This is who I met when I went to Warwick Castle to seek my fortune

This is a character I met when I went to Warwick Castle on Saturday. I would have posted it before, but it took a long time to walk from Warwick with my worldly belongings tied up in a spotted handkerchief on a stick, slung over my shoulder. Anyway, you see the perplexed looking kids in the background? He was watching one of them make a call on a mobile phone, and was asking them what the strange instrument was, and whether it was magic that meant they could use it to talk to people a long way away ...

So after a couple of minutes of this, I asked him if I could use my magic lantern box, which was powered by imps and fairies, and that if I pressed this magic button it would form his likeness! 'My LIKENESS!' He was intrigued now. I reassured him that it wouldn't steal his soul, and that if it did I'd give it back immediately. After looking a bit doubtful, he said he'd trust me. I subsequently showed him the picture on my camera, and he said that it looked a bit small. I reassured him that it was because he had been magically transmuted by the imps and fairies, and that this was nothing to worry about. I left him shaking his head at all the magical things he keeps seeing around him.

He was actually right, though, as he was much bigger than the picture of him.


Then I went up the tower and ramparts. Then I remembered that I don't like Heights. Or Enclosed Spaces. Or either of the Above in the Dark. Or Uneven Spiral Staircases. And it's also a one way system to cope with the number of visitors they have there, so you can't get halfway up a staircase, change your mind and come back down again. I did manage to take this rather tipsy photo from one of the ramparts, but other than that I just escaped as soon as possible, leaving much of this august edifice unexplored.

And then, safely back on terra firma (good old terra!) I sat down to do some drawing, and then ... the heavens they did open, and aqueous torrents streamed earthwards, and landed on me. Lightning flashed, the thunder crashed. Somewhere a wolf howled. (Or was it those Italian tourists who looked like football fans?) Unearthly charges rampaged in the firmament. I duly escaped back to the Warwick Folk Festival from whence I had come, by this time so wet that I really didn't care any more, and left my own personal rain puddles everywhere I stood.

So - Warwick Castle - you can't beat the place for a really DIFFERENT sort of day out ...