Up Front

Our good friend Evelyn (pictured here) took us for lunch today to say goodbye before we move house on 23 July.  We chose the Up Front restaurant at Unthank near Penrith (not the Unthank near Dalston, nor the Unthank near Gamblesby).  John Parkinson, who owns and runs the place with his wife, is a sculptor and puppet-master, and has a well-known puppet theatre at the same venue. I believe he makes all his own puppets.  When the shows have finished their run he displays the puppets in the gallery adjacent to the restaurant.

For anyone who knows the statue of a Border Reiver that stands alongside Scotland Road in Carlisle - John Parkinson made it.  (pictured here) Also the fugures for the nativity scene that is on display in Hesket Newmarket village each Christmas (and which has lived for the rest of the time inside my barn for the last eighteen years.)