I’m w-a-a-y behind in posting. In the last 5 weeks, Cecelia (friend from Oregon) came to visit for 2 weeks, we spent a week in Indy visiting Kim & John and friends, doing a pile of shopping, sent Bryan back to BYU in Provo, and have now spent a week in Utah ourselves, visiting with lots of family and dropping Tim at the MTC to begin his mission. Blaik went back to Ireland last weekend, I’m headed back to Indy for a day this week, then home to Ireland in time for our 30th anniversary on Saturday.

So here’s to friends and family, awesome grown-up kids, and settling back into empgy-nester mode. I’ll be catching up on the blog once I catch up on my sleep!

Have fun with this.

How long to figure out how it worked?

I spent 3 days at the West Cork Literary Festival last week in Bantry.  Not a writer’s conference, per se, but I got to spend mornings working on my writing and afternoons and evenings going to readings and speakers and such.  Went to some stuff I wouldn’t have normally, which was good, bought too many books, which maybe wasn’t.  Mostly had 3 days with friends, all wrapped up in words and stories.

One of the fun things was a flash fiction contest.  They gave us the first paragraph and we had to write the rest of the story – 750 words max, including the first paragraph.  I worked on it my first morning instead of the other stories I planned on, then the three of us that went together critiqued each others, then we edited the next day and turned them in.  Results came in Friday night late, and Mandy sent a text the next morning.  Cathy won and I came in 2nd!  She said the judge read them both out, said she had them both tagged for first, then finally just had to make a choice.  So we both did the happy dance – long distance because Cathy is in Tipperary this week.

I was going to post the story here, because although I like how it came out, I didn’t know any place I could send it.  But tonight on my walk, I had some ideas to flip it around a bit and I’ll be able to send it out.  If I post it here, it’s considered published, and I don’t know that I’ll be changing enough to consider it a different story.

So I have a challenge for you.  Write a story as if you were entering the contest. Post it here as a comment (or email it to me), and I’ll e-mail you mine in return.

Here’s the first paragraph.  It’s a little clunky, but you have to include it as the opening of your story.  No more than 750 words, not counting the title (if you change it), so use the word counter on your word processor.  And have fun!

Pavel’s uncle has left him a painting in his will.  Pavel’s delighted, his uncle had many paintings, he was a connoisseur.  Pavel waits to see which one his uncle picked out especially for him.  The painting is wrapped in plain brown paper.  The courier hands it over.  “And your signature here, if you please.” Pavel sighs, takes the painting and unwraps it.

PS – I’ll give any challengers two months, until September 15th, to post their stories.  After that, if anyone else wants a copy of the story, send me a note and I’ll e-mail it to you.

Tim's missionary application photo

It finally came!  Tim is going to the Denver Colorado South Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  He reports to the MTC on Sept. 2, 2009, so we’ll be heading back to the States for our next “home leave” towards the end of August.

We tried to have Kim and John on the phone when he opened it, but only got Kim’s voice mail.  So we called my parents in Oregon, and they got to hear him rip the envelope open.  (Sorry, K & J, but he was bouncing from foot to foot waiting the hour-and-a-half for Dad to come home, and he couldn’t wait any longer.)  Anyway, Blaik says he was grinning ear to ear.  I couldn’t see it–my eyes were closed with yet another attack of vertigo–but I could certainly hear it.

The Denver South mission includes the southern part of the city (and the Denver Temple), and goes out into the mountains:  Grand Junction, Aspen, Vale, Montrose, Steamboat Springs, etc.  And no, I don’t think he gets to go skiing!  Parker (where the Ure family is), and Colorado Springs are in a different mission.

You’re welcome to say “hi” here, but Tim’s Facebook page will get to him directly.  If you don’t have it, e-mail me and I’ll send it to you.  (Not posting it here for unknown public consumption, sorry.)

OK, between tonight and last night, I finally got all the blogs I wrote along the way posted with pictures.  I’m glad I wrote as we went, made it lots easier, but it still takes a while to go through the pictures, format them, and upload everything decently.  And as soon as we got home, I got hit by a few days of vertigo, an abscessed tooth, and problems with the boys’ work permits filling up the next week.  (Vertigo gone, solutions to the rest are in the works.)

Anyway, the ferry ride home was over rough seas, and was NOT delightful.  But we made it, and are very glad to be back and settling in.  If you want the England trip from the beginning, scroll down to the one about crossing to Wales in the ferry, and work your way up.  And if you don’t, check in again in a week or so – Tim’s mission call should be arriving soon.  Cheers!

Lacock Village

(Written 5/15/09)

Since we had been to Old Sarum the day before, I had browsed around for what to do in the afternoon.  We were all museum-ed out.  So we drove up to the Village of Lacock, a small medieval village with people living there, but traffic is diverted so it’s really quiet.  The whole village is a National Trust site, so there’s no modern architecture, streetlights, etc., coming in.  They use it for filming a lot of period pieces, including parts of BBC’s Pride & Prejudice and bits of Harry Potter.  It was the village of Meryton in P&P.

I took lots of pictures so I can watch movies and look for the places.  We had lunch at “King John’s Hunting Lodge,” one of the oldest building in the town.  Nice, crowded lunch/tearoom, food was so-so, the fun part were the photos of Harry, Ron & Hermione from filming in probably the first and fourth Harry Potter movies.  Don’t know what the room was used for, but we’ll keep an eye out for it when we watch.  Then dessert from a restaurant in the old stable – luscious baked treats to eat on the way.  The boys were a bored for the hour or two (it didn’t help that it was raining off and on), but it was a nice break and sort of on our way out.

Blaik liked the old tithe barn in Lacock Village.

We’re in Newport in Wales tonight, and felt so good to have a couple of fairly easy-going days.  I didn’t realize how much the day in Bath took out of me.  Tomorrow we’ll drive through a Welsh National Park on the way to the ferry, and then head home.  It’s been a really nice trip.

Salisbury Cathedral

We were at Salisbury Cathedral this morning (Friday the 15th), too early to have a tour or to climb the steps in the tower, but it was almost better.

We got there after the early morning service, but there’s another service for the students at the cathedral school at 9:00.  And the organist stays in between and practices.  So we wandered with our brochure guides, admiring the beauty and architecture, amazed at what they accomplished in the early 1200s, and matching up people buried there with what we know of English history, all while listening to magnificent music.  It just added to the atmosphere.

Salisbury Cathedral interior - gorgeous!

And then the kids started to come in, members of the girls’ choir first, blocking out movements for their next performance, and then all the others, including a group of absolutely cute 4-year-olds.  (The choir members come on full scholarships between 7 & 9 years old, but since there were such young kids, it must be a regular school, too.)  So we went on to the Chapter House to see the Magna Carta.

It’s magnificent.  I don’t think the boys realized how much of our human rights and freedoms began with this agreement.  The cathedral has one of the four originals left in existence, and they said this is the most legible.   It really is—it made me wish I could read Latin!  There were translations there, of course, but seeing the actual writing on the original velum was awesome.

Then Blaik and I went back into the cathedral, where the children were finishing their morning service.  They sat in the quire for it (gorgeous), sang with the also-gorgeous organ music, then had a benediction and filed out.  (Not as reverently as they filed in!)  But as they left, the organist let out all the stops with some magnificent Bach – can you imagine hearing that on a daily basis?  The kids were gone, the organist finally finished, and we left to take more pictures of the outside (cloudy, drippy day).  So like I said, no guided tour, but it was so much more than we anticipated.

(Written Friday, 5/15)

It was rather gray, threatening rain on Thursday, with heavy showers expected Friday, so we flipped our days around and left the Cathedral for Friday to be inside when it was wet.  We started the morning at the Salisbury Museum and had a great overview of Stonehenge.  And it would be a pretty cool museum for kids, too – lots of hands on stuff like lifting the stones they used to sculpt the sarsens, and blocks and a pulley to see how many men and oxen it takes to raise one upright.  Lots of stuff about Romans and more recent stuff, but we mostly skipped that.  <g>

Hanging Out at Stonehenge

So we drove the half hour to Stonehenge, and the rain held off for us.  I listened to the audio guide for a while, but I’ve read enough and having just been at the museum, I felt like I was hearing the same thing over and over.  But the guys listened.  I’m in awe of the work it took and the incredible astronomical calculations you can make with it, but my favorite thing is still Mary Stewart’s version of Merlin building it.

The boys’ reactions? Tim is fascinated with how people were able to raise Stonehenge with the technology they had. Bryan says, “Stonehenge? Rocks – old, well-placed rocks.”  (His favorite parts of the trip were Glastonbury Abby and the Roman Baths.)

Part of Old Sarum ruins

Blaik in some building remnants at Old Sarum.

It didn’t take as long as I had figured, even with time just sitting there, so we headed over to Old Sarum.  The drizzle turned to light rain, but we wandered anyway.  There’s not much left, but that’s where the original settlement was for hundreds of years.  Then the church and the army had a falling out, and the bishop moved his headquarters a couple miles down the road to the current Salisbury and built the cathedral there.

Then we went to dinner at the Haunch and Venison, a cool old building (13th century?) that backs up against one of the old churches.  It had great food, but even better was the mummified hand of a card sharp who cheated and someone chopped it off a couple hundred years ago, and the story of the tunnel they built from the church in the days the building was a brothel – allowed visiting clergymen to commit indiscretions with discretion!  Tim wasn’t thrilled with the sloping floors, but the next room over from us (where we went to look out the window at the church) had huge nail heads in a very uneven, if somewhat more level floor.

"Haunch of Venison" restaurant in Salisbury

(Written 5/14/09)

Glastonbury has so many legends wrapped around it it’s ridiculous.  And Glastonbury Tor is taller than it looks!

View from half-way up Glastonbury Tor. Cloudy day.

Long way up - the tower is actually higher than the front part of the Tor.

It was a steep climb up a long hill, with the remnants of a church on top.  I told Tim he ought to run to the top and he took off!  As my jaw dropped, Bryan said he’d wait 5 minutes, then go after him to pick up the pieces.  So we huffed and puffed and all made it.  Views were fabulous, lovely countryside.  The plains flood, which turns the tor into an island that comes and goes – Avalon.  Definitely brought Mists of Avalon to life.

Glastonbury Tor grows lopsided cows!

First fountain at Chalice Well. The Holy Thorn Tree is in the top right.

The Well and quiet place

We stopped at a place called The Chalice Well, a lovely garden and mediation place.  Legend has it that the Holy Thorn tree there is one brought by Joseph of Arimithea (we’ve been learning a lot of the other legends of the area, too).  The gardens and fountains are gorgeous, with lots of nooks and crannies to just sit, and we wandered quietly.  The boys drank from the healing well, and we just soaked in the peace after climbing the Tor and before touring the Abbey.

part of Glastonbury Abbey. Hard to show how big it really was.

Glastonbury Abbey-Lady Chapel

The Glastonbury Abbey is remnants, the treasures taken when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, and the walls torn down to use in building other things over the years.  The church was huge!  The Lady Chapel is still largely intact, and the remnants of the small chapel at the other end is s-o-o-o far away.  The round kitchen building is still there, all together, mostly because it didn’t have anything anyone could use.

Glastonbury Abbey Kitchen House

The Abbey is also supposed to be where Arthur and Guinevere are buried.  The monks needed money (maybe five centuries ago?) and people weren’t coming to visit anymore, so they decided to follow up the old legend that King Arthur’s grave was there.  They dug around and found two graves with bodies, which in modern times have been dated to  the 5th/6th century.  So who knows?  And more visitors did come.

Modern Glastonbury is an interesting place.  There’s a big music concert every year, but it’s also a draw for anything and everything New Age.  Shop after shop of alternative healing, magic, occult, crystals, dragons, etc., etc.  Even the bookstores were all “alternative.”  I was fascinated.

Oops–posted out of order.

(Written 5/11/09)
We stopped in Cardiff tonight (Monday) after about 2 hours of lovely scenery that was very much like Ireland, with a  commission from a friend in Indiana.

Rita is Welsh, and grew up in Cardiff until she left as a teenager (or so I remember her telling me when she found out we were moving to Ireland).  In her childhood, there was a village green, or town square, or something along those lines, with a circle of posts and chains.  As children, she and her brother would run and get the chains all swinging at the same time.

One of Cardiff's government buildings.

So Rita asked if we ever got over to Wales, to swing the chains in Cardiff for her. Unfortunately, I never asked Rita enough specifics.  I was afraid things had changed in 60+ years, but my physiotherapist went to college in Cardiff and told me the town hall and government buildings were old and hadn’t changed. So we checked into the hotel and then went to find them.

Getting the last chain swinging!

Hmmm.  Not much luck.  There are some lovely buildings, and a beautiful park-type area in front and behind them, with some areas that might have had a circle of chains years ago, but not now.  So I took lots of pictures for Rita and then swung part of the long loop of chains around the whole park.  NOT all of them!

Besides that, I think the best part of Cardiff was seeing the red Welsh Dragon everywhere.  On flags, on signs, on sides of buildings.  Cool symbol of national pride.

Welsh is worse than Irish!