Dog & Pony Show

Last weekend was a Bank Holiday (meaning we got Monday off for no reason). Our friends Claire and Ricardo invited us down for a visit to The New Forest, in the south of England where Claire grew up. She set us up at a great B&B run by some older South African gays down the road from her mom's house. I will always remember this trip as the first and last time I got to have a breakfast with fried eggs and sausage cooked in bacon fat (the egg whites in a dab of olive oil have since returned - dammit Chad!) Everywhere you went through out the town of Brockenhurst, wild ponies and donkeys were abound. (Sadly, the English didn't get my Sam Cartwright-from-It's a Wonderful Life-"hee-haw!" reference. Although, I guess, few really would, except maybe my mom. Hee-haw. mom!)

We mostly spent the weekend relaxing, chatting and walking with Claire and Ric, their kids and Claire's parents. We took an old slam door train (it's exactly what you would think) down to a town called Lymington Harbour, where we could have fish & chips by the sea - although, I didn't, sick of the stuff by now. We had afternoon tea in a thatched cottage, scones and all. We took a walk on the beach, where we were blown away (literally) by the English "summer" weather and I got to have myself a "toasty" (a Britishism for a toasted sandwich). And then just like that, we founds ourselves out of the forest and back in the city.