So I got back from my holiday over a week ago and have yet to share any of my photos or experiences on here. It seems like suddenly the number of hours in a day have shrunk or maybe I’m just trying to fit too much into them. But whichever of the two it is, I am here now with a selection of pics and memories to share.
First up is the story behind these two lovely books that you see here.
Baggage checked in and with over an hour left to departure, I started kicking myself for not taking a book along with me for the flight. So I peeped into Agenda looking for a Nick Hornby to buy, and instead found myself caressing the chunky paperback copy of World Without End, which is the sequel to The Pillars of the Earth. However the sequel by itself made no sense and there didn’t seem to be a copy of the first book. I was advised to check again after our Security Check at Departures but despite finding matching copies of both books at WHSmith, the queue to the cash till was so long I might have missed my flight for waiting so I regrettably put both books back on the shelf. Needless to say, I popped into the very first bookshop I found once settled in our England hotel and bought them both. I weighed them up and down in my hands, thinking of just how much luggage weight they would be using up, yet could not bring myself to put them back on the shelf yet again. So now I finally have them in my non-existent library at home, seeing as my whole life is still packed up in boxes.
The highlight of the holiday, which was a present from my mother to my son, was a visit to West Midland Safari Park, where we took a trip in the Safari van in stormy weather that frightened most of the animals and made the giraffes get turned in (apparently they can easily fall and break a leg when the ground is slippery). However we were still lucky enough to see one giraffe out of the enclosure, which also came to eat out of our hands.
However my favourite episode of all was the reenactment of the War of the Roses at Warwick Castle. Here you can see shots from the show.
Meanwhile I revisited also the area titled Royal Weekend Party, which leads the visitors through a series of rooms that would have made up the royal family’s leisure home, complete with library and multiple bedrooms, all with realistic waxwork figures of the people who would have lived within the rooms.
Our visit to the Castle included a hilarious truly-lost experience in the Horrible Histories Maze, which although set up as a children’s attraction was very much a real and confusing maze of hedges, inside of which one could stumble upon recreations of The Stocks, a First World War area enclosed by sand bags and even barrels of explosives.
Although our England trip was short and the idea was cultural more than a shopping expedition, we did manage to haul back quite a few new items of clothing and accessories and here I am pictured in two of the t-shirts I bought whilst on the trip.
Which concludes my entry for today, as I switch off for some much-deserved sleep. Good night.
