Caught!
It seems like I haven't had a minute to myself these past few weeks. The wedding looms large, and there are loads of minutiae that we've either neglected or screwed up. This is becoming a fulltime job! My surreptitious scheme to ‘just stay the hell out of it’ has been detected and thwarted by Foxy and her band of cronies.
I just licked and stamped 120 invitations. I’m not kidding. It feels like I have marshmallows and plaster in my mouth, and my tongue has somehow become glued to the outside of my cheek. We forgot to buy an envelope moistener, and Foxy would have none of the licking. So I was saddled with the gooey task.
Hopefully, life will be moving at a more normal clip again within the next week or so.
The Isle of Wight – or, IoW to those of us in the know - was wonderful! The scenery is extremely dramatic, with its jutting, chalky promontories, lush green hills and valleys, violent Channel-upsurges, and roving bipedal lobsters from sundry locales around the United Kingdom.
It was Cowes Week on the IoW, an international regatta and festival which is centered in and around the town of Cowes. Apparently, this is the world's largest regatta. Bigger than the America's Cup? I don't know, I didn't ask. It was very impressive nonetheless.
I also caught the Sandown Airshow, which is also another ‘biggest’ in the UK. I found that hard to believe, as it was actually quite small. Anyway, the program featured the holy trinity of the Battle of Britain: The Hurricane, The Spitfire, and The P-51 Mustang. It was absolutely incredible to watch these planes scream by within a hundred yards at full throttle, and something I’ll not soon forget.
I just licked and stamped 120 invitations. I’m not kidding. It feels like I have marshmallows and plaster in my mouth, and my tongue has somehow become glued to the outside of my cheek. We forgot to buy an envelope moistener, and Foxy would have none of the licking. So I was saddled with the gooey task.
Hopefully, life will be moving at a more normal clip again within the next week or so.
The Isle of Wight – or, IoW to those of us in the know - was wonderful! The scenery is extremely dramatic, with its jutting, chalky promontories, lush green hills and valleys, violent Channel-upsurges, and roving bipedal lobsters from sundry locales around the United Kingdom.
It was Cowes Week on the IoW, an international regatta and festival which is centered in and around the town of Cowes. Apparently, this is the world's largest regatta. Bigger than the America's Cup? I don't know, I didn't ask. It was very impressive nonetheless.
I also caught the Sandown Airshow, which is also another ‘biggest’ in the UK. I found that hard to believe, as it was actually quite small. Anyway, the program featured the holy trinity of the Battle of Britain: The Hurricane, The Spitfire, and The P-51 Mustang. It was absolutely incredible to watch these planes scream by within a hundred yards at full throttle, and something I’ll not soon forget.
posted by SD at 6:27 AM
3 Comments:
Glad you like Vectis.
Couple of minor points:
The P51 Mustang played no part in the Battle of Britain; it flew its first mission on May 10, 1942, by which time the BoB was long over.
And The America's Cup is a race, not a regatta.
All the best.
The inclusion of the P-51 Mustang in the Battle of Britain is my mistake.
However:
Main Entry: re·gat·ta
Pronunciation: ri-'gä-t&, -'ga-
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian regata
: a rowing, speedboat, or sailing race or a series of such races
You're really splitting hairs, aren't you, Tony?
No, not really.
Your Merriam-Webster definition gives a series of such races as a secondary possible meaning, while the Oxford dictionaries and, I think, common usage, make it the primary one. Does anyone ever call the America's Cup a regatta?
All I meant was that it doesn't make sense to compare the "size" of a week's sailing events, however piffling they they may be individually, to that of one race, however important.
The victory of the schooner America off Cowes in 1851 was what began the Cup. The British side accused the Americans of taking a shorter course, and there were even questions alluding to the use of a steam driven propeller. Rotten sports, the British.
In the end, nothing was proved, and the United States were declared the victors.
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