Two weeks to the start of exams. Four weeks until the end of term. Conversations in the coffee shops now interspersed with words like 'revision' and 'reading list'. In the cafe by the chapel three young headphone wearing women are staring, unblinking and unsmiling, at the screens on their laptops. Such is their immersion in whatever they're reading that they don't notice us arrive and they don't notice us leave. Give it another week and the panic levels will be higher.
The large luxury hotel a mile from 'The Last Wee House before Denmark ' is getting busy. Last week it had a 15% occupancy rate. This week it's going to be 70% +. The Thanksgiving golfing crowd are on their way. As we drive past the windows are aglow, the flags at the gate house are floodlit and the car park, usually deserted in mid-November, is filling up with large, golf bag accommodative, rental cars.
In town there is a dog show for university staff. We arrive to see the 'Beautiful Puppy ' competition.
I think there are three entrants. 'The Font' thinks there are four. A gentleman in a bobble hat talks to the dogs. He is presumably the judge. After some conferring first, second and third place winners are announced by a lady with what I would call a 'Megaphone' but which 'The Font' rather charmingly refers to as a 'Bull Horn '. The fourth entrant seems to have been an affable but ageing black labrador. He's been entered into the senior dog competition but thinks he should be a participant in every category. No one wants to spoil his fun. Other dogs stand around getting wet and wonder what's going on.
In the rather grand university reception room a Christmas market has been set up. It's home to stalls selling local products. Portraits of unsmiling Victorian academics look down on this festive commercialism. I have a feeling the academics ghosts don't approve.
Tea towels with Puffins or stylised ruined cathedral landscapes are very popular.
To show willingness we buy a stylised cathedral tea towel .
A place we've never been to but which looks like fun:https://www.nickscove.com/
8 comments:
The dog show doesn't look well attended, and what miserable weather. It seems a strange time to hold it.
The Christmas Market doesn't look very festive - where are all the fairy lights? I like your choice of tea towel, and that stall looks as though it has some decent gifts.
How could even the frostiest academic ghost not smile at the little girls in the green sleeved coat attempting to fly? (I think rainbow jacketed toddler in the foreground wants to be let off his leash.)
Those poor dogs want to be moving, not standing about in the rain.
Puffins galore in that rather large space.
One wonders when your family will grow again?
I rather fancy the badger, at the Christmas market. As a long-time resident of the Bay Area, I confess I have never heard of Marshall, CA.
That hotel does look like fun. And I think Charlie would have liked to join the Beautiful Puppy competition, even though he's three and even though it's raining.
That poor golden with its imploring look: "can you get me out of here?"
Thank you for buying something. The husband and I used to do the farmers market and a market at the old capitol of our county. It does help. Please feel free when you are looking at such things to think of gifts for people you know and would delight in a gift from you.
If a dog want to be in every category ,I agree, let them. A senior is still a puppy at heart. Like all seniors every one has the heart of a child in them somewhere.
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