It’s a wet Bank Holiday, so we won’t be going out very much today.
Hubby took Maggie up for her first wee of the day around 8am, he clad in the black waterproofs and she in her little jacket and rainproof cover.
I got up, made sure a towel was on deck for their return, and got the hairdryer out just in case. Hubs hasn’t enough hair to warrant it, but Maggie loves being dried off this way.
Looking at the radar picture, the UK is under a blanket of dark green so the wet stuff is going to be with us for a while. The question is what to do.
When we were in the house, on rainy days I’d either bake or get my kit out and make some cards. With such limited space on the boat, the latter is awkward and cumbersome, and I still haven’t used the cooker or grill, as most of the things I cook only require the hob and possibly the microwave. Tonight is sweet and sour and thus I shall only be using 2 saucepans.
Maggie is a creature of habit, and no matter what time her first wee is, about an hour and a half thereafter it’s time for another, but even she’s not keen to go out again.
In fact, she’s been curled up literally alongside me, her nose under my elbow, and a foot intermittently rests on the keypad sending my cursor northbound.
The internet here is playing up today and has been for most of the weekend.
The car park is full and we learned yesterday that there was a festival upriver and also a couple of local fêtes.
Also, there are a lot of children on site and in order to keep them occupied, we believe parents have turned on their TVs, ipods, ipads, playstations etc which is putting a drain on the signal. We gave up last night and watched a DVD instead of playing scrabble, dominoes, or cribbage.
It’s funny sometimes as we sit and work on our laptops. Our connection is on yo-yo elastic, and we can practically tell the time by the ‘dips’ as they coincide with the soaps and reality programmes in the evenings.
Years ago when you went on holiday, especially camping or caravanning, TVs were off the menu but that was part of the appeal, to get away from it all. News was obtained via the radio or a newspaper, and kids were encouraged to explore or play outside.
I remember one year buying some small poster paint pots with the full intention of sitting down with paper and painting the scenery.
I soon discovered I was crappy at that: I see so much, yet I am unable to transpose it to paper without the aid of a camera, and even that isn’t on paper now thanks to the digital age.
These days, I paint pictures with words. In some of my posts, I try to take the reader on the journey, to put them where I am, to see the things I do. I hope I succeed sometimes.
pensitivity101 
Just remember that when all that “wet stuff” goes away, you will be left with the lush green fields and plants that so many countries would love to have. I can remember taking off from Toronto airport one May and seeing all the browns of a typical late Winter/early Spring…. and later descending to land at Cardiff airport and seeing beautiful green fields. A wonderful sight. 🙂
Plus the air will smell fresh and clean. I love the green fields, especially from the river!
Memories! Fields as seen from a road are handicapped by the road, but a river simply adds another dimension to the view doesn’t it! 🙂
🙂 🙂 🙂
Oh dear. Wet weather. Dogs do have their schedules. I was up early getting Molly out to walk while reasonably less hot. Rain will be arriving shortly and stay most of the week. Not a big problem with Molly as her coats sheds water so well she never notices or manages to huddle along the house where it’s protected by roof overhang. A stack of towels is waiting by each door. I think we will need a rain cape for her this winter as it may be cold and wet.
I had forgotten about internet signal drain. The kid’s toys are probably the reason. I always think it’s sad to see kids staring so long at a little screen instead of out windows or doing nothing. Something important is being lost: day dreaming.
As one who once taught art, most people do have the ability to draw. Schools tend to knock creativity out by rewarding points/praise to only those whose images fit a set pattern in the teacher’s brain. The most difficult thing was to get older students to free themselves from those chains. A person’s eye and own judgmental brain is the biggest obstacle. We had adults drawing in paper bags or with their sketchpads hidden underneath covers to force the eye to follow the lines of the object/landscape/still life instead of watching each movement of the pencil/charcoal/marker. You have to break that eye ruling the hand’s movements in order to make any progress. And remember, practice does make perfect. There’s a reason the old masters had apprentices and that artists sketch and sketch and sketch (many pictures/drawings are terrible if you really look without the aura of “famous artists)
Hope the weather breaks. Cameras are fun – and digital pictures do take up much less room!
Interesting about drawing techniques.Thanks! I never thought about it like that, so maybe I’ll have another go sometime. At school I always had poor marks for arts and crafts because my end result didn’t look like the original.
Digital pictures do indeed take up less room, and you can delete the bad ones rather than had to pay for them to be developed!