If you go down to the woods today

Yawn...another very quiet week.

What I did

Highlight of the week was bank holiday Monday - well, a day off work would be the highlight of anyone's week now wouldn't it? We went to "Wildwood", a wild animal park near Herne Bay in Kent. The highlight of a visit to Wildwood is seeing the wild boars and the badgers, and they didn't disappoint. The wild boars look big and evil and dirty, but their piglets are just sooooo cute! Only one piglet this year though. The keeper said that they thought that the extremely cold winter had meant that this year's litter wasn't so big. A couple of years ago they had about 8 piglets running about the place. The used to have three badgers that they'd rescued from a landfill site when their mother died, and couldn't be sent back to the wild. They still have two of them, but unfortunately one, Jeremy, died earlier in the year. The two remaining badgers, Big Bore and Medium Bore, were gorgeous. We have some badgers round our way, but naturally we don't see them very often. The keeper gave us an interesting talk about badgers while Big Bore and Medium Bore hassled him for food. After that we went for dinner at Pizza Express in Maidstone.

The only other happening of note was a visit to Comet on the bypass to buy and new camera. I will be setting aside some time this forthcoming Tuesday to try it out and start to learn about all its new functions.

What I made

I really put some hours this week into the Floral Filigree beaded scarf, and I have now completed and joined up 250 of the flowers. Only another 110 to go! I finished Kerrie Slade's brick stitch flower pendant, and I've made a start of the necklace bit of it, which should be finished tomorrow. I'm definitely going to post a picture of that when it's finished.

What I read

I'm still hauling through Frank Harris's biography of Oscar Wilde, which interestingly enough focuses on the time after he left prison, which most biographies don't really cover in much detail. I'm nearly finished it now, and it's been a fascinating read. Frank is a complete maggot and although he claimed to be Oscar's friend, he clearly bears out the phrase "with friends like him, who needs enemies?" His version of some of the events in this part of Oscar's life, and his role in them, simply don't agree with other sources. Frank is telling porkies. I'm also continuing to read "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell. It is a series of six interlinked stories and I'm very impressed by David's ability to tell different stories in different "voices". The mystery which runs through all six is intriguing, but given that this is a work of literature rather than a mystery story I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that the mystery never gets solved.

What I learned this week

There are two Hilton hotels on Praed Street in London. Make sure you get the right one, or otherwise you might find yourself attending a conference on microbiology.