John and I are officially better, as of Saturday morning. We both woke up, full, as John says, of the joys of Spring. We did a few errands, then trundled off to the Wings, Wheels and Steam festival, about 15 minutes down the road. We saw lots of steam tractors, some really cool flyovers, and wandered through one of the strangest exhibits we've ever seen.
It was a "stationary engine" display, which consisted of a grassy avenue, fenced off on both sides. On each sides of the fences were caravans, with their occupants (mostly wearing wife-beaters and such) sprawled out in front on lawn chairs. Strange enough, say you? Hah! In front of these vignettes were small-ish engines, stationary, spluttering away and pumping food coloringed water out of a bucket and back in again. The racket was tremendous, yet the owners of the spluttery machines seemed perfectly happy to sit outside and stare at each other. Some of the more intrepid owners had even brought out couch cushions for their lawn chairs, adding a particularly charming touch. John and I beat a hasty retreat.
On our way out, we started watching some kids launching homemade rockets from a compressed air tank. It turned out that it was £2 to make a rocket and fire it off five times. We had such a good time with our first rocket that 10 minutes later we were back to build a second one. And, since neither of us is in elementary school, the guys in charge of the rocket school decided they wanted to go head-to-head with our rockets. It was awesome. John captured a pic of the rocket going off with the continuous shutter setting on the camera...sweet!
We had Ian and Caroline over for a curry on Saturday night- the Stowmarket curry house has been pronounced as good as the one in Bury. Success!!
This evening, we trundled off to The Stag (the least sketchy pub in Stowmarket, by our estimation), where we watched Beckham and his textbook free kick send the Ecuadorians home. We then went to Chinese Checkers, a chinese place that Lynn, my Stowmarket mom, has been recommending. It was AWESOME and we will definitely be going back.
Currently reading The Devine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, which is a really fun chick-lit book. More updates when I've finished it.
2 comments:
You probably don't remember, but you went to at least one steam and engine fair at Thorpe Hall in Peterborough in summer 1993. The star of the show was a huge, beautifully restored and fully operational steam tractor with gigantic metal wheels...which got stuck up to the axles in mud, and required all the tow trucks in Cambridgeshire to get pulled out. We have a photo of you in front of it to prove it. Great fun! Love, Dad.
i love the divine secrets--it coulda been a good book club book too, now that i think of it!!!!
hope you're feeling well....
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