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Easter
The Easter weekend not only saw me start work behind a bar, but it also brought a couple of outings and a visitor to town. On Easter Friday (after arriving home at about 1am in the morning courtesy of my first bar shift), we woke up and decided a day trip was in order. After scouring the map and googling Dorset tourist sites, we decided to head to a little place called Cerne Abbas, home of the Cerne Abbas Giant! In order to reach Cerne Abbas, we had to drive through a few little villages with rather interesting names - Puddletown, Tolpuddle, Piddlehinton & Piddletrenthide. I found out a few days later that the owners of my pub have a micro-brewery located at Piddletrenthide where they brew their own real ale, aptly titled 'Piddle'!! Would you believe the number of people that don't mind a pint of Piddle?! And the number of little snickers/joke that come out of people's mouths when they order a Piddle…
Anyway, back to Cerne Abbas and the giant. The giant (also apparently referred to as the Rude Man or the Rude Giant) is a old chalk figure drawn into the face of a hill, portraying a naked man (with rather obvious genitalia on display!). For this reason, people believe the giant to be a prehistoric or Celtic fertility god or symbol. Back in the day, local women who wanted to conceive would spend a night alone on the hillside, and young couples would 'make love' on the giant to ensure conception!
As I was doing my usual thing and taking pictures of the giant, Nige turned to me and said "is that Homer Simpson?" Strange as it may seem, Nige had located the outline of a figure that really was the one and only Homer Simpson to the left of the giant on the hill face! I took photos of it of course so have a look at my latest album additions to find the reason why Homer can be seen in the hill (I've also added a great photo of it from when it was originally created as another chalk figure on the hill).
Easter Saturday brought family brunch at my aunty and uncle's with my cousin Faye, her husband Neil, and her 2 sons Jordan and Hadley (when I was here 9/10 years ago, Jordan was my 3 year old best mate!). Along with family, my good mate Andrew Collard graced us with his presence from ol' London town (and enjoyed a hearty Spicer/Brice brunch in the process!). We'd met up with Collard the night we arrived in London and had collectively decided that the early Easter weekend might be a good time to show him the sights of Bournemouth! Of course, I was working like a trooper every night of the Easter weekend, so Nige was a gracious host to my good mate from home. They even came into the pub on Saturday evening for a carvery and a pint of piddle! (I won't go on to say that while Nige managed to finish his pint, Collard headed to the spirits after managing barely half a pint of piddle…).
Easter Sunday and it was time to explore a little more beyond the sights of Christchurch and Bournemouth, so the 3 of us - me (tired again after an almost 9 hour shift Saturday night!), Nige and Collard - went on a little road trip to Stonehenge! It's probably only 45-50 minutes from Christchurch, but I'd never been there before, not even when I lived here 10 years ago (courtesy of me being known by Jordan as 'the working lady' back there, running between 2 casual jobs!). The weather over Easter was chilly to say the least, as Europe and the UK hit a real cold patch for a few days. So as we wandered around the tourist path at Stonehenge (you can't get right up close to the stones these days), it started to sleet! It was so cold that a) Collard hastened his pace and headed back to shelter, b) Nige started to walk at a constant pace and eventually caught up with Collard, and c) I got so cold that it was near impossible to do my usual task of taking obligatory photos!! Luckily for you though, I got more than enough photos to put into my Facebook / Off Exploring albums!
Before we went to Stonehenge, Collard and I thought it best that we at least head in the direction of a church (him trying to watch the Easter Sunday service on television that morning was a bit hard to compare to our old days of the Easter Camp dawn service!). So we went back to Salisbury Cathedral on our way to Stonehenge - although we didn't catch any services, we did catch a number of people taking photos inside the cathedral!
After a day of excitement, I unfortunately had to go back for my fourth straight night behind the bar so I left the guys at home to watch Ice Age!
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