The Spice Wippitts

We're a bit late posting this week. Sorry. As we keep telling the Madwoman, it's probably due to weakness from lack of food. Anyway, last Saturday we were jollied off to the Open Air Museum to have our heads stuffed with yet more history. As we keep telling everyone, never mind filling our heads, try filling our mouths a bit more often instead please.

We found a historical looking person - clutching tankards and glasses, he was also obviously in search of sustence, so we followed him in hope.

 

This started to look hopeful. This weeks historical re-enactors were apparently on their way to the Spice Islands via Chalfont St Giles. We were less interested in the itinerary than that here were lots of spices, perfect for creating a luscious sucking pig marinade! 



At last we found the kitchen area, and got quite excited when we spotted a fire being started in a  sucking pig size tray, although we couldn't see a spit for it anywhere. Turned out all that effort was simply for boiling water to wash things in. Hmmmph. We are the Spice Wippits and we'll tell you what we want, what we really, really want ...

 

Garden pests

Look what we found in the garden!

Archie did his special 'Get the hedgehog' roar and we both scratched and sniffed furiously at the

scaffold plank leaning against the back fence which it was hiding under.

The Madwoman dragged us away and told us it was very welcome,

and good for the garden.

So are we.

We're always watering plants and things to help out.

And we're very decorative too, of course - and all the year round, unlike flowers.

 

At home with the Tudors

It will come as no great surprise to regular readers of this blog to discover that we were taken off to the Open Air Museum in search of yet more education to fill in any gaps in our now quite extensive historical knowledge. Well, it feels like our heads are stuffed with it. We'd rather have our mouths stuffed with historical sucking pig, and thought that the Tudors at least would be bound to have at least one if not several.                     

 Hmm, no sucking pig here, just a lot of bows and arrows and stuff. The Madwoman got a bit carried away and asked if she could hold one of the swords. They got a bit worried as she started to wave it around, especially when a strange glint appeared in her eye, and they had to virtually wrestle it back off her.

We had to pretend we weren't with her.

.

Aha!

The Tudor kitchen.

Carrots - lots of 'em. We like carrots,

And potage: not sure what that is, but we like porage, which is only one letter different.

And a capon. That's Tudor for chicken: sadly not cooked yet, and

we do prefer ours roasted rather than raw.

We sucked in our sides and looked as thin as possible,

and got lots of sympathetic attention.

Not sympathetic enough to offer us any lunch though.

Not so much as a slice of carrot. 

Off we go again

Guess where we went this weekend?

Yep, the Open Air Museum.

Again.

Still, if anyone is likely to have a roast sucking pig,

surely it'll be the Saxons and Vikings?

We live in hope, so off we went. 

Here's a Saxon lurcher.
If he looks a bit blurry it's because we're a bit scared
of other dogs, so we had our eyes half shut, pretending that
he wasn't really there.

Ah, here we are, the campfire.

What do you mean, there's no sucking pig?
No, we don't want strawberries, thank you, we have plenty of those at home.
As well as a Saxon lurcher, there was a Saxon Staffy and a Saxon Springer Spaniel - no sucking Pug fortunately, as they are REALLY scary the way they snort and snuffle at us.
But enough dogs to make us decide not to check out the Saxon kitchen too closely.

The Madwoman spotted that the scaffolding had gone from around Haddenham cottage, and the blue tarpaulin on the roof: we've watched it grow from its foundations, and she was quite excited to see it nearing completion.

We didn't really have time to take it in - we were too busy keeping a watchful eye on the Saxon dogs.

Just in case. 

Salvete!

"Historia est vitae magistra" announced the Madwoman yesterday.

Apparently this meant that when we got to the Open Air Museum for our usual weekend jaunt we were in for another dose of education,

courtesy of the Romans this time.

We quite like the Romans actually.

The ones in armour tend to clank a bit, but they all come and stroke and admire us.

Here are the ones that clank, attempting to intimidate the audience
with their huge pilums. No-one actually screamed or fainted though.

They tried again, this time waving their swords at us.
We stood our ground.
After all, audaces fortuna invat.

One of them fell over in his enthusiasm to attack the audience.
Of course we didn't laugh.
Well, not much.

It started to rain.
This is supposed to be the famous 'Tortoise' (or Testudo if you're a Roman and therefore can't speak proper English) formation, but we think they hadn't brought any umbrellas and were just trying to keep dry.

This was more like it. This is Sosia at Sosia's kitchen.
She'd brought along some Roman food including an apple and cinnamon cake.
The Madwoman actually shared some with us, and we also snaffled up a slice of apple which fell on the grass and no-one else seemed to want for some reason.
Delicious!

And here the lady demonstrating make-up
flashed her knickers at us.
So now we know what Romans wear under their togas. 

Someone called out that lunch was ready.
Unfortunately, when we got there, they didn't mean us.
It smelled good, too, but no-one offered to share.
Maybe next time. Illegitimi non carborundum!

(Of course we understand Latin. 
We're dogs, so naturally we understand every word you say.)