Pratting Around the World

stafford life

back to stafford for a few nights and one last english piss-up.

England had just won the Ashes, so i thought i’d show kelly that cricket is alot better than baseball. She was actually quite good.

A homecooked sunday roast. (cheers mum)
a classic sunday roast doesn’t really exist in the states, at least not on my sundays. I was picturing yorkshire pudding as a dough-y version of chocolate pudding, but luckily it was much tastier. more like a muffin pancake? a delicious muffin pancake i mean.

wasted. what a bunch of drunks.

brady, hudson’s sister, kept buying rounds at the last bar. what a doll. a wasty-face doll.

surprise day: part 2

cadbury world

cadbury world… a cross between a chocolate factory and amusement park. this place was amazing if you like chocolate. we tried in vain to find anyone there without a child in tow. the exhibits and stuff were childish, but the factory and advertising section were actually interesting. cadbury’s done some great advertising over the years (their gorilla playing the drums was showcased – it won loads of awards last year).

Hudson wanted to ask a bunch of the fatties around to line up in front of the cadbury sign so he could get a hilarious pick. so mean. however, there was this one chubby little kid with his face glued to window of the factory. he was practically licking the glass – it was straight out of willy wonka and we were sad that no photos were allowed in the factory.. the photo below is the only chocolate fatty he could find that would pose.

we got loads and loads of free samples. I kept wondering how all the little kids weren’t puking. hudson even got a stomach-ache after attempting to eat a cup of liquid goo milk chocolate covered with jelly babies.

the minx loves chocolate so we bought her loads at the shop and shipped it over to the states.

there was a station to play around with gooey chocolate. the guy said that they reuse the chocolate for about a month. so sick and germy. i hope little kids don’t try to snag any of this disgusting goo…

surprise day: part 1

This day of fun began with visiting Shugborough, an old 19th century estate near Stafford. It’s also the place that Hudson worked for during a few summers. My favorite part was definitely all the fluffy animals, especially those in the pony family.

look at this cute champ. a mule with a huge head, but with the heart of a pony. what a cuddle monster he was.

Kelly loved torturing the poor animals. The pony was desperate to get away, it took seven different pictures before the pony finally remained still.

hudson tries to look cool with this horse, but the horse is just after him for some tasty oats.

these fluffsters were shy, but i finally won them over with handfuls of clover. they were much cooler than their pals in wales.

hudson had originally told me that he worked as a car attendant at shugborough, but i guess our visit brought back some fond memories because  he wouldn’t shut up about how he filled in as “the miller” one day and then was asked to be the miller full time! what a success story, and i had to admit that his milling technique was the image of perfection.

london

a trip to england would not be complete without seeing london. we went to saatchi gallery to see some modern american artists, national history museum (packed full of annoying kids so we missed the dinosaur exhibit), design museum, a few touristy walks, ate some fish and chips and caught a show in covent garden. (jersey boys – the story of frankie valli)
My highlight was hearing kelly sing along to ‘walk like a man’ and ‘big girls don’t cry’.

I’d been dying for some fish and chips and finally got some. Hudson wanted to go to this seedy place. I thought it looked awful; Hudson said it was a little too classy, but that it would do. I guess his philosophy is real fish and chips only come from crap hole in the walls. He’s probably right because it was all tasty, except for disugsting mushy peas. Sometimes the English have such bad taste in food.

mushy peas, aka glorified baby food. disgusto, but I tried them.

An exhibit from Saatchi gallery. When I visited London a few years ago, I went to Saatchi and loved it. The gallery I went to featured young artists and had since been sold and moved (sad), but there is a main Saatchi gallery that I hadn’t known about. There were some cool exhibits; you can see more on thepaperplanes.org when I get that blog up and running.

from the design musuem, which was a bit of a disappointment.

lancaster sightseeing

A tour of Lancaster was in order. With lots to see,  an early start was required. Actually, we just about managed to get up from the couch after watching 13 episodes of the ‘inbetweeners’ at about 4 and had a two hour sightseeing tour of lancaster.

I couldn’t resist looking like an idiot.

a proper fry up

wake up to this:

a proper english fry up at dave’s. baked beans for breakfast -  just what was needed after the fat marvin burger.

that flourescent deliciousness in the glass is Iron Brew. the night beforeMac had claimed that the Iron brew is a classic Scottish concoction guarenteed to cure hangovers. I believed Mac (he’s got that lovely Scottish accent afterall, and I thought it would involve a bit of the hair of the dog… but it turned out to be a disgusting version of fiizy gatorade (the can-wtf- it came in partially showed.)

a lancaster night out

Hudson’s grandpa let us borrow his car and we were off to Lancaster to see his old teaching pals. Dunkis (the car) got us there in style and we stayed with Hudson’s best pal Dave, who is also the best host ever. after some home-made lasagna courtesy of Mack, Dave whipped up some white russians and we immediately started drinking. needless to say, i liked lancaster right away.

friend, friend…friend with the weird expression friend.

A few beers with some Lancaster friends.

this is right before dave offered to get me a lemonade because I wasn’t drinking my beer fast enough. i then chugged my pint to save face… but dave, what about your pint?

I couldn’t let a night out pass without some great english food so i advised to kelly eat a fat marvin burger at starvin marvins – an amazingly disgusting late night.

I have starvin marvins. but I like the name. (kelly)