Afternoon in Picton Castle gardens

We have taken a break from unpacking the contents of both Brian's houses and putting them into the cottage this afternoon. We did extremely well yesterday and the kitchen is now pretty ship shape, today we unpacked the clothes and did the bathroom, so the main things left to do are all the paperwork boxes, music scores, and connecting tv and hi fi. However as the aerial man won't be here till next week at the earliest there is no great rush for that.

So we took this sunny afternoon off and went to Picton Castle. I wanted to see the rhododendrons in flower, and although they were past their best, there were still enough of them out to make quite a spectacular show.
Here are some lovely red ones
This is taken from the inside of a bower made of woven (willow maybe?) like a little round tent.
More lovely flowers.

The top picture is Brian sitting beside the pond in the walled garden. It was really lovely. We had a very nice tea with carrot cake (me) and raspberry and coconut slice (Brian).

Tomorrow we will need to do more work, but today was very relaxing.

As you can tell perhaps, we have also got Brian's broadband connection up and running. This is a very good thing.

Wales May 2010

Hot sunny weekend

Boo and Trev came down this weekend. We had tickets to go see the Strictly Come Dancing Professionals show on the Saturday night, which we did, and it was brilliant. However the star of the weekend was the weather! It was fabulous. We had heat and sunshine all weekend. Here we are on the Sunday walking along the coast path towards the lighthouse.
However the other star of the weekend is Miss Muffet. Nic's friend Chloe had a Welsh pony mare who had to be put down on Wednesday and who left behind a 2 day old foal. Here is Miss Muffet taken on Saturday when she was 5 days old. Chloe is having to bottle feed her every 2 hours at the moment which is asking a lot of anyone. Luckily she lives on a farm so they have the space, but she also has 3 boys under 6 so is busy at the best of time. They are trying to teach her to drink from a bucket because it would be better not to be hand reared by people. She needs to know she is a horse. Although Chloe has another pony mare with a month old foal the little one is so young that they are too nervous to put her with them until she is older. So Chloe, Nic and Keely have gone off to see if they can get a small donkey to be a companion for her, because apparently donkeys are less likely to kick or bite.
Here she is again - unbelievably cute and so beautiful.
Here are Boo and Trev on Llantwit beach enjoying an ice lolly.

We also had a barbeque because this may be the only weekend we can do so.

It has been like a little holiday this weekend, absolutely wonderful.

Adventures near and afar

This weekend we went to Southampton to visit Kieran and Alice and we decided to go for a bluebell walk in the New Forest. I suspect that Mike would argue that it is neither new nor a forest. However it was new 900 years ago when it was created by William I and there is common grazing hence the heathland - but there are also wooded bits. What it doesn't have is many bluebells or waymarks on it's walks We were following a walk from a book, which is usually very reliable. It did warn us that it might be boggy but we thought that we'd be OK as it has been a dry spring. The walk started well as we encountered wild ponies and highland cows(!) on the common. Then when we entered the woods the path was blocked by a fallen tree. So we diverted out of the woods onto a clearing. We realised that it might be a bit muddy here as the ponies were up to their knees (or whatever that joint is called in a horse) in mud. Also the path was very unclear.The going was incredibly hard work. The woods were now behind a wire fence and Kieran suggested that the path actually should be on the wood side of the fence. We weren't all convinced but it was much drier that side so we all climbed over or scrambled under the fence. However after a while we saw a sign which informed us we were in a reserve for red deer and we realised we should be on the other side. So we all clambered or crawled under or over the fence again. We all saw a herd of red deer apart from Trev who was in mid clamber. We made progress using fallen trees as bridges without disappearing too deeply into the bog and then we found the path again. Hurray! After a while we came upon a field that was in the instructions. We had to walk miles around it to find a way over the brook that wasn't mentioned in the instruction. Then we saw a gate. We decided that this must definitely be the stile in the instructions and clambered over it. We came across a gravel path which seemed right. However I suspect we were meant to join it later as we had to cross a ford! It was at this stage that Trev announced we were only about half way around the walk. When we came to a road and Trev suggested we could cut out a large corner from the walk by staying on the road. The thought that the footpaths could be adventurous as the first half meant that we all agreed. It was actually great fun but we definitely felt we deserved an icecream at the end

We went to see Hairspray in the evening at the Mayflower theatre in Southampton. It's a fantastic Victorian theatre which miraculously escaped the blitz. The show was brilliant apart from the annoying women who came in late and stepped on Alice's foot to get to their seats and then kept talking. Grrr!
A fabulous weekend all round.
I have included some further pictures of Erin's travels. She has left Vietnam and is now in Cambodia. She wasn't able to download photos in Vietnam but had an excellent time there. She hasn't labelled many of these photos so it is partly guess work on my part.

When Toys Turn to the Dark Side

This may be a little obscure, expecially because I haven't blogged here in a long time. However I thought this might be a comical and slightly horrifying talking point. A friend of mine alerted me to this little treat from the world of advertising. It's so scary I felt I should share it to make the horror dilute and then I'll be able to sleep at night! Do you think anyone was tempted to buy it? Watch it if you DARE!!!

More anon xx

Small town

Today I travelled up to London to do some training on a database we use at work. It finished at 12.30 leaving me the rest of the day in London. Hurray! I had lunch in the refectory at Southwark Cathedral (can I just say I have rarely had disappointing eating experiences in Cathedral refectories.) Then I went to a lovely exhibition of Renaissance drawings at the British Museum. Who did I chance upon at this exhibition but Linda! We have decided that we need never email or phone to make arrangements because we will simply meet up through telepathy!!

Gardening

Before I get to the subject is Mike trying to leave the country? Because this is the first time I've ever heard of all airports being closed because of volcanic ash and he does seem to court bizarre transport issues.
But anyway, gardening. I really hate it. It is a nice day here and the weeds are waiting for removal but yet I am in here on the computer and after that I will do some hoovering. Because gardening is like housework outdoors but worse. You get scratched, there is dirt under your nails, your back and/or knees hurt and there are yucky creepy crawlies. Don't get me wrong, I adore a lovely garden, but I just don't like being involved in the process of creating it.
Here's the thing though, my keen gardening freinds and neighbours feel the need to change my opinion with the religious zeal of a Jehovah's witnesses. They keep giving me cuttings or bulbs and I suspect they think that I will suddenly see the light. I know they are being kind and I am being churlish but to me it's as if somebody gave me a new duster so that I would finally do something about the dust on my ventian blinds.
Actually, nearly everyone I know seems obsessed with gardening. People at work will go "Ooh the weather is good - I will get on in the garden this weekend, at last". And again, like a religion, gardeners will keep talking to each other in Latin. Even Helen, who actually was the worst gardener in the world, now has Mum's gardening talents reincarnated in her has become quite enthusiastic.
My neighbour - who is a lovely neighbour, often gives me cuttings and bulbs and I have to plant them conspicuosly and water them as she can see the garden from her house. Sometimes I send Trev to bring the washing in in the evening in case she gives me bulbs (actually, that is largely because she could talk for Britain. Seriously, if it were an olympic sport Nic would get a distant silver to her gold!) Anyway, the other day we were given some bulbs by our neighbour and I asked Trev to plant them. His enthusiasm for gardening matches mine but he did so in the front garden -right next to our neighbour's drive. Later on in the week we noticed that the neigbour had run over theem in their car! Still, she gave Trev some more bulbs last week when I sent him to get them washing so I think I should just accept the kindness and be grateful it's bulbs and not dusters I'm getting.

Technology gone mad!

In sci fi films and the original Star Trek series every so often there would be a computer/robot that was too big for it's boots and started taking over the joint. The only way to conquer this machine was to give it an unsolvable problem. So Captain Kirk would say something like "I am lying". The computer/robot would start talking in a high pitched voice, smoke would come out of it and sometimes it would twirl around until finally it died. Uppity technology put in it's place by a quick thinking twinkly eyed homo sapiens.
Well, yesterday we had our own bit of technology gone mad. It will probably surprise nobody to know it was our SatNav. Now you would think we knew better but every so often it is really useful. We were off on a walk in the Chilterns and sometimes it is hard to find the beginning of a walk. I must say, I started losing faith when it took us on a bizarre route through Luton- not the one I had plotted on the map but I thought it might know something I didn't. Apparently not! Right through the town centre and then the town centre of Dunstable. If you have never been to Luton or Dunstable, I wouldn't bother, you haven't missed much. Anyway, having got to Dunstable Downs which are on the edge of the Chilterns, we could really appreciate their beauty after the ugliness of the two towns! But when we got near our destination the GPS went mad. It kept going "Turn right, turn right,turn right" On and on and there wasn't a right turn. Luckily it has no control over us or the car so we didn't end up with a Hal/2001 situation and simply turned it off.
The walk was outstanding and I would recommend it to anyone. Along the Ridgeway with amazing views. Really a perfect walk with no naff road bits which you sometimes get in circle walks And it ended in a tea shop at a visitors centre where there were clean toilets. Bliss! I have included some photos.


The white chalk lion is at Whipsnade zoo

I have included some more links to Erin's travels. They are of her jungle trek in Thailand and her couple of weeks in Laos. Laos, according to Wikipedia, is the most bombed country in the world. It had more bombs landing on it in the Vietnam war then all the countries in the World War II. Anyway, it is very beautiful apparently, but what seemed to impress Erin the most was that the French influence has meant that you get really good cakes. I think there are more photos of cakes than countryside on her Facebook pages. I have not included them here.When I spoke to her yesterday she and Heather were catching a bus to Hanoi that would take 22 hours. She is probably still on it now.

Washing machine crisis!

Thursday night last week, and I was heading for bed.

A shout comes up from downstairs.

"Mum! Water is shooting out of the washing machine!" yelled Adam.

Bugger!

I didn't actually see the water shooting out of the soap dispenser as Adam had turned the machine off by the time I got downstairs, however the floor was soaking. Luckily the washing machine is in the garage, so it could have been a lot worse. We made sure it was off and went to bed (that took nearly an hour).

Friday morning while having the early morning tea in bed I was on the internet looking at new washing machines. The last time I spent money on the old one I said I would spend no more on it, so it was for the chop. I have gone for one with a bigger drum than the old one because Nic creates huge amounts of washing (working outdoors etc) and a high spin speed (drying quicker). Then Brian and I got up and went downstairs to wrestle with the washing machine. Eventually he managed to get it out and the cold water inlet pipe turned off, but the hot water one wouldn't turn. He got the waste pipe off and we drained a bit of the water out of the machine into a bucket, but not much of it I tried opening the door and it did open, though it shouldn't have because there was lots of water in there, but we caught lots of it in a sort of large bucket/washing basket thing. The we had a cup of tea and Brian worked out how to turn off the hot pipe, we then manhandled the washing machine out. The we chucked out the carpet from that part of the garage.

After a coffee I ordered the washing machine we had decided on and it was delivered on the Saturday, a 2 hour time slot was given and they were within that - really excellent service!

Carl plumbed it in for me, and it has been working away today!

However as I had to put a new exhaust on the car on Thursday as well April has started off as a very expensive month!!!

Kitchen sink drama

This is rather a random post really but it does include a kitchen which has a sink, although there was not much drama really - but it could be argued that I was unnecessarily dramatic about it all!
To start off here is a picture of two blonds on an elephant.

I am sure there is a joke in there somewhere but I'd rather not hear it. This is part of Erin and Heather's jungle adventure in Thailand. They have now left Thailand and are in Laos. You might all be amused to know that the hair straighteners have now finished their world trip and are back in Essex!


Closer to home and infinitely less interesting here is progress on the kitchen. It really is one of the most disruptive things ever. We had to store the kitchen units the week before and empty the kitchen too. So the new units were in the computer room and the garage, the car had to live on the street and the computer was discombobulated and put in Kieran's room. The kitchen filled Erin's room, the spare room, and the sitting room. Luckily, we can both eat at work so we survived pretty well with just bottled water, a kettle and a toaster functioning but I wouldn't like to have gone on for more than a week. My admiration to all these people who undertake major projects - they are clearly made of more Stirling stuff than me!
The kitchen is mostly done now but the work surface and the sink will be fitted in 3 weeks time and the alarmingly wobbly larder unit is being replaced and then we need to choose tiles and flooring. We had Kevin the carpenter and Brian the builder and we have been recommended to use Tim the Tiler. Gotta love alliteration!



Here is the kitchen in it's present state.

Finally, we went for a walk on the Stour estuary and were surprised to see this!
It is the remains of Richard Branson's transatlantic balloon.

Apparently his recently deceased co pilot lived in the village.
We were also pleasantly surprised to see a sweet chestnut wood full of Wood Anemones.
It was actually more spectacular than this photo looks.
We also spotted this posh school on the other side of the river.
It looks a bit like Greenwich (from a distance, anyway)

Holiday in Barcelona

Adam, Nicky and I have just come home from a lovely short holiday with Chris and Xavier in Villasar. We did the usual things - the Sagrada Familia church, the Parc Guell, and the Picasso museum. They are the usual things because they are well worth seeing, and we really enjoyed it all. Gaudi was a truly original mind.

We also went for a walk on the mountain, and down to the beach. Unfortunately the beach created a huge allergic reaction in Adam, and his eyes were streaming and itchy, so we had to give up and go back to the flat. I've no idea what caused it because he hasn't had a violent reaction like that before. Luckily the anti hystamine sorted it out.

The weather was great, as it was warm and sunny with a bit of wind, like a nice summer day here. we were out in t shirts and , had we brought them, could have worn sandals.

There are some pictures on Picassa here

Love for librarians

I'm fairly sure certain members of the family will enjoy this:

http://www.zencollegelife.com/2009/12/29/85-reasons-to-be-thankful-for-librarians/

(I'm clearly doing something wrong with Blogger as it doesn't seem to want to activate the link - copy and paste it into your brower instead!)

xxxx

Day at the races

So having a sister who works for a National Hunt trainer has finally paid off :) I had a marvellous day out at the Cheltenham Gold Cup on Friday which is something of a tradition where I work, and was happily joined for much of the day by said sister and sister's best friend Sally. It's always a brilliant day out and this year was no different despite the absolutely vile weather (it rained all day). Luckily I'd been to Asda and bought a brolly the day before so was well prepared and it was probably the best £1 I've ever spent.

Two days before hand, Nicky had given me an outside tip for a horse at her yard who was running in the first race. Barizan was priced on William Hill at 40 - 1 but rumour had it Tony McCoy (ace jockey) might decide to ride him on the day in which case his odds would plummet. So I thought I'd place a little bet online. Unlike my gambling mother, I didn't already have an online betting account and setting one up was a real pain because I'm currently between surnames and between swapping addresses so it's all very confusing when registering for anything at the moment. I was going to give up at one point but persevered. And wasn't I glad when Barizan surprised almost everyone, nearly winning by about 20 lengths! He was unfortunately pipped to the winning post at the last but as I'd bet each (as advised) I knew I was in the money. So for the rest of the day I gambled and drank with gay abandon knowing that I had that money in the bank, it was fabulous! I had two more seconds and the winner in the Gold Cup itself too.

It was lovely to spend the day with Nicky who was christened 'Mini McNabb' by the boys I work with, and after the stress of moving and an incredibly busy time at work, it was brilliant just to have a fun day out. Boringly, normal service resumed on Saturday with the painting of our Swindon house, which is very nearly done now - hurrah!

And I've just tried to add some pictures of Barizan the horse and also a comedy picture of Nicky from her work's website which I just stumbled across when searching for the horse picture, but Blogger doesn't seem to want to upload them for some reason :(
Love Kate xxxx

Further adventures of Erin

For those of an envious disposition I would ignore this post. This is all Thailand and it all looks fantastic and most of the pictures seem to involve eating and drinking.
Apparently they had to catch a night ferry where the accommodation was just mattresses on the floor. When they got going they turned off the fans and the lights and the cockroaches all came out! Yuck - not all perfect in paradise!

Language and Travels

Well, we just had a marvellous weekend in Grenoble with Sue. But before that, a new word from National Express. On a slow journey to work last week, the driver announced there was a failed train ahead, and the driver of that train was "de-passengerising".... He spluttered a bit as he wanted to say "his passengers", but changed it to "getting them off the train". So watch out if you travel National Express..

To France and beautiful sunny weather, but with some cold wind and nights. We saw a cornucopia of birds on Sue's terrace, including: Robin, Sparrow, Blackbird, (hmm, no one impressed yet)Great Tit, Blue Tit, Chaffinch,(still no excitement) Serin, Brambling, GoldCrest, Hawfinch, Siskin and Long Tailed Tit (good finish eh?)

One or two pictures below.

First a Great Tit and two Goldcrests (in the original file size it is more impressive)



Here is the classic coffee stop, note snowdrops in the background.



I forgot to mention the yellow and black salamanders. The head is at the bottom of this picture.



Then we noticed on the bus back to the airport the English translation was machine driven. Say in your head in a French accent "Place de la Resistance" and then repeat the same words but with English pronunciations of "Place" and Resistance". Made us giggle.

I'll let my wife tell you about the joy of Lyons airport in another post.

Finally two girls in the mountains;

London Zoo

For my birthday treat we went to London Zoo! Inspired by Kate and Carl's adventures in South Africa we decided to have our own safari with Kieran and Alice. OK no Sani pass (think that was Erin not K and C) but instead we got lost in the one way system in Camden High Street - almost as adventurous.
I love London Zoo but the catering is a bit rubbish. The cafe was so cramped that the chairs were clearly designed for people without limbs. We decided to brave the elements and sit outside for lunch.
It was a lovely day but very cold. So cold in fact that Trev's glasses were so steamed up when we went into the butterfly house that he almost trod on a butterfly. I literally had to push him out of the way. I bet they lose a few butterflies that way each year.
London zoo is plagued by brilliant architecture like the penguin pool ,snazzy, but unsuitable for Pingu and friends and now empty and the Mappin terrace which now has Australian animals as it wasn't suitable for the bears it was meant for. These things are grade 1 listed so the poor zoo is stuck with them. The upside of that is that you can enjoy architecture and animals on you zoo visit.


Who let these animals out?



Our big 5 didn't include the usually kind as the bigger creatures are mostly in Whipsnade where they have more room. Here they are
Number one Ocapi. This really is a horse designed by a committee



Otters, singing and playing waiting for their lunch (horsemeat rather mysteriously)
Warthogs with snazzy Flock of Seagulls hairstyles
The excellently named Spledid Starling
And finally these guys need no introduction

Honeymoon

As promised, here's a link to a Picasa album of our honeymoon shots. Again, there are hundreds so have pruned them but thanks largely in part to Mum's super duper camera there are some pretty great shots so there are quite a lot of pics to browse through.

Who needs New Zealand, hey Erin? Pah! A few months travelling is nothing compared with what we crammed into two weeks in South Africa....not that I'm jealous that her trip is still going and ours is over...

Honeymoon

Kate xxxx

Catching up

So now we're into the new house and I have at least some internet access (courtesy of a shaky 3G dongle) I am making an attempt to catch up on my photos which I'm aware are horribly overdue.

For starters I've done a Picasa album of some of the official pictures of the wedding. There are literally hundreds so I've just done a selection. I have all the originals on a CD so if you'd like copies of any just let me know and I'll post them to you. As I say, there are lots I've not included here but I don't want to bore everyone!

South Africa pics are to follow and then some of the new house!

I'm then going to start keeping a log of my training as I've signed up to do the Bristol half marathon in September. I'm quite horrified I've agreed to do this as I've done no exercise since before the wedding and have managed to stick back on quite a bit of weight in the meantime. Rubbish. But the challenge will do me good I feel and I'm going to raise money for charity which can only be a good thing.

Here's the link to the Picasa album - never done one of these before so if you can't see it let me know and I'll change the settings!

Official Wedding Pics

Merry Christmas!

Somewhat later than planned the Martins and McNabbs have managed to have a Christmas weekend (the parents anyway, none of the young could make it this time).

We had a great weekend.

There was much laughter, wine and playing on the Wii, which caused much of the laughter.

Brian was very good at being a flying chicken and leading a marching band, I was surprisingly good at frisbee golf and ten pin bowling (both of which I am rubbish at in real life). It was great fun.

We went to Cambridge and to the Fitzwilliam Museum which had an exhibition of Japanese netsuke which are fantastic, so incredibly detailed and so tiny.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netsuke

Here is a Wikipedia article on them.

On the way home we stopped at Kate and Carl's new house. They are near Reading now, in a modern semi which is very pleasant, and right on the edge of the countryside. While sitting having lunch we saw a heron fly past, then a kite, and goldcrests outside. Looks like it will be a good place for birdwatching.

Further adventures of Erin

Here are a few more pictures lifted from Heather's photos. They are all of the North island of New Zealand. There are a few captions, but Heather hasn't captioned many so it is guess work on my part sometimes. They are still having a fabulous time as you can see.

Erin's adventures

Well, as you know Erin is on her travels and she is keeping in touch but we aren't seeing many pictures. So through a process of wheedling and guilt trips I have managed to become Heather's friend on Facebook, thus I can actually see pictures of Erin. It sounds like she is having an amazing time. I have put less scenery and more Erin - it is very beautiful but you can just look at National Geographic or watch Lord of the Rings if you want to see what New Zealand looks like. The pictures are mostly South Island NZ. Sydney and Tokyo are obvious. Nothing is labelled because I am too lazy to back reference to Heather's photos, and it is not in order either
I think that Helen and I are holidaying vicariously through our daughters at the moment!
Enjoy the photos.

English and languages.

Sorry if you have been commenting and nothing has happened I thought they would email me but I have to keep checking. Anyway got another spammer so worth doing.
Anyway I am developing a theory as to why the English are so bad at other languages. OK it's largely because we are lazy and English is an international language. But my theory is that we get a bit embarrassed at pronunciation.
Most days I give and Indian colleague a lift home. We were talking about the Himalayas. Now I know from watching a documentary that they are pronounced Himaaaarleears in the Subcontinent unlike HimaLAYas in England. When talking to Mamta I pronounced them as she does but if I was talking to somebody English I would use the second pronunciation because I feel a bit pretentious.
For example, I would never say that I am going to see my niece in Parreeeee. I would say I was going to Paris.
I remember when Kieran came to chose which language he wanted to do at school, he could choose between French and German. He chose the latter. Partly, I think, because as a mathematician he could appreciate a language that had rules and stuck to them. But also it's a less embarrassing language to pronounce. The boys could all bark at each other like prison guards from the Great Escape (the language of Schiller and Beethoven probably wasn't on the agenda). Whereas French is hard to get right and can be a bit camp.
Anyway such are my thoughts

Some of Kate and Carl's pics

Here is a link to some of Kate and Carl's pictures

It is only a fraction of them but it shows some of the animals they saw, and a little bit of the scenery.

Fabulous.

Honeymoon Part 1 (Sort of)

....apologies for being completely rubbish and not posting about our (fabulous) honeymoon or the (pretty-good-if-I-do-say-so-myself) photos. With Carl being posted we are moving in a week's time so it's all a bit hectic here, and Carl has had to go away for training and he's taken the laptop with him that has all our photos on.

I am rubbish, there's no excuse but I promise, promise to get the pictures from Carl this weekend and post extensively and bore the pants off you all about the joys of South Africa.

Official thanks are now on their way to you all but whilst I'm here we both want to say a huge thank you for your generous donations to our travel fund. It really was the holiday of a life time :)

Pics and details to follow!
Kate
xxxx

Lodgers

Well many members of this family have been to exotic and warm places recently but they are choosing not to share the experience with the rest of us. So here is a blog that will bring you down to earth with a bump.
I love garden birds, a love that probably came from Mum. I have always been delighted that a family of starlings have chosen to nest under the eaves of our roof every year. They are positioned over the loo so they don't wake us with those 4.30am feeds in mid June. They vacate the nest in the late summer but occasionally shelter in the loft when it is very cold. Trev did a brilliant recreation of "The Birds" when he went to put something in the loft one evening and startled the starling. (Although unlike the film there was no eye gouging or rubbish acting).
However, we are now beginning to wonder if the starlings are such an honour.
When Kieran moved to Southampton we redecorated his room including changing his carpet. So over the summer when he and Alice were staying and Alice mentioned that she thought she saw some beetles in the carpet, I was convinced that it was simply the carpet settling down. Why would creatures be in this brand new carpet. Erin has a 20 year old carpet in a fairly appalling state. Infact whenever you try to vacuum in there the hoover hangs back and starts crying!
However at Xmas Alice mentioned it again and I had to admit that she was right (and that probably she has made a mental note to definitely not take us in when we are in our dotage).
We attacked the black bugs with fly spray and that seemed to do the trick. However they have appeared again. A friend suggested that they could be carpet beetles. So I looked them up and apparently the likeliest source is sparrow or starling nests!
I think the existing structure will be demolished on Saturday in daylight but I don't think there is much we can do to stop the starling rebuilding it and if the nest is active it is against the law to remove it. I think if we remove it every autumn then hopefully it won't be full of so much ancient feathers and stuff. Hey ho Bill Oddie never mentioned this in Spring watch!

Up and Away

Well today we took Erin and her best friend, Heather, to Heathrow where they begin their 5 month adventure. They are going to Japan, Australia, New Zealand and various parts of South East Asia. Here they are with their back packs at Heathrow.

At Kate's wedding Erin asked Christine advice about what to take on her travels. Christine pretty much said you'll be fine with two pairs of knickers and a toothbrush. Erin and Heather took this advice to heart and decided that they should only take one hair dryer and one hair straightener between them!

Anyway, it was an emotional time for me and Trev. That's our baby leaving the nest. We decided to cheer ourselves up by going to Kew Gardens since we are seldom in that part of London before 10 am and it was a lovely day. Great decision especially as we bumped into Linda in the cafe at lunch time! Purely by coincidence! So we ended up having a lovely day and as Linda has been through all this with the aforementioned niece we had a kindred spirit.

Anyway, I'm sure Erin and Heather will have fantastic adventures and I believe that they have formed a Facebook Group where you can follow them (heavily edited so that I don't have to worry too much.

Here are some pictures of our day. That robin is actually in one of the greenhouses!

Well I don't know about this Island. We tried toget off it two days in a row last week to go to Barcelona and failed. First time was legit it was a snowstorm, but the second day was bright and sunny, but apparently the runway was icy? Ever heard of salt? So anyway we stayed and had a lovely walk along the Thames in about 4 ins of dry snow, lovely. Watched a lot of birda and the rowers were out. as long as you were rowing fine, but the poor coxes must have been freezing.
Having had so much trouble getting to Paris before Christmas train to Dover.3 hour wait, ferry to Calais, no connections, two more trains to Paris, the incentives to travel are small. However, I am going to try foe Canada tomorrow, but snow is in the forecast and teh Queen Mary doesn't start running until April.

Linda and Mike

Stormy weather

Just before Christmas we had a snowy, icy spell which made travelling rather more interesting than we would like. I think the trouble is that we are just not used to driving in this weather and forget how to drive properly. Even though we have all been taught it doesn't happen that often (Climate change permitting!)
Anyway my neighbour told me amusing story. In one of the villages near us the roads were in a very poor condition. A woman was trying to drive her car up a small hill, the wheels were spinning and she was panicking. A small queue formed behind her and at the back of the queue was a white van. The white van man got out and told the woman how she should be driving but with colourful and unpleasant language. However , the woman managed to gain control of her car and drove off but the while the man was being vile his van had slid down the hill and landed in a ditch.
There is a God!

Christmas

Here are some Christmas pictures.
Nic really liked her present.
Saffy in her new collar. She was a lot more excited by the bags of doggy treats though
Here is me opening a present from Brian - very pretty undies!

We had a very nice day. Ate too much of a rather aerobically inclined turkey - had real muscles in his legs, though the breast meat was (actually still is as we have lots left) very tender. I made an Italian nut christmas cake from Delia's new book which is very tasty indeed. We also had lovely cheese. And wine. A good day.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas

So having battled my post wedding blues, I've set about trying to feel festive but thus far Christmas cheer has been eluding me. I've got tons on at work, am completely over excited about and therefore distracted by our honeymoon and I'm also really quite skint which never helps when buying lots of lovely presents. In order to combat this I thought that this weekend I'd put our tree up, despite the fact we'll be back in Wales for Christmas day itself. So yesterday I headed out to buy a tree but was really surprised a) by how few there are available this year and b) by how expensive they are! Something about the exchange rate was the only answer I could divulge - has anyone else has this problem? Anyway, I found one that was actually under £20 when I randomly drove past a newsagents of all places.

Great I thought, now the fun can begin. Having got said tree home though I couldn't find our tree holder device, so had to improvise Blue Peter-style with an empty washing powder pot filled with gravel from the garden, which I was pretty pleased with! So with tree up I set about decorating it. After the wedding we have tons of fairy lights as we bought extra to put up at Court Colman. Again, great I thought. Apart from, most of them are broken and of course I didn't check they were working before I wrapped them around the tree :( So I then had to unwrap them upon realising they didn't work and start all over again. Tiresome. But on I go and get on some lights that work, all the baubles, etc until I'm happy with it all. I then make the rookie mistake of turning my back on the damn thing and go into the kitchen, and my home-made tree holding device lets me down and the whole thing falls flat on the floor!!!!

I really was feeling anything other than festive at this point despite my best efforts and those of Bing on the CD player. However, I dusted myself off and did a bit more wedging of the tree with a bit of additional garden gravel, re-applied all the baubles and voila! It's been standing now for about 5 hours so fingers crossed it stays that way over night. I'm sure you'll agree it was a lot of effort for a little tree! But my lights are now twinkling brightly and I have left over wedding candles burning as well for good measure. So mission accomplished, I am actually feeling quite festive now and looking forward to mince pies at Boo's next weekend. We are really looking forward to seeing everyone who is going :)

Love Kate xxxx

Music on a winter's afternoon

We have just had a lovely weekend in Southampton visiting Kieran and Alice. We spent Saturday in nearby Winchester, which is a lovely cathedral city. I managed to buy a few Xmas presents and bizarrely we bumped into a former neighbour's daughter who used to babysit for us. We were just passing the cathedral and there she was. Small world eh?
Alice is in a couple of orchestras and fortuitously we had chosen to come when one of them was holding a concert. It was in a village outside of Southampton called Chandler's Ford where Peggy was always visiting some relative back in the day. We were a little late as the SatNav chose to take us to the village of Easliegh instead. Just when I trust that technology it lets me down. Trev is like an abused wife over it. He refuses to hear criticism of it and always says he must have programmed it wrongly hmmmm.
Anyway we missed most of the Wasps by Vaughn Williams but luckily the hall was such that we could sneak in the back without making too much noise. The programme included Sibelius but the highlight for me was Pictures at an Exhibition. They had got in extra percussionists and a harpist for it and the sound was great. The percussion section was fascinating as they seemed to have to take it in turns to play the gong so they were all swapping places and instruments so the right person was free to play the gong. I am sure there was method in all this. I was very pleased to see also that one of the clarinetist looked as if he had escaped from Pickwick papers. All sideburns. Of course the best section was the violins and the first violin players were subperb!
It was a really lovely concert and I was very impressed. I recommend them if you are ever in the Southampton ares

Back to reality...

...it's amazing how quickly life has returned to normal post-wedding. I have struggled through the past few days really with post-wedding blues and can see why it's the tradition for newlyweds to go on honeymoon straight away because going back to work only 2 days later really sucked.

I have to say a HUGE thank you to everyone who came to the wedding and to everyone who's so generously donated to our Trailfinders list. We've been frankly overwhelmed with the generosity and want to say a big, big thank you. We are sooooo excited about our trip to South Africa - less than a month to go now, whoop! The biggest thank you however has to go to Mum who was a total hero and not only made 110 cupcakes, arranged all the flowers, got up at 5am on the wedding day to try and coax the tiger lillies into opening (which they didn't but we did get a bit of a refund at least), and was altering my dress at the last minute - not only did she do all this but she was calm and supportive throughout, even when I was getting bridezilla-ish and stressed. AND she looked fabulous on the day after all her hard work :) So thank you Mum, you are the best.

Needless to say we both had an absolutely amazing time on the wedding day - the best day ever in fact - and hope everyone did who came too. I'm not going to post any more pictures as everyone must be sick of the sight of us by now, but I will do a Picasa album of the professional pictures once they come through. I'm very excited about getting them and feel really glad this is something we spent some money on because the day after the wedding when we woke up and it was all over and you realise how much money you spent it's quite scary! But the pictures should be something we treasure forever.

We had a lovely couple of days at Brian's cottage post wedding and mostly slept and ate left over cheese and curry which was just what we needed (thank you Brian).

So again, a big thank you and I leave you with just one picture which is of our best present (thank you Erin!) and also to say that it is soooooo exciting that Moira and John are now engaged!! Think I might turn into some kind of wedding groupie now as I know just how fantastic a time they have ahead of them! Congrats guys :)

Love Kate xxxx