Celebrating in Lobster Light

We have had a week of celebrations here in Chagford. Well - so has the rest of the country. The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee was celebrated al over the U.K. from last Saturday (the 2nd ) until Tuesday. I spent the week before helping the primary school children make puppets for a performance in Chagford Square on Saturday afternoon. It was called the Mad Tinner’s Teaparty ( a take on the mad hatter’s teaparty)and almost every child in Chagford school participated in some way. It was conceived of and directed by William Todd Jones - with a lot of help from puppet and costume making volunteers. Unfortunately, I was at the back of the crowd for the performance and couldn’t actually take any decent pictures, so you’ll just have to believe me when I say that the singing strawberries, the talking cakes and the singing plates of eggs and chips (that’s french-fries for you Americans) were great along with the two huge (3meters tall) puppets of the queen and the Mad Tinner, dancing corgi dogs, wild ponies and a fly-by from a whole lot of crows. Almost everything was made from recycled and found materials. It was really a lot of fun (and a lot of work too!). 

There was a picnic in the park for the whole village and live music in the square. We haven’t had this much fun as a whole village in a long time. It was lovely. 

We also celebrated our wedding anniversary last week. We’ve been married a LONG time! We always tend to celebrate in the same way. We drive down to the coast and find a place that sells fresh lobsters and bring a couple of them home for dinner to have with champagne. This has been our treat for years. We realized that we were getting older (or perhaps just more temperate) when we couldn’t even finish the bottle of champagne and we still had lobster left over too! Oh well - time marches on. But - we have over the years discovered that if we take a photo of the two of us leaning down over the platter of lobsters, the light that bounces back on us from the lobsters makes us look really quite good (come on - it’s all relative). We now call this “lobster light” and we recommend it to anyone celebrating an anniversary and wanting to look like you’ve been lit with an amber or rose gel light (those are the gels that make glamorous movie stars look good!) Or you could just walk around with a cooked lobster tied around your neck for a more lasting effect. Well -that’s our tip for the week. 

Last night we lit candles for dinner and mysteriously one of them burned down and one didn’t. There was no breeze or draft and they were the same size when we lit them. The only explanation I can think of is that the one near Brian burned faster because he talked non-stop (except for eating) through the whole dinner. Hot air can do that I guess. 

No magical adventures this week, apart from the celebrations. It’s been extremely cold and raining far too much to go out and explore. We did both get a lot of work done so I suppose that was a good thing really. From the weather report, I think we’ll be working all this coming week as well. Hmmmm. 

We’re getting excited about the publication of the “Trolls” book at the end of the summer (no - I don’t know the exact date yet, but it is available for pre-order on Amazon or signed pre-order at AFA NYC). It was fun to see the photos of the paintings from the book that Heidi put up on the facebook page. Here’s a photo of the troll child who also features in the book.

Another exciting thing happening is that we will have an app coming out in the autumn as well. It will be a series of meditations, rather like the ones we use in our workshops and lectures, and it’s going to be quite special - but more about that later! 

That’s it for now. Here’s to another rainy week!