Wednesday 7 May 2014

BEDM Day 7 - May Day Bank Holiday

This latest Bank Holiday saw me back in the Mothership for a weekend of me and Mum time. I'd actually booked the tickets a long time back because I thought I was going out for someone's birthday but sometimes things just don't turn out like you thought they would. But that was fine, it meant more time for me to spend with Mumsie.

I took no crochet with me, just the ridiculously large hardback copy of A Dance with Dragons, the final book in the Song of Ice & Fire series (a.k.a. Game of Thrones). It is just too big that book, but I knew I was finally coming to the end of it and could get through a good chunk of it on the Megabus journey. I started it on 31 March and have been held back from finishing it sooner purely by the literal size of it - it is just physically difficult to lug around with you. Luckily for those reading it in paperback, it has been split into two books - although I can't lie to you, they're still outrageously large.

Speaking of ridiculously large things one of Mum's friends came round to see her with some spare rhubarb from his allotment. Cue Mum walking in with a heavy duty bin liner that she could barely lift. See picture below (Lily is captured for a size reference).


Mum spent a fair portion of my time stewing rhubarb, but there was still a fairly huge pile left so I was dispatched back to the Midlands carrying what felt like half a stone of rhubarb on my back.

Whilst Mum stewed rhubarb, I drank cider, because I know how to roll on a Bank Holiday. I am not a drinker of 'proper' wee-coloured cider. Not at all the time at least. I am mostly a drinker of namby bamby fruit ciders that basically don't taste of alcohol. I feel like I might as well be drinking a bottle of Hooch, so little have my drinking habits changed over the years.

Question - isn't Apple kind of a given flavour when you're drinking cider?

Obviously there was much Fred and Lily time. Lily was uncharacteristically affectionate with me this trip - normally she just loves Mum but I was honoured to have the pleasure of her company on my lap quite a few times. That top right picture is her watching Pillow Talk on Saturday night with me. (If you've never watched it you are missing out.) 

That's Fred yawning by the way. He's not really fierce.

I didn't just stay in, drinking cider, stewing rhubarb and playing with cats though.

We took a wander in to town where I got to admire Queen's Gardens looking flippin' fit in the sunshine with their newly planted beds and I even took a trip to East Park for a run with a friend. We probably did a little bit more walking than we should have done but at least we were out doing something yeah? Let's call it interval training.

And anyway, who cares about the running when you can see a deer like this little baby down below?


It may not have been a heady Bank Holiday, full of boozing and boozing and some more boozing but it was a Bank Holiday full of things I love:

- Cider
- Reading
- Fred and Lily
- Time with Mumsie
- My city looking pretty
(Not in order of importance)

So a little lesson that sometimes in disappointment, nice things can come.

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PS Have you read all the Game of Thrones books? Want to talk about brilliant theories of what might come next if George R R Martin ever gets on with writing another book? TALK TO ME.

PPS I'm not weird, I call her Mumsie because that was what Richard O'Brien used to call his Mumsie on The Crystal Maze. What can I say - I'm a product of the 90s.

4 comments:

  1. Ok, I've had more time to think about your theory (or was it Neil's) about the prologue being relevant to the events at The Wall at the end. Considering how GRR linked the prologue of A Feast For Crows with the end chapter when Sam arrived at the Citadel, I think it very likely that this prologue will also link with the closing events. I might need to go back and re-read!

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  2. Love Lily going in for a little investigation of the epic volume of rhubarb- sounds like a really lovely weekend, kinda living for some down time at the moment, but typically as I'm at my parents' place for the week, they've buggered off to Spain.

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  3. Hahaha, love the reference to The Crystal Maze.

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  4. All i'm going to say first is that i'm jealous of all that rhubarb, but yeah it does stew down to nothing doesn't it?!

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