A tale of two potters

We've had our holidays and had a good time in both places.  On Friday Mum and Dad nipped up to Samye Ling from the Lake District to see Laura and we met them all in Moffat which is a really nice little town.  The weather really was horrid so we had a rather long lunch in one of the hotels finished off by rather large but delicious local icecream - yum!  We then dashed from shop to shop including a brilliant old-fashioned sweet shop.  You know, the sort where everyone is looking at the jars saying 'Oooh look, do you remember sweet peanuts/cherry lips/sweet baccy', etc, etc. 

We also did a bit of impulse buying (past birthday/christmas money) in the form of a very quirky clock.  It is apparently based on a 17th century design and really is quite hypnotic.  When it's wound up the little horizontal bar at the top swings round from side to side swinging the chain with a ball on the end.  That wraps itself round  one of the upright brass bars, unwinds itself, winds itself round the opposite way, unwinds again and then swings the horizontal bar round to the other side where it does it all over again.  Got it?  Simple really!  The clock itself only has one hand so it is good for telling you that it is lunch time, bedtime etc, but not that it's 7 minutes to 10, so that all fits in quite well with our lifestyle - we never really need to know the exact time.

Before we met the others, Bob and I went into a nice looking pottery shop.  Laura had said that the owner has banned anyone from Samye Ling from going in (he is a born again christian I think), but that really didn't prepare us for the experience!  The potter started off telling us about his former life as an opera singer (quite interesting), then went on to the tragedy of his wife's death and then his daughter's death (very sad and you can't interupt and walk out when someone's telling you all this) gradually, and without drawing breath, he moved onto finding The Lord, etc, etc.  He ended up being quite forceful in his view that we must be saved.  We were there for nearly half an hour.  Trouble is we were just too polite, but by the end I was really getting quite cross at being 'trapped' in that way.  Thinking back, we should just have said early on that we had only come in to look at mugs and jugs, not for a lecture and walked out.  We finally did escape though and I felt quite drained at the experience!  Luckily, our faith in potters was restored later in our holiday when we visited a Lake District pottery with a lovely lady potter who chattered away about normal things and where we bought two stoneware mugs and a jug.

At Samye Ling, we did get to do some painting.  Saturday's weather was reasonably good so Laura and I got to paint a silver dragon which is climbing into the pond in which the statue we were supposed to paint sits.  Bob and the tree planting party got on really well and planted about 600 trees!  That is all the trees they have for this year's planting so Claire, who is in charge of the gardening, is going to have to think of something else for the people booked onto the next two tree-planting weekends to do!

In the Lake District, we were again quite lucky with the weather.  We did a reasonably long walk (by our standards) and the weather was fine until we got back to the car when it tipped down and we had a hail storm!  Good timing.  The same happened on Tuesday when we walked up to the Osprey viewing point and, once again, it poured down as we got back to the car.

When we got back on Wednesday lunchtime, we unpacked the car and Bob plonked the bags down in the hall.  There was a very nasty sound and further investigation revealed that every piece of pottery we'd bought was broken into several pieces!  What a real shame . . . . Bob was not very pleased with himself to say the least!  Oh well, these things happen.  In the afternoon we went wood gathering and I broke the chainsaw!  So, we're evens now!

The next few stairs are nearly done.  We can't leave the next step in because then you can't get the ladder in, but it is cut and fits.  After this is the winders  which could be more complicated!

Oooh, just seen the time and I need to get ready to go to work!  Suppose sometimes we do actually need to know the time!