So, I’ve been writing this progressively since the last
entry but didn’t ever reach a stage where it was worth publishing, as such it
might be a bit all over the place but you’ll have to forgive me on that front I’m
afraid. So here’s the mammoth holiday entry…
I’ll start off with a brief summary of the last week in
Kenya on the work front, the building’s now shooting up, concrete pillars and
single skin block walls are a lot quicker than amateur piping and reinforced
floors, here’s the last picture I took:
Last I heard we had 30 odd seahorses, mostly still H. histrix but there are a few H. capensis in there, which is nice. The
day after I left we had another batch of young born, so fingers crossed that
the low flow tank might do the trick for them, especially now we’ve got a better
source of artemia eggs. [Edit: This
was written quite some time ago, and as I’d expected there wasn’t much in the
way of success]
The main event of the last week, however, was the pantomime.
On the Monday what was meant to be a dress rehearsal turned into pretty much
the first performance. One of the girls in the cast runs a local school for
learning disabled kids, as far as I’d gathered a few of the more able kids were
going to come along to watch the dress rehearsal, somewhere along the way though
some wires got crossed and about 40 odd kids turned up with their parents. I
felt pretty sorry for them to be honest, even had they not been learning
disabled none of them would have had a clue how to react to a pantomime,
language barrier notwithstanding I’m struggling to think of anything more
British than a panto. In the end it was pretty good really, as after that any
audience that even slightly responded seemed amazing!
The rest of the performances went really well (I thought so
at least, the beers before and during the play may well have helped) and seemed
to go down pretty well with the audiences. Despite (or possibly because of, but
we won’t go into that) the most ridiculous costume and make up I had a really
good time being involved with the whole thing, and met a great bunch of people
as well. I’m still a bit confused about how I managed to turn a taxiing job
into a leading role, but I’m pretty glad I did!
For those who are keen to see what I looked like the whole
thing was filmed, so once I get hold of a copy I’ll sort out a way for you to
see it.
So, post final night after party and ensuing lack of
hangover (which I was pretty surprised by) I hopped on a plane back to Blighty,
the trip was pretty painless really, nothing actually ran on time but it was
all fine and the whole thing only took 22 hours door to door, which could be a
whole lot worse. I was shattered though! It was great to see mum and dad and my
grandparents, as well as Maddie who made the trip from Soton on the Sunday. The
climate’s been a bit of a shock, but it’s definitely a relief not to be
sweating all the time!
I was in Dublin for about a week to see Kealan Doyle, a chap
who works with the Seahorse Trust
and has been working with seahorses for a good long time. He’s currently
running a pretty excellent aquarium shop, Seahorse Aquariums, but
they’ve got a small breeding project running alongside that which he was kind
enough to let me poke around. We also had some really interesting, useful and
scary conversations about the pitfalls we’ll almost certainly be encountering
along the way.
After a few days on my own in Dublin when I tried to fit
around Kealan’s pretty busy schedule Maddie hopped on a plane to join me for
the weekend (for those of you who don’t know Maddie’s my girlfriend, and has
been pretty incredible over the last few months). We had a cracking few days
wandering around the city being incredibly touristy and eating way too much (including
the world’s biggest enchilada which
Maddie couldn’t quite finish). Dublin was, as I was expecting, pretty
expensive, but it was a pretty good week there, both on the job front and the
long overdue catch up with Maddie front.
From Dublin I went to stay in Southampton for a week in
order to do a few bits of research. As well as returning to student housing I
also had a reintroduction to student drinking as I joined my old rugby team on
a night out as a ‘surprise’ guest, it (predictably) ended up with a pretty
nasty hangover but it was good to see the lads again, I definitely miss being
able to play the game. The end of that week marked the start of proper holiday
time, and Maddie and I made the journey to her parents house, near Northampton.
We spent the week getting ready for Christmas in a very
inefficient manner and just generally relaxing, although Maddie managed to
squeeze in a fair bit of revision. We joined Maddie’s sister Jenna and her boyfriend
on a day trip to London to see the Wildlife
Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum, there
were some amazing pictures on show, it’s well worth a visit, (or at least a
google search!). After that we went ice skating just outside the museum which
was pretty atmospheric and, as far I was concerned, successful as I managed to
stay upright throughout.
Christmas Eve is Maddie’s family’s big day of the holiday,
we went to see Bath lose to Northampton at the rugby and then 2 other families
descended on the Brasier household for a far too massive meal, we all ate so
much that the walk to the pub after was a struggle!
On Christmas day we enjoyed the morning with Maddie’s family
and then drove down to Devon, Christmas day driving is the way forward, there
were hardly any cars on the road at all. As I’d only managed one night at home
since August it was really good to be home, especially as Richard (my dad’s
brother) and his family were also there. Christmas dinner had been suspended
until Boxing Day because of our late arrival so we spend the rest of the day
opening presents and just generally enjoying the day, which continued for the
next couple of days.
On the 28th we (mum, dad, sister, Maddie and I)
joined my grandparents and Penny’s family in London for my grandparents wedding
anniversary. We went to see the new Matilda
musical, which was absolutely incredible, and had a really nice meal. The next day we spent the morning in the British museum and then headed back to Devon, it was a great way to finish off Christmas.
The next big event was New Year, which, for the Shakspeare
family, generally involves a trip to Bristol to join a massive gang of family
friends. This year the theme was ‘films’ which led to some pretty interesting costumes,
I found a stuffed Rambo costume for relatively cheap and went around looking
stupid all night. Midnight was spent on the Clifton Suspension Bridge, from
which you can see a good deal of the firework displays of Bristol, it’s a great
place to see the new year in.
Once we’d all been restored by a fry up in the morning we
embarked on a pub crawl, most of us dressed in, the frankly ridiculous, Kigu costumes. Wandering around Bristol
on New Years day dressed as a menagerie of different animals definitely gets
you a few interesting looks!
That night was a black tie meal, dad did a
brilliant job of making a roast for 30 odd people, but did manage to drink
rather too much in the process which led to a pretty amusing night for the rest
of us.
Post New Year I had a week at home to sort some stuff out
and spend some chill out time with mum, dad and Maddie. I said good bye to
Maddie on the Friday, which was not much fun, finished packing and then got on
a train Saturday lunch time. Leaving home was hard this time round, it was a
really lovely Christmas break, but the journey was pretty painless (despite a
complete lack of sleep on the overnight flight), I even managed to get an hour
earlier flight from Nairobi to Mombasa than planned.
Yesterday was spent in a daze of tiredness and an early
night, and then I returned to work this morning. The builidng’s shot up and
there are still plenty of seahorses left, but we’re still a long way off where
I would have expected to be by this time if you’d asked me last September, I guess
that’s how things go though.
I guess that’s the lot, sorry it’s all been a bit waffley and
self-indulgent, I’ll return to the interesting stuff this weekend hopefully!
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