Civilised!

Mary and Helen are civilised! We had an absolutely blissful day on the 8th of August. Our talented and generous friend Niall captured the day beautifully in photographs, and we'd love to share them with you here.


We've created a Flickr group called civilisation080808, and we would absolutely love it if those of you who have photos of the day could add them to the group there! If you are not on or don't like Flickr, it would be wonderful if you could mail us any particularly hilarious
or touching photos.

We'd like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support, good wishes, messages, generous presents, and for contributing to make our day so wonderful, whether in person or from afar.

Picnic, 9 August

Dear All

As some of you are aware, we're going to be staying in York the weekend after the ceremony and hope to see some of you. On Saturday, we're planning a picnic at Rowntree Park () to which anyone who is staying in York on Saturday is invited. The 10-day forecast is currently saying 20 degrees and intermittent sunshine, which sounds promising! We are aiming to be down at the park by about half-past twelve, armed with some provisions. We'll probably pick up a couple of bottles of wine, beer, soft drinks, bread and things to put on it, crisps, fruit and plastic cutlery, plates and cups. However, we aren't going to try and cater it fully, so if you would like to bring something edible or drinkable along as well, that would be very welcome.

We will have one or two blankets, but please do bring more if you have them. (We also aspire to coolbags/icepacks, but that's probably not possible.) This is all going to be very casual, so please feel free to just drop down to the park if you have time, chat to us for a bit, have a wander around and then wander off again. Do also feel free to bring frisbees, kites and so on.

Look forward to seeing you next week!


Good places to buy food:

Sainsburys, Foss Bank (map)

M&S, Parliament Street (map)

York Market, behind M&S, between Parliament Street and the Shambles
(There is also a great delicatessen just by the market, which wins many awards and does particularly fine pork pies! And I say that as someone who is generally disturbed and disgusted by pork pies...)

Betty's Tea Shop, St Helen's Square (map)

the Yorkshire Brewery Shop and Little Bettys, on Stonegate (map)

There is a also Cornish Pasty shop on Coney Street - but I have no idea whether or not this is dire! There are also off-licences on Church Street (Threshers, I think - I'm doing this from memory!) and a slightly nicer one on Picadilly. There are also various other convenience stores, supermarkets, bakers &c dotted around the centre of York, and car-accessible ones outside the city centre.

If there is anything particular you would like to find that I haven't thought of, ask me or one of the York residents for suggestions on Friday night!