Porkus Pieus

Guess what arrived in the post this morning - a box of 4 pork pies from Blasau - so some went in the freezer and 1 was kept for CM's lunch together with a Jamie Oliver Mothership Tomato Salad with red, yellow, black, plum and baby tomatoes and tomatillos from the greenhouse.
Worked on organising the next Piper trip and editing stained glass films to show Patrick Reyntiens (which should be in the Piper blog I guess!)

Found missing

Immediately after breakfast we rushed round to Blasau for CM's pork pie, but the delivery hadn't arrived, so we packed the bags, packed the car, and returned - still no pies. We then checked out of the hotel and drove past the deli - but still no pies! :-(
Apart from being stuck behind an Eddie Stobart lorry all the way from Machynlleth to Shrewsbury, an uneventful journey back to Film Farm, where Charles again worked on the Aidan Dun DVD whilst Libby caught up on emails.

A Piper interlude

Another early run along the beach which probably won't do my hip much good but it's just so beautiful and the air is so fresh. Charles highly delighted at breakfast by discovering a cereal named JUST RIGHT (which of course he is all the time). Libby saw some innocuous looking olives in Newton Street which she couldn't resist (she's an olive freak) which transpired to be THE most expensive olives EVER @ £1.25 per olive! YIKES! Having pulled herself together we then drove through some wonderful Welsh countryside getting general panoramas for the Piper film.
And we still had time left in the day to visit the Centre for Alternative Technology near Macynlleth which was hugely disappointing - we both anticipated leaving feeling truly inspired - but it's all geared at children, half the exhibits didn't work, the gardens and polytunnels were not well tended - just an air of neglect where one would have expected youthful enthusiasm and technological advances. Libby deemed the wooden seat with coins between the slots worthy of a brief R&R though.

Called in at the Blasau deli in Machynlleth run by Edward Hammond to check they'd have pork pies for CM's lunch tomorrow (see http://piperpapers.blogspot.com 10 July 2008).
Good evening meal at the Wynnstay Hotel c/o Chef Gareth (no relation) although CM had been hoping the wood fired pizza oven would be operational.

Gareth

I couldn't resist a run along the beach this morning - and it was joyful, so clean, fabulous rock formations, seaweed strewn as if by hand evenly across the rolling outcrops and between rockpools. After a stroll down Mumbles pier and along Newton Street we drive to Carmarthen area to film Gareth, and Charles has already spotted his lunch - a fish and chip shop by the name of Dick Barton - unfortunately we drove past before it opened so much grumps from himself.

Gareth has produced a truly beautiful sensitive cartoon from the scruffy photocopy I sent him of Girl with a Bowl, and has made a great start on cutting and putting together the glass pieces. We filmed him drawing on the cartoon and then he did his 'here's one I made earlier' routine, and also explained about different sorts of glass, colour balance, lead calmes - all highly successful. I'm hugely excited about my Bing/Tiffany/Brangwyn panel! The next episode will be sometime January 2009. Photos show work in progress.

Dick Barton was open on the return journey so CM INSISTED on stopping, buying a bag of chips, and being photographed with same. Unfortunately he was SO excited by the quality of the produce that he wouldn't stay still, which explains the slight blur (that's my story and I'm sticking to it). Actually, I'm not a chip lover by any stretch of the imagination, but have to admit they were truly scrummy - in fact I ate 2!

Superb evening meal in the hotel.

Andrea

Since all the filming we'll be doing this week is indoors, the weather promises to be glorious. An uneventful drive down to Clevedon - I don't think Charles made more than a couple of navigational errors - apart from the horrendous hold up on the Avon bridge where they appeared to be putting down a red carpet - presumably prior to some dignitary's arrival. This delayed us by something like 1/2 hour which was a shame because Andrea had kindly fitted us in between the various piano and languages lessons she gives. Anyway we needn't have worried about time because Andrea didn't need any prompting whatsoever - she was brilliant, a natural, chattering merrily away, some tinkling of the piano, all delivered with a cheery smile and much hilarity - watch out for the dong with the luminous nose.
Having already had sandwiches for elevenses and a pork pie for lunch, Charles' appetite was assuaged by Andrea's lovely fruit cake (getting up at 7.30 does CM's constitution no good at all).
Thence a drive down to Langland, staying at Little Langland, a beautifully appointed small hotel near the coast. We walked along the beach to Langland's Brasserie for a meal and actually sat outdoors, the weather was so balmy - what bliss.

Film Farm

Arrived at Film Farm to find Charles deep in the midst of editing his recording of the King's Cross poet Aidan Dun (with one N) which was required urgently. We watched it together, had a discussion, then he squirreled away again completing same until about 9pm - so a late evening meal - and we've got to leave at 9am tomorrow to drive to Clevedon to interview Andrea Argent - who you will recall is leader of the most wonderful Miscellany who sang for us last autumn (see entry 18 November 2007). We want to get her take on the difficulties of performing Mike's music as a companion piece to Mike's interview.

glass faces

The final piece of the jigsaw hopefully - a quick dash to Castle Loppem just outside Bruges to examine 3 faces of saints painted on glass which relate to the saints depicted in the Chapter Hall of St Andrei's Abbey, Zevenkerken (also just round the corner so to speak). Unfortunately one of the faces was broken, anyway we did our level best to photograph them against the light without too much of my hands showing and without dropping them. Castle itself designed by Jean-Baptiste de Bethune who was a chum of Frank's dad, but we thought it was rather an ugly pile.
En route back to England for some Piper filming we had to stop at City Europe of course to enable Charles to stock up on wines, mayonnaise, mustard and pate - and buy something for a late lunch - which turned out to be the largest crevettes we have EVER seen!