She's a witch!

Another busy day out at Chiltern Open Air Museum - Tuesday's are jam packed with things to do.
Although not all are suitable for wippitts.
Take this scarecrow sitting in the stocks for example ...

...apparently we are supposed to throw wet sponges at him. Excuse me? Have you ever tried throwing a wet sponge with paws?                     Anyway, what's he ever done to us?              

 

Here we are visiting the spinning woman ... spinning yarn, rather than actually spinning herself, which rather disappointed us. We were hoping for a whirling dervish. But we did learn the truth behind the story of Sleeping Beauty ... so we are keeping our paws well away from pointy spindles and don't even think of offering us any ergot. We sleep perfectly well without it thank you! And certainly wouldn't want to hibernate over Christmas, missing our dinner and prezzies ...

Here we found a scientific experiment in progress into whether there is any truth in Parkinson's Law.

We checked in again on the way back.

Yes, it's absolutely true.

(Incidentally, the sloping appearance of the house isn't due to subsidence,

just yet another example of the Madwoman's complete ineptitude with a camera)

At last! Our opportunity to shout 'She's a witch! Burn her!'

Although it was more the sort of weather to shout

'Throw another witch on the barbie!'

Thinking of which made us realise it was long past our lunchtime ...

 

On trial

We went to a trial at the weekend!

It was a Tudor court, holding three sessions each day at

the Chiltern Open Air Museum.

We put on our special smart Tudor pattern collars and

headed on down to the barn where proceedings were already in full flow ...

 

The Madwoman was a bit slow off the mark getting organised to go out,

so by the time we arrived it was standing room only.

The Madwoman refused to pick us up so we could see,

so we had to make do with peeking between their legs instead.

At the end we were all asked to vote, with a show of hands.

Very wippitist, we thought: no mention of a show of paws.

So we shouted 'She's a witch! Burn her!' instead and then ran away.

 

Boo!

We went on the Halloween walk at the Chiltern Open Air Museum last Friday - we always go during the afternoon rather than when it is dark, with the trail lit by candles and pumpkin heads. We think the Madwoman is worried it might be a bit too scary for us, but we think this is just an excuse and it's really the other way round. First up was this spooky spook in one of the barns - it fluttered and made eerie rustly sounds as the breeze caught it.

Then we found this pair out in the woods. Careful, you could have someone's eye out with that. Oh, you already have. Your own ...

And then there were the huge bats overhead everywhere ...

We tracked down three of the COAM witches responsible for some of this. You can tell they are witches because they are weraring pointy hats. It's a sure sign of a witch.

 

Hmmm ... two scarecrows evidently got a bit careless playing round the harrow.
Should have stuck to scaring crows.

 More bats ... Good thing we like bats. The Madwoman watches them flittering about in the back garden in summer.

Not so keen on these though. A monster spider crawling out of the dunny.  Personally we prefer to use the huge bathroom that is the great outdoors. Although you do need to be careful about nettles and thistles. Long wet grass or deep snow isn't good either. But at least there's no risk of a bite on the bum from a spider!

Another toilet ... with a mummy sitting on it. If there's a nationwide shortage of toilet paper this year, you'll know who to hold responsible ...


Seeing stars

And not a single person asked us for a pawtograph!

We went for a stroll round the Open Air Museum this afternoon: Horrible Histories were busy filming there. We watched for a while as witches, soldiers and kings wandered around and rehearsed a bit, whilst pursued by a flock of film crew people: it would appear that for every actor there are at least 6 other people - that's the ratio we counted here but no doubt there are more as there were hordes of others in the carpark.
We quickly got bored but had to wait to set off down the track towards our car until they'd finished dragging a portaloo along it, leaving it in place next to the field they were filming in. When we passed it there was a sign hanging on the door saying 'Out of order'. So what was the point of going to all that bother? Especially as there is a much nicer permanent toilet block right next to the field anyway ...
The whole thing is a mystery to us. Not that we ever use them ourselves you understand: the seats are poorly designed for wippitts, and far too high. No, we make do with a bit of grass (watch out for nettles) or discreetly behind a tree if one is conveniently handy. Of course, you do need to take a human with you to pick up the more ... solid ... offerings.