The Grand Tour Part 5, and Doll-A-Day 2023 #6: What's Your Elf Name?

   We're picking up where we left off in the tale of our trip. 

  The next day, after Ken and I wandered Hull by ourselves, Ken's sister had to work, and we ran some errands with her husband Alan. This took us to Preston, so Alan could make some purchases at the butcher shop, and Ken could complain some more about how you can't buy thickly cut liver like that over here. I wandered down the street while they were in the butcher's, to find a post box to send home a few postcards. The boys met me coming back, and we went into the All Saints Parish Church to have a look. This one's for you Raging Moon.

 Apparently there's an All Saints Church in Preston in Lancashire too, but this one is in East Riding of Yorkshire.

I love old things and old places, so this was wonderful.

Ken and Alan on the right.

Ken is the guy on the left, standing like a flamingo. Alan on the right.

The church is much older, but even the visitor's book was really old. There were signatures from as far back as at least the 1920's.

I can't believe i have to say the 1920's now, because we're on the 2020's!

  And of course, the outside had lots of super old tombstones.

Alan said that when some of the really old ones fell over they set them into a sort of sidewalk. I couldn't bear to walk on them, because if everybody did that, they'd wear away.

  Later, in the evening we went to visit a friend of Ken's from grade school. Ken's friend Paul's family had covid, so we didn't get to see them, and Ken's friend Robert, who we did NOT get to see last visit, (You might have read about that fiasco HERE.), decided he couldn't be bothered this time either. So I'm glad Ken got to see this friend and have a really fun evening. We saw them on the last trip. Ken hadn't seen his friend for over 30 years, and had never met his wife. I hadn't met either of them, but I liked them right away. This time we even got to meet their son, and we had a great time.

  The next day we visited Cliff in the hospital to see how badly our curse had affected him. (Remember, bad things were befalling everyone we knew.) Fortunately he was doing well. Marjorie had dinner with us later, so at least we got to see them. On the way to the hospital we passed this interesting former church.

It's a shame it's abandoned and getting run down. I thought the outside was very unusual..

  Gloria was working most of the next day, so Alan took us around a bit. We went to see his co-worker's cottage. 

It was a nice old house, quite pretty, but I was more excited when her husband mentioned that he collected fossils. "I'll show you some before you leave." "Okay." I said, trying to be an adult and not abandon Ken and Alan and follow the guy out the door. A few more things were said, and then he said something about when we were leaving and "...I'll give you some." I leapt to my feet. "I'm coming!" So much for not abandoning the guys.

  He had quite a collection! His shed was full of fossils! 

He collects them on the coast of Yorkshire, not far from where they live, where the cliffs are falling away. He's only been doing it for 4 years, but look at that collection. I would love to go fossil hunting sometime. Here's some of his amazing collection.

That's a mastodon tooth! He had only recently found that one and still had it soaking in a bucket of water. 

Isn't this beautiful?

  He said his wife will only allow one fossil in the house, and it sits on the side of the bathtub. I'd take them in!  

And he did give me some fossils! 

This animal would have been sort of like a squid.

This is the inside of the squid like thing.

Same swirly one again, with a hunk of coral.

  He gave a me a couple he had already cleaned up, and told me I could take anything I wanted out of his scrap pile! I tried not to be greedy, and Ken was reminding me that we did need to get the stuff home. So in the end I went off with five pieces. Forget this when I start telling you about how heavy our cases were on the way home, and how we had too much stuff. At this point we had unloaded all the English gifts from the cases except one lot, and we still had a German bound lot to deliver, and a Belgian one. And Ken hadn't done his main grocery shopping. I thought we had plenty of weight and space left. And I'm sorry. These were fossils. I was going to get them home if I had to swallow them. 

  Okay. So now I had a bag of Icelandic rocks, and a bag of English fossils. Still, we're just hanging out at Gloria's. I don't have to carry them anywhere...yet.

  After the fossils Alan drove us to Hornsea, to have a look at the sea. We saw a rainbow on the way, because of course it had been raining the whole time.

Once in Hornsea Ken got fish and chips AGAIN. I tried to paint with a camera again.

It was freezing cold by the sea. 

So hurry up and take the picture Ken!

Tammy wished she'd worn her bigger coat!

But the view was beautiful.

Still trying to paint.

Ken took a behind the scenes picture.

  We tried an ice cream that looked like Mr. Whippy on the sign, and even called itself a 'whippy' thing. It even had a Flake chocolate in it.  I was hoping it was the same, because Ken really wanted a Mr. Whippy, and I kept telling him it was not the season for ice cream trucks. It was not the same.

  The next day we took a trip to Scunthorpe for a concert. Ken is a big fan of Gilbert O'Sullivan, if anybody remembers him. In the 70's he had a hit in the U.S. with "Alone Again, Naturally" . He's still around and his voice is pretty much the same. I checked when I knew we were going and found that he was going to not only be on tour, but playing in nearby Scunthorpe while we were in Hull. I asked Gloria to get the tickets for us, since I'd had that trouble getting the theatre website for the Michael Palin show to take my order. Ken never goes to anything he likes, but he goes to plenty of stuff with me, so I wanted to make sure he got to go.

  Before the show we stopped for food. Ken saw two fish things he really wanted on the menu, and he couldn't make up his mind. Gloria said, "Well, you can't eat both." This is where you are wrong Gloria. It was one of those 'Hold my beer.' situations. Ken ate them both. It made up for me, since I was still having stomach issues, and didn't eat at all.

  Ken enjoyed the show.

   Gloria bought him a Gilbert t-shirt, and I nabbed him a poster from a guy who was handing them out in the lobby after the show. I may have been just a bit pushy and sort of jumped the queue, which was more of a crowd really, and took the last one out of the guy's hand. But Ken was in the bathroom, and I look out for him. That's the other poster I brought home in the wrapping paper roll that someone said, "You are not seriously going to try to take that paper home.".  Yes I am. And it shall be full of posters.

  And now, where are those dolls, you're asking. Well, when Jenny and I were in Beverly a few days before, I had seen a display of little elves called 'What's Your Elf Name'. They came with names on them, and there was actually a peg marked 'Ivy', but it was empty. I think they may have had the 'Emma', but I didn't want to get one for only Emma.  I spent our time around Hull looking for those little name elves. And I finally found them.

Cutie Emma McSparklepants. She's on the wrapping paper I couldn't resist too.

 It's prettier in person.

  They're only about 4 inches tall at the most. I thought they were so cute, and there's never anything with Ivy's name on it. 

Icy Ivy McSnowflake.

  'Emma' I have almost always been able to find. When we named her Emma there weren't any others around, but a few years after that there were Emma's everywhere. So Emma named stuff is available, but Ivy has never had stuff with her name on it. I did see these window gels in Beverly, but what was she going to do with those at her age?

"Santa Ivy has been good Please stop"

  I like that even though the elves are really simple, and mass produced, they don't look alike! They are similar, but they each have their own personality. I suppose they are more ornament than doll, but they are sort of doll..like? Hey. Give me a break. It's hard doing both series of posts at the same time! There'll be more dolls when I get through this trip! There were dolls involved in the trip.

  See you tomorrow for an actual doll. Maybe lots of them...