Wednesday, 29th December, 2004

Fashion sense

Funny, isn't it, how favourite articles of clothing come and go? I mean, one week, I can be absolutely in love with one particular outfit — the next, I can be wearing something else until it falls off my back.

My current favourite little ensemble is the little black shirt I'm wearing in Photo 275, and nothing but underwear on underneath. Thanks to my central heating (that I got fixed last year) I can quite happily wander round the house on a frosty morning like today, in stockings, suspenders and my black shirt with just one button done up across my breasts

An anonymous coward writes:

Are you deliberately trying to be cute?

Course I bloody am

...

I must write up the past few days — I've been spending them with Kath and her family. Just let me get some coffee down my neck first...

Siobhan and Kath's Big Ilkley Moor Adventure

Now then. I'm sure we all know the song...

Well, the pair of us did indeed go on Ilkley Moor without hats. No, we did not catch our death of cold, no-one buried us, the worms did not come and eat us up, nor did ducks eat them (although, I'll come back to the ducks...) and (funnily enough) there was no duck shooting and therefore no-one ended up eating us.

But I digress

This little story starts off with me utterly convinced I had seen a symbol for a stone circle somewhere near Skipton, and a magical-mystery-drive round the area some weeks back looking for the thing (which didn't exist)

Undaunted, I spent a while googling for stone circles in the area, and came across one on Ilkley Moor, not too far from where Kath was spending Christmas. So the pair of us, map in hand, scarves round necks, set off on Monday morning to satisfy my never-ending urge to see stone circles.

We started off at the Cow and Calf hotel at the top of Ilkley Moor — just down from the eponymous stones ( I say "stones" ... they're bloody huge) and scrambled up a little path, round the foot of Pancake Stone

(I think it was Pancake Stone anyway. It's big and flat )

It was (a) very cold, and (b) very icy, so we made our way carefully along a ridge until we hit the Bradford-Ilkley Way — which at that point was covered with duck-boards.

Were these (as I mused) the place where the ducks from the song played football? Or were they relics of the First World War (as stated by Kath), deriving their name from the soldiers 'ducking' behind them in the trenches?

Neither (Sorry Kathie)

So, yeah, along we went, getting colder and colder, until we came to the top of the hill. And there, in a little clearing in the gorse were The Twelve Apostles

Apparently they're about 7,000 years old. As Kath pointed out, they must be pretty narked to have been sat there on top of that hill for all this time, then someone comes along 7,000 years later and labels them with the name "Twelve Apostles" ... "Hello — we were here a lot longer than those guys!"

One or two of the stones look like they're on the verge of falling over Normally, standing stones are embedded deep into the ground (as some of them were) but there were a couple that were just plonked on the surface, held up by little piles of stones. I've seen a few images of them online, and some had fallen over — I think the little piles of stones are modern attempts to preserve them.

Anyway, it was far too cold to spend a lot of time there, so we set off back down. I had a moment of panic when my Zippo stopped working (a Bad Thing™), but I braved the nicotine-less walk back nonetheless. (I am so brave )

I must admit though, that I was confused by the stones. They're part of an extensive amount of prehistoric remains showing that there has been a human presence on the moor for (as I said) the past 7,000 years. I have one question though: If I was a prehistoric transvestite, the last place I'd want to be is on Ilkley Moor. Beautiful place — but bloody cold. I'd have stayed in the valley, carving fake breasts out of mud (or something )

Another thing you get a lot of on the moor is stone carvings. Mostly cup and ring marks. We saw this one, but we weren't sure how ancient it was:

Apparently, there's also a very famous curly swastika on a rock somewhere — made long before the symbol lost its original 'good-luck' meaning and became an awful thing.

The climb down took us past some gorgeous views — which (as insisted by our little map) we dutifully enjoyed. Seriously, the map insisted: "Take time to enjoy the view" — and who are we to argue? There wer also some very steep steps:

Yep. That's Kath Looking cold

At the bottom of the steps was an old Victorian spa house which was really cute There was this oval-shaped well that you were supposed to bathe in. But it looked very cold. The water though was absolutely crystal clear though — and I believe on certain days, people take the plunge.

Weirdos

And from there, we walked back along underneath the Cow and Calf, to the car.

It was lovely — but I wouldn't mind doing it again on a warmer day. Like in Summer maybe

...

I have had a lovely few days over in Yorkshire Kath got me some lovely things for Christmas — not least of which was a set of curling tongs I had a play with them last night, and I can see all sorts of hair-based fun happening over the next few months. My hair isn't long enough yet to do major curling things — but I can make it do little swishes and sweeps off my face

Plus we did pretty well on The Guardian's Christmas Crossword Only got a few to go on it

...

So. Plan for today: Sort things out before New Year I've got a million-squillion red wine bottles to take to the tip, plus a fair bit of hoovering and washing to do. And I want things to be all spick and span before January.

So I guess I'd better get on with it

Davew writes:

err that's not snow on them stones is it? Any more pics of the stones in the camera?

Just this one Dave:

Sorry, it was very cold and my fingers were getting numb