Snowdonia

Last weekend the Putney crew hired a car and drove out to Snowdonia National Park in Wales for our friend Todd's surprise party. Shannon (of Todd and Shannon) organised the whole weekend, sourcing a ridiculously large mansion for the 16 of us (? - I lost count) to stay in.


This place was big. Apart from an inordinate number of bedrooms, it had an enourmous games room with billiards and ping-pong table; a huge kitchen with an old meat locker; and a dining room big enough to seat 16 people. Actually, just picture the Cluedo house (which, from memory, also had a ping-pong table) and you've pretty much got it. Apparently it cost the owners 100 pounds a day just to heat it.

Todd and Shannon arrived at around 11PM, and, needless to say, Todd was fairly surprised to find 14 people he knew lounging in a living room in the middle of Wales. We all said 'surprise', confirming his sentiment, then had a nice birthday party-like night.

The next day we went out clay pigeon shooting, which for me was a major highlight. We had an excellent instructor, a Welsh guy who had served in the armed forces, and (surprise, surprise) disliked the English. NB: If you ever feel the conversation drying up with a Welsh person, just mention the English - it's like putting a coin in a vending machine. I think you might even get something if you mentioned English muffins.

Now, in the shooting I came a valiant (if distant) last out of my troop, with John just edging Gerrod out for the top spot. However, it's important to remember that the winners don't write history, it's the people with video cameras. So in my version of events, I won, and the following clip shows the final shot that secured my victory. Hooray for Julian!



And this was a nice sunset, at two in the afternoon.

Wall of promises

So this is a wall of promises we found in Newport, Wales. I’m not sure what the significance of the fish might be, but some of the promises are worth zooming in on.

Some are noble.



Some are impossible.



Some are baffling.



And some exhibit what could be called a God complex.



I don’t know. It just didn’t help that such lofty sentiments were cast alongside scenes like this.



They can’t control the tides I suppose...or perhaps one of them can?

Nice Jugs!

For those of you who don’t know, we recently spent about a week touring around England and Wales with Peter and Jo (Shelley’s Mum and Dad). We rented a car, and drove in a vague direction towards Wales (past Slough and Swindon for Office devotees), stopping whenever we saw something nice. Fortunately this place is packed enough with interesting things to make that approach viable.

This is a B&B we stayed at in an anonymous little town in Wales (or at least a view of the town itself). I think the town was called Llwwddfyrddin; it has a nice river running near it with jumping salmon in the right season. That’s not important though. What is important is that the lady who runs the B&B has really nice jugs (see below).





She spent about a decade collecting them all, but then apparently had nowhere to store them, so hung them all on the rafters. At least that’s all I can make of it. People, this is what can happen when you get jug greedy. Be careful, it starts with, “Oooh, that’s a nice jug, I’ll have that”. Then it’s another, and another, until all you can think of is jugs. It’s sad to say, but we missed the opportunity to say the obvious line (a week passed before I realised). If there was one place in the world where you could, with a clear conscience, say to a lady, ‘Nice jugs!’ then this was it. And we missed it. I almost want to run back there and pop my head in – ‘And one more thing – you have nice jugs!’ It’s probably for the best.

We had an exceptionally nice meal in a pub down the road from the B&B. The hostess there was really friendly and chatted with us for a while, about travel, Australia, and how humans have a recessive gene that makes us want to fly like butterflies. According to Deepak Chopra (slightly radical author) the same gene that makes butterflies emerge from their cocoons and fly away is also present in humans. Now Dan knows why he tried to parachute off the garage roof with only a large plastic bag when he was five. Now if only we could pinpoint the gene that prompted Aaron and me to let him.