Friday, October 28, 2011

Inspiration Fridays: Back to Britain

Since my parents visited England a few weeks ago, my brain has been dreaming of returning to Great Britain.  I want to see more, desire to do more, and need to learn more.  I want to learn everything about the culture, immerse myself in it.  There is this vision I have, of me wearing a tartan scarf, eating a sausage roll, and reading Shakespeare whilst sitting in the middle of  a stone circle.  Call me stereotypical, but that just sounds fantastic. 

Kind of like this, but with said food, book and scarf... and my face...
 (This creepy effect happened and I just LOVE IT.)

But anyway, check out these other, fabulous, Britain-only things that I just can't wait to get more of!  There are quite a bunch, but I've narrowed it down for the sake of brevity, and not losing readers because I've written an extensive, but contentless bit of drabble.


1.  Highland Cattle
Because, Holy Cow!  These things are awesome!  They are also 100% real.  And, in Scotland.
Oh my goodness.

Oh My Goodness!

They have a world??!??

OHHH My GOODNESS.

Seriously, though, have you ever seen anything more fluffy and stupidly cute in your life?  Best of all, these animals a freaking huge.  Like taller than I am (5'3") at full height.  That is so much fluff, I can't even take it.


2. Pasties, Sausage Rolls, and Meat Pies
Because what is better than meat?  Meat wrapped in pastry!  Pronounced pah-sty, as opposed to pay-sty... pasties (pay-sties) are things ladies wear on their nipples, especially whilst stripping.  I considered putting some kind of hilarious photograph of that in this post, but, I'm at work, and even though my place of employment is an acting school, there are just some things I feel like I shouldn't have on my screen.  Unlike this meaty, pastry glory...
Yum.

Well, yum.

Nom nom nom nom...

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So, there are Pasty STORES like this all throughout Great Britain.  It's wonderful.  Not all of them have meat, some have vegetables, cheeses, eggs- all kinds of delicious stuff.  I'm drooling a bit just thinking about it.  


3. Stone Circles 
Now these are just mind-bogglingly amazing.  Think about how crazy they are.  Obviously, there is Stonehenge, which everyone and their mom has heard of, but there are dozens upon dozens of stone circles and other old stone structures in the UK.  It's so nifty.  People care so little about these things, because they are just, well, standard, that they are in the middle of parks, and even intersections.  A road goes through Stonehenge.  It's mind boggling.  I was able to snap that photo of myself standing on an altar-like structure in the middle of one in Cardiff, and no one stopped me.  No one was even around.  I love this blatant love and simultaneous complete disregard for history.  They have so much old stuff, the insignificant historical locations don't even matter, per se.
There's the classic.  Stonehenge.  It's pretty epic.

Here's one of the ones I took in Cardiff.  Yes.  This stone circle is smack-dab in the middle of... a traffic circle.

This is the same stone circle from the top of the page, sans moi.  It's in Bute Park in Cardiff.  No fence or anything.  Just, you know, ancient stone circle, chillin' out.
Note:   I know that stone circles exist in places other than the UK, but, the ones in the UK just rock my socks.


4. Tartans
Here, we have another specifically Scottish one for the win!  Tartans!  Part of my family is the Craigs, it was my grandmother's maiden name, and it is my father's middle name.  If my parents had a son, they might have given him the middle name Craig as well.  Though I am actually more English than Scottish (and also more German and Swiss than Scottish...) I feel a strange affinity with this part of my heritage.  Not as much as my uncle Barry, who used to dress in a kilt and go to big Scottish events, but I do feel proud.

This is the Craig tartan. 
Family pride is kind of awesome sometimes.

2 comments:

  1. Glad you liked my Hieland Coo' at Scotland in May.
    http://scotlandinmay.house-of-lynn.com/BirdsAndBeasties.html

    ReplyDelete