In view of the multiple grumblings, and two comments on the log about my having not posted the picture of myself and Beth ‘dancing’ at David’s wedding, here it is.
If you’re wondering why it looks rather posed, and not really dancing-like, is because what David neglected to say is that he didn’t manage to take a picture first off, so I had to go over and turn the camera into photo mode for him, and then we posed!
I’ve uploaded a work in progress on the holiday pictures. What is lacking at the moment are descriptions for a number of the pictures.
The pictures come from two Sony Cybershot cameras, and also a few from the camera on my mobile phone (easy to spot because of the dodgy colours). I’ve posted a few sample pictures below.
A while ago my Uncle, who produces books got involved in an upcoming book about Canada, looking at modern Canada, and how the people of the country live day to day. As Beth’s parents run a cattle ranch, he asked if they’d be happy to let a photographer come out to the ranch and take pictures of Beth’s Dad doing his day to day work.
Anyway, we didn’t hear much else, although the librarian at one of the nearby schools in Canada had apparently seen the finished book, and mentioned it because she recognised the rancher in the pictures as Stan.
One of the things I did whilst we were staying at the ranch is to try and locate a copy. In Canada it is only available as a textbook, however Amazon in the UK have a paperback version which arrived today. Beth’s Dad appears in a box-out on page 13, and there is also a shot of the river valley near the ranch during the recent drought in a section on climate change.
Tonight Beth learned a valuable lesson, be careful what you tell an entertainer before the show – you never quite know what will come back at you!
The entertainer in question was Richard Popovich, half of Richard and Deborah, who we saw doing their Roaring Twenties show on the Alberta Prairie Railway, and who did their Hillbilly Show at the Buffalo Fair tonight. Beth was up at the fair all day, and had a chat to Richard there, and I think an English Teacher with a British husband was really too good an opportunity to miss!
In terms of British Jokes there was some good humoured Fish and Chips jokes (which makes a change from the endless ‘cup of tea’ jokes I got when I worked in the USA), which I guess are the equivalent of the ‘All Canadian’s live in Igloos and listen to Celine Dion’ jokes that go in the reverse direction! The funniest moment from my point of view, was when he asked Beth, as an English teacher, what the difference between a Buffalo and a Bison is… She thought for a bit, and then answered ‘Semantics’… Needless to say that wasn’t the correct answer, and the correct answer proved to be rather amusing, and caused Beth to go bright red. (I won’t spoil the joke by putting down the answer). Beth actually said that most things she had mentioned came up during the evening!
Having said that, we weren’t the only source of jokes. Marg had yet again won the Apple Pie competition at the fair, however the regular judge had said that the pie was not up to her usual standards and only awarded her a second place, however as there were no other better pies she got the prize anyway, this provided a good few jokes. Another funny moment was when Richard pointed out that there was a Mercedes SUV in the car park with farm plates (I bet that doesn’t go out on the Prairie chasing down cattle), although I don’t think anybody owned up to that one – we did find it in the car park afterwards.
There was also a nice bit of audience participation, where various members of the community helped out with a song.
All in all it was a great evenings entertainment (even if we were the source of some of the jokes), and something that you don’t often come across in this part of the UK now. I guess as most people would not be able to make enough to earn a living in this part of the UK from playing small venues, as to some extent they don’t really exist. Whilst some places like Finchampstead still put on a Village show, it’s very much by the villagers for the villagers, I haven’t come across any professional entertainers doing similar shows.
You can find out more about Richard and Deborah at their website. There are more of our pictures of their show on the train, and at Buffalo on our pictures site.
Checking out whether the weblog was coming up on Google I came up with a new entry for the site as a result of our link to David Chait’s site. The link was on a site called Blogshares.
The site is a share trading game, but using weblogs as the commodity. Currently we’re not doing overly well, despite my having gone and bought as many of our shares as I could. There are a load of our shares left, and the game engine lists our stock as undervalued. Chance to snap up a bargain then!
