Hey Blog! Last post of the Orkney series.

Skara Brae, the Neolithic village lost to time, was, when discovered in 1850, one of the greatest discoveries of Stone Age archaeology, and still is. It remains a site of wonder, and we need to remind ourselves that these dwellings probably occurred all over Britain, it is merely that only those built in the hardwearing stone survived – and stone was only used when wood was scarce or simply not there at all – as it was in Orkney. That takes nothing away from the sense that you are walking where others walked, you are looking into the homes of those who could be our ancestors, and that this place is about 5000 years old – if every generation issue offspring at around 25, that’s about our 200-times great-grannies! The small, carefully built huts show a certain crude, refined beauty; it has lost some clarity by being buried under the sand for 5 millennia, but the structure of the site remains. My one pity was you weren’t allowed to go in, but nonetheless it was a very special visit. The museum was also good, and showed you many of the more portable things that would get blown away from the site (Orkney is windy – we were lucky to have good weather most of the time)!

There’s also a good beach on the bay of Skaill for skimming stones – I managed somewhere in the region of 15 bounces, though I have a way to go to get to the 40-something bounce world record!

Our last two nights were spent in Kirkwall. Though this may seem incredible, Orkney was once property of the kings of Norway, and had stronger ties to that country than Scotland! Also in its history, it was dominated by two rival, joined powers – bishops, and earls. Both built great palaces, one earl even attempting to join his extended palace to the preexisting bishop’s palace, and the result we went to see! They are recent in terms of Skara Brae, as they were only constructed in the last millennium, but when they were whole and not, as they are today, in ruins, they would have looked stunning. As the weather was fine, the ground had dried out, and made the remnants of the former formal gardens out the back stand out as green lines on yellow grass. This was interesting, as we could trace the layout exactly to the example on the signboard! I turns out a local legal building is situated just behind where the connecting wall would have been, evidently carrying on the trend of important business being carried out at that site for half a thousand years! The tower on one of the palaces provides spectacular views of the whole town, which in the past would have been very different – the sea came in further and the buildings were smaller. The only thing to rival the height of the two palaces was the cathedral, which we also went into. It is truly spectacular, beautifully made and with a long history.

An interesting fact of local history is the Ba’ game, started from the cathedral green and a remnant of the communal football games that were once widespread across the UK. Shrovetide football, an almost identical game, is played in Ashbourne, near where we live; there are occasional villages which do a similar thing, but these are all that survive to this day. It sounds very fun, but very boisterous – all the houses have barriers across the doors and windows to prevent the ball going through!

I would like to go back to Orkney. It’s more than anyone can say, a land with a long history which you can see, because those who made it left it for us to find. You have to see it to feel it, and there will be more discoveries, so we will hopefully go back one day!

Hey Blog! Sorry I haven’t uploaded anything recently, but that’s because I’ve been on holiday to ORKNEY!

The Orkney Islands are a group of islands off the north coast of Scottish mainland. The largest is simply known as the “Mainland” *, and there are apparently around 70 – but only 20 are inhabited! They have a UNESCO world heritage site, internationally important seabird colonies, some of the best wreck diving grounds in the UK, and lots more! As with our France trip, we didn’t want to fly there, so getting there we had several Experiences during the trip – but the Sleeper was definitely the best bit; it’s really cool to get on in London, go to sleep around Milton Keynes, wake up in Edinburgh because the train is being disconnected and reconnected, and then wake up again to get off in Inverness! The final train of the outward voyage was from Inverness to Thurso, just a few miles west of John-o-Groats and next to the ferry port. The ferry (this one named Hamnavoe, the old name for Stromness) was brilliant, we saw lots of seabirds (they look quite small when you see them from the deck of a massive ferry, as we subsequently found) and were hoping to see some seals, but didn’t at that point (we saw some later though!). The highlight of the ferry was sailing past the Old Man of Hoy, a famous and tall sea stack off the coast off the island of Hoy**.  The captain brought us close in and we could see it really clearly

On Orkney, we found it was exactly what I had expected, just a little larger! Compared with the UK mainland, it is quite small, but when you’re on the island, the distances are much bigger than would be thought from the things saying “quaint, small islands, steeped in history with loads of sealife”! If you don’t go in the tourist season, it’s a sleepy little place out of the towns – Kirkwall, we found, was full of tourists of the cruise ships that dock there – but once you go outside, it all goes quiet. We thought Stromness was very nice, it’s not overcrowded but is a very interesting town. The campsite was good and the museum is lovely and big for the size of the town! We also stayed at the Birsay hostel (though it is now group bookings only) and the pods at Kirkwall campsite. The “pods” are much better than the ones we stayed in in Cornwall last year, they are a lot roomier!

We came to Orkney to see really two things, the archaeology, and the wildlife. The archaeology I will detail in a later post(s), as there is more of it than the wildlife. However, some of the wildlife is of immense quality – more on that later, so I will start with a species special to Scotland, the Great Yellow Bumblebee. It is not endemic to Scotland, but within Britain, the species only lives on the north coast of the mainland and in the Scottish islands. While crossing back over the Churchill barriers, we stopped to have a walk along an old quay, and in the dunes behind saw this fuzzy flying yellow ball. I’m pretty good with bumblebee ID, and identified it as the great yellow, one of the list we had wanted to see!

One of the other things on that list was the puffins – everyone’s favourite seabird, right? Well, we saw them, one time when we went up to Yesnaby; and also at the brough of Birsay, an islet only accessible by a low-tide walkway. There weren’t very many of them, but they were there! Another tick. We saw even more seabirds on Marwick Head, on the cliffs of which there are gannets, Razorbills, Guillemots, Manx Shearwaters, bonxies (Skuas), gulls, and many more! No one can truly appreciate seabirds, I think, if they haven’t stood on top of the cliffs, watching thousands of them coming and going. It reminds you what we have to lose if these species disappear. I was so glad that there, at least, the birds seem to be very happy!

Another reason for going to Yesnaby is it’s a main site where the endemic Primula scotica, the Scottish primrose, is known to flower. Unfortunately we didn’t find that one, but still.

On the train from Inverness to Thurso we had seen, out of the corner of the window, a grey-backed, black-wing-tipped bird rise from a rock and fly, and there was nothing it could be but a hen harrier! Also known as sky dancers, these beautiful birds of prey are sadly widely persecuted. We saw one in Orkney too when one flew almost over the car while coming back from between lochs Harray and Stenness, it was not a sight to be missed! We followed it in the car to see where it went, and it literally flew over the primary school and through someone’s back garden! Words can’t really describe it, so my best recommendation is to go to Orkney and try to spot one yourself! Not much can top a Hen Harrier, so what else could Orkney show? A Short-eared owl hunting? Yes, it could! We saw this while driving back to Kirkwall, and immediately stopped to watch. Short-eared owls are light brown, and speckled, live in moorland and marshland habitats, and are the most likely of UK owls to hunt during the day. Its face was shown to good effect, and the wings subtly wavering as it looked for prey – most likely the Orkney vole ☹, a species only found on Orkney and is SO CUTE! We didn’t see this, but in terms of the owl, I’m glad, as I would have been rather upset to see them both in the same frame! The owl was stunning, and something I would love to see again!

In my next post(s) the archaeology of Orkney will be told of, so stay with me!

* Historically known by the Norse as Hrossey, or Horse Island – Hrossey is also the name of the ferry we took coming back!

** From Norse for ‘high’ – Hoy is very hilly so was known as the High Island.

Hey Blog! Time for my summer book review!

The book I am reviewing today was written back in 1998, and is totally unlike anything I have ever read before. The plot is the more twisted and convoluted than a half-knitted ball of string after three cats have fought over it while trying to tie the whole thing up in knots, and the result is a masterpiece of balance, hidden secrets, laws, curses, and a slowly revealing truth. Holes, by Louis Sacher, is totally unique. My big brother read it when he was younger, and now Dad has found a copy for me.

The plot is made up of three parts. Two are much earlier, and the third and main story is set contemporarily. Of course, according to Mrs. Yelnats, curses don’t exist and we shouldn’t believe in them, but… Anyway, the timeline really starts with 19^th Century Latvia, where the protagonist Stanley Yelnats’s no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather Elya Yelnats falls in love with the most beautiful girl in the village, Myra. To cut a long story short, Elya tries to provide the fattest pig to gain her hand, with the help of the old gypsy (witch?) Madam Zeroni. While originally against the idea, she agrees, so Elya has to carry a pig up a certain mountain, let it drink from a certain stream, and sing a special song – every day until Myra’s birthday, and then carry Madam Zeroni up the mountain too, or his family be cursed for eternity. He almost succeeds, but fails on the final day, causing him to not only lose Myra but receive the curse, and when he emigrates to America, he finds a trail of bad luck following. By the time his great-great-grandson Stanley Yelnats IV is born, the curse is not yet broken, and the song has become a lullaby.

One generation later, in the town of Green Lake in Texas, white schoolteacher Kate Barlow falls in love with the black onion seller Sam. When the two kiss, which goes against the racist laws of the state, Kate’s schoolhouse is attacked, and as the couple try to row away, Sam is shot and Kate is ‘rescued’. After Sam’s death, a curse is somehow placed on Green Lake, causing a hundred-and-ten-year drought; Kate later escapes and becomes outlaw Kissin’ Kate, who robs and leaves lipstick kisses on her victims. She even robs Elya’s son Stanley Yelnats I, a continuation of the bad luck which rids the Yelnats of their fortune. Eventually, the local landowner comes back to find Kate and demand her buried loot. She refuses, gets bitten by a venomous Yellow-Spotted Lizard, and dies laughing.

Stanley Yelnats IV, the main character, arrives at Camp Green Lake: Juvenile Correctional Facility after he is falsely convicted of shoe theft. At the camp, all campers have to dig a 5ft deep, 5ft wide hole every day, to “build character” probably looking for something buried on the dry lake bed. Over time, he gets to know the other boys in his tent, including one named Zero (Hector Zeroni), who is the smallest and best digger. After finding a lipstick tube with KB (Kate Barlow?!) on the end of it, Stanley deduces her treasure – including his grandfather’s treasure – might just be buried somewhere near: and possibly what the campers, or rather the Warden who controls them, are looking for!

Holes is definitely the one of the best books I have read this year, and stands alone in all books in the world. I have never to my knowledge read a book with flashbacks before, nor have I read a book containing so finely blended paranormal and, well, it’s not ordinary, more non-supernatural. You don’t often hear of a book for children or young teens set in what is effectively a jail, a forced labour camp. Even though the camp has no fences or any kind of protection – it has the only water in three hundred miles, so if anyone tried to run away, they would die. Probably. It includes difficult themes for writers to introduce to children, namely being convicted in court, and racism, which, even though I am constantly thinking up stories, I would definitely find hard to incorporate in a way that would be suitable for a target audience. The setting and characteristics of that setting (like scorpions, rattlesnakes, a scorching sun and yellow-spotted lizards) cause an atmosphere of tense excitement and possible danger everywhere, the greatest of these in the form of a lack of water. On the whole, it is an amazingly complicated, but brilliant book!

Can Stanley break two curses, and clear his name of shoe theft? I guess you have to (chorus) READ THE BOOK! Whatever way you take it, Holes is profoundly individual, and it will definitely remain on my shelf. Look out for my next book review coming soon!

Hey Blog! This is my conclusion of my Paris work, in which I will tell you all about the two exhibitions I attended for my Arts Award. As this part of the award contains a section where feedback is required, sending comments in to me would be very nice!

For my Arts Award, I chose to attend two exhibitions, the first being Arts et la Prehistoire, at the Musée de l’homme in Paris, and the second Picasso et la Prehistoire, also at the same museum. Here, I am sharing the analysis I have done on these two. I’m very glad that they also allowed a sneaky trip to Paris – as you have seen in my previous posts!

The first exhibition I attended was entitled ‘Arts et la Prehistoire’, and was at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. I chose to attend this exhibition because it was said to show a lot of different types of prehistoric art, and do its best to explain the many interpretations of these artworks. It would be impossible to bring the real static art (fixed art, on the wall such as cave paintings/carvings) to the galleries, but instead the exhibition creators used videos and other images to demonstrate the variety.

The artists who made these artworks were prehistoric people; we do not know their names as they left no writing, only art. However, we do know they taught one another, as we can see there were different ‘schools’ of art, i.e. common features run through the different artworks, for example in details of manes on horses, some have broad streaks of colour with no texture, some have lots of little lines to show fine, delicate detail. I saw all sorts of art, both portable, such as a few of the famous ‘Venus’ figurines (not all of them, mainly the ones found in or near France), and representations of static art, by means of videos and photographs of the famous cave paintings at Lascaux and Delacroix.

All artwork showed clearly. I liked the use of videos and shadow, there was a huge amount of famous art from all prehistoric periods, ranging from incisions on mammoth bone to [videos of] magnificent pigmented frescos. I liked the layout, with portable art, then static art, then an explanatory section, and finally interactive. The interactive part was a screen where you could make your own ‘cave art’ on a screen and it would slide over to the ‘cave wall’ with everybody’s art on.

I liked the idea that people had animation, or a version of it, in the prehistoric periods, with thaumatropes. The example in the exhibition was of a bison which would have a nodding head when the optical illusion was put in motion by twisting the disc on a string. Also, the interpretation of certain objects and wall panels included many different ways of understanding the art, which is good because it reminds you to keep an open mind to new ideas about the art.

All pieces of work furthered my understanding and showed me there are many different prehistoric styles of creating animals, which is to be expected as the art was created for so many thousands of years! I think the ancient artists were masters of the moving form, which is something I want to get better with over the course of my Arts Award too. It showed me what I need to practice before my final artwork, so it looks as I envisage.

I really, really enjoyed it as it included so much art that I hadn’t seen or even heard of before, and a lot of new information, which is rare.

For my second exhibition to attend, I decided to go to the ‘Picasso et la Prehistoire’ exhibition, also at the Musée de l’homme in Paris. This exhibition was running at the same time, in the same museum as the other, and was focused on how another artist used prehistory to inspire their own art – just like I am trying to do with my Arts Award!

As the name says, this exhibition focused on Picasso, so almost all of the art was by him: paintings, sculptures and a few drawings. There were also a few photographs by an artist called Brassaï, and objects from Picasso’s own nature collection, stones and sticks and the like. 

I found it a bit confusing really. I like stylized art, but with Picasso’s, I couldn’t see what it was meant to be! All the pieces, particularly the ‘gathered objects’ that served as inspiration in his studio, were laid out very well. I particularly liked the plaster-cast of Picasso’s hand, as seen in the picture, it fits mine quite well. One of the most interesting artworks was a drawing of what seemed at first a man with a Star Carr deer-skull mask. However, the caption at the bottom said it had “the antlers of a deer, the eyes of a bird, the ears of a wolf, the back of a bear, and the tail of a horse”. Aside from being one of the few pieces in the gallery that I could actually understand what it was meant to look like, I have a book (The Dark is Rising, by Susan Cooper) in which one of the characters has a mask with that face – a link between artworks, and literature!

It reminded me to look for inspiration in nature, and to make it so that I and other people can understand what it represents.

I didn’t enjoy this exhibition as much as the other one, it didn’t contain as much information and I don’t find Picasso’s art clear. I didn’t understand some of his pieces, as they didn’t show a picture of what they were called. They looked (to my untrained eye) mostly like a bunch of things he found in and around his house that were stuck together with paint and plaster-of-Paris and transformed by association with the artist, so I expect his art is far more about concept rather than realistic representation! Most of the time I couldn’t see a picture through the slightly confusing array of images. However, the layout and setting were good.

I hope you enjoyed the multitudes of posts here about my trip to Paris. You can see how much we could see in just three short days, and it’s such a big city we could spend years there and not see everything! On that note, I hope to go back sometime, so I’m sure I’ll have more holiday notes on Home Ed in a Shed very soon.

Hey Blog! It’s been rather busy blog-wise over these past weeks, so in this three-in-one post I’ll report on all that happened in a big day out – a trip to York, to visit two exhibitions; the monthly games club; and finally today, when I went to meet my Humanatees tutor Jake in person for the very first time!

You may remember a certain post on going to visit an exhibition of Van Gogh’s artwork in Leicester. At the end of it I said that we were planning to go again, this time with some friends. Well, this has happened! We went to see the same exhibition, but this time in York, as the Van Gogh experience was also on there, and also a different exhibition on ‘rebels in children’s literature’ in one of the York museums. As they both ran simultaneously for a short time, we could fit in both! I’m not going to detail the Van Gogh experience, as I have done so already, so for this see An Art Experience, 28^th Feb. The other, however, I will detail.

We had to get up at six to drive to Derby and meet the friends who were coming – they’re one of the families we went to London with last year and we see them almost every Wednesday – then together we took the train to York station. We went to the Van Gogh experience, and then, after a quick lunch break, straight on the ‘rebels’ exhibition. It was good. As it was focusing on literature, it included all sorts of characters I have read and others I have never heard of before. There were a few famous ones, like Oliver Twist by Dickens, Matilda by Dahl, and Anne of Green Gables by Montgomery (in all of these the titular character was the rebel) but a few I had never heard of, such as Howl’s Moving Castle or Noughts and Crosses. Past the bulk of the exhibition was an area where the books from the exhibition were on a bookshelf – I began to read… Once, after moving back from overseas before we had a house here, I used to use shops like libraries – I would choose a book, and the next shop we went into I would find the same book and jump to where I had left off! Luckily, my shelves have expanded somewhat since then and I now usually buy the book if I want it that much!

Last Friday was Games Club. This is a monthly meet-up for home-ed families to play games together, as I have told you before, but this time it was run outside! Therefore, games like boule and twister were able to be played, as well as table games. Consequently it was a lot of fun.

Today, I went to meet Jake. He is my humanities tutor, teaching Geography, History, Philosophy and other human-based subjects, but today I went to his house for the first time to take part in a debate. There were only five debaters, and Jake, of course, leading it and giving us points for good or bad arguments. The rules were – a good argument for your side: 1 point. Explaining your argument: 1 point. Insulting someone personally: -1 point. Interrupting an opening argument or closing argument: -1 point. We did three debates, the first being “Should we use giraffes in war?”! As my mum frequently points out, Jake is nuts – but in a good way! My side won that argument – that we shouldn’t, by making points like, “They’re peaceable creatures, they don’t want to fight,” and “If we take them away from their natural habitat, the ecosystem will collapse.” The next question was a little more sensible, as it was “Should we eat meat?” My side lost, even though we tried. Both of these the difference between the scores were only 1 point, but the third – and hardest question – was, after Jake had swapped the teams around, “Are animals better than humans?” and in the end the team I was on lost that one by six points, though this was probably due to half the team drawing pictures of monkeys on the whiteboard to try and do diagrams to try to make points instead of actually thinking hard! It was still immensely fun, and I would love to do another one in person! I have just started a one-year Environmental Management GCSE course with Jake, so I will be seeing him quite regularly.

This is getting rather loooong, so see you soon!

Hey Blog! Salut! Last post I said I would tell you all about what I did when in one of the many museums in Paris. Well, here you are!

We visited two museums in Paris. La première was the Musée d’Orsay, on the south bank of the Seine, and was designed to pick up where the art in the Louvre left off (the 16- 1700s), and cover the art of a more recent period. It is not the most modern one, as there is an entire museum which we didn’t go to dedicated to Picasso, who lived in the 20^th century; and there is also another one we didn’t go to called the museum of modern art – as far as I’m concerned, art is currently going very, very strange, with weird-in-a-confusing-way shapes and random everyday objects all piled together. However, I like the art from the Musée d’Orsay, it covers the impressionists and those to either side of them. This means there are great names like Monet, Cezanne, Degas, Manet, Renoir, Sisley… the list goes on and on.

If you’re wondering how I know all these names, it’s primarily because we have binge watched the entire set of ‘Fake or Fortune’ documentaries, where people with works of art suspected to be from one of the art world’s big names send in to the program and the experts try to trace it to the artist. There was also a specific reason for going to this museum instead of the Louvre, and that is to see one particular painting – the one I told you a bit about in the post about my drama performance. This is Cezanne’s The Card Players, an impressionist painting of two gents playing cards at a table with a bottle of wine. We incidentally saw a group of men doing just that as we walked to our hotel the first night! As I had portrayed it in the dramatic sketch, it was fun to find it.

The museum itself is in an old station building, and there are parallels to the Natural History Museum in London. There are also several cafés dotted around, and for lunch we went to one of these. Their baguettes were very good! But the other thing that was really important in the Musée d’Orsay was the special exhibition of Manet and Degas’s works, which was really good. This took most of the time in the museum, and showed the similarity and difference between the two artists. There were many examples of the latter, even though they lived in the same time and were both in the same community. There were some very famous paintings in there, by many different artists (though primarily the two the exhibition was focused on) and one of my thoughts was if someone managed to rob that gallery, they would be so rich they wouldn’t have to do a day’s work ever again! It’s hard to describe the exhibition; we went for both the Art value and the History value, which is not the same with all exhibitions! There was a lot of history to the impressionists, and a lot of art, generally in a kind of detached style, though sometimes realistic, with non-formal paintings rather than the stiff formal portraits of the previous centuries – they were groundbreakers at their time, but now they would almost be considered realistic, judging the standard of today’s art! I don’t know if the exhibition is still up, but if it is, it’s definitely worth a visit!

I have one more post to do about Paris. This will detail the exhibitions I originally went to Paris for – the Prehistoric art exhibitions for my Arts Award. See you soon!

Salut mon Blog/Hey Blog! Picking up where I left off on my last post… (Note: photos coming soon)

When we were planning to go to Paris, I wanted to see some of the famous landmarks: the Eiffel Tower being the most famous of course, but I also wanted to go to the Arc de Triomphe, l’Obelisk, and the Louvre. We saw the Louvre on the first morning, but didn’t go in, however we passed outside and saw the pyramids. When we next go to Paris, we will have to go in for a visit. From the Louvre, we walked through the Gardens Tuileries and at the other end is the Obelisk. Here I got my first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, and the Arc de Triomphe, which is at the other end of the avenue. The Paris Obelisk is originally from Egypt, is it and has a gold cone on the top. It is right at the spot where Louis XVI and Maris Antoinette were guillotined during the French Revolution, one of the revolutions that swept across the world in the 1700s and inspired Les Miserables which I have to go and see at the West End sometime.

We visited the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe the next day. The Arc de Triomphe is a LOT bigger than Marble Arch at Hyde Park corner (as I discovered on the way home), and it also has a flame burning underneath it which hasn’t gone out for a really long time, a flame over the grave of the unknown soldier – no one knows his name: he represents all the thousands who lie somewhere on the battlefields of the First World War, and subsequent conflicts. The Eiffel Tower now has a hoarding around the outside so that they can check everyone’s bags on the way in to make sure you aren’t some terrorist planning to blow it up; luckily weren’t carrying anything the authorities were interested in and were able to go and stand underneath it, which I didn’t think we could at first. Apparently there’s some work going on, it’s being painted for something like the vingtième time (or twentieth for English speakers) – but as it’s been standing there for over a hundred years, so there is a valid reason!

I like Paris. Apart from being a very famous city, it’s interesting, and has a lot of good cafés to sit outside, drink coffee, eat pastry, and soak up the atmosphere. The food is definitely very, very good, as it’s probably the pastry capital of the entire world, with pâtisseries from the classic croissant and pain-au-chocolate to ultra-fine delicacies standing in the window that look, to use the phrase that I don’t understand, too perfect to eat – though in my mind, they look perfect enough to eat! Baguettes, the traditional French stick of white bread that goes brilliantly with French cheese, tastes even better in France, for some reason! There’s also crepes, AKA pancakes, which give rise to the age-old classic joke “this is crepe” (not a positive statement!) and which taste AMAZING, very nice coffee/hot chocolate, and every meal comes with a basket of pain (said pan with a shortened “n”, meaning bread) to go with each meal, which I think is a lovely tradition. It’s also useful for mopping up the plate and as a starter! The dinners are very expensive in Paris, though, and the breakfasts are tasty, but very small! They’re called petit déjeuner for a reason, but I would call them très petit petit déjeuner!

A quick note on language – watch out for the different tenses of verbs when speaking to different people. I find referring to singular straightforward, but plurals are far harder to remember! Top Tips from Home-Ed-In-A-Shed – when talking to another person, especially as a tourist, always use the plural/polite form (Vous instead of Tu). It’s a sign of respect in France, and as we don’t do in in England, it’s always wise to speak in this form to local yocals.

Next post is about the exhibitions I visited, so stay tuned for more updates about my stay in Paris!

Salut mon Blog! Oh, sorry, Hey Blog! You might have noticed from the language, but WE’VE BEEN TO FRANCE!

This was the first time I have been out of the British Isles since 2017, when we popped back to Barbados to see how it was getting along after we had left it in 2015. So it was kind of a big deal. As we want to lower carbon emissions as much as possible, nous ne prenons pas l’avion, mais le Eurostar (or ‘we didn’t take the plane but the Eurostar’ in English). The main reason for going to Paris was to visit two prehistoric art exhibitions, both at le Musée de l’homme and that for a short period overlapped. I am doing an Arts Award, an award for young people interested in the Arts, on the subject of Prehistoric Art, and the level I’m doing (Silver) is equivalent standard to a GCSE in Arts. For the award you need to visit an exhibition/show, and as there are two on the topic of prehistoric art there, it made for a nice excuse to go to France and have fun! I hope to tell you about these in another post.

This is also the first time I have been to France, or indeed any country in Europe outside the UK, since I was about 1 and we went to Sicily. I don’t remember this of course, and as I wasn’t speaking at the time, I’ve never had to use another language before, as all the countries I’ve been to have been English-speaking. English is spoken a lot more in France than I thought it would be, but my conversation is still not up to the standard I would feel comfortable going to another county on my own with! Luckily, I’m learning French on Duo Lingo and have done a bit with Mum, so I was able to understand a few bits of conversation and order myself a caramel crepe at a creperie completely on my own. I’m glad Mum was there though; as she used to teach French before I was born, she could check into the hotel and ask all sorts of questions where me and Dad would have been utterly lost!

The Eurostar leaves from London St. Pancras International. It’s not the most interesting experience going through the actual channel, as there’s nothing to see! It’s dark out there, as is expected when you are underneath the sea floor, and from start to finish it’s 50 kilometres, starting in Kent and finishing on the north coast of France, or the other way round if going the other way! The Channel Tunnel is the third longest railway tunnel in the world, and has the longest undersea section. We were traveling at 270-something mph for a lot of the journey, which meant it didn’t take long. The longest part was traveling to Paris after arriving in France, though the entire journey seemed to take a lot less time on the way back for some reason! The train’s destination in France was the Gare du Nord, meaning train station of the north, from which it was only a twenty-minute walk to the hotel.

When we arrived in France, my first impressions of Paris were that it was big, it was busy, it was fancy – pretty much as I’d expected, really. It also had a different smell to England; Paris smells of warmth and a bit sweet (maybe that’s all the pastries). It’s a normal western city, and it is more like London that I’d expected. I also heard more different languages bring spoken in Paris than I had heard in London earlier the same day. Paris is a gateway to lots of places: eastern, western, northern and southern Europe, not to mention the British Isles, and so has developed a fusion of many different cultures. I also heard my first swifts of the year; this signals a return from spring to summer and further brightened up the evening.

Hey Blog! Last Saturday I had a drama performance, which I mentioned in my last post. In this one, I’ll tell you what happened with it!

This is probably my third big drama performance, and was the first for which I wrote the script. Or rather, I should say, we, my drama group, wrote the script, as it was a bit of practiced lines and a bit of complete improvisation. We had been planning it in drama for a few months, but the bulk of fully forming it was done in the last three weeks. Our drama teacher had had the idea of a ‘gallery ghosts’ performance, where various paintings from different time periods came to life, and so we all picked the paintings we would come from. Eventually, the final set were: Lady with Ermine (DaVinci); Girl with a Pearl Earring (Vermeer); Self Portrait (Van Gogh – for more on this artist see my previous post An Art Experience); The Card Players (Cezanne); Lady with Hat (Matisse); American Gothic (Grant Wood): and Son of Man (Magritte). These seven paintings were portrayed by nine performers, of which I was the dark-suited man in The Card Players.

If you look up the paintings, you will see what we had to try to copy, which is not all that easy! I think we managed all right, however. The props were possible to sort out, but the costumes less so – unless you have a massive wardrobe containing everything from polystyrene apples to Elizabethan costumes in the middle of the building where you practise. Luckily, our drama teacher has just that, so costumes weren’t a trouble. We had planned two performances outside, for the Belper Arts Trail, an annual event showcasing art and local talent. We had rehearsed a lot, and as it wasn’t my first performance, I found it not too difficult. As I was one of the card players, I was looking at my cards, not at the audience, so I wasn’t unnerved by the growing number of people watching until it was time to actually do the performance, which decreased trepidation.

The one thing I had to provide myself for the costume was the pipe. I said, perhaps foolishly, that I would whittle one. This took up most of Saturday afternoon, though I hadn’t started it till Friday. It looks absolutely amazing though, so if you happened to be looking out of your window in Belper on Sunday morning and saw a tall man (my Dad) and a boy in a black suit, old-fashioned hat, and white cravat waving in the wind with an odd-looking pipe sticking out of his mouth – yep, it was me! We wandered around town for a bit, and then went into the building for a last practice.

Both times we performed were brilliant, as the play we did was funny and poignant, because there were funny lines like “knock yourself out” to Van Gogh, when he asked for something to eat and there was a bottle of wine on the table; and the best in all time with this group – “God won’t pay my mortgage” in response to the American missionaries saying where God had got the man with the apple. The Lady with the Ermine got annoyed because everyone was more interested in “this beastly creature” (the ermine) than herself! Because we were all from different times, everyone had different ideas, and therefore some people had more in common than others! The end was Van Gogh slowly starting to die, as no one offered him any food. The missionaries did notice him, but had nothing themselves. The last words were from Van Gogh – “Please, preserve my paintings!” which was an amazing cue to all freeze, being preserved in time. The whole performance was super, and I would like a chance to write a script for something like that again!

Hey Blog! This post is exploring two big events happening/just happened in the UK right now – St George’s Day and the upcoming coronation of His Majesty THE KING; which are up in the streets simultaneously in flags, bunting and other forms of plastic tat!

St George’s Day is a national holiday and commemorates the patron saint of England. He is also the patron saint of quite a few other countries, including one named after him – Georgia. There are multiple legends surrounding him, but the main one is of him slaying an evil dragon who was terrorising a local village. He also managed to rescue the damsel in distress, saving her from the dragon who wanted to eat her. Noticeably, the red-gold dragon Smaug, from The Hobbit, made a practice of stealing maidens and eating them when he had destroyed Dale and taken the Lonely Mountain (see my book review on The Hobbit for more on this amazing book); and Perseus, rider of Pegasus, the winged horse, rescued the princess Andromeda from the sea monster Cetus, perhaps inspiring the later tale of the popular saint.

In Scouts, we celebrate the day with a service in the district church and then a march through Belper, the town in which our Scout HQ is. I have attended the full march for only two years as it is only for Scouts, but it is one of the two special occasions in the year, the other being Remembrance Day, which is also attended by Cubs and Beavers, so I have been going to that longer. The band goes at the front, and the entire district of Scouts and Guides comes after. The line of people gets even longer as at the other church we pick up all the Brownies, Rainbows, Cubs and Beavers, and even Squirrels (four-year-olds in Scouting). These last caused some confusion, as I said “look out for the Squirrels,” and people thought I meant the animals! The march takes about three-quarters of an hour, and ends with an enormous crowd of people all packed together on one street. You get to see all the parents running along backwards trying to take pictures, which is very amusing. Mine don’t do that, which makes it a bit easier.

The service before was also very funny, as the person running it used to be a criminal investigator and had worked with the police on crime cases, so he got us to tell each other what we had for breakfast that morning (one of the kids in our troop shouted “pancakes” – we had had them that morning at Scout camp) and the other to be totally uninterested, then the other way round and the other to be as interested as possible. Then, we had to try to identify where something was hidden in a picture, and it proved to be very difficult. For example, count how many faces there are in a tree – there were eight, but finding them was incredibly hard. Then there was one where there were two people getting up close in a rose – the picture was small and I couldn’t have got it until it was shown! It seems the art of looking is a tricky thing…

The Scout Camp mentioned in the previous paragraph was a two-night Scout Camp, and was the plan for April to get another month done for my Dragon Award (see Bed in a Shed for more info). We did climbing (I and two other Scouts went down upside down, which I would have done twice, but we had no time left); whittling tent pegs (mine defiantly looked the best, but most of them were also functional); fire lighting, and archery, which I didn’t get to do as I had to be taken out to go to drama for an hour as I had a performance coming – the next blog post! I have done archery before, so it wasn’t too bad, and anyway, the camp was already fun! On Sunday morning the shop was opened, so I went and bought a Drum Hill woggle, and a site badge for my blanket. On the way back, we found what could possibly be a bullet blank, but couldn’t be sure. Sunday was a bit hectic, as we had to be picked up from camp in the morning, go home, get clean and get changed, and then go out to parade – all in a few hours!

Coming to the King, well, you can see in almost all shops that they are ready, with piles of flags, bunting, ribbons and much more, so we should have a very memorable coronation, and as it is the first for 70 years, it will be very important to a lot of people. The patriotic feeling in the country is high, and seeing as we have a different type of monarchy with a different place in the world than ever before, I think it will be very interesting to watch how it all unfolds!