We Have Been Going To Wales For A Long, Long Time
 The Holiday Is About to Begin
This early photograph of Gromet has one or two interesting features,
See details below:-
1. Sally, our dog, can just be seen inside Gromet. Until now it was thought that there were no large mammals around at the time of the dinosaurs.
2. A picture of what is thought to have inspired the Millennium Dome.
Contents
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Forward Planning
The only way to write up a diary of a holiday, and have it ready in time to put on the internet and distribute to friends,is to write as much of it before hand as possible and, of course, it is imperative that one does not allow the facts to get in the way!
Wales is a country of many old and interesting traditions. We only just arrived in time to witness this one, the famous "Releasing Of The Cat" ceremony.
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Introduction
It was both the last Saturday of July and the last July of the twentieth century, as Neil Lawrence drove through the early morning fog, interspersed only by bouts of all pervading drizzle, to arrive in West Hallam by 6:45 am.
He had brought the photographs of Kirsty's graduation. First Class Honours rule OK.
We gave him one last opportunity to join us, on our annual pilgrimage to the Welsh peninsula known as Lynn, but he's not daft. After his rain drenched experiences of two years ago, when he almost developed webbed feet and pneumonia, he decided that a holiday job at Kodak, in the deep south of England, with remission, for the occasional visit to see Kirsty, was preferable to splashing about on a rain sodden mound of earth protruding into the Atlantic, no matter how quiet and peaceful we professed it to be.
Further more he was rather perturbed by Nips unhealthy obsession with the idea of purchasing a boat. We tried to allay Neil's fears by pointing out that Nip only wanted a 15 to 20 foot motor boat to potter about in, but we were too late, Neil had already discovered the plans, pinned to the wall, for an arc, with integral ramp for Land Rover access.
| Our protestations that we had merely purchased an unusual wall paper design, that we had come across, while perusing the shelves of a newly opened shop in the High Street, "Noah's Alternative Life Styles", were in vain. We, on the other hand, were out to prove Neil's suspicions groundless. We decided there and then that our mission for 1999 would be to quash the rumours that this years full eclipse of the sun would herald the dawning of a new aquatic age for the afore mentioned appendage to North West Wales.
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The Predictions
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The dire predictions were made, in 1961 by Spinny Norman, in 1961 by Spinney Norman, a crotchety old spider crab who shrugged off his mortal coil two years later. You have probably not heard of this revered sage due to his unfortunate and suspicious death coinciding with, and therefore being over shadowed by, the assassination of President John F Kennedy.
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| Spinney Norman claimed that the coming eclipse would bring torrential rain to the peninsula and a lot more besides. |
The rain he forecast, would beat down on the land for a month and a day, washing all the soil into the waiting sea.
It is reputed that Spinney Norman went on to tell, anyone who would listen, that the land would be laid bare and submerged by the rising sea water levels caused by the combined effects of global warming on the polar ice caps and the gravitational pull, focused on the Welsh peninsula, and created by the lining up of all the planets in our solar system. One such listener was Timothy Cockle who told all, just before his tragic and needless death in 1998. His friends say he was, as usual, boring the pants off everyone, with his explanations of the predictions. Timothy insisted they were true since they were made in 1961, a year which even when turned upside down was still 1961. It was only moments after this, they explained to the bored policeman, that at a party on the sands of Porth Ore Timothy was brutally murdered by a gorges female, she produced a sharp pin, impaled Timothy on it's end, dragged him from his shell and ate him.
For more information about this particularly gruesome event see holiday'98
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The Document
Luckily, before their demise, Spinney Norman and Timothy Cockle had agreed that Timothy should illustrate the prediction, and that they should publish it; the result was a vertical paper panel two meters long that could be folded concertina fashion. Spinney Norman's text ran the entire length of the right side, in twelve type faces of different colours, he kept running out of ink. Timothy's visual accompaniment appeared on the left, at times filling gaps left by the prediction's unconventional layout. A syncopated rhythm of arcs, angles and vibrant colours, it counterpointed and complemented the text, presenting, as the authors explained, a "simultaneous contrast" such that the prediction could be seen, at once, as a whole and a sequential set of images.
They only managed to make 62 copies of the predictions, Spinney Norman and Timothy Cockle had planned to publish 150 but working on paper, with non-water proof ink, under the sea, has its problems - it amused them that unfolded, and sellotaped together, their copies could extend to the top of the Eiffel Tower.
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Naturally we do not believe in the predictions, however, quite coincidentally, we are making plans to holiday in the North of Scotland next year and, of course, when the above predictions prove fruitless we will be selling some unusual wall paper, along with a quantity of used timber, if anyone is interested.
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