It’s been a funny old week so far this week, not at all usual. As you all know I have been looking for a wee doggy for sometime now, a little companion to come shopping, holidays and walking with me (sounds like Peter). Well Monday I stumbled across an advert for a rather lovable cheeky little chappy on the internet who was being sold, a pug/ shih tzu cross breed. Well seeing his little face I immediately fell for him, and phoned that night to find out more. Tuesday night, I found myself heading all the way over to Worcestershire to see him… and I bought him, Bailey he is called. But I don’t have him yet :o( you see I am going away for the weekend with mum and didn’t want to bring him back to leave him with relatives, and so Monday I will be going back to collect my new friend.



Then yesterday, I took Peter out to the Cotswolds for a photography lesson. I have to say, I’m not the teacher he is, but hopefully he learned something off me! The rest of the week I am hoping is pretty quiet, I am just waiting for a phone call now to tell me what is wrong with my car and hoping I have it back in time for the weekend as I have to drive us to Chichester! Hmmm!

I think it was an odd sort of weekend this weekend! It went really quickly too.

Saturday daytime, mum wanted us to go into town to look at a ring which she wanted to buy, unfortunately the intermittent showers which classic FM had promised, turned out to be torrential rain storms with no break in between. Anyway, we managed to soldier on to get to the shop to purchase my new MP3 player, beyond that we were stuck with our sandals on in the doorway of a shop watching the floods of water flow like grey rivers down the street. Eventually getting fed up we managed to get to one more shop. Mum bought a new top and a ring, and I bought a lovely Swarovski crystal ring too! When we were leaving the shop, it was still raining so bad, that darling sweet pea had to come out from home in his car, pick me and mum up at the shop door, and drive us to my car! That has to be the most diva thing I have ever done, quite amusing really… ah isn’t he good though? He looks after me :o)

Saturday night we went out for Peter’s mum’s birthday. Spice 45, and Indian/Thai restaurant on the A45. It’s ashame none of us really had much money, seeing as we counting down the hours until payday, but it was the first time I had been out with all of Peter’s family at once, it was really nice and I enjoyed the company.

Sunday, after a jaunt to the local retail park where I wonderfully found a jumper for a little dog reduced to £1… I just need the dog to put in it now! :o(
Anyway, Peter came around for dinner, and started teaching me how to paint. As you saw from my last painting, it’s hardly a natural talent, but Peter is a wonderful teacher, in fact I was surprised at his patience. First he helped me to paint a picture from a photograph which I had done many years ago as part of my A-level photography, so that was when I was 17. Here’s the painting.



Then I had to do another painting using the principles he had taught me, but with less help. And so we found a picture from the rough guide to Devon and Cornwall and I painted that, I love it, I’m so pleased with them both.



And so, it was 1.15am by the time I got to bed lastnight, and then I lay awake until about 2am, and my alarm went off at 7am…. Yes I am tired, but only 4 days left until the weekend!

After all the fun and shenanigans of the week, as expected we were wrecked by the time we got to the weekend. Nonetheless I made the journey into town with mum who bless her had been alone for much of the week! Whilst there, having decided previously that I wanted to attempt a painting like some of the ones we saw in Newquay, I bought my supplies while in town, an easel, paintbrushes, canvas, paints :o) I had intended to spend Saturday night painting, but we ended up at sweetpea’s house instead watching TV.

Sunday, we were heading to the Godiva Festival which is on every year in Coventry and is usually pretty good, of course the whole atmosphere of the event was heightened by the heatwave we are currently in the middle of. We got there in the middle of the afternoon, Petr, mum, kids, dog and me! It was packed and boiling hot, so we head straight to the tents, there wasn’t that much going on in them, but the craft village was great. We found a few stalls selling crystals (most of the proprietors had come from the south coast) which was just what Peter wanted to display in a lovely piece of driftwood he bought on holiday! The first stall, brilliant gems, was mostly jewellery with the gems in, lovely stuff, but not quite what he was after! The second stall we found was larger more raw crystals, and the guy on the stall read our energies with a crystal pendulum and told us we needed green, gold and dark blue. So Peter ended up buying a lovely slab of Labradorite:



And a big chunk of green calcite:



I haven’t seen either in their new homes, but I know they are working because he went home that night and began painting. I think I have got him on the crystal thing now like me lol! We carried on looking at a few of the stalls, but it got far too hot, despite all the lovely hippy wares, we had to go get a beer from the beer tent before heading home, even Pru was overheated.

I was home fairly early, about 6ish… so I decided to get my new paints out, I wanted to paint the picture which I had taken on my mobile of Fistral beach:



But I wanted to do it in a very simplistic, stylised nature… now I warn you, a photographer I am, but I never pertain to being a painter… that is Peter’s skill, but this is my first painting… I am quite pleased with it :o) Hopefully I’ll get better with practice though.



And there you have it, the end of our week with a hippy weekend… back to work on Monday boo!

Our final day. The week of our first holiday had gone so very quickly, but we were determined that we weren’t going to go easily… even with the pennies we had left in our pockets, we were determined to take more photographs, see more of the sea and get more sun. Another gloriously sunny day, and we had to decide where we would stop off to see another place in Cornwall, would it be Bodmin Jail? Or Tintagel Castle… the legendary abode of King Arthur… well, it’s blazing sun outside, I don’t want to be stuck in a jail! So off we set, through back country roads to the ancient village of Tintagel.



On arriving in the village at about 11.30am, we were glad we had chosen this, old cottages, ancient post offices, gift shops, great! We took the steep downhill walk followed by the steep uphill walk carrying photography kit, to the top of a cliff where the castle was, taking pictures of the beautiful green lagoon that was situated at the base of the castle, we wandered upwards on a winding path to the sumit of the cliff, where there was a church,



And what a beautiful church it was. After spending time on that cliff, we took the steep downhill, and even steeper uphill walk back into the village to look at the local shops selling books about king Arthur, celtic runes, tarot cards and astrology books. It seems to be an area very attached to it’s celtic roots. Then we found one of my favourites, a crystal shop, Peter and I bought matching tourquiose cross pendants, and I bought mum an amethyst one the same, I also bought a bag filled with random stones, Aventurine, snowflake obsidian, and so on… before we ate the tuna sandwiches we had packed and set off to hit the motorway, it was 2.30pm. We’d had a lovely lovely time in Cornwall, and the drive back out to the main roads wasn’t without it’s amusement, for example the 60MPH road we were sent up, which actually was a dirt track hewn out of bushes and was no wider than Peter’s passatt…. And the random little villages, all of which have similar names!

It was a long drive home, around 5hrs back to the concrete jungle, but we had a lot of time to discuss things on the journey… things like future plans! For instance, the crafts we saw in Cornwall, art, photography to name a few, well Peter is an artist and I am a photographer… could we not make a living from such crafts? Peter has always wanted a tea shop… imagine one which was also a gallery and was by the sea! And so slowly a long term plan has developed from that journey… watch this space because 5 years from now, it could be a space based in Cornwall!

Thursday, we woke up surprisingly without hangovers, :o) and decided on a beach to go to in order to try out our new wetsuits. We’d already decided that it was too rough to go in any further than ankle height at Fistral beach, there was Great Western, which was good because it was near Tolcarne, which had the beach huts on which we wanted to photograph later. Looking in the Newquay guide though, lusty glaze looked just fantastic, it didn’t even look like an English beach:



So with me in navigators seat… we took the wrong turning 3 times lol! But finally at the top end of town, we found the signs for the lusty glaze car park, it was easily the hottest day of our holiday so far and we climbed out of the car, dragging our wetsuits with us… we made the steep descent down the steps, in awe of the beautiful beach we had found. The beach even had lockers for our keys and phones, how cool. Once again I scraped my sunburn into my wetsuit, as did sweetpea, looking dapper in our matching suits. We head to the water and it was great fun, in 3ft of water, the waves were easily 6ft tall, we were thrown around, having a fantastic time, being dragged by the waves, but equally envious of the people who had body boards. We head back to the shops on the beach to buy a body board, but at £12.95 we decided it was a rip off (some other shops were selling ones for £5) so we hired one out, and back down to the ocean we went. Well who could ever have known what fun body boarding is… for those of you who don’t know, you battle your way out into the sea to where the waves are coming in, and as a wave pics up speed you jump on your body board, and let the wave take you to the beach… it’s fab, and if you get a good one you can be doing about 20MPH I reckon! I caught a few good ones, and Peter was really good at it, what fun!

Once both of us were completely battered by the sea, with eyes and lips burning from the salt water and heads burning from the sun, we decided to pack away the wetsuits and get the cameras out. It was about 5pm by the time we got back up the steep steep steps and to the car for the cameras and tripods, then, just as we were about to walk out of the car park, look yonder a mini Pru. A woman came into the car park with her dog, it looked like Pru… but it had been shrunk from too much swimming in sea. Oh she was so cute, a Welsh Terrier (Pru is an Airedale), we spoke to her person and found out she was called Maisey and was only a young dog, and very playful, everytime we went near her she rolled over to have her tum tickled… I think she made Peter pine for Pru, but it would have been amusing to have one of each, a Pru and a mini me…. I haven’t been swayed though, I still want my Lhasa Apso.



After leaving Maisey and her person, we hit the coast path again, this time going back to Tolcarne beach.



We took lots of photographs here, particularly of the beach huts, and finally got a long awaited cream tea… as the light was drawing in we decided we wanted to head out to one of the wind farms we had spotted earlier in the week through my bargain binoculars. We went in about 7 different directions, finally pulling in at a petrol station to ask how to get to one of the many wind farms to take photographs, luckily the woman we asked was knowledgable about them, her husband having constructed them and so off we went towards Truro into the countryside to find the impressive giants…



After wearily photographing them (and hoping for a good result) we decided to head home. The previous night I had seen from our location the puffs of a steam engine in the distance, and lo and behold on the journey back to the caravan, there were signs for the Lappa valley railway… were we going to get photographs of steam engines? Oh joy! Having taken photographs for 10 years, I know the value of a steam railway. We followed the signs, into the back of beyond, and turned up disappointed to find the Lappa valley railway is in fact a childrens attraction.. a Thomas the tank engine type train going through the valley, and to top it off, it was closed for the day.

Amused by our excursion, we head home to pack our bags, tomorrow would be our last day!