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Fat Rascals at Bettys YORKSHIRE NOTES
A beautiful sunny morning here in Harrogate! The plants are just enough later here than in the Willamette Valley so that we have had two springs of blooms and blossoms. We also have a demanding garden view on the two window sides of the cottage. The one to the south is well manicured with a couple islands of annuals surrounded by various plants, including according to the sign, an Oregon Wild Blackberry....you know, the kind you can burn or grub out every other year. The larger garden to the west is really a lawn tennis court. The landlady's leaning clothes line strung over it on Mondays and Thursdays doesn't help the image, but she is good about taking it down when the players arrive. There is full sun all day (and increasingly night) so you couldn't ask for a prettier sight. Yesterday started bright and then turned to rain, but that was okay too, adding a mood appropriate for catching up with reading and adding to our intellectual development via BBC. We spent the better part of the day in Otley, a very old market town rapidly becoming a bedroom community for the yuppies and other business types of the North. Businesses are also relocating their offices in these formerly sleepy farm towns. Our friend Barrie moved his Life Skills International into a remodeled warehouse on the River Wharf. Very pleasant way to do business. After an afternoon of high level discussions, we were treated to a personal tour of Otley highlighted by a visit to Ripley's Ice Cream store...7% butter fat, Mr. Ripley claims. TR refused a cone, but was aggressively eager to hold mine when a camera appeared.
***** Separate-Your-Knickers Ripley here. I don't want any funny ideas to be getting around about all this. My spousal unit, see, everything really is in units here, has neglected to mention how the bed situation is coming along at the Coach House at 17 Park Drive. The beds, all four or five of them, have now been fully surveyed and tried. We have come with up the following solution, thus far. At bedtime, which is increasingly early for both of us, because of the sun and birds arising at about 4 a.m., we go off into separate bed "units." Both of them single beds. The double bed, unsleepable by our standards lies waiting for the early riser. A general gathering in the double bedroom usually follows. Because of media and cyberspace standards nothing more will be mentioned about this arrangement during the rest of our stay.
Other trip highlights to date have been finding a Clark shoe store! Some of you might think this odd but probably you don't have extra wide female feet and know that only English Clark shoes will fit them. Clarks imported to the U.S. have been made narrow to torture my feet and presumably others' as well. Another highlight was attending with Val and Barrie a private opening of an art show held in rural Atherton Castle on the Harrogate-York road that is memorable, in part, due to its 75-foot entrance ceiling. Awesome, says the Midwest farm girl, who has only seen ceiling heights like that in Illinois grain elevators. The artist, by the way, is a fellow named McKenzie Thorpe, who features large square sheep with very small heads. He does other things, too, including people with round heads, white faces that consist of three dubs (technical term) of a brush. He is Yorkshire born and bred and apparently has enjoyed recent success in the US. You more or less had to be there. There is a 100-year-old "castle" estate building which is lived in and very comfortable. I could be happy there, especially with the new Jag in the garage.
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