undyingking | What I've been up to for the last couple of weeks

A bit of zipping about, and a much-needed holiday. Nothing very startling, but that's August for you.

Started off with a few days in Bristol visiting T's parents. Met her brother's new baby, who was born at an eye-watering 10lb 8oz -- this is their fourth, and each one has been successively bigger I think. Maybe they'll stop now they've got a boy to go with the three girls... The eldest of whom wrote me this poem about a little toy elephant I brought her back from India earlier in the year:

There was a elephant
That drunk slug repellent
He turned from grey,
To purple, to green,
To yellow,
He was a mellow fellow,
Even if he was yellow.

I predict great things for this girl.

T's sister and b-i-l are currently living half the week in Bristol and half in Stockport, selling their house there, and hence rather frazzled. Had a good evening though with them and Tony S (of ex-Oxford quantum physics fame) -- sat down on the waterfront sipping (OK, gulping) wine into the night, feeling very Continental. Tony was in good form as usual -- T keeps saying "we must find a nice girlfriend for him"... be afraid!

Thence visit to my little sister in Sheffield. She is also selling up, going to be renting in Liverpool for the next three months while on a course, then to India -> Aus -> NZ over Dec / Jan, finally to take up a job in Tanzania (treating AIDS sufferers) for two years from Feb.

Finally we started the holiday proper, in a cottage in the White Peak. This was pretty new to me as although I've been to the Peaks plenty of times, it's always been to the north, the Edale / Hope Valley area. I was surprised to see how different it is -- the White Peak is more like downland rather than hills. Take away the drystone walls and we could have been in Sussex. Limestone is much cheerier to gaze upon than millstone grit! And there are a bunch of disused railways that've been converted into bridleways, which makes for a nice combination of good views / lazy walking. Excellent range and quality of beer, too, which isn't often the case in the more rugged walking regions.

Strictly it wasn't supposed to be a walking holiday, more of a loafing holiday. T gets stir-crazy after a day around the house, so there was a fair amount of craft-shop-visiting too (the general theme seemed to be dichroic glass) but I did manage to engineer a few periods of reading and cricket-watching.
Books read:

Harry Potter and the H-B P (borrowed off Ori)
Maharanis (Lucy Moore)
Emergence (Steven Johnson)
Case Histories (Kate Atkinson)
An Unconventional Cricketer (Albert Kinross, the cottage's)
The Moving Finger (Agatha Christie, the cottage's)
I Was a Rat! ... or The Scarlet Slippers (Philip Pullman)
and of course The Anatomy of Melancholy, my constant travelling-companion.

Got back here to find still another two days before going back to work, which seems very civilized. And here I am now supposedly at work but actually writing this, so I'll stop there for now.