Photo an Hour l 21st March

06.35 : Up frightfully early for a weekend because I was about to embark on a huge journey. Not before fuelling up with Marmite on toast & a cup of tea though.

07.20 : In the car and ready to drive down the M5 to Somerset to visit my Dad. The prospect of a 3.5 hour trip down there was not making me feel excited.

09.25 : No photo for 8am as driving (safety first everyone!) But I did have a stop off at the Services after hitting a stressful diversion on the M5 which was closed for 4 junctions due to a lorry overturning and spilling about 600 litres of fuel all over the place.

11.10 : Destination reached! Hurrah! Cup of tea for the weary traveller.

12.30 : Oh no I'm back in a car again! But luckily not driving this time. Instead we were headed for an adventure...

13.30 : To the sea!! I love the sea! Technically not the sea, but the English Channel. And a stroll along the beach at Burton Bradstock. It was beautiful and there will obviously be a separate blog post devoted to it where I will spam your face with pictures of it.

14.30 : Some people go to the beach and have fish & chips - I do it in style baby. Messy style, but style nonetheless.

15.40 : Back at home and Shadow is not a happy girl. She did not enjoy the water and did not enjoy the sand. It's safe to say she's not a beach fan.

16.30 : Sat down to do a spot of crocheting, obviously there's something new on my hook...

17.30 : Dedication people. I will get back into running, I will. And so determined was I that I brought my stuff with me to go for a run at my Dad's. Not one of my best decisions, Crewkerne is absolutely littered with hills. They are everywhere. And because I was just aimlessly running I didn't know where I was going and I swear at one point I thought I had devised a route which only contained uphill streets and I was never going to make it back down again. Still. Felt smug at the end of it though.

18.30 : Back crocheting and admiring my awesome stitch markers.

19.40 : It's starting to take shape - but can you tell what it is yet?!

20.15 : Late dinner of breakfast. Obviously.

21.20 : What? More crochet? Oh go on then.

22.30 : BED. Too much adventuring for one girl to take.

-------------------------------------------

Thanks as always to Jane and Louisa for hosting. Check in with them to find out the date for April's Photo an Hour post and don't forget to join in on Twitter and/or Instagram using #PhotoAnHour

2015 Photo an Hour posts

January

February

Bristolia

Probably the worst thing about being single are the weekends. During the week everything is pretty fine, I work probably a little later than I should so I don't spend a lot of time alone, but when I come home, I enjoy the time I have to myself.

Weekends are sucky. Weekends are when people in couples are enjoying the weekend being a couple. Saturday mornings break and I still stifle an internal sigh at the thought of two whole days of my own company stretching out before me.

I went to a lot of effort to book in things for the weekends after the break up, and finding myself in London for work on a Friday, I took the opportunity to pop over to Bristol for the weekend to see an old friend.

After being waved off by Paddington at none other than London Paddington Station I plonked my very hungover body down on the train and headed to hitherto uncharted territory.

A word to the un-initiated - Bristol on a hangover isn't the most fun ever. There are a lot of hills in that place. Hills and I do not get on and I was blissfully unaware of what was in store for me. Add to this the fact that my friend appeared determined to make me see every single sight possible in the remaining time we had left before the light disappeared.

Red wine hangover + hills = not a great tourist.

Tourist attractions visited included Cabot Tower - verdict: The spiral staircase might just kill you but the views once you get to the top really are worth it.

...And the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Verdict: Not as big as the Humber Bridge. Sorry. My expectations are high when it comes to suspension bridges. Although it does win points for being a damn sight older than the Humber Bridge.

...And The Downs. Verdict: Well worth a visit for the views over the Avon Gorge. Also an unnatural number of joggers/runners were there. I'm guessing because it's the only place that isn't on a flipping hill. It almost, almost made me want to start running again.

The rest of the weekend was spent visiting various drinking establishments - so many that I couldn't even begin to list or remember them.

All in all - a good introduction to Bristol. The company was....well, let's just say my judgement when it comes to certain people in my life is still seriously compromised...so I'm keen to re-visit again and maybe meet up with some people that I know are genuinely good people - Hayles? Kate? Jen?

Somerset's Best Kept Secret

"When we're arranging for you to come and see us in November we'll try and time it for when there's a Carnival on."

I'll be honest, Dad says a lot of stuff that I don't really take in, but this was one of the few times that I actually stopped and listened. He didn't really seem able to explain it - kept talking about tractors and floats and lightbulbs and saying that I should look it up on You Tube.

I politely declined and put it to the back of my mind.

So when I arrived in Crewkerne on 7th November I was greeted with the news that the next day we would be going to the North Petherton Carnival.

I was still in the dark.

It wasn't until I discovered Louisa via that day's Photo an Hour hashtag on Twitter that things became a lot clearer.

I'll let you read her post about the origins but you basically need to know a couple of things:

- There are tractors pulling floats
- The floats are decorated up the wazoo in lightbulbs
- Some floats have insane hydraulics systems built into them
- It's bloody freezing
- It's absolutely amazing

First thing you need to know? You have to get there early. The roads in and out of North Petherton close by 5.30pm to prepare for the Carnival so if you want to go to the Carnival you have to go to the Carnival. You have to commit, which for us meant queueing on the M5 with the hazard lights on as the tailback went all the way down the sliproad and into the inside lane.

So you're in North Petherton. You're parked. It's 5.30pm. The Carnival isn't due to start until 7.00pm. What are you supposed to do?

The answer is go into the bowling club and drink some goddamn cider and shove a hot dog in your face. Obviously.

We were eager little beavers and made our way to stand on the side of the street at 6.45pm for the beginning of the Carnival. Kind of a mistake. This is where the insider info comes in useful and the next time I go to a Carnival I'll be well prepared. You need to bring with you:

Folding chairs

Thermos

Lots o' food

Blanket

For the Carnival did not reach us until 8.30pm. Trust me, standing on a dark street in the freezing cold,  in the dark, staring at a hedgerow for almost two hours does not happy campers make. I can make the best out of most situations, but I was starting to lose the will to live after a while. If I'd been sat on my bum under a blanket reading a book I'd have been grand though.

There is honestly, nothing that can prepare you for a Carnival. I'd looked at Louisa's photos and I had been forced to watch a couple of You Tube videos before we left but I still didn't get the huge scale of the floats that we're talking about.

I cannot even conceive how long it takes to put all of this together, I can only imagine the Carnival Clubs have started planning their themes for 2015 already. The carpentry alone but when I say hydraulics I mean hydraulics. These are big giant floats being pulled by tractors, with moving parts on them.

Dad had first heard about the Somerset Carnivals when talking to a local who told him a story about a Health & Safety officer being poached from one Carnival Club by another. I can now see why - this is a Health & Safety Officer's wet dream. Electricity? Massive floats? People on the sides of the streets? People singing and dancing flailing around on the floats? Did I mention the hydraulics?

Spot the tractor driver. Hint: It's not the guy in the top hat

I cannot even understand how I have never heard of this Carnival stuff before. There they are, banging on about cider all the time when Somerset should be banging on about this. Tek your Rio and shove it - this is Carnival British Style aka in the cold and dark. But with chippy vans so, you know, swings and roundabouts.

Carnival is so far up my street it's untrue. 

Bright lights? Check

Loud music to dance to? Check

Strangers acting and singing and dancing (and even more unbelievably, standing stock still in the Tableau Class - I don't even understand how they could do that.)? Check

Strangers standing on the street that you can talk to? Erm, check.

The whole thing lasted about an hour and a half or so and I was stood there with a gaping mouth like a complete moron for about 75% of it. The remaining 25% I was dancing and singing.

At the end of it all it was back to the car park and a surprisingly quick get away. I had visions of us being stuck there for hours but the road is opened in one direction only and we were on our way back home in no time at all. (With the heating in the car turned up as high as it would go.)

There isn't any more I can say, other than to urge you to maybe think about taking a little weekend trip down to Somerset in October/November 2015 to see it for yourself.

Trust me, you don't want to miss out on Somerset's best kept secret.

(Did I mention the hydraulics?)

Photo an Hour l 8th November

I am loving these Photo an Hour posts you know. It means I have a guaranteed topic to post about once a month - anything to save me from the horror of working out what I'm supposed to write about.

I was initially quite excited about the choice of the 8th November as I knew I was going to be away visiting my Dad in Somerset - a change of scenery is usually a good omen from some more interesting photos than when you're just twatting about at home - but unfortunately the heavens poured down upon us most of the day so you can expect a fairly crochet-laden post coming up.

Pop over to Is That You Darling to see others' posts and to find out the date of the next Photo an Hour day which will be in December. And remember you can also join in on Twitter and Instagram using #photoanhour

This was Saturday 8th November...

10am - A late start to the day with a little read in bed. Mrs Dalloway is November's Classic as part of my Not Really Resolutions - I purposely picked quite a thin one as I have been running a bit behind schedule lately!

11am - Ablutions time. Anyone else remember a day when just getting ready was a case of splashing your face with some water and being good to go? I'm not even a girly girl and I'm astonished at the amount of paraphernalia I seem to cart about with me, although that's mostly due to the fact that I don't empty anything out and just add more to the pile...

12.10pm - Rubbish weather? Can only mean one thing - time for crochet. But what on earth could it be that I'm making?

1.10pm - Lunchtime and a continuation of the absolutely god-awful weather

2.10pm - What am I making? A Father Christmas of course! Since swearing that I was going to make a job lot of them and sell them at Christmas I made three and then promptly made no more. It is time to get my bum in gear because these guys really don't take that long to work up. In fact this would have been completed much earlier if it wasn't for the fact that I had a complete brain malfunction and forgot to change back to red wool and merrily crocheted along for 6 rows of 42-odd stitches. Yaaaaaay.

3.15pm - Finished! I had no idea these guys worked up this quickly. Thank goodness for Photo an Hour, I would never have known that it takes roughly an hour to work up the bobble for Father Christmas' hat, his hat trim, his face, beard and moustache, attach all the above and sew on a little face. Good to know these things.

4.30pm - This is how I know I'm in the country. You go somewhere to buy dog food and outside they have what can only be described as a fuckton of carrots. It's an official measurement. For a second I thought that people in Somerset really liked their rabbits, before twigging that they're probably for horses.

5.25pm - You see this is why Photo an Hour is brilliant. There I was idly browsing through #photoanhour tweets when I came across Louisa who was talking about editing some Carnival photos. I couldn't believe it as I was on my way to the North Petherton Carnival, something I had never ever heard about until Dad piped up that it would be where we would be spending our evening. How very cool is that?! (Check out Louisa's post from last year which explains what exactly it is I'm talking about). Anyway. 5.25pm we were stuck in some immense carnival traffic trying to get off the M5 and into North Petherton before the road closed for the Carnival.

6.20pm - Officially trapped in North Petherton with time to kill before the Carnival started at 7pm there was nothing for it but to hunker down in the bowling club house with a hot dog and pint of cider.

7.35pm - One of my least favourite things is standing still in the cold. Be warned that going to a Carnival involves a lot of standing still in the cold. I was just thankful it wasn't wet as well. To keep warm I jumped about like an idiot in to the road to see if I could see the start of it. We had a long wait on our hands...

8.30pm - The first float! Hurrah. After an hour and a half of standing in the cold staring at a hedge this was a welcome sight. Little did I know what I was about to witness. It was absolutely mind boggling.

9.25pm - Honestly. When someone says you're going to see an illuminated float parade you don't really know what's in store for you. This was insane and will clearly have a post of its own once I've gone through the 4,000 pictures that I took and begun to compose my thoughts about it.

10.30pm - Back in the car and on the way home down the back roads

11.30pm - Back home feeling cold to our very bones and glad to be in the warmth. Max was also happy to see us but mostly sad that he had been abandoned for the evening.