I have no idea who this guy was, but he was funny to look at, and the mittle kid on the back was having a ball!

One of the carnival queens on her float. The hours that must go into decorating these must be phenomenal! There were lots of marching bands, huge trucks decorated and community groups and some businesses participating.

A dressed well in Buxton. A lot of the towns in the area have well dressing carnivals, and Buxton is the largest. All the Carnival queens ride in the Buxton Carnival parade.

Another well-dressed well

With another familiar face in the chatsworth scuplture room

One more of Chatsworth!

Plans............

I've finally managed to book a few days off at the end of this month. This in itself was an exciting prospect, though once I had the time organised, I was left with the challenge of filling it with something exciting to do! Options included a bit of a week long road trip around the country visiting lots of friends who are living here there and everywhere. The second option was a Haggis tour of Scotland, which had been recommended to me. Then I learned that a good friend of mine is going to Spain to throw tomatoes at her brother, and anyone else in the vicinity!!
That sounds good, hey! So I have just finished booking flights and accomodation to the La Tomatina festival in Valencia, Spain, and then on to Barcelona for a few days afterwards.
I'm also going to the Hillsong Annual Summer Ball in London with Lara (afore mentioned friend), which sounds like a great night. Just have to find a ball gown from somewhere................ :)
I'll post a few more pics of things that have been happening the last month or so above...............................

Nostalgia

Life is trundling along here, work is going ok. We have a new locum at work, which might mean I get a chance to take some time off at the end of this month, which would be great!
The car I have at work sort of fell apart a couple of weeks ago, (well, it is a Ford after all, can't expect much better I suppose). the gear box needed replacing, (and that has nothing to do with me putting 20L of unleaded fuel into it's diesel tank a week or so before - how dumb can you feel?????!:). So I had to put up with driving a brand spanking new peugeot 307 around for two weeks! It was lovely to drive, but now I have gone back to the old Maverick, complete with new gear box and three new tyres. :(
I made the most of having the Peugeot and drove over to Chesterfield, which is about 20 minutes from here, and caught up with Lee, a friend from uni, on her last day there before she moved onto her next locum position. WE checked out the markets and looks around the cathedral with the crooked spire, which Chesterfield is famous for. Apparently it was built in a bit of a hurry several centuries ago and they didn't wait for the wood to dry properly, so as it dried out over time, the whole spire has spiralled a little bit. it looks quite precaious but is so tightly joined now that it wouldn't fall down very easily at all!
I then drove further south to 'Fenny Drayton' the village where my Grandparents used to live. It was where my family stayed the times we came out on holiday, the last of which was about 13 years ago, so it was really quite surreal to be there again. I saw my Grandma's old house, which has had some extensions on the front, and the little park where we used to play with some other kids in the village, and where I saw snow for the first time. Lots of little memories came flooding back, and driving myself around, places were all connected up so they made more sense. I dropped in on a friend of my Grandma's and my mum's (and now mine as well!), who used to live on the next door farm to my mum's family in a place called Bentley in Warwickshire. Mrs Farmer is a lovely lady, and absolutely loves animals, and worked at a vets for a while herself, so we sat and chatted for ages. There had been some really severe storms, which I had driven through on the way down, and there was not power in the Village, so we drove to the next town and got fish and chips for dinner.
I drove home feeling like I had reconnected with my mum's side of the family, and I will be back down that way again to see some more friends no doubt.

With the bust of 'Mr Darcy'

The chapel in Chasworth - there are over 100 rooms in the house, and this chapel was about half way along our tour (we spent a total of 6 hours at the place!)

View from the Cascades water feature at Chatsworth. It was a hot summer Sunday, and the place was very busy. It was all we could do to stop ourselves joining all the kids that were splashing around in the cool water!

Chastworth house - the view as you approach the house fits perfectly with the description Jane Austin gives in the book - it is believed that she really did base the ficticious Pemberly on Chatsworth when she wrote about it.

With Lee at Chatsworth house (the new Pemberly in the recent Pride and Prejudice movie)

'Lyme Hall', which was used as Pemberly in the BBCs Pride and Prejudice

The Peak district - some of the beautiful scenery I drive through most days at work :)

A couple of weeks ago I wentup to Manchester with Caz (my housemate, who is a nurse at work) and her boyfriend Andy, and Val, one of the other vets. We went to the Trafford Centre, which looks from the outiside like a massive ornate building with several huge golden domes and statues and the like. Inside it is one of the biggest shopping centres I've ever seen, (makes Indooroopilly look tiny, and is probably bigger than Fountain Gate or Chadstone). We browsed around the shops, and went and saw 'Pirates on the Caribbean 2', which was good fun - obviously setting up for a trilogy there!! Val had to get a prezzie for her friend's new baby and while we were in the early learning centre (which was one of the more entertaining shops on our whole expedition!), we found some really cool painted wooden letters with animals on them. Caz and I got some lettering for our bedroom doors (it was my birthday present to myself!). For those who know me well, the animals are quite fitting - a Cockatoo for C, Ants for A and a tiger for T :)
I was also introduced to Nandos chicken which is a chain restaurant which does portuguese style chicken dishes - very tasty, and gave me practice at eating chilli, which I am trying to teach myself to appreciate more.

With my housemate, Caroline and our new door lettering!!

hedgehogs are cute!

View of Buxton from Solomon's Temple, which is a small circular tower on one of the nearby hills - a lovely little walk through the woods to get there :)

Life in the Peak

How long as it been? Sorry it's been a bit boring on this blog for a while! I am settling in to Buxton and work now, and I feel like I am able to pull my weight a bit more around the place now I know how it works. I've been navigating around the countryside, which has been a pleasure so far, with very scenic drives between farms, the countryside is beautifully green, with lots of happy sheep and cows scattered everywhere. Instead of fences, there are dry stone walls everywhere, the making of which is an artform in itself. the height of the summer has drawn hundreds of tourists to the area, and many of the walking tracks go through farmland and over hill and dale, so there are people everywhere. Quite a lot of farms are being encouraged to diversify and have small van parks or barns for people to stay in. Overall the people are very friendly; I think my accent is helpful when I still have to look up books to find the drugs I'm after, or if I have to ask farmers to please repeat yet again what exatly is going on with their cow ('summit up wit' coo':)
I am enjoying learning what the local colloquialisms mean, and what words have different meanings (it's 'post', not mail, and they are trousers, not pants!) I still smile at 'y'allreeght me duck' or me choock, or meord (my old friend).

I am still trying to get my bank account sorted for my limited company, which is proving to be quite a challenge, but hopefully I am on the homeward stretch for this.

I had my first real weekend of sightseeing last weekend, which really happened by chance. The Buxton Carnival has been on, which involves 'well dressings' where the wells (that produce natural spring water at 27.5 degrees C all year round) are decorated with amazing collages depicting scenes or concepts relevant to the local area. There is also a huge carnival parade, which was on last Saturday. I was in the little mall here in Buxton and literall bumped into a friend from uni! Lee is working in Chesterfield for a few weeks and had just decided to visit Buxton becuase it looked interesting! So we joined some of the girls from my work and watched the parade (with the carnival Queens from all the surrounding towns on floats, as well as lots of other community groups, bands, dancers, etc).

Then we headed to 'Lyme Hall' which used in the BBC's production of Pride and Prejudice as Pemberly Hall. Unfortunately it was closed, and there was some scaffolding up, but it was a nice walk around the grounds. On Sunday we visited Chatsworth house, which was build by the first Duke of Devonshire in the 1500s and has been improved over the centuries to be one of the Largest and Grandest houses in the Country. It was used as Pemberly in the new Pride and Prejudice movie with Keira Knightly (yes, Lee and I are both Jane Austin Fans!!;). We ended our exciting weekend by the river in Bakewell, where I sampled a 'Bakewell pudding' which is like a pastry shell with a sweet sticky filling made from eggs and sugar, and some jam. YUMMY!!!
It has been crazy weather here, I would say just as hot as any Queensland summer days for almost a week. we finally got some rain and it is just slightly cooler today, but the houses are designed to keep the heat in, so it makes it a bit hard to sleep at night.
I'm sure there are lots of other things I intended to share, but I might have to post them later as I think of them............ :)