Mothering Sunday – The Outing (by sarah)
Mothers Day was lovely - I received three cards! One from Jean with a painted cat upon it 🙂 One from Mary with a very similar felt tip pen cat, glittery stickers showing things like camp fires and tents, and lots of scribble, and one from Alaric saying thankyou for making my dream family 🙂
(this was why I was in bed - I was awoken by child and baby clambering onto me with a cry of Happy Mothers Day Mummy!)
Al's one had a sad little side note in it about the fact that I have not got the life he promised I me i.e. the one I was working on when we met and got married - the science stuff but that he would never stop trying to make me happy.
I love him and the kids and PhD's can wait - not that I now think I have the attention span for one! I love projects that take 3-6 months! But that is something to dwell on later in life.
Anyway - we were going to go to the church but I looked on line and they seemed to only be doing Lent stuff and not a mothering sunday service and there was a large class breakage which needed cleaning up by which point it would have been to late anyway.
So we headed out to Gloucester and walked to the Cathedral to have a look at The Open West - which is an art display/instillation. I am still writing poetry and flash fiction from the pieces they had there as part of the Crucible exhibition.
We wondered round, building itself is awe inspiring and the evening song was on so singing echoed with sunlight hapazadly filtering in through the stained glass. Mary crawled around exstatically and Jean got excited everytime she found a new piece of art.
It did feel a bit invasive though as basically there were people lighting candles to pray and stuff and we were wondering around gawking at stuff. The cloisters and that were also closed so we didn't get to see it all which is a shame as I don't think I'll be able to get back there before it closes 🙁 But Jean did buy me a set of the prints for Mothers Day (with money borrowed from me) - she wanted some of the images too!
I was a little disappointed at the quality of the prints and of the photography itself if I am honest - but it will still serve as lovely writing and art material for me to work from. And hey Jeany desperatly wanted to buy it for me 🙂
I think my favourite piece was the Inside Out - a gold scaly umbilical cord - I took video of it as I found the light effect so enchanting.
Jean's was the video of people kissing under water.
Alaric liked the light and glass sculpture that looked like a neuron.
Mary - the steps of the Cathedral itself 🙂
We were going to go to the tea rooms and me knit but they were closed by the time we finished, and the ice cream parlour we were going to visit doesn't open on Sundays it turns out. But we found lush ice cream in BBs down by the shopping centre and then went in search of cheesy chips.
We went to the Aviator at Staverton but alas - it is apparently the busiest day of the year for them so they were bookings only and complete set menus! So we went to Sam's Pizza and Kabab House and I had a Kabab which is rare indeed, Al had a curry and Jean chips which she shared with Mary whilst we watched the sunset at Burrow Wake Viewing Point.
It was a lovely day.
Here be more photos!
This reminds me of an episode of Ulysses 31