeared to be the very same scene. The subject of both was "The Fairy Glen" just outside Betws-y-Coed.

We had tried to get there before on our way to The Isle of Anglesey but frustratingly we had lost our way and given up. This time I was determined to make it. The idea of  actually visiting The Fairy Glen had been gnawing away at me like a weevil and I knew that if I didn't go this time, that weevil would continue to burrow.

Again, the location was not easy to find. To access The Fairy Glen you must cross private land and you pay for the privilege. At the path gate, the farmer's wife waited to grab our money and she wasn't even remotely interested in my tale of our two paintings. She wasn't giving out ticket receipts so you wonder how the tax people can harvest their dues. The farm is called Cwmanog Isaf.

The Fairy Glen is in effect a deep cleft in the land, a rocky gorge through which a tributary of The River Conwy flows. To get down there, you have to negotiate a series of rough slate steps. It would be very easy to  tumble down them for they are quite precipitous and there is no handrail. However, we made it.

And there we were - standing in the very scene that has hung upon our walls for years now.  Because Great Britain has had virtually no rain in the last six weeks, the little river that flows through Fairy Glen was way down  - dribbling by instead of gushing.

But I didn't mind. The light was good and the glen felt quite magical. I took several pictures but this was probably the best of them...

Mission accomplished - we could now drive home.

Westward

In relation to our long weekend in Llandudno, if you hoped that one blogpost  - including three images - was all that you were going to get, then you are sorely mistaken. As Oliver Twist said, "More please!"

The Great Orme headland rises steeply above the town. To get up there you have a few options to pick from. Famously, you can ride in a Victorian tramcar and that is what we chose to do. Transport buff Andrew from Melbourne would no doubt have been wetting himself with excitement.

Close to the triangulation pillar at the very summit, we met a retired lone traveller from Brisbane, Australia. She had never seen a trig point before and I had to give her a rudimentary explanation before she handed me her smartphone to snap her souvenir picture. 

Within sight of the summit I was keen to locate Lletty'r Filiast which is an ancient burial place that dates back in time some 5,000 years. Translated into modern English, the Welsh name means Lair of the Greyhound Bitch. However, I guess that when it was first constructed the site had no name. The great stones would have concealed the deceased and then earth would have formed a mound over the structure.

With some difficulty, we found the ancient "cromlech". Two donkeys were grazing nearby and one of them was drawn to my whistling. He brayed loudly at the sky before staring suspiciously at the intruder in his field...

Lletty'r Filiast

On Sunday morning, we paid a voluntary toll of £5.60 to drive Clint round The Great Orme's five mile long perimeter road - Marine Drive. Fortunately, it's one way traffic only but in any case we hardly saw any other vehicles. As well as detouring up to St Tudno's church, I also spotted the old Great Orme's Head lighthouse building. Nowadays it offers B&B accommodation with spectacular views over The Irish Sea...

On Monday morning, I woke early and decided to stroll round the corner from our accommodation to the hospice where John Gray works. On the off-chance of success, I thought I would just see if his trusty vehicle Bluebell was in the car park but - as on Saturday night - it wasn't there. However, I thought that blog visitors might like to see the hospice itself - situated on a quiet back street in the lee of The Great Orme...

Finally, here's a sunset picture taken from West Shore - where we were staying - as our orb sinks yet again behind The Isle of Anglesey, travelling forever westward...

Llandudno

Back home from Llandudno. We had a lovely time over there in gorgeous, sunny weather.

In the Welsh language, the prefix "Llan" means church. High above the town on The Great Orme - the rocky headland that overlooks it - there is a very old church that is dedicated to Saint Tudno. Thus the name "Llandudno" means "Church of Saint Tudno".

We visited that church on Sunday morning and wandered around its graveyard - high above The Irish Sea. It was there that I spotted this hawthorn tree, bent by the prevailing south west wind...

The top picture shows two women walking along the promenade by the town's North Bay. Behind them you can see the Victorian pier and The Grand Hotel. What really caught my eye was their three-wheeled "rollators" - for they were bedecked with small cuddly toys. These weren't for sale. Perhaps the women had won them playing bingo. Anyway, it was something that they clearly had in common and it seemed a cheery thing to do.

People-watching on the prom - there were many sights to see. Here an Asian family up from Coventry for the day. There a yellow-helmeted child on a small bicycle with stabilisers. A fat man waddles along with tattoos on his calves. A young mother berates a small boy for throwing stones. In one of the seafront shelters we meet Harry aged 95. He lives in a two-bedroom apartment that looks out over the bay. He has a happy face and a happy disposition even though his wife of sixty years died three years ago.

Below you can see a castle - it's Conwy Castle - built under the instructions of King Edward I between 1283 and 1287 during his campaign to conquer Wales. It's a very fine castle - just three miles from Llandudno, it overlooks The River Conwy and its walls encircle the little town of Conwy. I know that many North American and Australian visitors like to see a nice castle and Conwy Castle is certainly one of the best:-

Away

Our rental in Llandudno

Health appointments have been coming thick and fast for me. If it's not one thing it's another. They have prevented us from planning holiday time away. It would have been a great opportunity to go just now as Frances, Stew, Phoebe and Margot are presently in western Australia visiting Stew's brother Richard, his Australian wife Cindy and their two children. They live in the suburbs of Perth.

However, today I booked three nights in Llandudno, North Wales. Our spring weather has been stunning for the past two weeks and it is predicted to carry on like this for several more days. It would have been a shame not to take a little advantage of it before my next doctor's appointment on Tuesday.

I have been to Llandudno before but it was long ago. There's a hospice there now - where John Gray works. I e-mailed him earlier - suggesting meeting up but I haven't heard back yet.

To tell you the truth, I am nervous about meeting other bloggers. Knowing them via a computer screen is one thing but seeing them in the flesh is another. Will they measure up? Will I measure up? It's a funny thing. I have met three other bloggers in "real life" before and all went very well. They were happy events.

I have "known" John Gray for about fifteen years and have followed his blog story. I admire the fact that he wears his heart on his sleeve and is open about his life and feelings. It's no surprise that hundreds of others have great affection for him and "Going Gently". Apart from anything else, he's a funny guy.

Today I had to go back to the garage on Sharrow Vale Road to get Clint's window washers fixed. I was there by eight fifteen. I said to the mechanics, "Will I need to go home or can I just go for breakfast and come back?" I knew the job would be a quick one.

"Oh you'll need to go home and wait for a call".

So I trudged a mile, back up the hill that is Ecclesall Road. As soon as I got home, Shirley said, "Oh, the garage have just been on the phone. The car's ready!"

Grrr!

If I ruled the world, stuff like this would never happen.

And so, yeah, we'll be heading west tomorrow - setting off mid-morning. No blogposts have been "scheduled" so this humble Yorkshire blog will be in mothballs until Monday night. As they say in Wales, "ffarwel!" Can you guess what it means?

Quiztime

QUIZTIME WITH MEIKE

Today we have another guest quizsetter. It's my friend Meike from Ludwigsburg, Germany. Her long-running blog is called "From My Mental Library". You can find it here. As usual, the answers will be given in the comments section.

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1) What is the tallest free-standing structure in Great Britain? 

(a) Arqiva Tower (Emley Moor transmitting station) 

(b) The Shard  (Office block in London)  

(c) Brighton i360 (Observation tower in Brighton, Sussex) 

(d) Blackpool Tower (Constructed in the 1890s)

2) What is the African country of Swaziland now called? 

(a) Zimbabwe (b) Egypt (c) Narnia (d) Eswatini

3) Meike asks, "How many cyber attacks against hospitals in Germany were officially registered in one single week in November 2020?"

(a) 29 (b) 295 (c) 2,950 (d) 29,500

4) What is gelotology? 

(a) The study of the effects and uses of gelatine in food production.

(b) The study of rocks and how they form through 

both volcanic and sedimentary activity. 

(c) The study of laughter and its effects on the body, 

from a psychological and physiological perspective.

(d) The study of icebergs, glaciers and  ice sheets

5) Who is this woman? She was the first female artist  to top the British pop charts with a self-penned song - back in 1978.

6) What was the longest song that the Swedish pop group ABBA ever released? 

(a) "Eagle" (b) "Dancing Queen" (c) "Waterloo" (d) "Fernando"

7)  Worldwide, which female artist has sold more records than any other?

8) What does the L in Samuel L. Jackson stand for?

(a) Leviticus (b) Leonard (c) Leroy (d) Luke

9) Which film star  was born in 1921 in the USA, the eleventh of fifteen children of a poor family of immigrants from Lithuania. His birth name was Charles Dennis Buchinsky.

(a) Mickey Rooney   (b) Charles Bronson 

(c) Charlton Heston  (d) Marlon Brando

10) What is this? (clue - it is thought to be 3750 years old and was unearthed in Germany in 1999)

(a) The Frankfurt Frisbee (b) The Dusseldorf Drum 

 (c) The Stuttgart Shield (d) The Nebra Sky Disc

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That's it folks! How did you do?

Liberation

It's Liberation Day!

Hip hip hooray!

All of out troubles will fly away.

Tariff time is here at last -

Our future rises from the past

With thanks to number forty seven

America is bound for heaven.

So dance my fellow patriots

Dance and laugh and proudly sing

Liberation Day means everything!

Illumination

Lightning

Let me be gentle. No, I am not frothing at the mouth. Yes. Let me smile and provide the following guidance with cheery goodwill. After all - in the end - does it really matter? It's only symbols on paper. I am not blowing a gasket. No I am not.

In my defence, I will say this... I was an English teacher for thirty eight years. I marked thousands of books, assignments, exam papers, essays, stories, letters, fake job applications, poems, playscripts, answers to questions. They all passed under my bridge, like autumn leaves upon the surface of  a river.

One red pen said hello to a new red pen and another and another. Sometimes there were green pens - lines of them stretching out to the horizon. I was doing my best to help. Never belittling nor being superior. The ability to spell accurately is born into some of us but not into others. I know that very well.

The psychology of spelling is often interwoven with our sense of self.

And now I come to the main meat of this blogpost. Settle down everybody. I would like you to look at the following two words:-

lightning

&
lightening

Can you see how they are different from each other? The second one has an "e" in the middle, Not only do these words look different - they have very different meanings.

lightning  - This refers to the natural phenomenon of a bright flash of light in the sky during a storm, caused by a discharge of electricity. It is also widely used figuratively to describe fast movement. Examples:-

During the storm, a bolt of lightning hit the church tower.

The pop fans ran like lightning to the front of the auditorium.

lightening - This is connected with the verb "To lighten". That verb may concern either light or weight. 

Light examples:-

The make-up artist was busy lightening the actress's 

cheeks with some white powder.

Over in the east, I observed a subtle lightening of the 

clouds as night gave way to a new day.

Weight examples:-

At the airport, Pixie tried lightening her suitcase by 

removing her bowling ball.

Lightening one's mind may often be achieved by sharing one's troubles.

⦿

So that's that. I thought that my teaching days were over but repeated evidence of lightning/lightening  confusion in the blogosphere caused me to dust off my mortarboard and academic gown  once more. Class dismissed.

Lightening