Grumpus and Dewi

After Grumpus's disastrous meeting with Valentine, he felt a wee bit bad about the decapitation, stoning and shooting through the heart thang. So from that day forward he decided to play nice with all the other saints, in the hopes that one day he would get to be St Grumpus and have a holiday of his very own! Erm I mean he wanted to be nice and stuff like that, in a truly altruistic way.

The Grumpus came across Dewi whilst he was up on a hillock, talking to a bird. The bird twas a dove perched upon Dewi's shoulder. Turns out Dewi was a vegetarian, who liked to party in Glastonbury, so after a few wild nights, Grumpus went on his way. Dewi was nice on all, but what with all the leeks and being vegetarian, I am sorry to say that Dewi had more than a little wind problem. 

Happy Saint David's Day to my Welsh Chums!

Dydd Gwyl Dewi hapus.

Factoid: The welsh leek has a flower much like a daffodil (which is quite a bit easier to find around the world in March), so many use daffodils instead

What will the Grumpus get up to next? I wonder if you can guess?

More on Actress Curigwen Lewis: Connections to the Past

(Curigwen Lewis as Desdamona, in what appears to be a very dire predicament.)

Our regularly-scheduled "Treasure Box Wednesday" post will be Thursday of this week, because I'm excited to share two very special notes I'd received-- and I think you'll enjoy them!

Many of you might remember a post I did about a month ago regarding vintage postcards featuring actresses from the early half of the 20th century. One of whom was that of a lovely little Alice in Wonderland, as played by a young actress named Curigwen Lewis.


Well, last week, I had the unique pleasure of hearing from Curigwen Lewis' granddaughter-- artist Blue MacAskill-- who came across the post regarding her beloved grandmother and contacted me. That is the amazing power of the Internet for you! I'm not over-stating it when I say it absolutely made my day.

And just as wonderful, Ms. MacAskill has kindly given me permission to share with you the information she shared with me. So here I will reproduce her two delightful emails.

I've also included them in the comments section of the original post (so any future readers can enjoy them, too), and have enhanced that post with her great extra information.

Okay, here we go...


Email One:

My name is Blue MacAskill, I tried to write on your blog, but I am no Google emailer.

My granny is that fantastic young women you have playing Alice in Wonderland, around 1936 in Bristol and then on tour.

She was completely brilliant in every way, and I miss her loads. Born in Wales in 1905, she went to RADA [Royal Academy of Dramatic Art] when she was 16, and went on to great things.

I am an artist and am working as artist-in-residence at The National Library of Wales, near to where she was brought up in Llandrindod Wells.

Hope you find this interesting, we loved your site.

Best Wishes
Curigwen's grand daughter
Blue MacAskill
Artist
www.bluemacaskill.com

Email Two:

...She told a fab story about being Alice. It goes like this.....

"When I was doing Alice on stage and it came to the scene when I had to fall down the hole, I started saying my lines, 'Ahhh, I'm falling!!....'

"And one night, one of the stage hands must have stopped concentrating for
a second, because he yelled across stage, 'It's alright, Miss Lewis, we've got you!'

She would hoot with laughter, and I think when she gave up acting, she really missed it. And when she told us her stories, you could she was there re-living the whole play, night after night...

I am sitting at my little desk, researching an article I am writing with the paper about my work and finding an article about my granny in the collection here. It is a great resource: http://www.llgc.org.uk/

All the best and hope you continue to have a great day!

B

You know, even though I work in online marketing for my real job, it still seems just beautiful and remarkable to me how a single post on something a blogger's cares about can start at one machine and wing its way around the world to connect to others-- even to those directly related to the subject matter.

The world has gotten smaller, my friends... And thanks much for being a part of mine. :)

• In case you missed Sunday's post of The Future's So Bright: Inside the 1950s Total Electric Home, click here.
• And if you're in the "neighborhood" tomorrow, I hope you'll pop by and see what's in the Thursday Treasure Box.

More on Actress Curigwen Lewis: Connections to the Past

(Curigwen Lewis as Desdamona, in what appears to be a very dire predicament.)

Our regularly-scheduled "Treasure Box Wednesday" post will be Thursday of this week, because I'm excited to share two very special notes I'd received-- and I think you'll enjoy them!

Many of you might remember a post I did about a month ago regarding vintage postcards featuring actresses from the early half of the 20th century. One of whom was that of a lovely little Alice in Wonderland, as played by a young actress named Curigwen Lewis.


Well, last week, I had the unique pleasure of hearing from Curigwen Lewis' granddaughter-- artist Blue MacAskill-- who came across the post regarding her beloved grandmother and contacted me. That is the amazing power of the Internet for you! I'm not over-stating it when I say it absolutely made my day.

And just as wonderful, Ms. MacAskill has kindly given me permission to share with you the information she shared with me. So here I will reproduce her two delightful emails.

I've also included them in the comments section of the original post (so any future readers can enjoy them, too), and have enhanced that post with her great extra information.

Okay, here we go...


Email One:

My name is Blue MacAskill, I tried to write on your blog, but I am no Google emailer.

My granny is that fantastic young women you have playing Alice in Wonderland, around 1936 in Bristol and then on tour.

She was completely brilliant in every way, and I miss her loads. Born in Wales in 1905, she went to RADA [Royal Academy of Dramatic Art] when she was 16, and went on to great things.

I am an artist and am working as artist-in-residence at The National Library of Wales, near to where she was brought up in Llandrindod Wells.

Hope you find this interesting, we loved your site.

Best Wishes
Curigwen's grand daughter
Blue MacAskill
Artist
www.bluemacaskill.com

Email Two:

...She told a fab story about being Alice. It goes like this.....

"When I was doing Alice on stage and it came to the scene when I had to fall down the hole, I started saying my lines, 'Ahhh, I'm falling!!....'

"And one night, one of the stage hands must have stopped concentrating for
a second, because he yelled across stage, 'It's alright, Miss Lewis, we've got you!'

She would hoot with laughter, and I think when she gave up acting, she really missed it. And when she told us her stories, you could she was there re-living the whole play, night after night...

I am sitting at my little desk, researching an article I am writing with the paper about my work and finding an article about my granny in the collection here. It is a great resource: http://www.llgc.org.uk/

All the best and hope you continue to have a great day!

B

You know, even though I work in online marketing for my real job, it still seems just beautiful and remarkable to me how a single post on something a blogger's cares about can start at one machine and wing its way around the world to connect to others-- even to those directly related to the subject matter.

The world has gotten smaller, my friends... And thanks much for being a part of mine. :)

• In case you missed Sunday's post of The Future's So Bright: Inside the 1950s Total Electric Home, click here.
• And if you're in the "neighborhood" tomorrow, I hope you'll pop by and see what's in the Thursday Treasure Box.

Cant be arsed writing

Yes I have turned into a lazy just throw up a picture blogger, MEH!

More photos from this hike here 

Wordless in Wales

More found in this set on flickr here

Hiking in The Devil's Kitchen

To see more photos and these photos individually visit my flickr page by following this link:
Twll Du photos on Flickr

Welcome to Twll Du which translates into the black hole in Welsh, but in English it translates into The Devils Kitchen. It refers to the narrow cleft which you can see in the top right hand photograph. It is found in the hanging valley called Cwm Idwal which is in Snowdonia, Wales.

I have been to this place quite a few times, even with school,as its an area that was formed by glaciation and is absolutely beautiful.

In those past visits I had not attempted any hiking. So its starts as a lovely nice stroll, then its a rather tough scramble to the top. You will see that if you watch the video located at the bottom of this post.

Unfortunately once we did get to the top in one piece, the devil decided to come out to play and we were battered by hailstones and a little snow flurry. Although that did pass fairly quickly, the clouds came down fast on the mountain tops and visibility decreased. This meant it wasn't safe to carry on as we weren't familiar enough with the area for that to be a wise decision.

This also meant I didn't get to see some rather cool rock formations, but I will be going back so will get them next time.

The scramble down was worse as it was a lot more slippery and I had to hold onto to the mountain at some points. No doubt you will be amazed to know that for once I did not fall on my arse, a miracle I know.

The Devil himself appeared in the form of a mountain goat on the scramble down, but stayed still long enough for me to take a picture. A fellow walker told us that one of the mountain goats butt you if you don't feed it. That would of meant goat curry if the furry blighter tried that with me.

Even though the weather spoilt some of walk, overall it was still a gorgeous place and I am looking forward to going back in better weather.

The video is filmed with the same camera that I use to take the photographs, a canon powershot A630. I wish I had a good quality hand held camera but at the moment this does the job.

As its an ominous place I went with ominous music to set the theme, also you could hear that I was out of breath at times, so that had to be edited out.

I forgot to say that the music is by Matthijs Vos, which I found on Jamendo thanks to my chum Tech Fun aka JD. It is track seven, Strings Adventure, and from your comments it definitely adds an eerie factor to the video.