Just thought i would toss in a old pick of my little buddy Kadin. I miss this guy! What a cool dude huh. Got a bit of pudge around the middle too. We'll see how much my bro has grown over these last 9 months. Mom keeps telling me he has grown a lot and his speech has accelerated and improved so much since I left. He grew at least 2 inches I think. I'll have to check on that.
Look at these hard asses! Good guys, better directors. from right to left, Dominik from Austria, Fu and our third assistant director Brynn. They worked hard to make our play a truly entertaining show and it turned out so well. Life has calmed significantly since.
Back to make delightful desserts, and other delicacies. Look ma, this is my attempt to make something like your famous fruit pizza dessert. Looks better than yours but it definetely suffers in quality. I have the wrong kind of crust underneath from what yours is, but it still was excellent.
Notice I made the Kiwis in the middle into pedals and made a small flower. Yeah, creative genius at work. Made my blueberry poundcake again on thursday along with a southern potato salad for the second time. Both are delicious recipes and believe me mom and dad, you will be tasting both very soon. Already copied down the recipes. don't expect too much out of fancy meals, but I have the desserts covered.
Last Saturday, mary and I took a short day trip to Neustad Abbey which is just outside the city of Nottingham. It's only a short 1/2 hour bus ride out of the city. The following is a bit of a lengthy journal entry about the experience... read as far as your eyelids are willing.
Mary and I left today for Newstead Abbey around 11:30 under a dreary sky, with promising patches of clearing. This has been one of the biggest goals of mine to reach all this semester since January. I almost took mary for Valentine’s day back in February and then decided that the season wasn’t right and promised her and myself to visit the place in May when the flowers had bloomed and the sun was shining. I really wanted it to be a sunny and beautiful day to draw out all the wonderful sights the place truly has to offer. In leaving I was a bit disappointed and mildly depressed over this lack of sun.
As we got off the bus at the gates, a mile from the abbey the sun had finally burst from the clouds and boy was I glad to see it. The walk was pleasant and the temperature perfect. Couldn’t have asked for a better day. It was funny how we got back on the bus, and when we arrived back in Nottingham the skies had returned to their grey, overcast nature. It’s as if the bus transported us to a whole separate world away from the smothering and bustling city. The abbey was as beautiful as I had expected in pictures. What I wasn’t expecting was how impressively the old abbey from before the mid-1500’s was converted into such a beautiful and readily liveable estate. I was actually of the mind that the abbey was an impressive pile of ruins, with lots of its original structure still standing and Byron’s home was somewhere nearby which is very far from the truth. The Byron family line moved into the place immediately after King Henry VIII forced the dissolution of the monasteries sometime in the 1540’s. They picked up from the ruins and transformed it from its original stone into quite the estate. It was passed down through the family through 6 generations of Byrons, until our famous Lord Byron the Poet came into possession of it in the early 19th century. He was pure despite his fame as a writer and could do little for the crumbling property besides fixing up a few small rooms, and thus had to put it up for sale. A good friend from school named Wilderman or something like that bought the place for a hefty 96,000 L. Thank goodness he did, because half of all the nice renovations we see today apparently came through his ownership and he nursed the mansion back into a respectable estate. It’s funny what a little money can do, and how much easier it makes your life.
Mary and I had lunch as soon as we had gotten there, just in front of the abbey out on the lawn alongside the lake. Read some poetry, fed an interested pair of ducks who waddled over while reading, and then packed up to check out the house. I was impressed. The house was well furnished and had some warmer touches. I like how the first room immediately gives the viewer a very good impression of how this house was once owned by a man’s man, a bachelor with interests in boxing, shooting pistols and other hunting exploits. Sets the proper mood, even though much of the house is very tasteful. In all the house, one placard surprised me. It talked of Lord Byron’s fame. He is considered by some to be the first “pop” idol. He set standards of dress and behaviour, breaking the typical mode and creating his own style seducing women of all types and impressing men. The only problem was at the end of the paragraph it talked about how he sadly died at the young age of 36, and the world was so broken up by his death such that it has never been affected in such a way until that of Princess Diana. Only in ones own home can you get away with such a bold and ridiculous statement. We just laughed and moved on. May his fame last forever.
We finished off with a pleasant stroll through the gardens. It was nice to see so many families out with their kids. I loved it. Children’s laughter was everywhere and constantly reminded me of Kadin. I can’t get my mind off the kid. Whether it is some 4 year old punk laughing evilly like a maniac, or bawling their eyes out at the injustice of life under the might of a mom, I can’t help but smile when I see them. I miss you buddy, and it’s a comfort to know there is only a month left til I see you again. The gardens were nice, but not overly impressive. I noticed in the house there were some themed rooms such as the Japanese room which was one of my favorites and to match there was a Japanese garden in the far back with lots of rocks and stepping stones across little ponds and stone bridges that fit right in with the lush green surroundings. Then on through the Venetian, and American Gardens. Again nothing too impressive, but just a beautiful space to walk around in. It was nice always having the lack to one side and the Abbey as a backdrop to such a beauty. A place that I could feel myself falling back through time. We did not manage to find Byron’s Oak that he devoted a poem to, but I heard there wasn’t much left to see anyway. Still, got a good sense of what a good life a person could live way out here in such seclusion, yet how worthy it was to have such distinguished, royal guests at times. A mesmerizing place that I would love to visit again someday. I couldn’t imagine anyone coming to Nottingham and not taking a short day to visit this gem from history.
No comments:
Post a Comment