grandmas

Monday, November 7, 2016

Witch tree?

The guy driving the little train through Kew Gardens in London didn't know which tree is the tree used in the Harry Potter movies as the whomping willow.
He just knows it was one of the massive trees in the area.
Too many branches
I supposed the Kew Gardens people felt if they identified the tree, the Gardens would be overrun by Potter groupies looking to take a selfie by the famous tree taken to slamming anyone who came too close.
So Marc and I just tried to guess and take photos of the most likely candidates.
A couple of problems arose: there are LOTS of trees in the gardens that have big, twisted trunks and several that look just like what I can remember from the movies.
The other problem is that the tree changes from movie to movie.
Sometimes it has big, clubby branches that it flings around trying to keep snoopy kids away.
Other times it's dark and still.
It's always a really big tree with dark bark.
Here's a few that I think qualify to be the one:
Too plump at the bottom


Too gnarly

Is this it? I like this one.
You tell me.

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Lost in London

How hard can it be to find somebody here?
We thought we were doing a good deed when Marc and I offered to find one of the women on our tour when she went missing.
We were all at the British Library looking at the Magna Carta and other valuable pieces of written history when those in charge noticed that Susie was not there.
Susie was one of the 38 people on our "Traditions of Christ in Ancient Britain" bus tour and somehow she hadn't made it over to the library from the British Museum.
Because Marc and I are somewhat familiar with London and the tube and the buses, I volunteered us to help find Susie.
We hadn't been with the bunch for the British Museum stop (we'd been at church) but we knew where it was and we know roughly how it's laid out.
The tour director gratefully said she'd let us go look for Susie. (She was so worried she was willing to accept any offers!)
Off we went.
It wasn't until we got into the museum that I realized I didn't have some vital information and resources.
For instance, we hadn't changed our phones to work in Europe. We didn't want to pay roaming or data fees so we were depending on Marc's iPad for basic needs on this trip.
If we found Susie we couldn't call to tell the director that.
If we didn't find Susie we couldn't relay that information either. We really wouldn't be able to do much.
It also dawned on me that finding a little old lady in a crowded museum on a Sunday afternoon wouldn't be easy, especially since we weren't with her that morning to notice things like what she was wearing at the time of departure.
As I tried to describe Susie to the security guards and the lady at the information desk, I realized I didn't even know Susie's last name.
"She's about 80 with white hair. She's thin, very thin and tall," I said and looked around to see about 100 thin, old ladies go by with white hair.
The information desk lady told us to sit down nearby and watch for Susie.
She called docents to scan the galleries. Had they noticed a little old lady looking lost?
Our selfless effort was fairly fruitless and it wasn't because of us that Susie showed up later that day, escorted home by a Londoner who found her at the library about an hour after the tour group left.
Susie wasn't worried.
She'd just walked over from the museum to the library once she figured out she'd been left behind.
She seemed pretty sure that all would end well.
I'm glad she's all right.
I'm happy she is safe and we did the right thing to try and help.
I'm just thinking maybe in the future, I ought to get it a bit more together before I go charging ahead!