Thus, Billy Connolly's 'Route 66' series, which a good friend sent me recently, was a real godsend over Christmas:
Ended up watching Connolly's journey on the old (and often underused) Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles twice over. Along the way, Connolly meets a host of fascinating abeit 'different' characters, including a couple of guys who worked on the American (World War II) atom bomb and some female rodeo stars. However, for me, its the 'real eccentrics' who steal the show, such as the long white-bearded Elmer who builds trees made from old bottles which he finds through travelling away from home at the weekend to do digs. While Elmer does each dig, his wife quite simply reads a book in the car.
Besides, Connolly's 'Route 66', I also found some Christmas relaxation through taking my wife's parents' pet golden retriever, Mieszek', for walks on the farmland beyond their barn. The pictures below show Mieszek around the barn and back garden of my wife's parents' farmstead:
After the barn, the first stop for Mieszek on his walk out is the small apple orchard, after which there is the open farmland and a small Christmas Tree plantation:
In particular, it is always the Christmas Tree plantation that interests an inquisitive Mieszek:
As I passed the end of the Christmas Tree plantation, in the distance, I saw the object of Mieszek's interest: a couple of fine deer. Of course, poor Mieszek was nowhere near fast enough to catch them, but he enjoyed the chase and exercise, anyway. Sadly, never had a camera on me with a decent zoom lens, so it was impossible to get a shot of the deer in the distance.
