Exploring Stow and The Circus Comes to Town.

I've had a busy week. Monday was our last interview day at work for the 2015/16 intake, it was a bit manic.

 I wore this lovely blue vintage dress for the first time since I bought it however many months ago.

 I got some lovely comments on it, someone said "I love your dress, it has this really vintage vibe about it" which of course meant I could smugly reply "actually it IS vintage".
Pride before a fall for me though, because as the very hot day wore on and the dress began to 'warm up' shall we say, it also began to smell. It wasn't smelling great when I got it, but I foolishly thought a quick freshen up in the washing machine would be all it needed, wrong, so very wrong.

I could not wait to get home and get that thing off me and shower! I then did the only sensible thing and reached out in desperation to our vintage frock guru Vix for advice! She and some other very lovely ladies on her Facebook page gave me some fab tips so here's to the dress smelling as fresh as a daisy from now on.

Tuesday the Dean of the business school had an afternoon tea for the staff, it was a gorgeous day and we got to stand around in his even more gorgeous garden eating sandwiches and little cakes and drinking prosecco.
I was with a couple of people from my office chatting and happily being topped up every time the bottle came round. We realised perhaps we had been a tad too enthusiastic with the top ups when the waiter said "Shall I just bring you 3 a bottle to yourselves?" My cue to wobble off and catch my train home!

Friday I had the dentist (Boo) followed by the circus (Yay)
Thankfully the dentist visit was all good. I still have 2 milk (baby) teeth and he gave them a push and said "these things are rock solid, at this rate you will lose all your other teeth and these two will still be hanging in there" I decided right then and there to do just that very thing, because I am bloody minded in that way.
 Also whose to say that finally losing all my baby teeth might not make me grow up properly and frankly I never want to grow-up properly.

I went back to my parents house to eat lunch, watch some tennis and snooze on the sofa until it was time for the cirucs.

Yes Gifford's Circus was back. As you know I do try to go every year if I can, it's such great fun. This year the show was called 'Thunderers' and was about the Greek gods. It was fantastic, though hand on heart not the best show by them. I would have liked more of the tumbling and juggling of previous shows.
Having said that there were some incredible moments, the contortionist who played Medusa was mind boggling and the Chinese acrobats did one move that had the whole tent gasp out loud in unison.
I loved the good old fashioned slapstick with water from Tweedy the clown, and had to chuckle when Bibi and Bichu the jugglers came on and a woman to my left exclaimed " OH MY! He's just beautiful!" rather more loudly that she probably meant too. For the record they are both gorgeous so she was quite fair in her assessment.

I got home and watched a bit of Glastonbury on the tv with a glass of wine which was a pretty good way to end the day.
Saturday I was up and off to meet Soo for our second weekend jaunt in a row. We were going to take a trip to Stowe Park for a gentle meander but as the weather had decided not to play ball, the plan changed to driving to Stow-on-the-Wold instead because I have never been there before.
It's a very, very beautiful little Cotswolds town.

This is the area where a lot of celebrities and rich people have their country retreat, so it was wall to wall Range Rovers and expensive little shops. Clearly they also like to come to Stow to eat because there were more quaint tea shops and other eateries than you could shake a stick at.
We ambled about oohing and ahhing at the lovely houses and gardens and snorting loudly at the ridiculously over priced unnecessary stuff in the shops. Clearly people round here have more money than sense!

We had a delicious lunch in The Burrow Cafe where they had the inspired idea of putting old games on the table so we got to have a rousing game of dominos whilst we waited for our lunch to arrive. According to the lady who owns the cafe our doubles had been in there a few days before and were touring the Cotswolds.
I know we are all meant to have a double in the world but I'm hoping I have 2 because as I am already meant to have a scanky one (see here for details) So I would like to have a nice looking one too.
Happily there were charity shops so we did both make a few purchases before the sky did this

and it started to rain in a biblical kind of way. We took shelter in the town hall where there was a craft fair.
I bought a necklace for my Mum and admired a nude picture of Nell Gwynn whilst wondering if it really was the right kind of picture for a town hall......

In the end we risked the rain to head back to the car. In that true crazy British weather way would you believe it was hammering down with rain at the same time as the sun was shining when I took this picture. 

Without further ado here are my purchases from the day.

A glass whale paperweight

A crazy blouse with upside down pheasants on it.

a designer frock darling, which looks just like any other pretty tea dress style frock you can get!

and a vintage brooch to add to my every growing collection.

I got home grabbed some dinner and did a bit of sewing whilst I waited to watch Metallica at Glastonbury, who in my opinion fucking nailed it. So there's mud in your eye to all the pretentious music twats who thought it was blasphemy to have a metal band at Glastonbury!

I finally fixed this pretty gingham summer dress with bees on it. It had really stupid frilly straps which I altered.

much nicer now don't you think?