A Smashing Day

I arranged a mini-blipmeet today at Waddesdon Manor with bucksmiss and JohnH1989.  Although they've been following each other's journals for over a year, and only live a few miles apart, they hadn't met in person until today.  And what a day we had for our get-together - blue skies and endless sunshine.  We enjoyed a lovely wander through the aviary, where a mother implored her little boy not to get wet by the ornate fountain (see extra photo), and we saw and heard some exotic and colourful birds.  One was named the Rothschild's Mynah after the family who built Waddesdon Manor.  I thought it might have been more entertaining to call it the Waddesdon Mynah.  My favourite was the Asian Fairy Bluebird.

We saw a great deal of very expensive porcelain inside the house itself, most of it very old - but the magnificent explosive crockery chandelier in my blipfoto was created in 1994 by German designer Ingo Maurer for the current Lord Rothschild to hang in the dining room.  It's called "Porca Miseria" (an Italian phrase roughly equating to "bloody hell"), and a similar one auctioned at Christie's in 2008 fetched over £37,000.

A smashing day indeed, spent in great company.