Hi-Ho Off To Work We Go

This then, is Day Two of my latest Manx Road Trip with the man called Noah. Already, we have toured the hotspots of Port Erin, Port St Mary, Laxey and Ramsey on our 3-day island tour. Sadly though, our transport is a hired little Nissan Micra and not something a bit more racey or exotic. For example, it would have been nice to travel in convoy in a pair of teeny Peel P50's , especially since Peel is our final destination tomorrow. Sadly, my bulk our budget wouldn't accommodate this.

Talking of 'life in miniature', although it is a bit like Where's Wally, if you look very carefully at today in large, there were actually five different types of gnome for sale in the wonderfully traditional, and eccentric hardware shop called Felton's in Ramsey. Now that is what I call true choice, and who said high street shopping in small towns was dead?

Ironically, just out of view is the precedent of a brand-new Costa Coffee franchise just being fitted-out. Let's hope the Isle of Man can hang onto it's independent shopping experience for a while longer yet.

I wonder by-the-way what the collective noun could be for an assortment of garden gnomes? I was thinking of maybe a 'hi-ho'.

Postscript: The collective expressions of these gnomes reminded me of one of my favourite films Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (thanks to nanou for telling me the film's full title, as I only ever knew it before as 'Amélie'). In the film, Amélie, played by Audrey Tautou, mischievously kidnaps her repressed father's garden gnome at one point, and sends it off with a friend on a 'world tour' to be photographed as a series at various spots around the world. The photos are then periodically posted back to him as unexplained postcards from abroad, which allows her father a chance to dream and escape his sad everyday life. The gnome was then returned and replaced in secret as if nothing had happened. The film has helped kick-off a global Roaming Gnome Prank as well as the Garden Gnome Liberation Front movement.