Diamond Days!

As you *may* have noticed, this last weekend has been the Diamond Jubilee. I've been off all week and so was suitably excited by the time Friday rolled around. I loved the documentary on BBC One, with the Prince of Wales watching childhood home videos, a truly lovely show which showed another side to the Royal family.

Saturday, despite all the weather forecasts was gorgeously sunny! We went to the Jubilee Fete in a park in town and had a lovely time, eating cake, watching donkey rides and maypole dancing and mulling over the outrageous size of sheep testicles....

 The Park, in the wonderful sunshine.

 The cute donkeys :)

Check out the size of THOSE bad boys lol!

We finished off with a stroll along the seafront, arriving home just minutes before the heavens opened! How's that for timing?

Sunday was a Barnsley visit, and despite the weather Hague had a wonderful time with the boys whilst I tried to watch the outrageously bad coverage of the Thames Pageant on iPlayer....seriously, how hard is it to actually show the boats and hear the music?? Seriously bad work from Auntie Beeb :(

Monday had been decreed a lazy day (by me) so we had a few beers and relaxed until the evening when we headed out again for the lighting of the beacon and fireworks (boy, do I LOVE fireworks lol). It was packed  on the sea front, full of people out to celebrate and enjoy themselves!

 Fireworks (red, white and blue of course)

Jubilee Beacon

The fireworks were fantastic, all red, white or blue and it gave me a chance to practice firework photography too!

Tuesday heralded the 6th birthday of my youngest Niece Carys, a lovely way to end a lovely weekend, with family and a very excited little girl playing her new guitar and showing off her red, white and blue dress.

Shame every weekend can't be like this eh? Gawd Bless Ya, Your Maj :) 

Published :)

I'm published. I have managed to cross an entry off of my Bucket List! I normally always have a quick flick through the local free paper, but for some reason this week, I didn't and Hague had already made a home for it in the recycling bin. I then got a FB message asking if it was my picture in the paper.....

Cue a panicked search through the recycling bin and a peruse of the paper and there it was - my photograph in print for all of Great Yarmouth to see (if they bother looking at the free paper). I was SO excited!

Okay, so it's part of an article about the iWitness website which encourages people to upload their pictures of local events and pictures of interest, but they chose mine and it truly did make my day :)

I'm famous!

Ups and Downs!

December has so far been a bit busy! The 1st is always exciting as it's Hague's birthday, tight funds meant that we couldn't really uber-celebrate, but he loved his pressies (Two and a Half Men box set and a Karl Pilkington t-shirt). We managed to scrape together enough for a Chinese and some alkyhol and we had a lovely evening watching trillions of episodes of TAAHM :)

 Pressies!

The Birthday Boy!

The next day was a bit of a bummer. I woke up with a horrible sore throat and a headache, never fun - and it meant that I spent the day indoors rather than outside at the Christmas Fayre!
With the continuing down theme, I still felt rough on Saturday and despite getting up late was in bed at 8pm, partly as I felt poo and partly as we had to be up early to go to Barnsley so Dan could see his boys...

Sleepy, Grumpy Karen!

Unfortunately his youngest was a bit under the weather, and so Dan made the decision not to go up. It's not fair to drag a 6 year old who's feeling icky away from his Mum and then on buses, hopefully he'll see them next weekend.
Surprisingly we didn't go back to bed, despite being up at 7am, we'd both showered, and by the time Dan had made the decision it was past 8.30 and although we stayed in bed for a little while longer, sleep wasn't forthcoming and so we had that rarest of things....an entire Sunday spread before us, with nothing planned!
It made sense to finally head for the Christmas Fayre, it usually contains lots of foodie stalls with noms to taste and the odd crafty stall. This year was a bit naff to be honest, but it was being held in the church. Now, Great Yarmouth's Parish Church, St Nicholas is ENORMOUS, it's the largest Parish Church in England and as such it was rather lovely to have a wander around. There are displays and information boards all around the Church and we spent quite a while exploring and finding out little known facts...

1. The church was founded in 1101
2. Nelson returned in triumph after battles to the church to be blessed.
3. Bodies were stolen from the graveyard and taken down to London
4. In the 1500's 5 men were banned from the Church after bartering for Herring during a service.
5. The church was all but destroyed during WWII, but rebuilt in the 1960's

Fascinating :o) Of course I took lots of piccies too...

It truly is a beautiful Church, despite me being of Pagan persuasion, I can appreciate the beauty of the building and the various altars, chapels and windows.

So, not a bad morning at all really, add into that a rather impressive haul of 3, yes THREE fleeces and a bad day has turned out not so bad after all. Tonight we also have chocolate cake which was supposed to be a part of a birthday surprise for Hague, but now has to be eaten by us.....I've had worse days!

'Tis the season to spot fleeces...

Finally, I know I'm late with the Book Club, I have been a major slacker and only read 3 books this month (and I only finished one of those on the 3rd of December)....but I will let you know what I thought very soon!