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I must be having fun as it’s somehow got to July already. Compared to last year we’ve hardly had any visitors but I just had a lovely few weeks with my Mother in both England and here on the Island:We went for a walk down Silverdale Glen and came across the annual Model Boat Regatta:

Even a little steam boat amongst them:

And a long boat:We visited the 12th Century Monks Bridge:

She was very game, going for a ride with Joey Dunlop!I finally made it to Tynwald Day – that really was like stepping back in time. One of the Doctors from the Hospice where I work is one of the Manx dancers:I spent a couple of hours promoting the Wallabies Gone Wild for the Hospice:Then enjoyed the 1000 year old traditions like the procession, the reading out of the laws and people bringing their grievances to Tynwald, some of you may have seen my video on Instagram:

Mannanin’s Cloak still sneaks in occasionally:

I had some great news yesterday. I’m organising the Inaugural Manx Scrabble Championship 8,9 & 10 May 2020 and received the letter that the Department of Enterprise is going to help fund it. In a few weeks it’ll be advertised on Visit Isle of Man, I have 2 weeks to get all the info in.

And I still can’t believe I really live here, I can’t tell you all how happy I feel.

 

TT fortnight started a week ago and all we’ve had is two practice sessions! The place is heaving with visitors, bikes, fairgrounds, marquees, bandstands, celebrities and festivities. Every shop has either been taken over by a pop-up shop, or is featuring bikes in the window

The Hospice Shop belongs to the charity I work for is featuring both bikes and wallabies as part of “Wallabies Gone Wild”

There are big and small wallaby sculptures all over the Island

Back to racing – or lack there of!

Festivities abound, but racing does not. I’ve taken a few pics today showing how Manannan’s cloak has been coming in to hide the Island from invaders:

From an optimistic Parc Ferme:

To an empty one:

Visibility poor:

We’re waiting to hear whether there’ll be a session this evening, fingers crossed. The last fine day was excellent, I took some pics walking up to the Grandstand from bottom of Bray Hill as everyone was getting ready:

Let’s hope we get some more of that soon!

We’re not allowed to take pictures while marshalling, for that you’ll have to go to the IOM TT website or social media

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It’s countdown time, less than three weeks till TT fortnight. Roads are being mended, hotels touched up and more bikers wearing racing leathers are appearing on the roads. The TT barriers and safety equipment have popped up around the course and that familiar air of anticipation is here again. I’ve completed my new online marshal training and looking forward to practice evenings after work at the top of Duke’s Avenue.

In the meantime we can enjoy the gentler part of life.

The Promenade has undergone a revamp and the horse-trams will be late starting this summer but I figure they can’t be far off as I saw some tram horses in a field near the grandstand yesterday:

While on the topic of animals, I’ve been having a few animal encounters since getting back in April from my Australia trip:

A  Manx cat crossed my path on my first day back, I’m not sure if that’s lucky or not. I guess I’ll be OK as long as I don’t mention the other word for a longtail, you are allowed to spell it: R-A-T, but something dreadful will happen if you say the word! I wonder if that can be cancelled out by the good fortune you have if you say hello to the fairies under the Fairy Bridge?

That peacock that I featured in my previous post, who frequents the Tescos car-park and the adjacent railway station appeared with full tail display to greet the steam train I was on recently (more fame for me as this picture made it into the readers photos in the local paper – probably to promote the Transport Festival):

On one of our recent walks we passed a farmer loading his Loughton sheep into a truck. They are unique to the Isle of Man and have four (sometimes six!!!) horns and brown wool:

There are also plenty of Spring lambs till around – please don’t anyone mention mint sauce, I prefer to live in denial:

A friend and I also came across a spooked baby rabbit on a walk last week, someone who lives nearby assured us it did eventually move:

The water birds are abundant and diverse:

There are all sorts of motorsport events here besides the TT here. I was walking to work the other day and was passed by these cars that were here for the annual hill climb event, once again I felt I was in a time warp:

Our rented flat is just up the road going off to the left of that picture.

Talking of events. I am organising the Inaugural Isle of Man Scrabble Championship here in May 2020. I’m working with people from the Association of British Scrabble Players (ABSP) and it will count as a British rated tournament. I hope some players from Australia will make it too!

About half the ladies I’ve made friends with seem to be called Jackie, below is one I go walking with who also volunteers for Compassionate Isle of Man

Compassionate Isle of Man is a group of volunteers that I’ve joined, coordinated by two ladies based at the Hospice. We try and help people with life-limiting illnesses. This includes back-home boxes for people discharged from hospital who live alone, sitting with people near end of life who don’t have friends or family on the Island and we currently have a roster to babysit a one-year-old whose Mother is very ill. Here’s a somewhat posed one of packing a Compassionate Isle of Man back-home box:

There was an interesting article about MC’s views on the Isle of Man in the magazine on the plane to England:

I had a surprise when the very English looking “pub” I stayed in was run by a Muslim Family, nice and quiet as it had no bar!

I had a surprise podium finish in the Scrabble tournament after fluctuating all weekend, extract from ABSP website below:

Great view of the Calf of Man from the plane. I must have a pretty quick shutter speed, the propellers were moving a bit faster than that!

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The seasons change so quickly. It’s been really hard to stay away from the  window at work when the fields outside are full of gambolling lambs, little time-thieves:

The black ones are the cutest

The peacock is parading around the Tescos carpark. Drivers wait patiently when it sits on their car roof:

Chester the seagull is all nice and clean again, and back on our windowsill:

And the skies are as beautiful as ever:

Every now and then the Island is threatened by invaders but we are quite safe as the great sea god, Mannannin, after whom the Island is named, hides the Island in a cloak of mist to protect us. It has a magical and eerie feel to it. I’ve shown you lots of pictures of the Tower of Refuge in Douglas Bay. Here is what it looks like wearing Mannannin’s Cloak:

and when the cloak lifts a little:

And here are some Mannannin’s Cloak pictures from various places on the Island:

Standing on the Prom looking out to sea:

Winter skeletal tree silhouettes look amazing on misty days:

Even the views out of my two office windows disappear:

This view has baby lambs on a clear day!

Like this:

Gambolling lambs are very distracting and I get lots of visitors!

The weather never prevents me from going out, though Charlie doesn’t want to know me in my rain outfit!

 

 

(Note – if you know me please email me – I delete all the comments that come in as most are from bots. If you don’t know me just enjoy the view – I’m not trying to be followed!)

Taken 8.10 am 2nd February:

Our rented flat is more or less in the middle. You can see a bit of snow on the slieau (hill/mountain):

Chester the seagull is back on our window sill:

He drops by to watch the kiddy’s shows:

I also saw him down on the prom the other day and stopped for a chat:

Taken at 8am on Christmas Eve, you can only see the wind turbines on very clear days:

I’m amazed how quickly the light changes so Googled it to check the details. I found this at iomguide.com – amazing to think that a mid-summers day is light for nearly 10 hours more than a mid-winters day (17 hours 11 minutes and 7 hours 19 minutes). You can click on any image to see a bigger version if you want.

 

I just can’t resist a good sky picture – this was on the way to work:

 

And of course the night life is also like stepping back in time – love it, but it makes me miss the Freo Workers Club:

 

 

 

(Reminder – I don’t look at the comments on this site, I just delete them all. If you know me then please email me, if you’re a bot, don’t bother! If you’re a person who just happened to find it, I hope you enjoy it :)) You can click on pictures if you want a bigger version.

I finally get the point of Christmas. Forget Pagan or Christian beliefs and commercialism! They came later. All those twinkly lights, music and festivities evolved as a way of getting people to get excited about mid-winter. How could anyone get the winter blues when there’s so much excitement in the air. Anticipation….

Twinkle twinkle…

Christmas is taken seriously here. Not even in TT week have I seen the streets in central Douglas as crowded as the night they switched on the Christmas lights. Woolly-Christmas-hatted toddlers bobbed up and down excitedly on their daddies’ shoulders and the countdown must have been heard across in Liverpool. So many pompoms…

Celebrating Isle of Man wallabies. More about that later this year, watch this space!

Carol singers abound…

A few nights later….

These little carol singers didn’t realise that the tree starts playing loud Christmas music periodically. I should have video-ed it – about 30 seconds after I took this picture they nearly all jumped out of the skin as the tree interrupted their carol with a boom of Christmas music, unfortunately not in tune with the song they were singing.

The research team had a little tea party at work last week. These are the lovely ladies I work with:

One triumph of the week was getting two Manx Radio presenters to sing the Aussie version of Jingle Bells on air. They were broadcasting from my workplace and interviewing members of each team. We were told they might ask us to request a Christmas song after our interview so I’d printed the words. Instead of looking for it online to play, they sang it live. They said we could find it on catch-up on their website but I haven’t found it. I’ll share the link if I do.

Charlie and I will spend Christmas Eve at the Manx Legion Club with friends watching a great local 60s band – Shaddy Waddy. On Christmas Day Charlie is cooking a roast for the two of us. This year we won’t have to put the air-con on full blast so we can pretend it’s cold enough for a traditional English Christmas dinner!

Happy Silly Season everybody – try a northern Hemisphere one some day!

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I hope I’ll be a little better at updating this site in winter than I have been in the other seasons – life is busy with work and fun. Halloween and Guy Fawkes are huge here – and in the same week. Our flat is like box seats for the fireworks over the bay:

I don’t do great night time pictures but thought I’d start with something festive. You don’t actually need fireworks to make the sky look pretty – Some of you may have seen my instagram posts and know that I’ve become somewhat besotted with taking sunrise and other Manx sky pictures so I’m putting a whole lot here. Feel free to scroll through quickly if you get bored with sky pictures, or head off to the Dream Home Project page.

I took 6 days off work to meet Gigi in England and spent some time using my Britrail ticket. The trains are a bit topsy-turvy at the moment and I had to make do with some rail-replacement buses at times. We met in Cambridge at my cousin-in-law Lizzie’s place where Gigi lived last year.

We did the tourist pose-y thing. The weather has been really warm. I heard someone say something I never thought I’d hear in England: “I hope it rains soon”! Even the Isle of Man is starting to look brown and dry, and there was a dreadful bushfire in Yorkshire while we were in England.

Interspersed with the beauty of Cambrdge is a sadder side with lots of homeless people sleeping on the streets. this was taken at about 5am

You could say we “did  Oxbridge”  as we also visited my second cousin Ivor in Oxford who gave us a tour of “Hogwarts”.

We had a drink in the Turf Tavern where Bob Hawke entered the Guinness Book of Records:

And Gigi showed she was eligible for  a position advertised at a tapas bar:

We went punting the next day with Ivor and his family but I was afraid of getting my phone wet so didn’t take any pictures. Thanks to Jo, Ivor’s wife we have a few but she’s not in them. Lots of fun – we have some wonderful relatives!

I managed to fit in a few Scrabble games in Warrington, I still don’t have anyone to play with on the Island. I’m missing Toastmasters too.

Gigi came back with me on the ferry

She came to see the new property. By the way the building application went in 2 weeks ago and stripping out will start soon. It’s all taking a bit longer than we’d hoped, I think we’ll have most of winter in the rented flat.

She tested out my bike – sort of:

And won!

I only have one day left with her, then she’s back to Cambridge and back to Australia on Thursday/Friday. I will miss her very much.

Am hoping my little duplex in Spearwood will sell soon so I can afford to visit her in Australia early next year!