Twas a Great Fate!

Hello! So recently I got to experience my first village fate, ok so it's spelled fete, but you pronouce it "fate"! What on earth is a village fete you may ask? Well, wikipedia says that they " are usually outdoor shows held on village greens or recreation grounds with a variety of activities and are organised by an ad hoc committee of volunteers from organizations such as residents associations". Yup. That's pretty much what it is. I snapped a few pictures to give you a bettter idea.

This little boy is about to get a balloon sword.

Tombola was a big hit. Apparently this is a very common game to have in a village fete. You pay a quid for 3 tickets which you draw out of a big bag. If any of your tickets have numbers that corrospond with the numbers on the bottles you win it! There were bottles of wine, liquer, beer, juice, soap, etc.
This was also a common game. I guess it's a cousin game of whack-a-mole. It's pretty self explanitory. The dude in the funny hat shoves a bean-bag rat down the pipe and you are supposed to splat it when it pops out. Sounds easy, but it when watching it you can tell it would be tricky.
There were also vege and baking competitions! This reminded me of the Kent County Expo back home in New Brunswick. There were many different catagories from scones, to onions, to flower arrangments. This one shown above was the winner and oddly enough the entry name was Mr. Tom Long. Tehe.
There was also a dog show going on. I noticed lots of pairs of dogs walking around which lead me to belive there must have been a couples competition. Not sure if thats what this pair were going for or not....
Anyways, thats all I have for now... I know, not very exciting. Hopefully I will have more news after this weekend. I am making a trip back to Bath!! I am also heading to Cheltenham to see about possibly moving there. So hopefully I will have some exciting news/pics for the next post.
Here's on last one of the Fete. There is a classic ice cream van in this shot. They have them everywhere here! And they actually play that funny ice cream van music and drive around neighbourhoods. Tehehe.
Lata!

Jolly Ol' Jobless England.

Well, I have made it 3 weeks now and still, no job. Everywhere I go I hear about people's kids looking for work, or the painter's grandson, still looking for a job. Hopefully when students start filing back to school some jobs will open up. In the mean time, I may look into nannying for a wee while, just to pass the time and earn some money. I am told there may be some work there considering it's the summer holidays and lots of families have kids home and still have to work. Other than the job front I have been keeping myself busy. Last weekend, on Will's day off, he took me to a water reserve nearby where we rented bikes (a bit pricey for a 2 hour rental in my opinion) and biked around the reserve (I think it was 12 km.)
Even when biking my Canadian insticts kicked it. Whenever we would meet people on the trail I would instinctivly shift over to the right side of the trail. Well of course they went that side too and probably thought I was a bit of a tool. I had to keep reminding myself that I was in England and even on bikes the driving is backwards.
That evening I trained it into London to meet up with some exchange friends from last year. We somehow figured out that a few of us where going to be in the UK around the same time, so we planned to have a bit of a reunion. It was great to see everyone. Below are some pictures of London that I took while I was there.
There was a vintage festival going on that Sunday afternoon, so we decided to check it out. There were tons of booths and stalls selling old things for too much money, although if you were really keen you could sometimes find a good deal. There were lots of fashionable folk walking around as well as some of the organisers pictured below who took vintage to the extreme.

Oh, I also found a vintage cutout of Darth Vader. Here is Vader and I and my German friend Vicktor. (Vicktor was also a Star Wars fan.)
Here is the London eye. A HUGE ferris wheel type thing. It costs an arm and a leg to go on it and it moves like 1 meter per hour, but apparently the view is quite nice at the top.

Throughout this week I spent a lot of time online looking for work and exploring the local towns nearby. And while the closest towns are not the most beautiful, we did go to one yesterday called Stamford that was really nice! I will take pictures next time I am there. As some of you may know it was Pete and mine's Birthday on Wednesday. For my Birthday Will surprised me by taking a day of work and taking me skiing! That's right, skiing. In England...in August. They have an indoor ski slope about an hour from here, so we spent an a couple hours skiing! Never thought I'd do that on my birthday. Unfortunatly I didn't take any pictures of it. I will try to take more exciting pictures over the next week to spice it up.
That's all I got. T.T.F.N. Ta ta for now!!