Enterprising

Well yesterday I had to catch a train from King's Cross Station Platform 9b and look what I found next to it

I suppose so many people were looking for it that the station managers decided to put it there - or perhaps it was there all along!

Tutorial

Hi all.

My good friend Jill is attempting to show me how to put in photos in the snazzy way that she does. So this is rather a random post that may well get abandoned









By the way that is Lacock Abbey(famous as a set for Harry Potter), The Louvre (famous for the Da Vinci Code) and the Sistine Museum (Just famous really)
Thankyou for you time
love
B00

briannoyes.co.uk

The website I have written for Brian is now released into the big wild world, so can you have a look and tell me what doesn't work. Please bear in mind that this is the first time I have done a website and that i did it on a free piece of software which is a little bit moody. For instance when I looked at some pages on the pc at work there appear to be broken links to photos on the left side of some pages, however these aren't on the pages in Kompozer and don't appear on the mac so I'm not quite sure how to get rid of them.

Brian is a bit embarrassed by it really but it does the job, which is to give information about him, about the compositions etc to anyone who might be interested and is much easier and less obvious than a fat list of works etc on paper. That's the idea.

I actually really enjoyed doing it, though sometimes when Kompozer would do something one day and not do it the next it got annoying. You can get lots of free stuff now where you fit the information into a template and they probably look better than what I have done but I didn't know about them when I started, and this is finished pretty much now, but I might redo it sometime and make it prettier.

it is www.briannoyes.co.uk

Nicky is back home until she goes travelling in January, and is working at 2 stables, exercising race horses and looking after a show cob. However it is lovely to have her home for a while, and she was actually home for her birthday for the first time in 3 years!

love Helen

Bread Slice Horror

The other week I made (using our fine breadmaker) a small wholemeal. Here is a picture of half of it. The other half looked exactly the same - at first.

Later that same day I came down from my ivory tower (also known as the spare bedroom) where I had been working at home to see this:

















Yes, it really was as it appears, cut not just at an angle, but with a convex contour effect. Must have been one heck of a sandwich! I'll let the architect of the shape explain more in the inevitable comment - I love her dearly.

Tee hee.

Wet weekend in Devon

This weekend I went down to Shaldon in Devon (near Torquay) to stay with Lucy who I lived with at university, along with Cath and Emilie who I also lived with at university. Needless to say we had a grand old time - the weekend kicked off with lasagne, wine and karaoke on the Friday night (and what more could anyone want from a Friday night?). Sadly though when we awoke on Saturday, a severe weather warning meant the normal sunshine, beach activities were somewhat curtailed, and yes unfortunately I was optimistic enough to take my bikini!.

However, Lucy's mum who lives down the road has recently purchased a camper van in the form of a Mazda Bongo (best car name ever?!). So we went on a wet and windy tour of the Devon coast taking in Teignmouth, Torquay (photo on the right is me, Lucy and Cath on the Torquay cliffs), Paignton, Dartmouth and the not-so-scenic Newton Abbot. The Bongo saved us really as we'd all packed flipflops and completely inappropriate clothing so we were able to be touristy without drowning. Saturday night was spent in the local pub which randomly has a Thai restaurant in it and we had a great meal on top of the picnic and cream tea we'd already had that day. Sunday dried out a bit and we had a lovely potter around Shaldon and I ended up being incredibly jealous that I, unlike Lucy, don't live a picturesque village by the sea. It's absolutely gorgeous there and I'd thoroughly recommend it for a meander if you're ever in the area.

I'm told there are compensations for living where I live though. When I said to Cath 'I want to live in Shaldon, there's nothing good about living in Swindon' she turned around and said 'Well, you have got a Matalan'.....hmmm.

Anyway, the other exciting thing about the weekend is that I got to see Cath who has lost 5 and a half stone in the last year! She looks absolutely brilliant and hasn't done any kind of faddy diet, just good old fashioned healthy eating and exercise. I felt a) very proud and pleased for her and b) very inspired to keep cracking on with my own weight loss mission. So I got up today and went out for a run to burn off the wine/lasagne/cream tea/thai meal/sunday lunch with which I stuffed myself this weekend :)

Love Kate xxxx

Unusual encounters

When I was at university a waggish friend of mine wrote on the blotting paper in the Campus bank "Boo Carter welcomes lonely hearts". Obviously I scribbled over it but sometimes I think it has remained indelibly on my forehead. I have lived in the South East of the UK for most of my life and I think I behave with the general unfriendliness of our neck of the woods but it doesn't seem to put people off.


This weekend we went down to Southampton to see Kieran and Alice. We had a lovely time and learned that the Captain of the Titanic lived in the very street that they live in. Anyway on Saturday morning Trev and I went for a stroll around Southampton Common and stopped to look at a duck pond. We were actually watching in horror as a tern picked up a duckling in it's beak and then dropped it in the water again when a local man walking his dog came to stand next to us and said "Beautiful, aren't they?" I looked at him in surprise and realised that he was talking about the swans. I told him about the duckling's near death experience and he said. "Well, there used to be a lot more ducks on the lake. They used to have those pretty ones - what are they called?"
"Mandarin ducks?" I suggested.
"Yes, them! But the immigrants keep eating them" (Good grief) "So they put them in a sanctuary and they took away the boards around the lake that tell you which birds where which!"
"Goodness!" I muttered "Well, must get on now"
Walking away hastily and pondering on the thought that these immigrants clearly had a taste for mandarin ducks but they didn't actually know what they looked like!

Anyway later that day we all went to Chichester to see 6 Characters in Search of an Author. It was brilliant although the ending was rather unsatisfying. The end of the first act was rather harrowing and involved a violation and I noticed with relief that the child in the cast was not on stage for this scene. An elderly lady was sitting behind us and engaged me in conversation while Trev was buying the ice creams at the interval. "That little boy will never be the same again!" She said. I laughed and said that I noticed he hadn't been on stage. However she carried on regardless. When Trev came back she said to him: That little boy, he'll never be the same again". Then when her companions came back she said it again. Then when everyone in the row came back she said it to all of them!

Anyway we came home and away from the weirdness of the South when we got a phone call. Somebody in a broad Scottish accent said to me: "I've lost my cat, man!" I was silent and he said again" I've lost my cat, man" Then when I still didn't say anything he said "Is that Jessie?" I told him no and he apologised profusely and hung up.

All very strange and a good reason for me to never go on a cruise where I couldn't run away from these people

Bridesmaid pics

So the day dawned and after 18 months of dieting and working out, my best friend Kelsie got married and I was a bridesmaid. I say 18 months of dieting and working out....I've certainly worked out consistently over that time. I have stepped and aerobocised and run and lifted weights and sweated a LOT! And I'm now gearing up for a 10km run in September (sponsor me here if you haven't already: http://www.run10ksponsorme.org/katemcnabb and thanks to those that already have!) For all this working out I feel great.


However, I haven't as such, dieted really...I have drastically changed what I eat and how much alcohol I drink but I haven't been on Weight Watchers or Slimming World, I've just tried to be a bit more sensible. I've fallen off the wagon a lot but if at first you don't succeed and all that, I've always tried to climb back on and stay on the straight and narrow. I've lost 24lbs and gone down a dress size and one of the most satisfying things of all has been to throw away my bigger clothes :) My big aim now is to carry it on and lose another dress size in time for Kieran's wedding and my friend Alyson's wedding next year.




She had a beautiful day in the end - glorious sunshine all day and everything went swimmingly - great speeches (not too long, always a good thing I find), great food, great company and the Bear Hotel was a fantastic venue. The only downside was that at around 9pm, I was showing off, doing a Nigella Lawson impersonation of all things (yep, finger sucking I'm afraid) and managed to knock an entire glass of red wine down my lovely bridesmaid dress! Luckily we were staying at the hotel and someone whipped me away up to my room, rinsed the dress out and got me changed PDQ! And happily the dress isn't stained :) So here's a few pics to see the new and somewhat improved me, oh and the bride (guess it was her day too) and Alyson who was my fellow bridesmaid and Carl too.























Love Kate xxxx

Holidays

We had a lovely holiday in France. We spent a couple of days with Matt and Sue where Brian was put to work chopping logs and strimming grass though the weather was a bit damp. Then we went down to the Haute Alps de Provence into a very nice gite, where the weather also improved and we had a nice time pottering about.

However the Tuesday morning we found a piece of bread on the floor that looked like it had been nibbled and assumed it was field mice, which we weren't that concerned about. However the following night when Brian went to the loo he saw a rat disappearing round a corner. Not mice then. Got up in the morning and scrubbed every surface in the kitchen/lounge area before we made a cup of tea. We wondered whether to go or stay and decided to stay but told the owners and asked for a cupboard we could put everything away into, as it was open shelves and curtains. They put down poison and got a cupboard and we washed everything and put it away, and you have never seen a kitchen which I run looking so tidy in your life! Nothing was out. Brian heard noises that night but saw nothing, and I didn't hear anything because I had earplugs in to block the snoring. The following night however they had decided to invite the neighbours in for a rave. There was a small roofspace above the bathroom and there must have been 2 or 3 in there judging by the noise, there was another one under the roof tiles and Brian saw one disappear behind the oven housing. This was all at 2 am. I had a really strong desire to hide under the bedclothes though what good that would do I have no idea. The bedroom was actually ok as all the walls had been plastered whereas the living room was stone and there must be small gaps between the render. So in the morning we packed up and I threw out my toothbrush (just in case) and went to tell the owners. They were a young couple, mid 20s and had only had the place since january. They were setting up a business making tapenade and special mustards etc plus the gite. They had people due on the Saturday and this was Thursday morning. So poor Veronique went to get the refund for the 2 nights we weren't staying, and came back in tears. So there we were patting her on the shoulder and giving lots of good advice about getting the rat man in, finding a farmer with a good terrier etc. Brian had already given lots of good advice about renovating the building (already done a stone cottage and really know what needs doing advice). We both felt quite parental in a way, but it was impossible to stay.

So we went south and spent the first night outside Aix en Provence within sight of
(Brian on path up to Mont)
Cezanne's Mont de St Victoire, and had a fabulous meal. The next day was wet so we abandoned the idea of staying somewhere beachy and pushed on to Nice, which is where we were flying from on the Saturday. Nice has the most appalling road signage ever! We saw the airport but couldn't get to it, so eventually headed for the sea and drove back along the Boulevard des Anglais, where we found an Ibis to stay the night. We had the worst meal I have ever had there, in fact my meal was inedible. However we had a nice potter round Nice the following day and went for a swim in the Med. But Nice has an awful beach, really stony and really, really hard to walk on.

Brian outside a gallery in Simiane de Rotonde - uncanny eh? Such a not-french name Brian

Then we went to Pembrokeshire and had a nice pottery time there. We were on Abereiddy beach on the Saturday (glorious day) and had a picnic and went for a walk along the cliff, but didn't go for a swim because the water was seriously cold. However we decided that actually the temperature of the water was the only thing we preferred about Nice compared to Abereiddy, which is lucky really as we are going to spend much more time there than in Nice.

it was such a nice break. Going back to work......

Look at this

Well me again! Having got the house clean I feel totally justified wasting time on the computer!

Here is Trev in front of the Trevi fountain in Rome


Here is a geezer in front of geysir!

Ho ho ho! (note to self, better stay away from manequin pis when we got to Brussels later this year

English

Well, me again! I have people coming over tonight and I am meant to be tidying up the house but I keep finding myself doing something else. I am up to date with all my games of scrabulous so I had better have a quick blog before I tackle the kitchen! (Actually, I may have to have another cup of tea after this)
Anyway, we noticed on holiday that there are many words in Icelandic that clearly have similar roots to English. Obviously, the nordic, germanic thing. For example, Foss is a waterfall and in the north of England a waterfall is a force. Also a church is a Kirkja which is like the Scottish word Kirk and also the German.
Heaven knows they are not pronounced easily even if they do have a common root to our own language. I took the view that I should be like Ian McKellan on Lord of the Rings ie. Morrrdorrrr.
Anyway while Trev and I were discussing the similarites somewhere in the back of my mind I remember hearing that in English most household words come from german roots, such as house and most ruling words come from French, such as parliament. However, I'm not sure if I just imagined that I heard that so I would be interested in other's opinions.

Iceland

We have just returned from an amazing holiday in Iceland. It turns out that we are not the new Aunty Peggy after all - we were just heading in the wrong direction, before. We had one day of rain but after that it was sunny and clear (although obviously it didn't get up much above 15 degrees).
It being June it was light all the time. I took this picture from our hotel room at 00.15. The guide books claim it did get dark but I always have to go to the loo in the middle of the night and it was always light enough to read a book outside. However, the downside of that of course is that it must be equally dark in winter. We stayed in a small town in the North which is surrounded by three mountains. Apparently the sun goes down at the beginning of December and it doesn’t manage to rise above the mountains until the end of January.



The hot water is heated geothermally so it all smells a bit sulphur like. It seemed worse in Reykjavik or we just got used to smelling a bit eggy. I always like to think of Trev as Lord of the Farts so he was in his element.
The land is amazing we saw geysers, lava fields, fjords, waterfalls and rifts. I should have paid more attention in geography in school.
The roads were quite exciting and, luckily, fairly empty too. As there are hardly any trees you could see for miles ahead so overtaking was a fairly simple option,which probably pleased the Icelandic drivers who could overtake us. Actually, our rough guide did warn us that Icelandic drivers do literally tear along the dotted line as they drive, but the roads are so empty that it did make sense. Some of the roads are gravel, Trev had a very exciting driving experience avoiding the potholes in them. Our Toyota Yaris did outstandingly, but in hindsight I think we would go for a four wheel drive car. There are some roads that are so rough that you are only allowed to do them in a four wheel drive.
Our accommodation and food was universally excellent. Apart from the night when we arrived in Isafjordur which was about an 8 hour drive from anywhere else only to discover that the hotel hadn't opened for summer. Fortunately they had booked us into the other hotel in the town! It is a VERY expensive place to holiday. There are not many places that make London look like a cheap date! A bottle of wine with dinner would have cost us £35. We had bought some over with us and then Trev went and topped up at a booze shop which was only open one hour a day and you had to access through a flower shop. Then they put the wine in brown paper bags like winos in American films. Talk about guilty pleasures.
The other thing we loved looking at was the bird life. There are snipes and puffins and arctic terns everywhere. The terns are very bold and apparently later on in the year they attack people! There were lots of eider duck who make a very comical noise. We took a boat trip to an island where there is one farm which makes it’s living from eider down. The ducks always nest in the same place every year and will sit on the eggs for 4 weeks not eating but they will go for a drink once a day and that is when the farmer goes to collect the down. They then process is to get rid of the bugs then they go through it by hand to clean it. No wonder eider down is so expensive. The farmer on the island lay on a tea for us involving lovely home made cakes. An Icelandic man on the trip had a slice of each of the four kinds of cake then he went back for seconds – he had 7 slices of cake! Clearly he was laying down his blubber for winter. Luckily he didn’t sink the boat.
Anyway, it is a wonderful place. We would love to go back and I would highly recommend it.Here are some photos if you want to see more you can go to our Picassa page here

Gullfoss


Reykjavik from Hallgrimskirkja


A gravel road over the mountains. The snow hadn't melted properly and there was a howling gale so the picture was taken from the car!


There were plenty of these everywhere. Although they have short legs you MUST call them horses, not ponies. Apparently they have 5 gaits.

Drangajokull Glacier from Isafjordur

Please sponsor me...

So after my abortive attempts to sign up for the Sport Relief 6 mile run (3 times online and twice over the phone and due to 'technical difficulties' had no joy) I have since been thinking about looking for another 'race' of about the same length to give me a bit of a challenge. Then whilst walking Saffy at Coate Water Park this afternoon I found a flyer (as if by fate) in the grass advertising a 10k run for Cancer Research UK in the autumn.

Before I could back out, I came home and signed up for it - argh! So I'm now committed to running 10k on 21st September at Bowood House and it would be wonderful if you could sponsor me to incentivise me to do it, and do it well (i.e. get round in under an hour). I have an online page set up which is this:

http://www.run10ksponsorme.org/katemcnabb

In addition to the obvious charity benefits, I am hoping to further improve my fitness and lose some more weight. The bridesmaid 'diet' I began a year ago was essentially a lifestyle change and has yielded results.; for my best friend's wedding, which is next Saturday, I have managed to lose a total of 24lbs (not quite the 2 stone I was aiming for) and a total of 19 inches from my chest, waist and hips. This 'race' is therefore a good challenge for me to keep up the good work and reach my overall goal of being a size 12 (I believe this is size 8 US or 38 European for our international readers).

So help me get skinny and sponsor me :)

Thanks in advance
Kate

Baaaaa. Humbug

There comes a time in every person's life when they should, of course, grow their own sheep. Sarah has reached a significant birthday this year so I gave her a grow you own sheep kit for her birthday and here is the result.
Apparently she also got a Grow your own toyboy kit but she hasn't sent me a picture of that!

Helen has a new camera

I have got a new camera and so I am showing you some of the pictures I have taken. It has a fantastic zoom lens so I have managed to get some close ups. here we have the rare(ish) Brian gardening man - you can see he is at home in the knee deep grass after having not been at the cottage for a month in the spring.

here are 3 rooks pretending to be the 3 ravens in the folk song and looking surprisingly decorative against the sky


This is a ceanothus flower from the garden


This is Mrs Whinchat who we saw when we were out for a walk. She is about the size of a sparrow, and she was sitting on a branch looking decorative. However as is usually the way with birds, here we have Mr Whinchat who looks more decorative. He is really very pretty though. Last summer when we were out walking we saw a whole family - Mr, Mrs and 3 young Whinchats all sitting on the fence chatting to each other. I think they are pretty common round Pembrokeshire.

What a nutter

I just saw these photos in the Guardian newspaper. Lordy Lordy, it takes all sorts.
Check this out!

Doggy old age

Gromit our beloved Cavvy will be 12 in a few weeks time and he is very creaky now. He is not tremendously old for a dog but he is a thoroughbread and if you look at his family tree the same individuals do appear more than once. I've worked in a genetic research institute for long enough to know that this probably isn't good. One of his symptons cause his back legs to collapse sometimes making him land in his jobbie while on the job - most undignified. However he is not in pain and he is very keen on the cod liver oil on a little piece of bread that the vet recommended (served with a little balsamic vinegar, perhaps?)
As a result of this he seems to be able to get himself into trouble but hasn't got the flexibilty to get himself out. Last week I came into the kitchen and found that he had managed to get his neck through the neck piece of an pinafore apron that was flung over the chair. He was just sitting there waiting to be rescued. Then yesterday, Trev gave him the large bag that his biscuits come in which still had a few crumbs in it. Trev left the room for a couple of minutes and when he came back the dog was sitting there with the bag entirely covering his head! It is worth noting that Trev is a much better person than me, as I would have immediately rushed for a camera. However Trev thought he might be suffocating and rescued him.
Anyway, I wouldn't feel too sorry for the dog. He managed to eat an entire packet of cheddar and black pepper flatbreads that I had left on a side table in the length of time it took me to have a shower last Sunday so he can be pretty nifty if he wants.

Newport Pagnell

So this evening I find myself in Newport Pagnell. This is a situation entirely of my own making as I selected the Harben House Hotel in Newport Pagnell as a venue for a work event tomorrow....chosen principally for its transport links I'd not had the pleasure of visiting here before today, and some how I don't think I'll be back after tomorrow. Hotel is firstly (and weirdly) located in the middle of a housing estate and is also a very odd mixture of the new (reception and bar) and retro 60s/70s (bedroom) interior design which reminds me very strongly of my halls of residence at university.

Upon arrival I asked if I could take some delegate packs up to the conference room as I'd lugged them in from my car with me. The nice receptionist said 'Of course, Chris will help you with those, he's our night security.' Is it wrong I expected a big burly dude to come out and lift my heavy load with one hand? Instead a little Indian chap came out and proceeded to wheeze all the way around the building and up the stairs struggling under the weight of all my event stuff! Felt v.guilty!

So now having had a serioius guilt trip and a tasteless tuna sandwich but a nice glass of red, I'm off to bed to worry about my presentation tomorrow. Good night from Newport Pagnell :)
Love Kate xxxx

Our bluebells are better than yours

Alice and I went for a walk in the new forest on bank holiday monday, and saw far superior blue bells to those paltry essex examples that have been shown here- see below

It was a somewhat muddy journey, as our shoes bore testament to.

Along the way we saw a thousand year old church, with a thousand year old tree....

All in all, a rather beautiful place...

Mid-afternoon post

Ah, much better when sober.
Here is a picture of sarah and her 30th birthday cake:

Sarah and Boo sharing a joke
Andy's speech
And here is Alice (Kierans Fiance - and maybe that isn't the right spelling and punctuation)
and Brian at the Bristish Museum Courtyard restaurant

And Boo and Linda at the same venue
Now for the more exciting stuff - the Doctor Who exhibition that we went to after lunch. We being Martins plus Alice.

Look, K9 and Boo

Alice meets the Doctor by a phone box (shame about his face - the projection got washed oout by the flash I guess)
Don't blink!
The face of Bo (yes Bo, not Boo.............)
Daleks!
And now Cybermen - but the best picture is next

Yes, it is Kieran and he is inside the Tardis - woo!!
That's it for now. We've been to the Botanics today, had lunch in Cambridge, bought Asparagus, strawberries and Cherries, so slumming it again eh?

Paintballing and partying

As Boo has (rightly) commented we've all been a bit slack on the posting front recently, I thought I'd just pop up some photos from my friends' 30th birthday celebrations on Saturday. For some reason best known to themselves, my friends Lyndsey and Amy decided to go paintballing to celebrate their 30th birthdays. This is an activity I'd already participated in back in January and frankly was not an experience I was particularly eager to repeat. However, there was no way I was going to wriggle my way out of it, so here are a couple of photos of me and my friends getting ready to go and shoot each other with little purple pellets that actually really, really hurt when they hit you - wound here being illustrated by my friend Giles' hand after taking a shot at close range :(

Here's also one of me and my friend Jo at the party in the evening looking marginally more glam than we did earlier in the day. You can also see my new hair colour too which mum thinks is too dark but I actually quite like :)

Love Kate xxxx