Children,s books

Lists! I love them and when they are lists compiled by experts listing the top 10 of whatever their chosen field is I love them even more. Largely, so I can be outraged by them and feel myself to be morally and intelectually superior. This week all the children's laureate's listed what they considered to be the top five children's books. I can see that JK Rowling and Philip Pullman haven't been round long enough to see how they age. I am very surprised that Roald Dahl isn't included and I would seriously question whether Oliver Twist is suitable for children at all! However on the whole these books reflect the authors' favourite books from their childhoods. So after some thought I have decided to list my favourite books from my childhood( I think - I might change my mind)
The land of Green Ginger by Noel Langley
Jennie by Paul Galico
Black Beauty Anna Sewell
The horse and his boy by C.S Lewis
The House at Pooh corner A.A. Milne

So what are other people's favourites?

Southampton

Hello. We have just returned from an excellent weekend in Southampton visiting Kieran and Alice. The weather was good and the company excellent.
We went for a walk around Southampton Common and Southampton Old Cemetry. This is huge and has been left to grow quite wild in parts. I think deliberately to encourage wild life. It is very atmospheric and would make a fantastic location for film or TV. Some of the grave have trees growing up from them.



While we were walking round it we saw the grave of somebody who had been struck by lightening. Kieran instructed us on what to do if you were caught in an electric storm. He then instructed us on how to survive a Zombie attack. I'm hoping that I never have to put either of these instructions to the test
In the hotel room a little later, Trev made a cup of tea and we decided to eat some complimentary biscuits. Trev read out what the choice was - Chocolate chip, shortbread or Tennessee Ginger biscuit. Well, I had never heard of the latter and opted for them at the same time thinking that it seemed unlikely that ginger was cultivated in tennessee. As we ate them I said "Arent't these supposed to be ginger?" "I thought so," said Trev."What does it say on the packet." I looked again and they were in fact Viennese Finger biscuits. Ah well they were nice.
Last night we had a lovely meal at a restaurant called Dock of the Bay. Here is a picture of Kieran and Alice sitting in the dock of the bay. Ho Ho Ho
(Seriously, I'm sure nobody has thought of that before.)
An excellent weekend with a lot of lovely food, entertaining board games and brilliant company

Outrage!

Well, OK maybe that's overstating it a bit but it is annoying. The hotel in the village where Kieran's wedding is taking place is hosting another wedding that day. Anyway, Alice's aunt and her family had booked three rooms there last year before the hotel had booked the wedding. But now the hotel has booted Alice's family out! How rude! So much for verbal agreements, eh?

Cat or Dog?

This morning, great joy, I worked from home. This allowed me the pleasure of walking to the local shop to buy a paper with my lovely wife. On the way we saw a man, with a black cat following him. As we passed, it sort of paused and gave us a look. We tittered, "it looks like that man is taking it for a walk - arf arf". Then we heard the man say "come on Boris"! So he was. So was that a man who wanted a dog, could only get a cat, but had trained it like a dog? Or was the look the cat gave us saying "he might think he's taking me for a walk, but I just decided to humour him again"?

If only it could talk......................

Former glory

Two of my best chums are teachers and during the holidays I book a day's holiday and we have a little tripette. Usually it is somewhere that will provide a nice lunch and have some historic buildings which we can saunter around and then somewhere else we can have a nice tea. I have just returend from Wisbech which is in north Cambridge deep in the fens. Ann and I had both seen the film Dean Spanley which was largely filmed there and decided it would be an interesting place for a day out.

It certainly is a handsome town with a wealth of Georgian housing as you can see from the pictures. But, my, it is in need of some tlc. It was obviously very wealthy in the 18th and 19th centuries when the port was thriving and it had two railway stations and a tramway. Indeed the Rev Audrey was inspired to write the Thomas the Tank engine books from the town. But now the railway and tramway are gone and the port is hardly vital. It has a marina but it doesn't seem to be bringing in much cash. It's full of pound shops and charity shops and virtually no chain stores or restaraunt. The roads to it are rubbish and it's not near any major conurbation. Many of the buildings are looking a bit sorry for themselves and I don't know how a town like that can recover. Mind you I should have known what to expect as a colleague called it Wisbekistan and a friend describe it as an armit.

That said we had a very nice day out. Peckover house and Octavia Hill's birthplace are very interesting and it is worth a visit in the unlikely event that you are ever in that partof the fens

Adam's birthday

Hi

Here are some photos and a video(if it ever finishes loading) of Adam's birthday lunch, which - despite the weather forecast - was a beautiful day (which is why we were eating in the garden)

Wedding date

Kate has said I can blog this, so we have a date booked for Kate and Carl's wedding.

It is going to be on 21 November at Court Colman Hotel which is north of Bridgend. I'm not sure when the invitations will be going out, that will be when they have finalised the guest list, which is currently too long - they always are at the beginning probably, but there are always also limitations on space and (even more crucially) budget. There is an award winning Indian restaurant attached to the house so they are going to have an Indian buffet for the dinner which is both different and also something which has Carl who is a real foodie and loves Indian food really excited.

Two weddings in one year! How exciting.

Little people

At the moment I am in love with this art Bascially, the artists puts these tiny installations all over London and photographs them then leaves them to their fate.

Fevered imagination

At the moment I have a cough. It's not so bad really but it is keeping me awake at night and it is in the middle of the night that any sense of proportion departs. The other night I must have had a temperature because one minute I was freezing and then the next I was boiling. At the same time any chance of dozing off was remote because I kept coughing. So in the small hours of the morning my imagination got the better of me and I decided that I must have malaria. A laboratory on the same floor as the library is working on malarial mosquitos and I decided that one of them must have escaped the biocontainment and bitten me. There could be no other explanation. Eventually, with the help of olbas oil I went to sleep and in the morning I realised what a silly moo I had been. Strange how different things can seem in the middle of the night

Extreme sheep herding

One of Erin's friends just showed me this on You Tube. I suspect there is much cleverness involved but I still love it.
Oh yes and a fascinator is a bunch of feathers stuck on an Alice Band

Personal shopping

I was flummoxed by the idea of finding an outfit for Kieran's wedding. I know what to wear at work or home or an evening out but really posh is a foreign country to me. Then I heard from Helen about John Lewis's personal shopping service -which is free! I decided to give it a go bringing Erin along to keep me in touch with reality. It was really excellent. Jan, our fashion advisor, took us to this fairly large room with armchairs and a changing area. She took down my detail and asked me what colours I liked and what was the occasion (as well as imparting a good deal about her own home life). Then we followed her around the fashion floor as she picked up things that I wouldn't even have tried on. We had two hours of her time and I settled on a nice dress and jacket. I knew it was going to go well when very early on I found the perfect shoes. However I am glad that I brought Erin as she dissuaded me from a dress that Jan liked a lot more than I did and I think I would have been too weak to say no on my own. Also when I tried on a fascinator Erin's tittering reminded me of the fact that Andy's reaction would have been tittering times 10! Though to be honest I don't think I would have gone down the fascinator route it did look a bit silly. All three of us agreed that the hat was a bad idea.
All in all an excellent service. I would recommend it although, of course, I went way over budget which is probably the idea!

Tea and family

Here we are in the pub, after the lovely tea at Fortum and Mason.

Here we are in Fortum and Mason having our tea
Here we are in Green Park on our way to tea

We had a great day. As Kate said - we packed an amazing amount into 1 day. Selfridges, Cabinet War rooms, Tea and a meeting in the pub, then home to cheese, wine and a film. And we lost an hour's sleep!

Great though - I really want to do it again next year.

Two nations divided by a single language

Our newspaper has just pointed out that there is an American TV programme starting here called The Mentalist (tee hee) and the first programme is directed by David Nutter! Ah That has made me smile all weekend!
Once again I am blogging about names!

Lots of pix of Llantwit

It was such a beautiful day that I went for a walk with the camera. These pix are on the blog but if you want to look at them they are on Picasa too

http://picasaweb.google.com/Cariadelen/LlantwitMajor?feat=directlink/

I hope

Sports

To be honest I have always been rubbish at sports. I wasn't always the last picked for teams as I was this height when I was 12 so I was often chosen as goalie in netball where I just stood in the way impressively. However, other than that it was never good. My PE teacher, Miss Tucker (who was lovely and a realist) once remarked that if only I could run as quickly on the tennis court as I did for the dinner queue I might have the makings of an athlete!
Out of the 5 of us siblings. The boys were quite sporty. Helen wasn't but 2 of her children are. But by the time it got to me there was nothing left in the gene pool for me and mine. It was a proud day in the Martin family when our children were put in the bottom set for PE at their High School. As Kieran remarked the bottom set was full of people who were too fat or too clever to be good at Sport. They seemed to spend their PE lessons being smart arses.
My school was far too small to have sets for PE. However by the fourth year (Yr10) we were allowed to choose which sport we did. The table tennis table was in a different room to the gym. So all the people who were too clever or too lazy to be good at sport (I can't really remember any fat girls and I admit I was lazy rather than clever) used to choose ping pong. Somebody would be lookout and we would simply sit round chatting for an hour or so unless Miss Tucker felt the need to look in on us.
Anyway, that is not to say that I don't do any exercise. I walk regularly and I go to Pilates once a week. I have done Pilates for several years and I think it keeps my stiff back moving. My Pilates teacher, Vicki, is lovely and has an excellent sense of humour. During Tuesday's class we were on the floor waving our legs around in some tortuous manner. Vicki said. "if you find this hard then you can lower your leg a little" I didn't need to be told twice and my raised leg was quickly a millimetre above the floor. Unfortunately Vicki was passing and said. "Choosing the lazy way,Frances?" and hoicked it higher again. Later in the class we were doing some complicated stretch during which I had entirely lost the plot. Vicki happened to be passing then. "Arm straight Frances! Ah your such a challenge to me!"
See nothing changes! She would get on well with Miss Tucker!

A moan

I am fed up with housework. I've got to be honest, it's not my strong point. I do have a bit of a weird obsessive compulsive in me in that I like things to be in their proper place or in neat little piles and get irritated when they're not. But actual dusting and getting into the corners is not my favourite past time. Which is a shame as it seems to need doing ALL the time! As soon as it's done it needs doing again! I work pretty hard (most of the time) during the week and just do not want to spend my weekends sweeping and hoovering and dusting and all that other crap. This weekend for example I went away to my friend Emilie's to help her celebrate her 30th birthday. I had a great time, came home tired and hungover and managed to ignore any gathering dust. I then go to work this morning, work all day, come home and go for a run with the dog and just as I am planning to settle down for the night and watch last night's Lost, I suddenly start noticing how dusty everything is and spend the next hour cleaning because I can't bear it - argh!!! I can't be alone in being completely and utterly fed up with this? Maybe I should just try and be like my friend Lyndsey who takes great pleasure in cleaning?

Anyway, moan over and in the mean time here's some pictures of me and my friends from university dressed up in an 80s theme for Emilie's birthday at the weekend. I decided to channel Joan Collins in a Dynasty stylee...nice. However despite the fact we look horrendous it was a lot more fun than bloody dusting :)

Visit to Crufts

Nicky and I went to Crufts yesterday and had a very nice day , pottering around and seeing lots and lots of different dogs. Here is a boxer who has clearly had enough of being on show and is having a nap.Here are some Pharoah hounds who are very intent on the lady preparing their dinner which is why they are so fixed on the same thing - they got chicken for dinner, which is better than what was on offer for the humans.
Here is a collie who is clearly interested in something going on down the aisle.
And finally here is the new love of Nicky's life. When we got to the corgis she was astonished that she had never met one before, and was totally smitten with the Pembrokeshire ones, like this one below. The are very fox like in the face, with huge bat ears and very bright, alert eyes. They have stopped docking their tails now, and they have lovely long bushy tails. Nic wants one. They are very cute, and as they were cattle dogs, will run and run for hours and can do agility courses and all sorts, which is a bit surprising as they have such short legs. We saw other Heelers (cattle dogs which nip the heels of the cattle, but are so low to the ground that if the cow kicks the kick goes over the top of them) from other countries and they are all the same basic shape, which was interesting.
It was interesting to see so many different breeds, a few of which I had never heard of. There were also loads of stalls selling all sorts of things. They had collars and leads covered with different colour diamante so you could have the ultimate bling dog if you wanted. Nic managed to get a fitted waxed jacket that she has been looking for for a while as well as a really nice waistcoat/bodywarmer and 2 shirts. When she goes racing and is leading the horse round the parade ring they have to dress smartly, and these will fit the bill admirably. They were all greatly reduced as well, so she had a very successful day indeed.

Blue screen

This is a picture of Helen, Brian and us at St Donat's at New Year. We propped the camera on a rock to take the photo so it''s a bit lob sided. But the back ground looks like a blue screen. It is as if you could substitute the Bristol Channel with the Taj Mahal if you so wish!

Blog for Helen

I have started a blog - just our of curiosity to see if I can keep it up and find something to write.

http://wordbywordwales.blogspot.com/

Here is the url if anyone is interested. (it's not very exciting)

Pigeons

This weekend we had a lovely weekend in Woodstock (Oxfordshire not the famous festival place). Very nice it was too. I would post pictures but Trev was having trouble down loading them. Anyway they were mostly of our walks around Stowe and Blenheim. Very pretty too but there is plenty on the internet if you want to see pictures of them. Anwyay, on the way home we were a bit Stately Homed Out so we went to Bletchley Park, which is where the code breakers were based in the second World War. A very interesting place it is too. Enthusiasts have reconstructed the early computers by salvaging valves and transformers from machines. A real labour of love. One thing I learned this time was of the use of pigeons during war. No longer will I curse pigeons as flying rats because they are remarkable birds. Basically they would parachute them in to occupied territory and the resistance would use them to send messages to the UK. The Germans were aware of this and it was illegal in Nazi occupied territory to be in possession of a pigeon unless you had a licence and you could be executed if you were found with one. They had troups positioned on the coast whose job it was to shoot pigeons.
At Bletchley they have an excellent video telling you all this. It says the War office recruited the finest pigeons available. I just like the idea of a kind of James Bond pigeon. All a bit Nick Parks really!