The Grand Tour Part 11 and Doll-A-Day 2023 #187: Not Elves on the Shelf

   Yesterday we talked about our visit with our friend Cheryl in Clacton-on-Sea. For some background, Cheryl started out as my penpal years ago. I went to England in 1985, and we got to meet in person.

Cheryl took this picture of me in Trafalgar Square on the day we met. I don't have access to all my pictures right now, so I can't show you any I took of Cheryl that day.

When I went back the next year, Cheryl and I actually took a trip to Amsterdam together.

Where, once again, Cheryl took this picture of me, and my pictures of her are at home.

   And in 1989, a couple of months before Ken and I got married, Cheryl came over and we took her on a different Grand Tour.

Ohio...

Niagara Falls....

Cheryl and I preparing to go under the Falls.

Ken and Cheryl at Niagara Falls.

I have a great picture of Cheryl, and me, in Toronto, but also, it's at home. Ken takes forever to compose a photograph, and Cheryl doesn't have the patience for it. So there is a wonderful picture  where I'm smiling, and Cheryl is in mid "Take the picture!" It's hilarious. Maybe I'll update this post next week...

When we went to England in 2015, Cheryl came to London for a couple of days to hang out with us.

Yes, I'm standing up straight, and she's squatting to get in the picture with me.

   This time, we went to Cheryl. On the first day we were there, Cheryl took us to Colchester to see Colchester Castle and we went to a small museum full of toys and dolls. We also had to make a shopping stop, due to our desperation to find another suitcase before we had to move on to Germany. One of our big cases had a shattered wheel. We knew we couldn't move those things without wheels. So we managed to finally find a couple of shops that had suitcases. Here you can find suitcases all year long, a million different places. In Clacton there were two places with cases at that time of year, and they had about two or three each. It was like Goldilocks looking for a chair: one was too small, one was too big, (expensive)...except none of them were just right. We settled on one that was a bit smaller than the one with the broken wheel, and more cheaply made, because at least it was pretty big, and didn't cost a million dollars. 

  While we were shopping, Cheryl developed some stomach problems. She didn't feel well, and once we got back to her house she went to bed a little early.

  The next day we went around Clacton a bit. Clacton-on-Sea  is a seaside town, as the name implies. We went down to the pier to 'see the sea'. 

But it wasn't the sort of day you'd typically do that. 

It was cold and rainy.

And VERY windy!

Yes, it was as cold as it looks. 

  I remember when I was in Clacton in 1985. Cheryl and I were looking at postcards of Clacton, all sunny beaches and happy bathers, and Cheryl laughing and saying, "Clacton never looks like that!" It certainly didn't this day.

  Ken tried to get another almost-Mr. Whippy ice cream, once again, without success.

We walked around town a bit. Cheryl was still not feeling well. She was supposed to take a group for a run, but everybody bowed out due to the rain. On the way back to Cheryl's I couldn't believe my eyes. We passed this:

It's a Masonic temple, but the thing is, it has my name on it! 

You never see that name on anything, including people, so I was flabbergasted to find it in Clacton. Cheryl circled back around so I could take a picture.

  Cheryl had planned a trip to a dollhouse/miniatures shop for me, but it was closed!

  So we relaxed at Cheryl's while I fought a bit more with the luggage. I was getting worried we were not going to be able to get everything home. I had had Cheryl buy me some English magazines I wanted, because they were much cheaper there than buying them at home. I also had her buy some of my favourite deodorant for me to take home. Okay. I know. Deodorant, what?! But I am really picky about smells, (and, if you believe my family and friends, about everything else too.), and I really love the blue Mum deodorant. It used to be called Cool Blue, and now it's something else, but it smells the same. I had her buy me loads, like, a whole box full. So I was worrying about the weight. I was heartened by the thought that we still had two more lots of gifts to drop off, one in Germany, and one in Belgium. And they were both heavy. That should free up plenty of weight, right? 

  While we were out shopping for cases the night before, I had bought a second Christmas elf. Wait. A second one? Yes. I bought one in Hull too. I actually saw one later I liked, but didn't buy for financial and weight reasons. But at this point, I was being optimistic. I still thought I could make it work somehow. And at that point, I might have been able to.

  So here are my two little guys. They are today's dolls. These pictures were taken before the fire.

They aren't really that little. They're about a foot tall.

 Anyway, I mentioned before that I saw a million different rip offs of The Elf on the Shelf in all the places we went. I bought the rather nice elf in Hull at the 1 pound shop. And he was, only a pound. (A little over a dollar.) He's the guy on the left. 

He has a sweet face and he was 'made by elves' and 'North Pole approved'.

His name is Ernie. Oh. Look what else his tag says: "Keep away from fire." Were they psychic or what?

  His suit has painted on buttons and a glued on collar and belt.

But at least he has 'real' hands that are stuffed and sewn on.

The one I bought in Clacton made less pretense about him being a 'bad' elf.  

In fact, he seems downright proud of it.

The Elf on the Shelf seems to have gone from an elf who watches  to make sure the children aren't bad, to a little wretch who gets up to all sorts in the middle of the night. His tag even says, "Watch out! Elf is about!" Next they'll be selling us elves to watch our elves. But I digress.

  He has some stitched detail on the front of his coat, and a sewn on belt, but glued on dots for buttons.

And his hands are just flat pieces of felt, glued to his wrists.

   They both have pointy toed elf feet, but flat hand guy also has flat feet. I guess he couldn't get into the army. But at least their feet are stitched on, and not glued.

In Hull I also found this backpack. It's a Christmas ornament, made of felt, and the perfect size for a camping elf...

It even has a rolled up sleeping bag, that you know I took out to see if it could be done. The sleeping bag is pretty small though.

It fits Hull elf Ernie pretty well.

  Clacton elf was a bit more than Hull elf, but not by much. Ken couldn't believe I wanted to buy something else, considering. I got the usual, "Tam!' But what harm could one more little felt elf, who weighed practically nothing and could be shoved in a pocket if I really had to, be?

  So I now had two elves, which is nice, because I love elves, and Christmas, and bringing home Christmas ornaments and things from vacations. Unfortunately these two were still hanging on my bedposts when the fire happened. In a future post we'll see what they looked like after the fire, and what they look like now.

  We left VERY early the next morning, and poor Cheryl even drove us to the station.

Still squatting to get in the photo with me.

  And what of our curse? Let's get serious here for a change. Of all the people who fell upon bad luck during our trip, Cheryl fared the worst. Let's be clear, she's doing pretty well right now, and will be fine. But after we left, Cheryl made a doctor's appointment and had some tests done. Her stomach issues were signs of a serious problem. Cheryl has leukemia. She was lucky it was discovered early and can be controlled by medication. But she has been very tired and Cheryl is used to being very active. So, you know those 'prayers and good thoughts' people are always asking for? Well, whatever you believe works, it would be nice to send some of that Cheryl's way. Ted needs her.

Even if he pretends not to.

    That's today's doll(s). See you tomorrow.

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...