Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Christmas-like Easter

A four day weekend was once again too much to stay at home & read & watch Spooks with my arm in a sling, so a good excuse to get away. Tedious buses & trains took me to Somerset for Easter weekend - which was strangely much more similar to Christmas than I am used to. It's not Easter Sunday as it is in NZ, rather Easter Day. I'm not completely sure what is a normal Easter at home - but I wasn't familiar with sitting around eating copious amounts of food, drinking well, fruit cakes, masses of cheese & biscuits and receiving cards & presents. I approve of little Christmas - especially as all the exercise I could manage was walking to town & down the beach.


Gary was Stationmaster for the afternoon at the local miniature railway, so I escaped into the sun to watch for a few hours. There were plenty of little steam engines chugging around the 3.5"/5" double-gauge track carrying a surprising number of children and parents/grandparents around. That smell of steam and partially combusted coal is still good on such a small scale. I managed to get a couple of loops of the recently extended track - but of course all I wanted to do was tinker with the little levers, fill coal boxes & water tenders. Alas. Anyway, that was different experience & I got to hear some proper West-Country accents (most of the people I know in the area are imports) - where you don't have to have a eye-patch & a wooden leg for it to be acceptable to say yarrrr.




1 comment:

  1. Interesting, because Easter here in Aus is different too! For me in NZ it was always an opportunity to go for an overnight tramp or go away and do something with friends, but here people go to see their families, just like Christmas. I've only just figured out why my husband always wanted to go and see his parents at Easter! It seems such a stupid time to travel 6 hrs when everyone else is also travelling. I prefer to stay home and relax (as we did this year).

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