dogpossum

Thursday 8 July 2004

Yesterday I was sitting in a tea room in Salisbury, enjoying a nice lunch and chat with a nanna I’d just met and who’d invited me to share her table with her, when I realised that I was the youngest person in the room by about forty years. And then I had a think about my previous declarations that I am a nanna-magnet. It really shouldn’t have surprised me so much: I’ve spent a great deal of time this trip in tea rooms or on public transport. And the over 70s are overrepresented in these two spaces. I’ve had nice lunches in tea rooms in Brecon, Bristol, Salisbury, Swindon, Marlborough and Cardiff, and will no doubt add a few more to my list before I’m done.

Thing is, tea rooms are one of the few places you can rely on decent sandwiches, bottomless tea pots and a clean bathroom.

You can also rely on the fact that most of the other people in the room with you at 2pm on a weekday will be over 70.

Owen was the cousin getting married last Saturday. He’s the one on the left. Tom is his younger brother. He was a grooms’ man. They are both really tall, but Tom is huge. He plays rugby, but his new job and a troublesome knee (which my brother and I also have) are pushing him out of serious football and into playing ‘for fun’. Owen is into soccer. I amn’t much interested in either, but I live in the land of AFL, which is more like gaelic football. The grandfather is Irish. My dad played rugby, then touch footy. My brother also played rugby. Then basketball, til his knees discouraged him. I dance, but I’m tougher than them, so I’m working on my posture and the way I use the muscles in my legs so my knees won’t hurt or get injured.
Tom is the sillier of the two, usually, so this series of photos is a nice contrast.

I’ve been in the UK for 13 days now, traveled on at least 24 individual buses, with six different bus companies in two countries.

Continue reading “All your bws are belong to us”

i did have some other photos from england, but i’ve had enough of this. perhaps another day.

my aunt and uncle here in england have many animals, including colin, a vietnamese potbellied pig. he is very friendly, much slimmer than when i last saw him, and fairly ugly. i adore him.
i have made a tiny film of him, which i’ll try to upload some time soon.
otherwise, i’m off to find a bus home.

:)

here are some of the decent photos of family i took. not all of them, but some of the best.

that’s catrina, my uncle tim’s wife. i was jealous of her hat all day. isn’t that a lovely smile?

Continue reading “family”

it was a clear, sunny, and windy day.
:)

edited.

here are the australian cousins, becky and claire (the short one is becky). they looked absolutely gorgeous, and while there was much huffing and puffing (literally, for the most part) over the effects of welsh cuisine on inactive holidaying torsoes, their dresses (though snug) looked delish.

i know this photo is giant: i’ll try to fix it later. i’m running out of time.

i took very few photos of the bridal party: i figured there’d be heaps of those by better photographers than me. so i focussed on family. here we are:

that’s me in the middle in the red dress. doing my best to stick my belly in. it’s only one of two with me in. the other has only the bottom part of me, which, while an interesting study of shared genetic features in the carroll family, isn’t actually all that excellent. but i’ve got lots more of my family…