Straitened Circumstances

I know Olean isn't an affluent town but when even the bollards are feeling the pinch, you've got to worry...

The Gloomiest Day of the Year

 Why? Because the Glorious Twelfth, the start of the British grouse season, always makes me think glumly of approaching autumn. It goes with the Edinburgh Festival and the Queen going to Balmoral and shops selling "back to school" stuff, all of which send icy fingers creeping down my spine. I do not like the thought of winter, especially, a Western New York winter, apart from the ski-ing, perhaps. But hey, let's dwell on the beauties of summer while we still can.
  Yesterday, let' face it, was about as good as it gets. As we sailed out of Buffalo harbour, an array of pretty spinnakers dotted the horizon. The "J" boats from the club down the river were having a race.

And here's one coming home with some Buffalonian landmarks in the background:  on the left, the Ugly Tower and City Hall, to the right, Buffalo's only skyscraper, the HSBC building, which I believe is no longer technically the HSBC building, since HSBC have moved out. So, apparently, have most of the other tenants, leaving it, like a lot of Buffalo's bricks-and-mortar, practically empty.

And more following...

   There are few man made things as graceful as a sailing boat. Which is more than I can say for the moron-driven powerboats which delight in cutting right across our bows, leaving us to bump around like a ping-pong ball in a jacuzzi.   As I recall promising, anyone who does that will be exposed in these pages, so here goes....And this one came seriously close. Where's the sheriff's helicopter when you need it? (That's Canada in the background, incidentally.)

   Before I met hubby, I never gave much thought to the powerboater versus sailor debate. But I have to say that the latter learns rather more about the meaning of life. You have to work at it, fiddling with all those lines and sails to get them right. Things don't always go smoothly. There's a limit to what you can tell the wind and weather to do. You are really a very small cog in the universe and you have to be patient and in tune with nature. Sometimes you're frustrated, have to make compromises, even accept defeat. But when things do go well, there is no more glorious feeling. Sailing is also described by hubby as, "The art of going nowhere, slowly and at great expense."  Powerboaters, on the other hand, just want instant gratification, which can get boring after a while. And even more expensive.

   Now this is quite one of the loveliest boats in the harbour, sadly not ours. A pity about the buildings in the background. Buffalo has not made the most of its lake frontage.

The lookout pooch (spot him?) is a nice touch.

And off she goes, towards the Ugly Tower. Talk about Beauty and the Beast.

Lawnmower Update

* I was right.

Western New York Lawnmower Blues

  There's the thing about coming to live in a quiet, rural neighbourhood. You don't have noise. Or, put correctly, you don't expect noise. In London, I was lulled to sleep by the sound of sirens; here there's a blissful nothing, except the birds and, in warm weather, the gentle hum of insects. Which makes any noise all the more intrusive - and the summer lawnmower menace so much worse.
  We are blessed with few neighbours here - the houses on our country lane are far apart and everyone can have a fair bit of land and privacy for relatively little expense. I enjoy our big, beautiful trees and I've made some modest attempts at gardening.

   Americans, however, have an obsession with smooth, green lawns. Practically every house you see is surrounded by a huge, empty expanse of lawn - often with no fence between it and next door's. How the average Brit would shudder at that.  And often there's hardly a tree or flower to be seen, or even any children scuffing the immaculate surface with a football. I don't know what they have these lawns for except to look at them.
    And mow them. I have a feeling Americans don't mow the lawn because it's there; they put in a lawn so they can mow. And in mowing, make as much din as possible.  Loud lawnmowers, of the rider kind (Heaven forbid they should have to push anything)  are status symbols - the ghetto blasters of the middle classes. One of our neighbours is in possession of the noisiest ride-on mower known to man. And he has an uncanny knack of sensing just when I'm about to pop outside for a little relaxing coffee break. No sooner have I settled myself into the sun lounger - currently unoccupied by the turkey family - than there's an ominous clank and off he goes, the sound amplified a hundred-fold by the echo from the hills behind. Another nearby mower is so loud you can even hear it inside the house with the windows closed and the chap has so much lawn he takes hours over it, going back and forth meticulously in case he misses a blade. How do I just know that, tomorrow, which promises to be the first sunny day for a while and we have guests for lunch and want to sit outside, he is going to be out there and at it.*
   Even people further into town, with very small lawns, have ride-on mowers - the size of the mower often in direct proportion to the girth of its owner. Instead of getting some useful exercise pushing a normal mower, they sit on their ridiculously expensive little tractors, going round in small circles, headphones on, their faces trance-like, almost as though enacting a religious ritual. To me it seems inexplicable, except, as hubby suggests, it may be the only time they can escape to some peace and quiet.

And There's More.....

Cattaraugus County Fair is just the sort of thing I love. Not too big, plenty of history...

Interesting food stalls....

(And whether by accident or design, right next to them..)

 There are wacky rides...

Even wackier rides....

and leftovers from the Demolition Derby... or is it the start of the Demolition Derby?

So even if you only come during the day and miss the Country and Western Concerts, you're really spoilt for choice.

But my second all time favourites are Swifty Swine, the racing piglets, aka "America's best kept racing secret". Here they come...

With names like Brad Pig and Lindsey Loham, out of the starting gates, they're faster than a flying sandwich...

There's a swimming pig too.

 But with apologies to Swifty Swine, my number one all time Fair favourite is..

 Smokey Joe's barbecue, from which billows smoke and the unforgettable scent of the best pulled pork in the world. Pulled pork is something I never encountered in England, though I've heard that it's getting popular in London. It was only a matter of time. It's tender and flaky and soused in delectable sauce.

New York state's biggest fair, the Erie County Fair, up in Hamburg, to the north of us, is about to start but if you ask me, I'd rather have Cattaraugus County Fair any time. I just heard on the radio that Erie County is sadly having to beef up its security, fearing terrorist threats. At least we're unlikely to get that sort of worry around here.

Western NY Meets The Archers*

  It was Cattaraugus County Fair and I was volunteering at the Ag Discovery Stand

Not that I know much about American agriculture but I can hand out stickers and arrange pink plastic pigs in the bran tub (in America, it's a corn tub), with the best of them.  Friday was Miniature Horse Day at our stall.

And here's Cal, with his star, Easter Lilly.

She can play dead, do the steal-the-blanket trick and hop over a few jumps.

But whatever you do, don't call her a pony.

Her friend, Impression, gets a pedi.

There were larger equines too. Watching some of the classes, you'd almost think yourself back in England, if it wasn't for the leather straps they wear just below their knees. Does that date from a time before lycra?

    There were some other differences.. Like the saddle-seat class. I just love that get-up....

Likewise the show-horse class and the ladies' sidesaddle..........

Someone lost a shoe but luckily the ferrier was on hand. Not farrier but ferrier, which perhaps, like many American expressions, is truer to the original word...

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the showground,  there was a use for that extra-large T-shirt.

 And someone else got a last-minute trim...

Mwah mwah

 Wait a minute, am I at the right show?

 Much more to come - including racing piglets and the remains of a demolition derby. Watch this space.

* American readers might not know this but The Archers is a popular radio soap about life in an English village.

Now What's Going on Here?

Much more on the high spot of the Cattaraugus County year after the weekend.........