Monday
We’re on holiday in Dorset! It’s so much fun! We went to Kingston Lacy, a big stately home near our caravan park (because we’re staying in a caravan)! At Kingston Lacy that had an exhibition about the previous owner of the house, William Bankes, being gay. In his day, being gay was punishable by death, so William ran away to Venice before he could be caught. He explored the European area and collected odd bits and bobs for his home, which, sadly, he could not see to design because of his exile.
William, after he had explored the area round Venice, ventured down to Egypt and traveled along the River Nile to reach more collections from his home. He also brought a fallen Egyptian obelisk back to his house, positioned on his garden-lawn!
When we went upstairs, a nice lady was demonstrating how thin the corsets were, but she didn’t have anyone to try it on to show everyone. That was when Tilly and I came up, and we tried it on. You all know how slim we are and it was squeezing so hard I thought that the parts where it lay would swell up because they had nowhere to go and bulge up either end! The lady said that women were expected to where eighteen-inch waist ones again almost straight after childbirth!
It was really amazing. At the end, a lady called Bev (who worked for the National Trust) interviewed us about the experience. They asked us because they had an exhibition might have scared some children, with ropes hanging from the ceiling which represented the number of men who had been executed for the crime of being gay, when it was a crime in those days. That’s why William Bankes had to go into exile so he didn’t get arrested and hanged. Mummy said we would be fine and we were, so we were (that I saw) the only children there (though probably because it was a school day). We told Bev what we thought about it and then Tilly pointed out that I could be a columnist in their kids’ National Trust magazine, because I love writing so much! The lady said that it would be great and she would ask about it; I gave her my website and email address and I’m very excited to see if I can!
Now we’re in our caravan. We’ve got a lovely one with quite springy beds but plump duvets and pillows (however we were quite shocked that there were no sheets, so we had to just sleep on the mattress without them). For dinner we had a lovely pea and ham quieche (if that’s how you spell it!) with parsley breadcrumbs! It was deeeeeelicious!
Tuesday
Today we went to Thomas Hardy’s birthplace and what used to be his house, now a stately home named Max Gate. The house was quite small but it was very inspirational, for stories of mine and paintings of Tilly’s. I went around it taking photos on Mummy’s phone of all the mahogany bureaus and marble-brown cabinets and all the other old-fashioned, posh things I could most certainly do with!
We went to his birthplace first, which was very small (a little cottage with teeny-tiny ceilings!) but very cosy and cute. There was a parlour downstairs where Hardy’s mother Jemima would have spent most of her time by the fire, stitching up socks or patching up rag-rugs. There was also the Granny’s kitchen, where Granny would have cooked (you see, she used to have a Granny-house before she passed away, and so she would have made her dinners inside the cottage). Then there was a rickety, uneven staircase to a small, cosy bedroom with a slanted roof that Tilly had to stoop to walk through (!), and a door into another one of those small bedrooms with the teeny-tiny beds and chests. Then there was another door into one last small bedroom, and again, another door went down an even more rickety, steep staircase, so steep that a sign said you had to go backwards because it was so much more safe! The door was locked, however, and the guide-lady said that a poor lady had fallen down the stairs and that they had had to call an ambulance to help her. I hope she’s alright now. It absolutely terrified me, because you could hear her breathing from under one of the those plastic air-masks you can get at the hospital. I hope she’s better!
On the way back down to the car park, we took a route called the ‘Highland Path’, where wild ponies were grazing on site! They were beautiful. Tilly and I named them (in Latin, of course!) so they have lovely names now as well. We called the first one we saw, a black one with a white star on its head, ‘Stella’, which is ‘star’ in Latin. We then called the second one, an enormous, great big white one, ‘Maximus’, because that means ‘biggest’. We then named the next one, another black one, ‘Nox’, which means ‘night’; and the last one, a small white one that came right up close, ‘Luna’, which is ‘moon’. I named Maximus and Nox and Tilly named Stella and Luna.
Then we went to Max Gate, the house Hardy grew up in himself. It was a Victorian one, and it was beautiful! Everything was mahogany and marble and old, and the stairs were all brown-carpeted held down with brass carpet rods. Hardy had a wife and a dog, and that dog was called Wessex. Wessex was known throughout the house, neighbourhood, countryside, and even the newspapers, for he was a very strange dog. The only people he did not bite and attack were Mr and Mrs Hardy, and they thought he was the best pet a man could wish for. Whenever there were visitors, he would cling to them by their teeth and Thomas and his wife wouldn’t say anything! And worse of all, yappy, bad-tempered terrier Wessex was allowed to stand on the table during meals! Guests or no guests! One lady guest wrote that she had to tackle off the dog every forkful of food, because Wessex wanted it, and when he wanted something, he would get it alright!
Lastly, we went to a town called Rochester. We walked round the shops, had a little wander, and then came back to our caravan, ready to watch our science videos with dinner. If you didn’t know, our ‘science videos’ are because in two years we’re taking all three science GCSEs, and we need to train for it of course! We’re very excited!
Wednesday
Today we went for a walk around Weymouth, where our caravan was; the nearest big stately home was an hour away, and we had no hiking boots so we couldn’t go on any kind of hike or walk. We had three hours in the car park, so we walked round the shops and round the beach, and we got some fish and chips! The nice man at the counter said that our fish got snapped in two, so even though we still had a whole fish, just severed in the middle, he gave us another ‘little slice’ of a different fish, which turned out to be a huge new one! The beach was really pretty and sandy, but unfortunately we could not have exactly went in the sea or anything because it was too cold and cloudy. We went into the shoe shops because Mummy wanted some boots for Tilly. We also found that Weymouth has a huge, sandy beach. Unfortunately, we will have to play there on a sunnier, warmer day in the future!
Thursday
On this holiday Mummy says I’ve been ‘very good with nature’, because I have spotted two flocks of geese migrating away in a big turned ‘V’ shape, rather like a big arrow pointing where they were heading; a conquer just about cracking into an acorn; and my very first sighting of a wild owl! It was sitting on a fence-post beside the motor way, and it was looking very ruffled and fluffy, and I spotted it all by myself, and it turned to look at me as our car went past! It was amazing. We went for a lovely walk today in the countryside in Dorset, although Mummy forgot to charge her phone so we don’t have any photos 🙁
Friday
On Friday, we went home from the caravan, but on the way we stopped at Poole, which was quite nearby. It was really fun there; we walked round some shops and even saw private boats anchored by the port! It was amazing – I which I could have my own private boat that we could just take to France or something like that!
Back on our way home again, we drove through the New Forest! We thought we’d be lucky to spot one or two ponies or horses hiding away, but there were LOADS! Most of them were in groups and some were really close to the road – they must be quite tame by seeing so many humans now. They were beautiful! However we flashed past so quickly we didn’t have time to name them all 😉
We stopped in the New Forest, though not to walk through the fields where the horses are because we didn’t have any hiking boots or anything. So we went to a town just five minutes away from the pony-area called Lyndhurst, and walked round there for half an hour or so and had some cake. Then we got back in the car (again!) and drove home.
But it wasn’t so easy as that! We got in the car at three and got home at seven, all because of a car crash and rush-hour! Got into bed and had a niiiice loooong sleeeeep…