Kylie and Jon's stag and hen night

The Beginning of May.  A great way to start a month is a Stag and Hens do.  Kylie and Jon are getting married on the 29th and a month was considered enough time to recover from such an event.

The Grail household owns but one camera and Gail kept it for the night to take girly pictures, which in all events was probably just as well as the boys night out involved lots of boring places where drinks were sold, and a pub with good food and wine, and places where drinks were sold.

The girls had actually organised an evening.  It started with a home cleansing and make over experience involving road base tar. 

 And wine guessing games

 and snacks

 before going to a class cocktail bar with a fancy aquarium as the bar.

 and some nice food in a Thai fashion

 And then the boys met the girls on a corner somewhere and we all went on a further rampage through the hotels and streets of Manchester. 

 Before we all ended up back at Jon and Kylie's flat in Didsbury by pre booked cabs and continued to party, drink some of Jon's lethal cocktails, finish off the girl's wine tasting bottles and generally have lots of meaningless chat and a little bit more of fun.

 Until it was all too much and the bride-to-be collapsed on the over here if you've had enough sofa.

 I apologise if the details of the evening are scarce and the information on events of the night somewhat less than expansive.  We did have a really good time, stayed in a nice room in the hotel next door to their flat which had a spa bath, and which I recall we took late night advantage of, just Gail and I not the whole party.  It is the earlier detail of the night I am rather shy on, not because it was raunchy or illicit, not at all, very grown up in fact, I was fine right up until the double margharitas, the sambucca and the irish whiskeys, trouble is, I can't quite recall what order they happened in either.... must have been the ale and wine that did that to me.

Anyway a good time and a fitting and enjoyable Stag night with nothing to be ashamed about . That I can remember.
We headed home the next day after a slow awakenning and a big hotel breakfast with ordinary coffee.

Gail took this shot of a van travelling with us on the motorway, thought it cute.  In a northern sort of way.

More Party Pirates and Royal Wedding

You may well be wondering who the raven haired wench is carrying champagne into our kitchen . 

Yes it's Gail in full pirate wig and regalia as we were off to a deferred Pirate and Wench party over in Meanwood, near Headingly, Leeds at the home of Kirsty and Clyde.  Kirsty works with Gail as a mobile MRI rad. 

It was quite a good night out, everyone got into the swing of the theme and while many photos were taken not many can be put up here.  Pirates and wenches are notoriously badly behaved.  And we were fuelled by some pretty strong rotgut, or cocktails as Kirsty liked to call them. 

 I was less attractive and got uglier as the night went on.

 Gail found someones hat and was caught mixing her drinks.

 A little sabre rattling and poking went on

 A bit of flirting,

 And quite a lot of chat and nonsense was spoken.

Corny attempts at pirate roles were enacted

 The Host (Clyde) and Hostess (Kirsty) set the theme and the mood

 And Gail had a deadly cosmopolitan,

 

 While others sang bawdy ballads and sultry sea shanties, I think.

It was all a bit of a change of pace to the previous weekend when David and Carolyn invited us to their place to watch the Kate and Willie royal wedding. 

Gail decided, after a bit of royal meal research,  that Beetroot and smoked salmon blinis with creme-fresh were very appropriate royal snacks to make and we enjoyed them during the tv show before tucking into a fabulous roast beef lunch prepared by Carolyn.  Sorry no shots of that, it was remiss of us not to take the camera I suppose. I have it on good authority photos of the wedding do exist though.

The flags in the hair were a bit OTT I thought. 

Recent art acquisitions, Neil Simone and Griff

By way of record of our time in Yorkshire we find ourselves buying art work again.  These are somewhat terrible photos of recent buys.  The first four are all Neil Simone, a London artist now living in Whixley just up the road from us, a bit. 
This first work is called As Autumn leaves, and is my favourite one to date.  It's #7 of 450 prints and we just collected it this week.

 This smaller one is called Glass painting and is my favourite one to date, we bought this about a month ago at his studio show.  It is an original study in pencil crayon and oils for a final work which in all honesty looked worse than this study as he gave the final a blue background which made it look rather heavy.  For both of these, in fact for all his works the detail is amazing and the surrealism beautifully captured.

 This Piece is from Neil's trips up to the west coast of Scotland and we can see about three beaches we have visited in this one.  We have had this for over a year now and it has pride of place in our front room as it is my favourite one to date.  It hangs next to Beatrice the blue cow an acrylic by Caroline Walker and my favourite cow to date. (Blog entry dated 31 July 2009) Anyway I just love the way Niel  does the surf spume.

 Funny story about this one below, Gail went to a fine art auction bazaar in Harrogate and bid unseen for Tree Route a 1980's Neil Simone print, paid 14 quid.  When she went to collect it she found the print, #180/ 475 had been hung in the sun for about 30 years and was almost unrecognisable as a print.  Never mind, she also got an original oil painting on board, artist and age unknown and an original Griff watercolour all framed and all for the same 14 quid bid.  Result. 
As we were going to Niel Simone's next studio showing we decided we would take the old print and let him know of it's sad life and to give it to him as an example of  one of his earliest prints and it's obvious life in the sun.  Just as a point of interest really, we didn't know if he kept tabs on his numbered prints and may want the sad old guy back.  Niel was most amazed to see its condition and we spoke for a while about print technologies and inks before going off to look at his latest works.  We bought Glass painting and decided to order As Autumn Leaves and as we were leaving the studio Neil presented us with a replacement print of Tree Route, he had numbered it 180/475 and signed it as a complete replacement of the faded one... Gail was most impressed as this print is the first work that Neil ever decided to create a print of and it has a history now that is very special.  As I said the photo's don't do the actual works justice but you get the idea and a bit of why we love meeting artists where ever we go.

 Here is the original Griff watercolor Gail got in the job lot at auction,

 And this the original old oil on board.

 Finally, this is the signed unlimited print by a bloke who does lots of Yorkshire towns whose name I forget but is very popular for his realism,  A bit old lady picture for me and not my most favourite to date. Also in the lot Gail bought unseen at Auction though so all in all, result, result and oh well it fills a space on the lounge room wall.