Oi \ˈȯi\ interjection. Used to attract attention or to express exasperation or dismay. Almost exactly like American hey.

Scarper \ˈskär-pər\ intransitive verb. Flee, run away.

Spice \ˈspīs\ noun. Derbyshire for sweets (British for candy).

Plashy \ˈpla-shē\ adjective. Like splashy, but different: “Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole…” (Evelyn Waugh, Scoop)

Faff \ˈfaf\ verb, noun. Ineffectual activity and/or its results: one who faffs around producing faff is known as a faffer. Similar to American futz.

Bonus Office Learnings:
Nottinghamshire’s three meals are breakfast, dinner, and tea.
The train was meant to arrive on time (rather than supposed to).
“Send it me sharpish” = “Send it to me quickly/soon”.

Kevin had a rough couple of weeks there, in which he mysteriously lost every single one of his tail feathers. But now they are growing back in at a remarkable rate.

We didn’t see Kevinita for an entire month before she returned with four chicks who wouldn’t listen to a thing she said. Teenagers!

The rock garden from afar. Huge piles of limestone, probably, brought in and artfully arranged.

The Emperor Fountain (named in honor of Czar Nicholas I and his promised but unfulfilled visit), at full power the highest gravity-fed fountain (296 feet) in the world. Usually run at half height.

Lupins at the entrance to the maze, on the former site of the the Great Conservatory.

Woven sculpture by Laura Ellen Bacon.

An “honesty patch,” left to show how things looked before they cleaned and restored the murals.

An urn of Derbyshire Blue John, a fluorite found only in the Peak District. It usually doesn’t come in pieces this big.

There, there, little dog.

Cast-iron stairs cantilevered from the wall.

Chandelier featuring stags, one of the symbols of the Duke of Devonshire.

Bourton-on-the-Water. This particular body of water is so shallow, the ducks are actually standing on the bottom. Lazy ducks.

Old and fancy pub in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Mosaic of some dude in Stratford.

Bits of Christ Church College.

The Meadow Building, Christ Church.

Alice’s Shop—the shop that inspired the Old Sheep Shop in Through the Looking- Glass. Now it sells ridiculously overpriced Alice memorabilia.

This is an image from a “save the world and all the baby bunnies!” exhibit they had scattered around the town centre. The subject is the greater mouse-eared bat, distinguished for being the very rarest of British bats; a single one lives all by himself in an undisclosed southern location. Stephan likes to tell me that he spends all his time hanging upside down in his cave crying little bat tears: “Why? Why?“

Of arguably more interest:

A view.

Bath station (our hotel on the left).

Bath Abbey door.

Theatre Royal, Bath.

Inside, waiting for The Pitmen Painters to begin.

A portion built by George IV. “G” for George, “R” for rex (Latin for king), “IIIJ” for The Fourth—the “J” is just an “I” with a tail acting as punctuation so no one could come along later and add another one.

St George’s Chapel, a fine example of English Perpendicular Gothic architecture.

Market Cross House, circa 1718, alongside Windsor’s Queen Charlotte Street, officially the shortest street in Britain (51 feet, 10 inches).

Fancy Victorian postbox in Windsor. No word on why this one is green instead of red, like normal.

Hampton Court Palace was built in the early 16th century (note to Stephan: 1500s) by Cardinal Wolsey, who “gave” it to Henry VIII when he began to fall out of the king’s favor. For the next 230 years, assorted monarchs lived there and ripped some old things out and put some new things in. Now it’s just real pretty and stuffed full of tourists. Like us! (50 percent of our intrepid party in the bottom right there):

A 16th-century astronomical clock that displays “the time of day, the phases of the moon, the month, the quarter of the year, the date, the sun and star sign, and high water at London Bridge.” Or so says Wikipedia:

The very worst part: historical reenactment. I had to skip part of the tour and come back later because Henry VIII and one of his many queens were standing around waiting to engage me in their nefarious charade:

One of the highlights is the massive kitchen. It was built across the palace complex from the most important parts so they wouldn’t be threatened if the kitchen caught fire. And it only employed men because they commanded a higher wage, so an all-male staff was a sign of prestige. The interior of the main kitchen, showing signs of past renovations:

The medieval rich ate a ridiculous amount of meat—something like 75% of their diet—and this is one of the large spit fireplaces in which it was cooked:

Besides the basics (cows, sheep, deer, and pigs) in general, it was the more exotic, the better:

And then we saw things on the outside. This bit was built for William and Mary by Christopher Wren (the bloke who designed St Paul’s Cathedral, among many other buildings):

The older, Tudor part. This was just about the time the chimney were invented—until this point, smoke from open fires escaped through the odd hole in the roof. So people were very excited about chimneys and built them into rooflines like there was no tomorrow:

A red dragon (symbol of Wales) decorating a recreated Tudor garden: