return of the dropstitch (oh yeah!)

I'm back! Did you miss me? In case you couldn't tell from this photo, the cats certainly did. We've actually been back for nearly a week (after being away for five whole days) and I still can't get a moment's peace. Lola is waking me up at least three times a night by purring in my ear, scratching my face/arms/back, combing my hair with her claws and chewing my fingers. She sits on my shoulder as I cook and generally lets me know she's there a lot. It's kind of adorable, but she's rather large and hard to ignore. Anyway, a lot has changed since I last blogged. I've been back to sunny Scarborough, I've turned 31, I'm covered in unsightly cat scratches and I've had all my hair chopped off, among other things.

We had a great time in Scarborough again, but I probably shared most of the sights last year, so I thought I'd just pop in with three posts of some new/random sights and share them at high speed. Here's some nice graffiti.

I spent most of my actual birthday in Peasholm Park. It was such a lovely day. The geese had been busy hatching out their super-cute fluffy babies. They were adorable, but the nesting geese were scary! At one point we thought we would be trapped by one particularly aggressive goose dad who would not let us pass at all. There was much hissing and flapping of wings. At one point I was stuck on one side of the goose with a random man while Graham was stuck on the other side of the goose with random man's wife.

Last year the geese were nesting on the bridge which meant you couldn't get across to the Oriental island with it's beautiful gardens and waterfalls. This year the geese had nested in more sensible places, so we were able to explore the island properly. It was so nice! Other birthday activities included eating cake, riding the miniature railway and generally milling about. Oh yeah, and being stuck on trains/buses for about six hours as we travelled home. Boo! Fortunately, there was some lovely birthday mail (and non-birthday mail - thanks, Marceline!) waiting for me when we got back to the flat to stop the day ending on a real anticlimax.

Right, back to the high-speed Scarborough roundup. Here's a nice RSPCA collection box.

Scarborough seemed to be absolutely full of ladybirds this year, hardly surprising when you realise how much ladybird humping was going on. Apologies for the graphic nature of this image, but check out how tight he's holding on to her shell!

We couldn't very well NOT have knickerbocker glories from the Harbour Bar, could we? Just as good as I remembered.

And I can't believe I missed this memorial bench last year. How lovely? It makes me wish I could have known Maldwyn Edwards. I wonder what his tapestry was like.

I'll be back with two more high-speed holiday posts imminently.