As you might, or might not, have noticed, I skipped my art post yesterday. That's because I have had a tiring overwhelming weekend and I needed a break!
My uncle and aunt descended on us from Manchester Friday evening and stayed till Sunday. I love them dearly, and they are possibly the most fun of my living relatives, but they are also very very loud, talkative and tiring. I couldn't take them in large doses!
Friday evening, after they turned us upside down and got my grandmother all flustered, we went out. My crazy uncle decided he wanted to see Fulham Football stadium, just because. He couldn't remember where it was, and his car was knew and he had learned how to properly use his sat-nav yet. You can imagine how it went... We did eventually find it. So we saw it. Closed. At night. In the dark. *sigh* Then we went to eat. At a spur of the moment impulse, we went for persian, which I quite liked - I had eaten persian before - but my grandmother and aunt complained no end about because it wasn't spicy enough for them. (Read: it wasn't indian.)
Saturday after eating a large breakfast and getting a late start, we roamed around the north of Greater London aimlessly. We passed by Wade, St Margaret's, Much Hadham, Harlow and various other places. We tried getting out for a walk by the canal in St Margaret's, but my grandmother complained of the cold and made us give up. We tried to go to the Henry Moore Foundation Sculpture Garden, but obviously found in closed because it was winter. Then we went shopping, because my grandmother insisted we take her to Boots and the supermarket.
In the evening we booked a table at a pub where we met my other aunt (my uncle's - and my mother's - sister) and my cousin's eldest daughter for dinner. My grandmother downed a whiskey mac in one large gulp before dinner, got drunk and proceeded to be very loud, difficult and embarrassing the whole night. She made them take her prawn cocktail back because it was on a plate and not a glass. (I begged the waitress to just plop what was on the plate in a random glass and bring it back for us.) She insisted her roast dinner was awful - and loudly proclaimed it repeatedly to the whole pub - and refused to eat it.
Possibly the most cringeworthy moment, though, was when my uncle, aunt and grandmother started talking loudly about all the mischief the first two got up to as children and teenagers. My uncle and aunt insisted my mother was the goody-two-shoes of the family (which I can totally believe), but my grandmother said she was just as much trouble. And as proof, she said that my mother had once brought home a black boyfriend! And that my grandfather got so angry he drove the boy home! You should have seen the rest of us cringe and look around the pub furtively... On the other hand, I am feeling rather proud of my mother. It was the late sixties, after all, and she lived in the conservative middle-class suburbs.
Sunday we left my grandmother home to get some peace and quiet and went for a long walk through the mud and the countryside by Hilly Fields and Forty Hill. It was a lovely walk, I took plenty of photos, but never got round to downloading them from my camera.
Once we got home, my grandmother was all rejuvenated and was ready to rearrange the dinning room - the room I'm sleeping in -, so I spent all evening going through tons of stuff she has accumulated trying to get rid of rubbish and moving furniture. The room is more spacious now, but we still have some stuff to give away or get rid of. On the other hand, I still don't have anywhere to put my stuff, and it still is in boxes on the floor.
Oof! What a boring long ramble!
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