A capital weekend in Edinburgh

I spent the last week of February working at a conference in Glasgow. When the conference ended and we had packed the stand away I said goodbye to my colleagues and hopped on a train to Edinburgh to see my sister, Sarah, and her husband, Dan, and their three kids Iona, Jura and Finlay. 

Sarah and Dan moved to Edinburgh about 15 years ago and this was the first time I had visited them, which I know is slack of me. However, I was able to get there earlier than planned on the Friday to maximise the amount of time I spent with them.

On the Saturday I came down for breakfast to find the house had been decorated for St David's Day - so that I wouldn't feel homesick! Our main thing for the morning was driving out to the Falkirk Helix to see the giant 'Kelpies' statues. I love large-scale artwork and the Kelpies were magnificent.

We also had ice creams. Dan was the biggest kid, going for blue sherbert on his ice cream. 

After lunch I went with Dan and Finlay to watch a football match. The game was Spartans FC against Bonnyrigg Rose in the Scottish League 2. The ground is about a 15 minute walk from Sarah and Dan's house, so really convenient for us. A friendly steward took a photo of us on the way in. 

Once we had gone in and found some seats, Finlay told me it was his first ever football match. Privately I hoped it wouldn't be a dire nil-nil. In fact, it was a good game with both sides playing attractive passing football. There were four goals, with the Spartans winning 3-1. All 4 goals were crackers. The attendance was given as 701, so I told Finlay he was the 1. He was pleased about that. 

We also had some unexpected sunshine, meaning that weather-wise, the game really was a game of two halves!

In the evening we watched Gladiators together, then played a game after tea called Don't be a Dik Dik. It's an amusing game featuring animals that have rude-sounding names. I think the grown ups spent more time sniggering during it than the kids did.

Sunday morning was bright and sunny again. I went with Sarah to watch Finlay play for his junior rugby team. I met two other Welshies there and I had a little chat in Cymraeg to an expat from Carmarthen.

In the afternoon we went into the city centre and visited the National Museum of Scotland, a hugely impressive building with some great exhibits. I was thrilled to see a selection of the famous Lewis chessmen, and bought a replica knight in the gift shop afterwards. 

From the roof of the national museum there are fab views across the city, including the castle and Arthur's Seat. The views are well worth the wait for the lift. 

Other exhibits included Scottish-built trains and cars, and a huge array of stuffed animals and fossil skeletons. Along with the Tyrannosaurus Rex there was a glyptodont, the fossil ancestor of pangolins.

Later in the evening we had a home visit from a T Rex, which turned out to be Iona in a dino-suit. 

Our evening meal on the Sunday was at an Indian restaurant called Dishoom where I discovered one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten - okra fries. I demolished the bowl before realising I should have taken a picture of it. Never mind, that just means I'll have to go back some time. The hardship!

All too quickly it was Monday morning. I said goodbye to the kids before they went to school. Dan kindly drove me to the airport and I had a hassle-free flight back to Bristol and an easy drive home across the bridge to a more familiar capital. 

Book cover comedy - dinosaur edition

Here are a couple of book covers I spotted in a charity shop today that are crying out for humorous captions. 

This demure dinosaur is clearly saying "Who, me? Be the cover star?"

Meanwhile, this suggestive guy is saying "Hey, baby, do you like therapods? Yeah, you do!"

Neither book came home with me despite making me chuckle.

Add your own caption by leaving a comment!

Some cheery Chrimbo things

With all the work going on in the house, Christmas decorating has taken a back seat.

However, my sister sent us a festive dinosaur diorama that is on the side in the kitchen.

And this year I have a Star Wars Droid Factory advent calendar again. It's taken five days to get all the pieces for the first droid - a gingerbread R2 unit with a mixer tray of drinks. I hope it's mixing whatever the version of egg nog they drink in a galaxy far, far away.

The Grangetown Zoo goes Jurassic

There was a dinosaur theme for the Grangetown Zoo community art project this year, and Cathy provided another awesome exhibit for our window.

...complete with crucial details in a zoo information panel.

I was more involved in the zoo experience this year, helping to set up, man and take down the stalls that were set up in our local park, Grange Gardens, which was guarded by more prehistoric beasties. 

I also had a stint in a dinosaur suit - as seen in this picture.

Another stall was being run by staff from the National Museum of Wales, who had dinosaur fossils for kids to handle, including a tooth from a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

There was a trail of activities and art installations around Grangetown. It was a super-hot day and I had important dinosauring duties so didn't get to see much of the trail. But the great thing about this project is the way it creates art that sticks around. So a few days later I got to see this large scale mural of some dinosaur descendants on the side of The Grange pub.

And so that was the third and most dinosaur-tastic Grangetown Zoo weekend. Roll on next year!

Some of the Christmas Cards from the 2021 ACCA

I've picked ten Christmas cards we received this year that stood out and have scanned them to share on here. First though, a couple of cards that literally stood out as 3D cards, that wouldn't scan. 

The card with Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the Peanuts gang on lights up and plays music if you press where it says "Press Here". Lights on the tree come on!

One of the first cards we received this year came from the rock band Terrorvision along with a copy of their Christmas single.

What makes it special is that the band have signed it.

I was a bit disappointed that the multilingual greetings didn't include Welsh.

I try to include at least one religious card in these showcases. This one ticked a number of categories on the ACCA, including the 'cartoon religious' theme.

It also has a line from a Christmas carol on the front. As did this next card. Sort of.

As a heads up, cards featuring puns feature strongly in this post. Despite having a carol-based pun on the front, this didn't get counted as a religious card.

Technically I suppose Saint Nicholas, also known as Santa Claus, could be counted as a religous figure. I really liked several of the depictions of Santa that arrived this year.

I sometimes feel like this juggling Santa, trying to get all the right presents to people.

This next one really appealed to me. Cathy pointed out that the artist, Karen Fjord Kjærsgaard, sounded Scandinavian. I looked her up and she was Danish. So that might be why this appeals so much.

And then there was this card from my Ozzie cousin, Trefor, featuring a surfer dude Santa.

The expression on the kangaroo's face made me chuckle. He looks like a mischief maker. 

A couple of years ago, Stewart caused me to redo my audit with a late entry and a note about being late. His card this year gets a place in this post because a) it has a dinosaur on, b) it has a pun on, and c) he made me laugh with the post script message after wishing us a happy Christmas.

Here's the P.S.

"PS - Isn't it funny that my whole family now have to suffer weird Christmas cards because of your blog!!"

Yes, it is funny. Also, I think this means that I am officially an influencer! (Now if only I could monetise this.)

We had a few Snoopy cards this year. I asked Cathy which one she wanted me to scan and she picked this one.

See, that could have been listed in the 'Dogs in Santa Hats' category. But it wasn't.

And so on to my final two cards of this post. Both were strong contenders for favourite card of the year. Both were puns and both featured... cheese. (Which seems punningly apt - after all cheeses is the reason for the season!)

Kitchen implements in Santa hats has never been a category. It might become one in future.

And here is my absolute favourite card this year!

It was sent to us by our friends Matt and Nikki, and is just brilliant. A posh cheese pun. What could be better?

Yes, you can polish a turd

Yonks back my very good friend, Matt, informed me that I was correct when I said you can't polish a turd, but, he went on to say, you can roll it in glitter!

Anyone who has spent any time in a communications department knows that sooner or later you will have to pick up the glitter and start rolling. That great idea for an ad campaign that the CEO has had in the shower that morning and now you have to make it work? Pass the glitter. That begging letter the head of finance loves because it's full of stats about how much it costs to run the charity for ten minutes? Pass the glitter. (True story - I wrote a letter that was a real heartstring-tugger which came back turned into something like a cross between a maths lecture and a shopping list. The letter bombed and a few months later I was out of a job.) Someone has had a great idea to do "something" on Facebook and "make it go viral"? Crap, we've run out of glitter.

"Roll it in glitter!" became one of my favourite catchphrases until I discovered it was possible to polish turds. If you leave it long enough. Corprolites are fossilised dinosaur poos. Over time, with a bit of pressure, the dino dumps have been turned into stone. You can find them for sale all over the web. And do you know what's special about these pleistocene plops? You can polish them. (as can be seen at the Poozeum.)

So there you go. Next time someone tells you that you can't polish a turd you have a couple of options. You can reach for the glitter. Or bury it for a hundred million years.

USA & Canada 2016 - Exploring West Massachusetts

We drove West from Boston along one of the smaller highways. For a lot of our day that meant driving past scenes like this.

One of the reasons we went on a road less travelled was because we wanted to visit Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. Seeing the Loggerheads on the sign of this junk shop made me feel at home.

The welcoming sign about parking would have gone down a treat in the original Shropshire as well.

Like the original Shrewsbury, the Massachusetts version has some historical old buildings.

And a historical past, commemorated on various plaques.

The final place we stopped in Shrewsbury was a mall down the road that had an International House of Pancakes (IHOP). I have a lot of fondness for IHOP but didn't really like the look of their new pancakes.

Further on from Shrewsbury is Northampton, where we had arranged to visit the studio of one of our favouritre cartoonists, Hilary Price. (We had met her back in April when she visited Shrewsbury UK for the cartoon festival.)

As we left I took a pic of this panel from one of her cartoons about relationships. This is me and Cathy. I often seem to be grabbed to look at 'bugs' or whatever.

We then went South to Springfield. One the way we stopped at the Dinosaur Footprints park, which is just off the road. I am being a dinosaur in this picture. (That's our hire car behind us)

My hand in a dino footprint. Dinosaur footprints are the state fossil of Masschusetts.

One of Springfield's claims to fame is that it is where Dr Seuss, author of The Cat and the Hat and many other books, grew up. We went to the Dr Seuss Memorial Garden to see the bronze statues of many of his most famous characters. We met The Cat in the Hat...

...the Lorax...

Horton, who famously heard a Who (this picture id just his trunk!)...

...and several other characters.

We then drove along Mulberry Street, where Dr Seuss's grandparents lived and the name of the street on which he set his very first book.

The final stop on our mini tour of the area was The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. Eric Carle is the author of The Hungry Caterpillar, and several other picture books. I have to admit I gained a new appreciation for his work from our visit to 'The Carle' as they call it. It was a fab museum and we could have spent a lot longer there.

Outside, Cathy saw a bug (not an iridescent one, but close!)

Inside there are some bespoke huge colour pieces by Eric Carle.

And some great exhibitions.

We then went to a nearby farmers deli for lunch. We had spicy dill pickle flavour potato chips. They were indeed spicy!

And then we moved on, leaving Massachusetts and entering New York State, making our way towards a site of pilgrimage for hundreds of thousands of people.