sciolist

We're on holiday in Portmeirion this week. It was so hot over the weekend that even I was starting to wilt a little and a lot of ice cream has been eaten. We've been for a few gentle walks around the woods here and said hello to the Bristol Colonnade:



This was originally the facade of the bath house at Arnos Court in Bristol. Arnos Court is just down the hill from our home, so this would have been part of the view when our late 1920's house was first built. The bath house was damaged by bombs in the Second World War and was scheduled for demolition by the council in the late 1950s but Clough William-Ellis, the architect of Portmeirion came to the rescue and transported the colonnade to the village and had it rebuilt there.

We'd planned an expedition today but the temperature dropped dramatically overnight and the forecast rain and windy was extremely rainy and extremely windy, so we decided to stay relatively local. We got a takeaway lunch from the extremely nice street food kiosk in the village. The weather was so bad that the usual queue was completely absent and the only other customer was a small bedraggled blue tit that was determinedly eating the contents of a mayo packet.



This afternoon we went out to Porthmadog and strolled up and down the high street and visited the maritime museum and the local bookshop. I've been trying to learn Welsh so I picked up a Welsh grammar book and a kids book in Welsh to see if I could translate any of it. The cashier rang everything up, thanked me for the purchase, and I automatically said thank you back while I was putting my purse away. It wasn't until we left the shop that battlehamster said I'd got a big smile from the cashier because her last sentence had been in Welsh and my thank you had been in Welsh too. So, I guess that despite the brain fog, I've managed to pick up something from Duolingo. Which is encouraging.