Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire

Saturday arrived, bringing with it sunshine and the most anticipated day of the year – Dickensian Festival.  Ulverston could probably be called the “festival town” since they seem to have some sort of festival every week.  However, their most popular festival is without a doubt Dickensian Festival.  Since I first heard of this festival involving 1850’s style costumes (or fancy dress as they call it here), I knew I had to attend as I love any reason to wear a costume.  I was even more thrilled when I realized that the festival coincided with the arrival of Katie and Cailin, two others who love costume parties as much as I do.

 

The costume shop in town, Inspirations, had a small selection of costumes for rent, but the main source for costumes is through a catalogue that is located at one of the local clothing stores, and has a wide selection of costumes in various sizes.  Since Cailin and Katie are very tiny, we wound up getting their costumes from the catalogue since it had a better selection of dresses in small sizes.  In addition, they had an extensive selection of suits, cravats and top hats for men, so Kevin got his costume (and John’s that he couldn’t use :( ) as well.  My dress I found in the costume shop the last time I was in Ulverston.

 

When I arrived in England two weeks ago, I was greatly dismayed to find a beard on Kevin’s face.  However, the reason for this beard was evident when Kevin shaved authentic mutton chops for the festival.  While I absolutely HATE his beard, I actually love the mutton chops.  I’m trying to convince him to keep them for Christmas so that all our American family and friends can enjoy them.  So, if you are reading this in the States, make sure to request that he keeps them!

Before

After

Mutton chops completed, we set off with our costumes around 1 pm, walking up Market Street and taking a few pictures before we headed to our friends Fred and Jen’s house for a little party.  As we were heading up the street, we thought the costume aspect of the festival may have been an “embarrass the Americans” prank as we were the only ones in costume.  In addition, every time we tried to take a few pictures, random people kept taking our picture like we were a tourist attraction.  Needless to say, I was excited when we made it to Fred and Jen’s and I saw other people in costume. 

    

About 100 random people have the same pictures

Victorian Pimp?

Jen and Fred not only had a huge spread of delicious food, but the best view of the festival around.  You could see everything going without having to be outside in the cold.  We filled up on some yummy snacks and drinks before we headed outside to take part in the costume parade.

 

   

Cailin and Katie enjoy some non-Victorian Drinks.  Diet coke and a Dickensian please?

 

  Some of the other fantastic costumes

The costume parade was probably the weirdest part of the day.  Everyone in costume meets at the Town Hall and is lead through town by a woman dressed as Queen Victoria and accompanied by the town marching band and a Bag Pipe band.  I absolutely abhor bagpipes and some how we got stuck directly in front of them, which naturally made me very angry.  However, it was fun seeing all the other costumes.  The weird part came when everyone else in town watched the parade and took pictures.

 

Queen Victoria

 

 

 

 

 

If only the Von Schnauzers were here! 

AHH! Bagpipes!

 

After we made a spectacle of ourselves, we went back to Jen and Fred’s to warm up and watch the lights be switched on, after which we went to grab a drink at the Swan.  Overall, a fantastic day!  I hope to be able to come back next year and attend.  This time, I’m making sure John Felty and Doyle get there as well!

Castle Craziness

 

Since the preparation of Thanksgiving dinner kept us inside most of Thursday, we decided to spend Friday with a little day trip.  Since Mini hadn’t been to a castle ever (unless you count Gillette Castle in CT), we decided to head on up to Carlisle to check out the castle there.    Carlisle is located very close to the England/Scotland border, and therefore has a lot of very interesting history associated with it.  Much of the city lies on top of Roman ruins.  The ever elusive Hadrian’s wall goes through the city.  It was also the site of a number of battles during the Jacobite rebellion of 1688-1746.  Therefore, it makes sense that the castle would have been a very important part of the city.  Due to the huge influence that the castle had, it was kept up a lot better than many of the other castles that Kevin and I had been to.  In fact, I think it was the best castle I have been to thus far. 

The castle was originally built in 1066 by William II  of England while the area was still part of Scotland.  He promptly took over Cumberland (what is now currently Nothwest Cumbria),  made it part of England and caused it to be fought over for the next 700 years.  Mary, Queen of Scots was briefly imprisoned here from May to July 1568.  Before you start feeling sorry for the red haired Queen, she had free reign of the castle and 30-40 servants !During the 2nd Jacobite rising, Carlisle castle was captured and held by the Jacobites until the Duke of Cumberland and his forces drove them out and held them prisoner in Carlisle Castle until they were executed.

 

Mini-Deal was obsessed with moats, but disappointed that this one no longer had water and contained no crocodiles

An extremely large portion of the castle was open to visitors, including the former prison/keep, and one of the buildings where people lived.  Kevin and Katie made a rookie mistake and left Cailin and I alone with our cameras.

 

Mini jumped in here and started singing “Everybody look at me cause I’m standing in a moat!”

      This was a problem

Katie and Cailin got sent to Jacobite jail

 

This was called the “licking stone” since the prisoners would lick it to get water, so obviously I needed to demonstrate

Bring us some meat!

I’m protecting the castle from Mini

A Dwarf door for the dwarf!

Mini desperately wanted to get through this trap door

  What’s in this hole?

Eye see you!  (Katie gets in on the ridiculous fun)

   

Mini is imitating the exit signs over here (see the green sign in the right side of the picture)  

  Poor Kevin was just trying to get a little shut eye!

After we had our fill of ridiculousness, we headed down to check out Carlisle Cathedral, had a quick bite to eat and headed home.  Carlisle Castle is definitely worth a visit if anyone ever gets up that way.

Give Thanks

But not to Continental Airlines.  Thanksgiving came, and we had a big day planned.  Katie and Kevin were to drive to Manchester and get John while Cailin and I slept and got Thanksgiving dinner started.  Once they arrived back with my BMF (best male friend), Kevin and John were going to drink scotchy scotch scotch while Katie and I finished up Thanksgiving dinner in time for our friends experiencing their first American Thanksgiving to come over.  However, Continental airlines had other plans when they caused John to miss his connecting flight due to air traffic problems, booked him on an alternate overbooked flight and caused his mother to have to drive to Newark in the middle of the night and pick him up.  While the news that John would not be coming left the entire flat depressed (its hard to tell if Katie was more sad about not getting to spend Thanksgiving with her husband or Kevin as he was now stuck with three girls), we tried to make the best of it. 

I spent the morning getting things prepared and we all ran out to the market around lunch to get a few last minute things.  After lunch, we put on the music and cooked.  Since we had a girl from Ireland, a girl from England and a guy from Scotland coming over, I figured we better do a very traditional Thanksgiving meal.  On the menu:

• Roast Turkey (brined the night before in citrus and then rubbed with Herbe de Provence butter and stuffed with lemons, oranges, onions, rosemary, sage and oregano)
• Mashed Potatoes (Alton Brown’s delicious masher recipe consisting of 2:1 russet to red potato and mashed by hand with garlic infused buttermilk)
• stuffing (traditional french bread, celery, onion and sage stuffing cooked outside the turkey.)
• Rosemary-citrus gravy
• Butternut squash (cubed and roasted in brown sugar/cinnamon butter)
• Green Bean casserole (with home-made onion rings on top since the French’s onions were back in CT with John)
• Cranberry Sauce (OceanSpray straight from America)
• Pumpkin cheesecake with pecan caramel sauce
• Chocolate cream pie

Look at that beautiful golden brown skin!

Allister wants to know what everything is.  The overwhelming hit – Green Bean Casserole!

   

Yum – wine!

After we taught our friends how to stuff yourself silly, Cailin broke out another hit of the night – Beef Jerky.  I don’t understand why they don’t sell it over here, since everyone I met over here has loved it.  Plus, it’s a culture obsessed with meat!

Meat!

While the jerky was a hit, the grapefruit gin and tonics that Katie and I discovered at the store were not! 

We’re smiling cause we haven’t tasted them yet

After we all digested our food slightly, we set off to get a post-dinner drink at the Swan with Allister and Ciara.  Cailin and Sarka were not feeling well so unfortunately they didn’t join us.

 

Enjoying a traditional “American” drink in honor of Thanksgiving – Jack Daniels (+coke for Katie and I)

We all missed our good friend John, but made the most of our day.  Hopefully everyone else enjoyed it as much as I did!