Meanderings

Partying

2012-02-01T09:09:00.000Z

Right then. Pay attention up the back, there.

We have been to Warminster for a party. It was Barb, the ex-Mrs Builder, 's brother Greg's 70th birthday party. (Got it? There might be a test later!!)

The party was held in the Cornmarket cafe in Warminster. (There might be a test on this later too!!)

So we trundled down to Stoford on Saturday after lunch and booked into The Swan, as is our habit when pootling about Down Sowf. Then we went to Nunton and collected The Builder's Mother, Gwen and took her with us.

None of us was exactly sure where the Cornmarket was, so I put the postcode into Kathy the Sat Nav and off we went. Alas - Kathy's map assured us that the place we were going to was down a side street which, once we got to Warminster, proved not to exist :-S So we went down another street, which did exist, and more or less by accident found ourselves in a car park which had a board announcing the existence of the Cornmarket Mall, or something very like it. I went on a little recce - and found the cafe with Barb and Greg and Jeanette and Matthew and Rebecca and Evie all sat inside. We decided that this must be the place we were heading for!!

It was a good do. Greg's sons came with their children. His other sister Pauline came with her family. There were friends and colleagues. I think there were something like 40 people there. The cafe was running a bar. There was music and dancing. There was food and merriment. One of Greg's sons presented him with an inflatable zimmer frame festooned with balloons.

Spot the birthday boy!!! (Click on the photo to get to the album)

It was all lots of fun. But we couldn't stay terribly late. Gwen was fading quite a bit by 9:30 or so (might have had something to do with the glass of wine I gave her, but I think she is usually heading for bed by around 10 anyway). So we took her home and then repaired to The Swan for a pre-bed tipple and a lovely, snuggly bed.

And then we more or less came home, after breakfast and a visit to the Wilton garden centre to see what varieties of seed potatoes they had. Marlo was quite surprised to see us. Usually if we are away overnight we either get back shortly after breakfast because we've stayed in Sheffield overnight, or not until later in the evening, because we've been gallivanting down in Wiltshire or Hampshire for the day. It's unusual for us to come home before lunch. But I had had the foresight to take a small piece of roasting meat out of the freezer before we left on the Saturday, so no excuse for a lunch out.

Alas, however. Poor Frugality has fallen flat on her face and seems to be rolling around in the gutter. Even without having Sunday lunch out, the savings for the GWT took something of a battering over the weekend. I think our "how-far-can-we-get-with-what-we've-got" meter might have plunged back to somewhere like Southampton.

Had a nice lunch with Freyja, Julia and Timon last week. Julia and Timon are back in New York now. Freyja is back at Uni. I think the partying is all done now.

Well - until Easter when I think we can start again :-)

Food, Wine and Merriment

2012-01-24T07:32:00.000Z

There was a meeting on Friday evening of the volunteers and committee for Bishops' House. It started at 7:30 and it hardly seemed worth my while going home to Tupton, just to turn around and head straight back to Sheffield. So I suggested to The Builder that he come into Sheffield at around 6pm, meet me and we could go somewhere for an early bite to eat before the meeting. He thought this was a good idea.

So we thought we would go to the Rutland Arms, which isn't far from where I work and does nice pub grub. Alas, when we got there it was absolutely chockers full (mostly of students, I think - which surprised me because it has never been a student pub and I would have thought it was slightly off the student track). No chance of getting a meal there then.

So we headed up towards Bishops' House and stopped at a pub along the way. No food there at all.

Then I remembered that there is a cafe not far from BH and as far as I remembered they were open on Friday evenings. So we went there. And they are open on Friday evenings. And on Fridays they do Caribbean food. So we had an unexpected delightful Caribbean meal and shared a bottle of wine and headed off to the meeting feeling full and replete.

We didn't stay long after the meeting, when there was cake and wine and chatter. I had been awake for the better part of the previous night and was feeling exceptionally sleepy.

Saturday was a relatively lazy day. No unexpected food adventures, but we did replenish the cat food supplies, to the great relief of the cat, and we replenished the wine supplies and generally pottered about.

Sunday was much more engaging.

Raspberry and white chocolate tart for dessert

You may remember that a little over a year ago, Julia and Timon called by for lunch with Freyja on their way to New York (not Freyja, she was just accompanying them to our place - no exciting New York adventures for her!). Well, it's nearly time for them to return to Australia and they decided to pay a visit to Western Europe before heading back to the Antipodes. I have been following Julia's NYC blog with interest while they've been there and have noted that one of the things she has really missed has been roast lamb. Or, indeed, any lamb. I don't think the denizens of NYC eat a great deal of sheep. So I said that if she came unto Tupton I would provide roast lamb for her. So she and Timon and Freyja and Simon trundled to Chesterfield on the train on Sunday and I provided the promised roast lamb (veggie alternatives available on request). With Yorkshire puddings. Julia is also rather partial to Yorkshire Puddings and I rather suspect they are almost as often on the New York menus as roast lamb appears to be. We had a lovely afternoon eating and chatting - but not drinking a great deal. Freyja thought it highly likely that I would start be reporting that they had all headed out on the razzle the previous evening and had had the temerity to turn up to my Sunday feast remarkably hungover and sleep deprived. In fact, I had intended to gloss over this. But I think I might, perhaps, just mention it in passing since Freyja had raised it :-D The Builder and I had not been razzling and thus were not hung over or sleep deprived. The Builder, alas, was taking the visitors back to the station when they left so couldn't indulge much over lunch (he caught up when he got home). But I could. So while everyone was partaking of the non-alcoholic cocktails I had found for non-drinkers, I got to drink the wine.

Julia and Timon head back to New York for a final month next week. Freyja and Simon are heading over for a few days just before Julia and Timon go home. The Builder and I have no New York Plans. But I think I have enough now in the Grand World Tour account to get us as far as Athens, possibly even a little further, depending on which deals I could find. Not that Athens figures in my plans, but I like to know how far I could get if I wanted to. The Grand World Tour at the moment features SE Asia, Australasia and the Far East. Europe doesn't, as yet, get a look in!

Day Off

2012-01-19T08:00:00.000Z

I had a remarkably long day at work on Tuesday. I had a 2 hour meeting in the morning that required a fair level of concentration. I had a 1.5 hour meeting in the afternoon that also required concentration. Then I was on the desk from 5-9 - which required considerable concentration to keep me awake!!!

I decided to take Wednesday off. I declared it to be a Saturday. A supplementary Saturday, sat in the middle of the week :-)

And I really enjoyed it. We got up spectacularly late by our standards (I somehow managed to sleep through the radio coming on and both of my alarm calls going off). We pottered about in a leisurely sort of a way. We went to Sainsbury's (for not only was it a day off, but it was also payday for me, so I did a few payday bits of shopping) and to the Garden Centre for some bird food supplies. We drove out to Chatsworth in a backwards rotation from our point of view (usually we go to Chatsworth then to Sainsbury's for mop up shopping) and thence on to The Nettle for a truly lovely chicken and leek pie (well, I had a chicken and leek pie. The Builder had gammon and egg and chips). And then we went home and watched television and read books and played games on the Internet. It was a lovely, lovely day.

And the weather was proper English weather. Misty and cloudy and damp - which sounds very dreary (and is, when it goes on day after day after day). But it is evocative and very atmospheric when you are out driving over the moors and in the countryside. The trees are beautiful and dark and sometimes twisted, and the mist curls and furls and unfurls. And sometimes it turns into tendrils of fog. And the frost and ice had gone and the temperature had once again turned quite mild.

It came as something of a shock to the system to wake up this morning and find that it wasn't Sunday, but Thursday. But I could easily get used to having a second Saturday on a Wednesday!

I have been working on the Grand World Tour savings account. So far I think I have enough to get us to Rome :-D

Finally, Winter has found us

2012-01-17T16:05:00.000Z

We woke up at the weekend to find that winter had finally managed to make its presence felt. Apart from a sprinkling of snow weather around my birthday, this winter has been by and large mild, grey and windy. Very, very windy! So it was rather nice to have a few days of cold, frosty, sunny and above all - still weather!

I'm not sure the chickens agreed with me though. They don't like the ice and the frost. And their water hopper froze :-S (We've bought another one so that there is at least one unfrozen hopper on the go!!) But they were quite happy with the warmed vegetable peelings or bread soaked in hot water that were on offer during the cold snap.

Sometimes where we live is beautiful in the winter, especially when the sun, which is low in the sky in January, catches the trees and hills as it passes by

The view from the bathroom on Sunday morning

We were scheduled to open Bishops' House on Saturday. I have to say I wasn't really expecting many visitors, if indeed any visitors. But I announced on Facebook that we were going and we took books and my laptop and the makings of tea and sandwiches. It was a stunning morning in Meersbrook Park, but most of the people out walking were with their dogs and they don't tend to come in.

My Facebook announcement drew out our friend Alex and his not quite 2 year old son. Neither of them had ever been inside and they only live around the corner! We were visited by someone wanting to know where the Weston Park Museum was (I felt that respondiong with: In Weston Park might not be entirely helpful!!!!!). His sat nav had brought him to us, instead. This seemed a bit strange - until when consulting my Very Useful Laptop, I discovered that the top entry on Google gave our address and post code and not the one that Weston Park actually has!!! And then we had a group of Greek people come to visit us. That was very exciting. We don't get many international visitors in the winter :-) Plus there were a couple of random people who popped in. And then suddenly it was time to hand the house over to the afternoon volunteers and go home

Click on the house to see the whole album

We will be back at Bishops' house from 10 - 1 on February 4th and March 10th if you fancy coming to say hello. On March 10th they're doing a Wartime Home reenactment from 10-4 (and a local heritage event on Saturday March 3rd as well). Entrance is free

2012 - the year of austerity

2012-01-10T08:01:00.000Z

And so I have, belatedly, joined the rest of the world in 2012. After a pleasant week sitting at home in my armchair, doing very little, I bounced back into the real world on Monday, ready to start the year, filled with resolutions, good intentions and New Year Plans. Just a week later than everyone else :-D

So this is to be the Year of Austerity. The Prime Minister says so. The Chancellor of the Exchequer says so. The Pundits all say so. If we are to rescue Capitalism from a moribund future and release it into a bouncing and revivified future, then austerity is definitely what is called for. (Although the sharp intakes of breath that followed the Prime Minister's strong suggestions that the nation should all of us tighten our belts and dramatically cut our household spending in order to reduce our household debts and clear our credit cards were clearly audible nationally when he made this proposal a few months ago. Small and large businesses all around the country seemed to think this was a recipe for catastrophic economic disaster. And you can see their point.)

Anyway. All that aside. I have been listening intently to the PM and his Chancellor and have agreed that austerity is the way to go for 2012. This will be something of a challenge. I am not very good at austere. I am hopeless when it comes to self restraint. Pathetic when it comes to self denial. Useless when it comes to pleasure deferred. More to the point - I am not very interested in economics, can't abide the PM or his Chancellor and their interference in matters that are none of their business (every time they opine that we should stop drinking, eating, breathing, I determine to go out and drink, eat and breathe even more!) and simply can't see how me spending much less will improve things one iota.

But I do have a personal carrot dangling in front of my nose. I am in the early stages of planning a Grand World Tour at the end of the year. And for that I will need a large injection of pennies. And this will require considerable scrimping, saving and definite austerity - at the moment I have precisely enough money for the train fares to and from work between now and the next payday!!

Oh - and I will need a house-sitter, if you know anyone who fancies a winter break in rural Derbyshire next December/January

Not planning to retire yet

2012-01-05T09:35:00.001Z

In the (highly unlikely) event that I can ever afford to retire I am going to have to be very careful not to fall into bad habits. Here it is, after 9:00 in the morning, and I am still sitting around in my night attire and fluffy dressing gown. Mind you - it is extremely windy and still rather wet outside so there is no absolute imperative to do anything. I was woken at 4:30 (you could learn to dislike intensely a time like 04:30 when you are greeted by it pretty much every morning and when there is no need to be awake - not that there often is need to be awake at 04:30!!) by a howling gale and squally but very heavy rain. To my surprise I went back to sleep and didn't wake up again until 07:30. And have only just got up. Doesn't augur well for an active life of retirement!!!

The other thing I will need to be careful about is noting the days of the week. I haven't even been off work for two weeks yet and I am chronically confused by what day it is. Fortunately my computer knows! But that really doesn't augur well for retirement.

So it is probably just as well that there is absolutely no prospect of an ongoing idle life in the foreseeable future. I go back to work on Monday with no plans for any time off after that until Easter (well, apart from the odd day here and there).

It crossed Freyja's mind on Tuesday that Wednesday would, most unusually, see The Builder, me, Tabitha, Cally and her all off work and all, more or less, in the same place. Did The Builder and I fancy going into Sheffield and all meeting somewhere for lunch. Now I find this very hard to explain, but I am always deeply reluctant to go into Sheffield on days when I am not at work or don't have pre-arranged things to do. It's not that I don't like Sheffield. It's not even that it's particularly far away or onerous to get to. Can't explain it at all. But my practically instant reaction to "Why don't you come into Sheffield and we'll ..." is nearly always "Bleurgh. Yet ANOTHER trip to Sheffield". And yet, when I go, I always enjoy whatever it is we've gone to do. On this occasion, however, I counter- suggested that she, Tabitha and Cally could perhaps come to us, on the bus which passes right by the bottom of Tabitha's road. So no need for me to go to Sheffield and they don't mind pottering about on the bus.

So The Builder went to collect them from the bus station, and I made pizzas and we all had a merry afternoon - except perhaps Marlo who was a bit disconcerted to find a small, rapidly moving creature running around in his lounge room (not that she can run, but she can crawl very quickly and can walk around with alacrity as long as she's hanging on to something - won't be long!!!) Gareth missed out on the pizzas and merriment, given that he actually was doing something useful and was at work. Then Tabitha, Cally and Freyja went back to Sheffield on the bus and The Builder and I settled in for a lazy evening.

Looks as though today is going to be a lazy day as well. No plans. And I'm *still* not dressed!!!

Welcome, 2012

2012-01-02T13:30:00.000Z

The Builder and I retired to bed nice and early on New Year's Eve, so that we would be refreshed and eager to greet 2012 with enthusiasm and vigour.

We were woken at 23:45 by The Builder's mobile phone excitedly receiving a text message. It doesn't get many text messages so is always keen to tell us when it does. We were woken again at 00:15 by what I think might have been the new people in the last house at the end of the terrace. Whoever it was, they were having a long, loud and cheery fireworks party. I woke up at 03:00 or so because I was a bit hot and a bit thirsty. We were woken after 04:00 by Daniel-next-door, who is in the army and stationed in Germany but is home for the holidays, having a happy, drunken and LOUD conversation on his mobile phone, until hustled inside by his father. At 05:15 I gave up and dispatched The Builder to make us a cup of tea. 2012 was clearly determined that we were going to note its arrival as soon as it could attract our attention!!

In fact, it is usually quite quiet in Tupton and it's unusual for us to be woken by noise at all. It was very exciting to had so many noise interruptions in one night!!!

This all had the effect that I was more than ready for Bea and Steve to come to lunch at 13:00. I had taken the giblets and neck from the lunchtime goose and made a stock. I had tidied up. I had set the table and made a table decoration. We had been out a-hunting and a-gathering in the garden and returned with a trug of vegetables (although it was a bit weird to be wandering around in the garden on New Year's Day wearing nothing but a cardigan. Well yes, and clothes - but no winter weight coat or scarf). The goose had gone into the oven on time. All was good! Although it is always a bit disconcerting when we are having a luncheon party and I am ready ahead of time. I always worry that I have forgotten something. But on this occasion, I hadn't.

And it was a very jolly luncheon party. And the roast goose was lovely. It was wet and very windy outside, but warm and cosy and festive inside. I think we all had a good time.

Today the sun has come out and it's a beautiful day. The temperature is much closer to the January average, so no wandering around outside without a jacket on. It's still nice and cosy in the house though.

It's a Bank Holiday today in the UK, and then most of the rest of the country gets back to normal tomorrow. Not Scotland, which I think is largely closed tomorrow. And not me. I have the rest of the week off :-)

Happy New Year
(Click on the photo to reach the food blog, to read all about the roast goose)

Poor old Greg

2011-12-31T10:13:00.000Z

For some time, Barb's brother Greg has been having problems with his heart. He was booked in to the Salisbury hospital on January 3rd to have an angiogram to see whether maybe a stent would help. But I think he was having delusions of royalness - after we had seen him on Wednesday he had to be taken in the middle of the night to the Salisbury hospital with severe chest pains. Alas - he didn't get to go in an exciting helicopter. He had to be content with a boring old ambulance - not even with its lights and siren going! Freyja says that this is all my fault - I had jinxed him by thinking how very well he was looking on Wednesday. But I don't think it was my fault. I hadn't actually said it - only thought it.

Anyway. He has now had his angiogram and has also had FOUR stents put in. I think he is expecting to go home today, so I assume he is feeling better. I don't think he is going home in an ambulance though.

On a happier note, our 2011 spare bedroom drought has been broken at the eleventh hour. Finally it has had an overnight visitor. Freyja came to stay while we were away, to play with Marlo, who was very pleased to see her. I think the spare room might have been pleased to see her as well. It must be very sad to be a spare room that no one uses for its intended purpose (I use it, mainly as a spare storage space for things I can't be bothered putting away - but that is obviously not its intended purpose).

Last day of the year. Better go and do something useful.

Mostly at The Swan

2011-12-29T08:00:00.000Z

It is possible that if you walked into your local pub to be greeted with a big kiss from the landlord you might be a bit worried that it suggested you were spending too much time in there. It would certainly worry me - largely because I've never set foot in either of our village pubs. They have never inspired much confidence. And in fact, one of them has been closed for months, and the other one has inspired the few people that I know who have ever been in (including The Builder) to suggest that I might like to save myself the trouble. We have been into both of the pubs on the edge of the village. But we don't tend to go to pubs for drinking purposes, unless we are out walking. Mostly we go for food. And while the two local-ish pubs do do acceptable food, they're not foodie pubs so we don't bother. We hop in the car and go to The Nettle, usually. Or to try some of the other country pubs hereabouts.

But I wasn't in the least bit worried when I ambled into The Swan on Tuesday evening to be greeted in the foyer by Carl the Landlord (who had seen me crossing the road) with the key to our room, and a hearty kiss on the cheek. It was, after all, Christmas. And although we don't count as locals (The Swan is a 3.5 hour car trip away, so not especially handy if we randomly decide to go out for lunch or dinner!), we must surely count as regulars. We go 6 or 7 times a year and stay at least one night and sometimes two. It's one of my favourite food pubs. I rather like the bedrooms as well!

We were joined that evening by Jeanette, Matthew, Rebecca and Evie who had come to see us and to have a rather nice dinner. The food was delicious. The log fire was burning (although in truth the night was remarkably mild for a late December evening). There was lots of wine. And a very great deal of fun and laughter. Then they all took themselves back to Whiteley, and The Builder and I dragged our weary and well-fed bones the huge great distance up the stairs to our room.

There was more feasting on Wednesday. We dropped around to Nunton and collected Gwen and took her across to Warminster, where we were having lunch at Barb's house. Some while ago, Barb and her brother Greg were round at out place for lunch and we were discussing that we were all of us increasingly finding it difficult to push Gwen around in her wheelchair when we took her out. We pondered the possibility of buying a second hand motorised scooter to replace it. The only problem was that it would need to fit in the boots of our cars. And while we have a hugely capacious boot - you could probably fit the houses of Parliament in if you stacked them brick by brick - you can't put anything particularly large in because of the design of the opening. We went our merry ways and kept an eye on eBay and Amazon and local-to-each-of-us mobility shops. One day Barb found just the very things based in Southampton and bought it. We all four contributed to its purchase and arranged to give it to Gwen for Christmas. And Wednesday was the handover day :-)

So we all exchange presents and gave Gwen her scooter. She was extremely surprised (noone had mentioned it to her) and highly delighted. Barb provided us with a delicious fish pie for lunch and lots and lots of wine. To our surprise, for she is largely teetotal, Gwen had not one, not two but THREE glasses of wine!!! We all had a go trying out the scooter. It's remarkably easy to drive and really rather fun. Then we took Gwen home and repaired back to The Swan for more food and more wine.

It was a great day. There was lots more fun and laughter. It was a very happy afternoon. Although it is quite possible that I really didn't need to eat a full cooked breakfast, a two course cooked lunch and a two course cooked dinner!!! I'm a bit scared about getting up and trying my trousers on :-S

But must get up. We're heading back home today. And there is another cooked breakfast on offer before we go :-D

Merry Christmas

2011-12-27T07:13:00.001Z

Text message received at work on Friday morning: "There's no wine in Tesco".

This seemed unlikely. None at all? Well yes; there is some. But not what we wanted for Christmas.

So The Builder went to Sainsbury's, where he had to queue to get into the car park! A quick smash and grab raid later he had acquired a bit of wine and went home. So there will be some wine for Christmas but not, perhaps, quite enough.

In the meantime I decided to go out at lunchtime and see if any of the supermarkets in town had any. It was raining :-S There is a little, milk bar style Sainsbury's across the road from SHU so I decided to head into town via that - but expecting it to be very busy and bereft of wine. I look through the window as I approached. It seemed fairly quiet. I went in. And found three members of staff, two customers and lots of wine. I assume everyone was in the large Sainsbury's on the Moor or in Waitrose or somewhere. And, of course, there are very few students around, and the store is mostly used by students as far as I can tell.

So I acquired some more wine and headed back to work for the couple of hours until we closed for the Christmas break.

And thus we went from possibly having NO wine for Christmas to having a bit to having lots. We are steadily drinking our way through it!!

And suddenly it was Christmas Day. Much to the amusement of my Aussie friends and relations, I was quite excited by the temperature outside. Now I am aware that 14d on Christmas Day isn't very exciting when the temperature where you are has been in the 30s. But that 14d was about 20d warmer than it had been last year!! It was a beautiful day. The sun shone and the sky was blue and everything. Not a flake of snow. Might almost have been an Easter Feast we were celebrating. If you were thinking about the weather, that is.

It was Cally's first Christmas celebration. I think she was a bit puzzled by it all but decided to indulge all the adults in their weird behaviour. She was a bit surprised to come down from her midday nap to find that The Builder, Freyja and I had turned up. Marryk was already there. She was a tad surprised to find that there were loads and loads and LOADs of presents - nearly all for her. She was quite surprised to find that there was a veritable feast in her kitchen - but was definitely prepared to indulge in feasting. And then it was definitely time for another nap. Alas - the festivities had worn her out to the extent that she napped right through to her bedtime - and didn't go back to sleep for hours and hours and hours. In the meantime, Freyja and Marryk had gone back to their various residences (Freyja didn't go back to London - she's staying at Simon's place in Nether Green for the holidays). The Builder and I repaired to the Spare Room. Tabitha took herself off to bed. Leaving poor Gareth to entertain Cally into the wee smalls.

Cally and Gareth were still asleep when Then Builder and I left to return to Tupton on Boxing Day morning, so missed out on talking to Stella and Tony on Skype. But Tabitha, The Builder and I talked to them.

It was a good day. We ate lots and drank lots and laughed lots. Thank you to Tabitha and Gareth and Cally for letting us have Christmas at their place .

We had Boxing Day quietly at home on our own. We pretty much had a Sunday - Sunday got more or less swallowed up by Christmas Day. We watched telly, installed the DVD player that Tabitha, Austin and Freyja had given us for Christmas and for the first time watched a DVD on the widescreen telly that we've only had for two years, ate roast beef and Yorkshire puddings and pottered about. And now I need to get moving and get organised for we are off to Salisbury for a couple of days later this morning and I am not ready!

Click on the photo to reach the Christmas photo album

Sunday

2011-12-19T09:23:00.000Z

It makes a quite startlingly large amount of noise when something as big as The Builder falls down the better part of our staircase! BANG! Bang. Bang. Bang. Accompanied by a sort of strangled yell.

Didn't sound good!

Got up and went to investigate, expecting to find a mangled mess of Builder at the bottom of the stairs. Our stairs are notoriously steep. Falling down headlong would not be an amusing thing to do.

Fortunately, The Builder had gone down on his bum and was sat at the bottom of the stairs, propped against the book case (and calling it all kinds of things that I couldn't possibly repeat in a family friendly blog!) Mind you - it's just as well it was there. Otherwise he might have kept going and flown right out through the front door. I think that's what Marlo thought might have been going to happen. He had been asleep on a tiny coffee table by the radiator, well within the trajectory of anything that was flying down the stairs and out through the front door. By the time The Builder fetched up by the bookcase, Marlo was on the drinks cabinet, peering around the corner looking worried. He can move quite sharpish when there is need, can that cat.

Unlike Molly Meldrum*, who appears to have been gadding about on a roof when he fell from a ladder in Melbourne, The Builder was bruised and bloodied but not broken so no need for ambulances or other emergency actions. And the day could proceed more or less as planned.

Although - can anyone tells me just what happens to whole days? One minute it was breakfast time and there was loads and loads of time to do fun things like baking and making stock and stuff. The next minute it was time to go and collect Gareth and Cally from their place, then Tabitha from the supermarket and then head to Paul and Carol's place for their Christmas party. Freyja, alas, did not go. She hadn't ever received an invitation (though one was sent). I hadn't enquired if she was going partly because I didn't realise that it was a family party we were going to (in which case I would have expected her to be invited); and also because UEL has exams this coming week and I had rather thought that she might be in London. She, of course, hadn't mentioned it to me because she didn't know about it. Sorry Freyja :-(

In the meantime, it was most definitely a family party. Jane and Neville were there. So were Ruth, Andy, Nicky and Jo, not to mention Andy's 88 year old mum, Molly. Claire was there with her boyfriend. Penny, Steve, Joseph and Imogen were there. Helen and Ian lobbed in later, after the pantomime rehearsals. And Jane's oldest friend Zoe (an honorary Gill) and her partner were also there. It was a lovely evening. Lots of good food and nice wine. Cally had a great time playing with Joseph and Imogen. Walter the cat beat a hasty retreat when everyone started arriving but came back later to be made a fuss of. The party ushered in Christmas quite nicely. And then we had to go. Tabitha started work this morning at 6. And I had to be up and ready to leave for work by 7:15. Early nights were called for.

December sunset near Sheffield
Click on the photo for the Christmas Party album

In other news, the Gill clan is to augmented by 1 in March for James and Kim are in an Interesting Condition.

The Hyde clan is also to be augmented by 1 in June when Austin and Kaori are also expecting a Happy Addition. Theirs is due on Austin's birthday. This would have the equally Happy Consequence that the baby's birthday would be nice and easy to remember!

And Freyja features in the Sheffield Steel Roller Girls' Calendar for 2012. If you fancy one, you can buy them here

*Australian pop guru

Unexpectedly Busy - Again!!

2011-12-17T08:43:00.000Z

Although, I suppose, it wasn't all that unexpected. It was payday, so we had planned to go to Waitrose when I finished work to lay in supplies. Plus, my whole sheep and half pig were due to be delivered in the morning and would need putting into bags for the freezer (they do come butchered and in packs, but the packs are sufficient for a small army and we really don't need to eat quite that many pork or lamb chops in a sitting!!). So I was all organised to be sorting out food when I finished work for the weekend.

Then I had a phone call from Freyja.

Some sort of computer catastrophe had beset Tabitha's place of work. Which is not good when you work in the online shopping section of a major supermarket the weekend before Christmas! Tabitha was going to have to work back late to help sort it all out. Gareth works until 7. Cally would need picking up from the nursery. Could we do it for Freyja was not free?

OK. This can be done. I'll leave work a little early and hotfoot it to Waitrose and do the shopping. We don't need much. The Builder can meet me there as planned and we'll go and collect Cally.

But wait! How will we get in to Cally's house? We don't have a key :-S

Change of plan. We'll go to Tabitha's supermarket, collect the key and *then* go to collect Cally.

Oh. But no car seat. Never mind. I can carry her home. The nursery isn't all that far away.

Right. So off I go. dash into Waitrose. Do the shopping. Head outside. Still no sign of The Builder. Get text message. He's in London. London? What's he doing in London?!? Oh - message was truncated!!! He's in London Road at a standstill in traffic. Eventually he turns up. Off we head to Taffa's supermarket. Or rather, off we don't head. Huge lots of traffic is taking a shortcut through the Waitrose carpark and it takes over half an hour to get out. Try to ring Tabitha to say that the timings are beginning to look doubtful - Cally has to be collected by 6 and it's already 5 and we're still in the Waitrose car park :-S Phone constantly engaged :-S

Eventually, we escape. And then the traffic just melted away and ten minutes later I was collecting the house keys from Tabitha. Just as well I hadn't been able to contact Tabitha from the Waitrose carpark!!! No worries getting out of the Sainsbury's car park and ten minutes after that I was talking to a rather surprised Cally in the nursery. She wasn't altogether delighted to see me, but cheered up as we walked back to her place and looked at Christmas trees in shop windows, and doggies waiting outside shops for their people. We even got to say hello to a police officer.

She was unimpressed to find The Builder sitting in her lounge room but cheered up when bribed with a small yoghurt pot, and was pleased but not noticeably relieved when her daddy got home just after 7.

Was all a bit stressful in the Waitrose carpark though!!

Still. It all worked out all right. And the pork and sheep are now sorted out and nestling in their new freezer bags in the freezer. And we had magnificent pork chops for dinner last night

Unexpectedly busy

2011-12-13T05:00:00.000Z

So. Off we ambled, on Saturday morning, to Bishops' House, where it was our turn to open up and to keep the place ticking over until 1:00. We don't get many visitors in the mornings during the winter, so we were expecting a very quiet morning. I had brought tea bags and milk and bananas to keep us fortified. The builder had brought his book. I had brought my Where's The Doctor? (á la Where's Wally) book that Tabitha, Gaz and Cally gave me for my birthday to keep me occupied. So it came as something of a surprise when a lady with a German accent came wandering in just after we had opened! All in all we had 4 visitors - plus a lady from the committee who came to look at the new stock we've got in our tiny shop. There will be more next weekend. There's a band coming to play music in the afternoon. We, alas, will not be there.

After the afternoon shift of volunteers came, The Builder and I made our way down to Sharrowvale Road near Hunters Bar. We drove round and round and round and round, looking for somewhere to park. Finally we found somewhere to park, and made our way to a new cafe/deli called Thelma's which sells delicious sandwiches, amazing hot chocolates and a range of interesting cheeses, cakes and yummy things. It's quite new. I would thoroughly recommend it should you find yourself in hunters Bar looking for somewhere for a nice lunch. There is also an astonishing fish monger just down the road, not to mention a rather lovely greengrocer across the road. Sharrowvale Road was on its way upmarket when we first arrived in Sheffield. It's quite a bit more so now (although there are still some of the old shops there, selling dish drainers for tuppence ha'penny should you need such a thing).

After our very tasty lunch, Freyja, The Builder and I drove into the city centre and visited the Bank Street Arts Centre - a small community place which was having a tiny Christmas market selling hand made knitted things and jewellery and felting and pretty things. Then Freyja went off to go skating and The Builder and I came home.

So it was an unexpectedly busy but very pleasant day.

On Sunday I was moved to decorate our ficus tree with Christmas decorations - something I would normally have done next weekend. But I felt like it, so I did it. I am not absolutely sure that Marlo really approved!

While I was about it, I made some Christmas biscuits

Starry jammy dodger, anyone?

Birthday celebrations

2011-12-08T09:29:00.001Z

12 months ago, Lindsey, The Builder and I went to The Nettle, through the snowy, snowy darkness, to celebrate my birthday at their Chocolate Feast. Alas. The chocolate feast had been cancelled because of the awful weather.

This year we made another attempt. Lindsey, sadly, was not with us, but Bea and Steve were. And it was my birthday eve, rather than my actual birthday - but that was OK. And the weather was mild and damp, so no snow on the roads around us. The chocolate feast was on!!

And very delicious it was too.

I had taken Wednesday off, partly because this always seems like a good plan when you have been to a Nettle function the night before, but mostly, on this occasion, because it was my birthday and I quite fancied having a day out in celebration. So we got up late and talked to Stella and Tony on the phone (There's a strange beeping noise - what can it possibly be? Oh! It's the bedroom telephone!! Can't remember the last time I heard that ring!!!) and had breakfast and chatted to Austin on my mobile phone and chatted to various people on Skype/Twitter/Facebook. Then we trundled into Sheffield and collected Tabitha and Cally, who also had Wednesday off and went out into the Peak District to the Chatsworth Farm Shop. It had been our intention to have lunch in the farm shop restaurant, but there were two coach loads of tourists cluttering the place up. So we pottered around in the shop and bought a few bits and pieces and then went to the Devonshire Arms in Pilsley instead.

It was a lovely day. Mostly the sun shone. There was snow up on the hills and in the fields. Cally seemed to enjoy her jaunt out, although you should have seen her face when she had her first mouthful of mashed potato at lunchtime!!! It was obviously not made in the way it's made at home or at nursery and her little brow furrowed in puzzlement while she thought about this :-D. I spoke to Freyja on my mobile phone while we were out and about. It was all good.

But we really, really didn't need any dinner last night. Feel a bit sorry for poor Gareth who was at work yesterday, so didn't get a mighty lunch - and possibly not a mighty dinner either!!

Cally and Taffa waiting for lunch in the Devonshire Arms in the Peak District. (Click on the image to reach the photo album)

I was rather surprised (and quite touched) by the number of birthday messages I got on Facebook yesterday. Took me simply ages to reply to them all!!! Who knew that I knew so many people!!!

The Builder

2011-12-07T08:43:00.000Z

Richard appears to have decided that I haven't mentioned The Builder much, or even at all in the last few blog posts and that this clearly means I have him locked up in a cupboard somewhere. So - just to prove that I do occasionally let him out of the cellar, here he is


The Builder, at The Nettle, with beer

Remembering how lovely our house is

2011-12-05T09:20:00.001Z

We have been in The Sidings for nearly 5.5 years now and so far have done very few of the things we thought we would do very quickly - like replace the carpet and redecorate the dining room and take the tin wardrobe out of the spare bedroom. We really don't see the carpet, or the rather fusty pinkness of the dining room any more. We don't really see the house any more. It's just where we live.

So it was lovely, on Saturday, when a work colleague, Jo, who has never been to the house before walked into the dining room and said "Oh, how lovely" and then went through into the lounge room and said "WOW!". Most people, when they walked into the lounge room for the first time did say "Wow", but there haven't been any first time visitors for a long time. We had forgotten just how much Wowness our house has. It's a lovely little house and we had stopped noticing just how lovely it is. We had also stopped noticing how lovely our garden is - until Jo asked me how I can bear to drag myself away from the garden and the view to go to work.

We clearly need more first time visitors. If you haven't been - come now. I might even tidy up in your honour :-D (You can come and visit even if you have been before - I'll tidy up for you too)

Winter is beckoning us into her frosty embrace. Most places had their first light dusting of snow overnight. I didn't think we had been so blessed - it was raining, not snowing when I left for work. But The Builder tells me that there was a dusting of snow down the back of the garden when he went down to feed the chickens this morning. But still - nothing like as exciting as last year's offering!!

So. We had Jo and Rob over for lunch on Saturday and yesterday we went to the Mill in Rowsley and came back with loads and loads of bread flour and plain flour and porridge oats. I did quite a bit of baking yesterday afternoon, and we had porridge for breakfast today. Porridge is a mighty fine breakfast on a dark and icy morning

Not much to say, really

2011-11-28T12:27:00.000Z

Mostly because the big event of the past few days was our visit to the BBC Winter Good Food Show and I said it all on the Kitchen Blog!!

A few days ago, I was talking to Lindsey and she told me off for running the washing machine overnight while we were in bed. What if we should inadvertently flood the house? In fact, I suspect we would first of all flood the cellar, but I run the washing machine overnight because the electricity night rate is considerably cheaper than the day rate. Following my conversation with Lindsey I was moved to investigate further. I had thought that the night rate was between 10 and 8 but a more careful inspection of the British Gas website suggested that it was any 7 hour period within those times. How do we know which 7 hours apply to us? I emailed them to ask. And it turns out that in our area the night rate is between midnight and 7am. Now I am sorry, but no matter how much I might want to live a more frugal lifestyle, I am not staying up until midnight to put the washing machine on. And I am definitely not doing the ironing after midnight. I shall do it all before 7 instead. So Lindsey now has no reason to fear that we will flood the house. Well, not from an unattended washing machine at any rate! There's not much I can do about the oven though. I am emphatically not going to bake bread and cakes, still less make roast dinners overnight!!

It occurs to me that this time last year Lindsey had just arrived from Singapore for a ten day visit, bringing huge quantities of snow and Arctic temperatures with her. This year the weather is windy and grey but very much milder. No real prospect of snow in the foreseeable future. It's nothing like as pretty - but it's a good deal easier to move around in. It further occurs to me that Lindsey was the last overnight guest we had. Not one overnight visitor this year. Have we done something to upset you all?

Sunday

2011-11-21T18:57:00.001Z

It crossed my mind a little while ago that we hadn't seen Penny, Steve, Joseph and Imogen for about a year, when we all met on the last day of October last year on the Norfolk coast to farewell Peter on his final voyage. Penny and I have communicated by email and postcard on and off over the year and have made vague plans to meet up, but there has never been a time when all of us were free at the same time, and the year has trundled along and here we are, nearly at the end of it.

Penny and I had both earmarked November 20th as a date when we were all free and had blacked it out in our diaries.

And so it was that The Builder and I took ourselves off through the fog towards Sheffield yesterday lunchtime for a merry afternoon chatting to Joseph and Imogen, admiring the renovations that Penny and Steve have made to their house, and eating the delicious soup, bread rolls, apple meringue and steamed syrup pudding that Penny and Joseph had prepared for our repast. Joseph and Imogen seem to have grown since last we saw them - but are not too old to appreciate the Advent Houses we took for them :-)

We haven't seen Joan this year either. Penny reports that she is quite well but does get a bit bored on days when she doesn't see anyone. I can entirely understand that! The Builder and I are going to sort out a weekend when we can meander over to Cambridge and visit her and possibly even potter about in the market as well!

Yesterday was also the day when both Chesterfield and Sheffield turned on the Christmas lights. So after a lovely afternoon catching up, The Builder and I pottered into the Sheffield city centre, where we met Tabitha, Gareth and Cally for a wander around the market stalls, carnival rides and various other activities that were taking place in town. We didn't stay for the actual turning on of the lights - it was getting a bit crowded. We accidentally wandered into The Rutland Arms instead for a quick one before The Builder and I drove home, and Tabitha and Gareth and Cally walked home. Well - Cally didn't walk - she rode in her pram. And she didn't have a quick one, she's a bit young at 8 months. She had a doze instead.

Cally out on the razz. (If you click on the photo it will take you to the rest of the album)

It is very seldom that I have occasion to cook chestnuts. I, alas, am unable to eat them. The Builder loves them and buys them at chestnut braziers in the winter. I buy them for him sometimes too, but he usually has those unroasted. When I bought some for him on Saturday, I decided to treat him and bunged them in the oven for a bit - not wishing to light the barbecue just to roast a few chestnuts!! I probably should have pricked or cut the ends. I probably shouldn't have forgotten all about them. I was forcibly reminded of them when there was an explosion rather like a small cannon going off in the oven. There were bits of chestnut shell all over the bottom and the rest of the oven was coated in what can only be described as chestnut flour. I took the tray out of the oven and put it on the gas stove so the rest of the nuts would cool, and went to tell The Builder what had happened. I was in the middle of relating the tale when there was the sound of a shotgun going off in the kitchen. Another chestnut had exploded, covering most of the kitchen in chestnut flour. This is not entirely desirable when you have a nut allergy!!!!! I nearly decide that it would be easiest to buy a new oven (can't afford a new kitchen!). But fortunately all the chestnut bits were easily brushed out using my dustpan and brush (once the oven had gone cold, of course). And I've been meaning to clean the extractor thingy over the gas stove for months!!

Gear Sticks

2011-11-18T18:05:00.000Z

We should, I suppose, be grateful that when the gear stick in the car decided to break, it didn't do it while we were travelling at speed, it didn't do it while we were on the motorway and it didn't do it while the car was in neutral or reverse. On the contrary, it decided to break just as we had come off a quiet roundabout on the way to the station and while we were, we think, in third gear. Thus The Builder, in his guise of my chauffeur, was able to coax the car to the station so I could get to work, and then managed to coax it home again, ably assisted by all the traffic lights which turned green on his approach.

Now, most cars these days have gear stick in little boxes. If you should need to replace or repair any of the cokmponent bits, you dismantle the gear box, fix whatever it is that needs fixing, remantle the gear box and off you go. But no - not ours. Our gear stick is encased in a hermetically sealed box which would take a nuclear blast to dismantle - and then you would never get it remantled again.

We had to buy a whole new unit at around £150.

As you will be aware, most gear sticks have a knob on the top of them which usefully tell you wehre the various gears are. In my naive innocence, I had always assumed that these come as an integral part of the gear stick. But no. They are a separate unit. In most cars, they screw on and off, or can be levered off. In our car, they are a separate unit which is then sealed eternally to the gear stick itself with resin. Our mechanic gamely tried to get the old one off the old gear stick, but it retaliated by shattering into a zillion pieces. We had to buy another one for a mere £60

:-S

All up, it took almost £300 to get the car back on the road. The Builder's bank account has gone into hiding!! Still, we are now mobile once again and I have given up my flirtation with the early morning bus drivers, and indeed the evening bus drivers. Was nice running across our next door neighbour Debby most mornings, mind you. She works in Chesterfield and most mornings was on the same bus as me

London

2011-11-14T07:30:00.000Z

*I* want to move to London Docklands, then when someone says "Would you like to help stage and perhaps even have a small part in a Medieval Mystery Play at St Clement's Church?" I too could say yes - although I would not need telling that this is probably THE St Clement's of Oranges and Lemons fame. (Not only did I already know this, but I have even been to St Clement's, once upon a time, a long while ago) I too could audition for the Olympic Games opening Ceremony, even if I can neither dance nor skate. And I could meander about during a free afternoon and find that I had walked to Canary Wharf and have a nice potter about in the shops.

Actually, I had been a bit worried when I delivered Freyja to UEL that I had more or less abandoned her in what looked like an industrial wasteland. Apart from the University itself, which is quite sweet and rather charming, there didn't appear to be anything else much about. Freyja, however, has been out exploring and has found suburbs and shops and even a park plus, of course, lots of exciting things to do in the city itself. So after we had had a small spot of lunch on Saturday, after The Builder and I had driven down in the morning, we went out for a look around. And it's quite a nice little area of London, around where Freyja lives. The park is huge. There are horses in it. And people wandering around. And even two silly boys on a VERY loud motor scooter rushing up and down on the grass. Mind you, the signs around the grass only forbid the playing or practising of golf. No mention of motor scooters. And, come to that, no mention of cricket, football or even lacrosse. Presumably we can do all of these things, provided we do not attempt to do it with golf clubs!

Freyja had mentioned that there was a city farm somewhere round about, but I had got the impressions that it was quite some distance away. So it was something of a surprise to run across this across the road from the park.

An unexpected find

Naturally, we had to go in! If you click on the photo, you can see what we found in there.

We had a good potter around the city farm then a bit of an explore on the way back to Freyja's place, where we had a nice cup of tea and then trundled back to Tupton. It was a good day. Although I think The Builder was a bit tired when we got back. He had done all the driving and his knee was objecting quite strongly to this. So I fortified him with liberal applications of wine and a nice stir fry. And we did almost nothing on Sunday - which was grey and dreary and gloomy in Tupton, despite reports of warm sunshine from almost everywhere else in the country!

I am, however, extremely glad that the gear stick in the car decided to snap away from the gear box when the Builder was calmly and steadily taking me to the station this morning, and not when we were hurtling up or down the motorway at great speed on Saturday!!

A long, long weekend

2011-11-09T09:09:00.001Z

The advantage to having a long, long weekend is that you get two short working weeks and the time passes very quickly.

The disadvantage to having a long, long weekend is that you get two short working weeks and the time passes very quickly. It seems to be Wednesday already. I am definitely not ready for it to be Wednesday!!

It was a good weekend, though. We went to Bishops' House on Saturday morning to open it up for visitors. Not that we had many visitors. It was a drizzly and gloomy sort of a morning so there wren't many people pottering about in the park. But we did have a mother with two excitable small boys drop in to say hello. And a couple of committee members came to meet a visitor from Colchester who had lived in the house during the 1970s, when it was divided into two residences and occupied by park keepers from the council. And Freyja came to visit too, not from London but from Simon's place near Nether Green. It's kind of fun, in a quiet sort of a way, volunteering at a small museum. We get to play shop. We get to wander around and look at things. We get to talk to the visitors, when there are any. Plus we had taken books and tea-making provisions, so between visitors we got to sit and read and drink tea and eat flapjack. Not a bad way of spending a morning.

Sunday was an absolutely beautiful day. Truly glorious. So, naturally, I washed absolutely everything I could find and hung it all out on the new washing lines The Builder has put up right down at the bottom of the garden which gets sun all year round, when there is any sun to get. I had intended to get out and do some clearing up in the garden and plant some bulbs and generally do useful things. Instead, we repotted the ficus in the lounge room which had very seriously outgrown its pot and was looking very unhappy. I've had it since I very first arrived in Sheffield when it was given to me as a present. When I got it it was about 40 cm tall and now it's around 120 or so and serves as our Christmas tree. It's looking very much happier now that it is in a substantial pot! So then I was about to go outside and do useful things in the garden. Instead I made some bread and an apple crumble and a beef and tomato stew. And suddenly, it had gone dark and was too late to go out gardening. Never mind. There's always tomorrow. I can sort the flower garden out then. In the meantime we will eat roast chicken and indulge in late Sunday afternoon activities.

Alas. Monday dawned gloomy and misty and damp. No gardening for me then. And the bulbs sit, unattended and unloved in their boxes for another week. And we more or less had another Sunday. All very restful and peaceful. And damp. But not as damp as yesterday. Yesterday was one of those days which, when you get them at other times of the year, cause people to say "Goodness - look at the weather; anyone would think it was November!!" Grey, dark, drizzly, misty. Not cold. Quite mild, really. But definitely not a nice day. Fortunately, I was back at work. The Builder and Marlo, alas, were stuck at home in the gloom. Fortunately for them, we have electric lights and central heating!!

Speaking of being at work, Gareth is off again this week. I think that the company that he has been working for has actually ceased trading. fortunately, the call centre in which he was based has found him a job with another company so there is no immediate need for me to send stale crusts and mouldy water to keep them ticking over. And he is on annual leave so is at least being paid, even if he might not have chosen to take leave this week.

And I am still waking up at around 04:00 ;-(

The house is looking distinctly tatty now that The Builder has painted the porch!


Autumn flowers in the driveway and our new back door

Waking early

2011-11-04T08:46:00.000Z

It is extremely irritating when you are consistently waking an hour earlier than you need to. It is even more irritating when you wake at that time on a day off!!

I have today off.

And still I woke up at about 4:00 this morning :-(

I *think* it's because our clocks went back last weekend. Usually I adjust quite quickly to the change in time. Not, apparently, this time. Not that I actually need to be awake at 5:00 in the mornings. Usually The Builder gets up around 05:20 and goes down to make us a cup of tea so we can have a leisurely drift into the morning before I get up at around 6. But I am usually awake a little before all this happens.

There was, of course, absolutely no reason at all why I needed to be awake, and up and attem on a day off ;-(

So we stayed in bed and drank our tea and listened to the radio and generally behaved as though it was a Saturday. It's quite nice having a Saturday when everyone else is doing Friday!

Gareth is doing a whole run of Saturdays. The company that he works for has been being naughty and it looks as though they might be about to cease trading. All their call centre staff were sent home earlier in the week while things sort themselves out. Fortunately he is being paid for this week. But he's not sure what will happen next week. Tabitha is due to go back to work later this month and has been doing odd extra shifts recently to get back into the swing of things. But I don't think anyone can comfortably survive on just statutory maternity pay, even with a few extra shifts thrown in and particularly not when there is a small creature in the family. For their size, small creatures are very expensive! We will have to hope that either the company Gareth works for keep going, or that the call centre they are based in can redeploy him (and, of course, all the other staff; let us not be selfish in our hopes for gainful employment).

Right. I'm off to do some useful things. The more Saturday things I do today, the fewer I'll have to do when it really is Saturday

A hippo has come a knock, knock, knocking

2011-10-31T18:27:00.000Z

... at the back door, looking for Freyja, Bernard and Sleepy.

The Builder was a bit surprised. He wasn't expecting a box in the post. It was addressed to me. *I* was surprised. I wasn't expecting a box in the post either. And I certainly wasn't expecting a hippo, searching for Freyja, Bernard and Sleepy, wishing to join them in East London so that she too can study, become a Lady of Letters and (apparently) smoke cigars and drink port. I am not sure that any of the others smoke cigars, but I expect they can oblige with the classes and the port. The hippo came bearing vegemite, socks and packets of chips. Hippos bearing gifts are always welcome!

I saw Freyja for lunch on Friday (and handed over the hippo, and her share of the goodies). I saw Tabitha and Cally and Gaz this afternoon and handed over their share. So many thanks to Tammy the Hippo for her largesse, and to Ian and Lindsey who I believe provided the airfare that allowed Tammy to get here.

We went to Salisbury on Saturday afternoon. And from Salisbury we went to Braishfield near Romsey so we could carry on stalking our favourite Australian publican and, entirely incidentally of course, eat the magnificent food his chef turns out (a mighty burger and some truly lovely French fries for me; steak and positively gargantuan chips for The Builder). We returned, well fed and well watered, to The Swan.

It was quite exciting the following morning when we came out in search of breakfast, to find Carl the landlord up a ladder outside our room peering into the fuse box (not that it has fuses, but it's the same sort of thing). There were no lights on in the bar! For some reason they had decided overnight to stop working!! So we had a romantic breakfast in dim lighting, sat by the window. Not that the window was providing much additional light. It was a grey, gloomy, misty morning. Entirely appropriate for autumn, but not much use if the lights aren't working! Still, how much light do you need to eat an egg and bacon sandwich? Or even a full English breakfast?

And by the time we returned at lunch time, bringing the Builder's mother with us after a really lovely drive around in the New Forest admiring the autumn colours, the lights were back on and we could easily see our Sunday roasts. It seems that the trip switches had taken against the beer coolers in the cellar and turned the lights out. (Don't ask me - I don't understand these things!)

The Builder's mother is in a right pickle. About three weeks ago council workers came and stripped out her kitchen and her bathroom. Agreed, they did do this by appointment, but THREE WEEKS LATER she still doesn't have a functional kitchen, the bathroom is more or less a toilet and a shower attached to a wall, the kitchen equipment is in her bedroom and loungeroom (although the washing machine is out in the corridor)and her (tiny) loungeroom is full of leaves and dust and chaos. Fortunately her youngest son Peter lives in the same complex so she can go and stay at his place during the day, so she isn't starving. But for goodness sake - how long can it possibly take to put in a small kitchen and bathroom?!?!?!? She'll be 87 in April and doesn't have the sharpest of short term memories any more. All this chaos and confusion isn't helping matters at all. She definitely enjoyed the lack of chaos at The Swan. And the food! (And the drive through the New Forest)

Lindsey asked for some more detailed photos of the progress of the porch. Here they are:

The back door with a new, large letter box. The shoe rack is by the dining room window

The Builder is going to paint all the boards yellow. Then he's going to put shelves up along this wall, which backs on to Steve and Debbie's garden

Eventually all this will go and the large freezer will go here. The Builder is going to reconcrete the floor and then put down lino

The door out into the garden. The hole at the bottom is to allow Marlo in- and egress. The windows are now glazed

A mid-week day off

2011-10-28T07:30:00.000+01:00

At some point last week I was musing that it was very nice to have a table booked at the Nettle for their Italian themed evening. Nicer still that Bea and Steve were coming with us. We don't go to the themed evenings very often. They have them every 8 weeks or so, but they are always on a Tuesday, which is not an entirely convenient evening for going out revelling if you happen to work full time! Mostly we go if I am off anyway on the Wednesday. And mostly the evening are full of food, full of wine and finish quite late (at least by my standards).

I consulted my diary to see if maybe I could go in a bit later on the Wdnesday following the Italian evening. And discovered that on that Wednesday, unexpectedly and quite remarkably - my diary was completely empty.

I booked the whole day off :-)

We had a really lovely evening. As predicted, it was full of food, full of wine and finished quite late (at least by my standards). I particularly enjoyed the deconstructed pizza - a warm bread roll which you could fill with your choice of charcuterie, olives, mozarella, tomatoes. It was nice to have an evening of gentle chat with Bea and Steve. It was a lovely evening.

And it was particularly lovely that I didn't need to bounce out of bed at 6:00 on Wednesday morning. The Builder, of course, is retired, so no need for bouncing for him. Bea was on an evening shift so also had no need to leap from her bed at an early hour. Spare a thought for poor Steve who alas did have to go to work first thing on Wednesday morning!

We had a nice, gentle morning on Wednesday, pottering about. Then The Buidler went to the surgery to see if they could work out why he is getting a bit breathless when rushing about. They did blood tests and a blood pressure test. They did a puff test. They stuck a thingy on his finger to measure how much oxygen his blood is getting. It was all very exciting for him. He has to go for an xray of his lungs as well. But the doctor doesn't seem to think that there is much amiss - and probably nothing that losing a bit of girth won't fix.

While he was doing that, I pootled into Sheffield and met Tabitha, Cally and Ginger Rich for a wander about the Woodseats shops. That was quite fun too. there is a good butcher. There is a good fishmonger. There are LOTS of charity shops, but we didn't trouble those much. We did trouble the book shop, largely because it is closing down and was selling books very cheaply. We ate chips and met Gaz on his lunch break. And then I went home again.

I rather like having Wednesdays off. Should do it more often. And we have booked into The Nettle's next themed night which is another Chocolate evening early in December. We are hopeful that this time it might not be snowed off. And I have booked the WEdnesday off, partly for expediency but mostly because it is my birthday :-)

2011-10-25T08:02:00.000+01:00

The car now seems to be better. The Builder took it to Nick The Mechanic during the week, who took it for a good drive and put it on his diagnostic computer and couldn't find anything wrong. He diagnosed dirty fuel. So The Builder put more fuel in the tank and added a fuel cleaning liquid and so far it seems to be running smoothly again.

I didn't go to my Japanese class on Thursday evening, though. I wasn't sure about this diagnosis, and had no wish to find myself stuck on the Dronfield bypass at 9:30 in the evening with a car that refused to go! But we took it to Chatsworth and round about on Saturday and it went perfectly well, so I have decided it must be better after all :-D

We didn't go to London, which had been the original plan for this Saturday. By the time it was clear that the car probably would take us to London and back, we had already put Freyja off and she had made other plans. We'll go down and see her in November. Instead, we just pottered around. The Builder put some more work in to the new porch. I baked and roasted and stewed. We did a little light gardening. It was all rather laid back and rather peaceful. And it was the last appointment-free weekend that we have for 5 or 6 weeks, now that I come to look at my diary.

Said I was tired, though - each evening I was asleep in my comfy armchair by 8:00 and had to be shooken awake at bedtime!!! Just as well I don't have a big and squishy comfy armchair!!!!!!!

Last week

2011-10-22T10:42:00.000+01:00

... was sat there, brooding and dark, even when I went home last Friday evening. I knew it was there, lurking.

I was aware of it all over last weekend, an oppressive presence, rather like a forthcoming thunderstorm, casting shards of glooming fingers through Saturday and Sunday.

Yet Monday dawned sunny and bright. My lecture went quite well. So far, so good. 1 down and only 4 to go

Tuesday remained sunny and bright. 3 classes, seemingly well received. Not too bad. 2 down

Wednesday had sat in the middle of the week looking alarming. 2 hours on the desk, made all the more disconcerting when the bookings system overnight decided that all of the rooms, equipment and kit on level 4 had been decommissioned - and cancelled everybody's bookings for anything on level 4 for the whole of the rest of time!!! This introduced a high level of chaos into the week. But mercifully the students were patient and friendly. The desk session was followed by a two hour meeting, which was followed by a brief interlude which allowed for lunch. Then came another hour on the desk and another meeting. And quite abruptly it was time to go home, the hump of the week was broken and the day had been survived. 3 down, only 2 to go.

Thursday and Friday each had two classes and one desk session, just not in the same order. 4 down, and then all done. Quite abruptly, the busiest week of the year in my diary was done.

And here we are. It's Saturday morning again. There is no dark cloud hovering over this weekend. The week that loomed so darkly over last weekend has been vanquished (and actually was quite a pleasant week, in the end, topped by the first year students and tailed by the final years, all of whom were engaged and charming). And I have been paid so we can go out and re-stock the larder and visit Chatsworth and re-stock the upright freezer.

So not too bad, to say that I had been aware of the week commencing 17th October for many weeks and was definitely not looking forward to it. Went quite well, all things considered.

I'm a bit on the tired side, though

It was a dark and stormy night

2011-10-18T07:08:00.000+01:00

And it was. It was extremely windy. And the wind was accompanied, from time to time, by bursts of very heavy rain.

The Builder has completed putting up the side panels for the kitchen porch and has finished putting the plastic over the top to form a lid.

He has not, yet, put a panel in over the door leading to the driveway, and the "wall" on the other side, leading to the garden is still completely exposed apart from a door.

The wind had a merry game, blowing in through the holes in the "walls" and trying to dislodge the plastic roofing.

It was all quite noisy, especially when you add in the noise that the fan oven makes when it's turned on!

So I wasn't immediately aware that there was a fairly rhythmic banging noise going on until there was a sudden lull in the windy plastic game and the oven noise subsided a bit.

What on earth is it? The oven about to explode? The roof about to explode? Some mad person engaged in a spot of DIY outside in the storm?

No idea. But whatever it is, it's now making the kitchen vibrate :-S

The Builder ambled in from the lounge room. "What do you suppose Sean is doing?" he asked. Sean is the next door neighbour on the other side of the kitchen. "It sounds as though he is attacking his kitchen or dining room with a sledge hammer!"

And that was exactly what it sounded as though he was doing (and it explained the banging noise). But I guess if people wish to attack their houses with sledge hammers, there's nothing to stop them. I stopped worrying about it and went back to making my shepherd's pie.

The Builder ambled off.

And suddenly there was an almighty banging noise on the (new) back door, leading to the driveway.

:-S

I went to investigate. And it was Sean on the hunt for a crowbar. He had locked himself out of his house and his Yale locks were entirely resistant to whatever it was he was trying to break them down with.

So that explained that!!

The Builder, of course, has a crowbar. He and Sean trundled down in the wind and the rain, armed with a torch, to the shed at the bottom of the garden and Sean disappeared home with the crowbar. A couple of huge bangs later he was back, back door now in bits (his, not ours).

Would seem easier, though, to have a spare key at our place. We are reasonably trustworthy when it comes to other people's keys!

After that it was a relatively uninteresting dark and stormy night. It was noticeably chillier this morning when I got up. But it's a truly beautiful morning in Sheffield now, although I am told it remains blustery

Dressing gowns

2011-10-17T06:47:00.000+01:00

I am in the fortunate position of possessing four dressing gowns.

Now you might consider this to be slightly excessive. I probably don't actually *need* four dressing gowns. But one of them is a big, thick, snuggly depth of winter dressing gown that I wear when the temperature is absolutely freezing. And one is the lightest of light summer dressing gowns that you don't need for warmth but for decorum's sake should you need to go outside in your summer night attire, or have visitors. The other two are mid-weight dressing gowns, one a bit warmer than the other. These are the two I wear most often and which one I wear depends entirely on the temperature inside the house, although I wear the lighter, purple one more often in the summer and the heavier, green one more often in the winter. Obviously!

The super snuggly one was washed at the end of the last winter and hung in the wardrobe. A few weeks later the green one was washed and went in. A little after that my very light summer one came out. This weekend I have washed it and put it back in the wardrobe. It was hardly worth washing it. I think I've worn it a mere handful of times this summer. It was not the hottest of summers that I have lived through since I came to England. And my green dressing gown came back out of the wardrobe a mere few weeks after it went in. Some bits of the summer were positively chilly!!

This weekend just gone, however, was not chilly at all. At least, not during the daytime. Proper autumn weather it was. Cool and even a bit drizzly in the early mornings, followed by gloriously sunny later mornings and afternoons, followed by cool, nearly cold nights. Lovely, it was. Although I think the summer veg might be coming to the end of their useful lives. They are not enjoying the colder nights any more than I would were it not for the fact that I have a lovely feathery, downy, cuddly doona to keep me cosy.

We went to the Chatsworth farm shop for a few supplies on Saturday. Now this would hardly count as news. I'm sure you all know that we go there fairly regularly. But Saturday's trip was very much more, um, exciting than it would usually be. As we were driving along, the Builder suddenly said: What on earth is the car doing? I couldn't see a car. But he meant ours. The one we were driving in. Out in the middle of the Derbyshire countryside. I don't know. What is it doing? Losing power, apparently. Three times on the way to Chatsworth it suddenly began to slow down and lose its acceleration. Getting back home again required careful, gentle driving on The Builder's part and encouraging exhortations from me to the car along the lines of: Come on, you can get to the top of the hill; keep trying. Then suddenly it seemed to shake itself and trundle along as normal. But I think that we might not go to London in it, as was the plan, on Saturday unless it's been inspected by Nick the Mechanic and possibly fixed. I have no wish for it to decide that it can't get any further half way along the M1!!

No other excitements except that The Builder had a delivery of wood boards during the week and has started putting up the side wall for the back porch. You never know - it might be finished by the time winter kicks in

Roller derby and chocolate brownies

2011-10-13T07:37:00.000+01:00

I thought, when we went to watch Freyja captain her team in a bout against Nottingham, that we might have gone to the wrong bout. That one was organised by Nottingham (so why, you may wonder, was it in Sheffield) and it was held at the skating rink, which I'm sure is fine for skating but isn't so good as a spectator venue. There isn't anywhere comfortable for specators to sit, or to see. There isn't room for a proper bar. There is no cafe. There wasn't really even any room for many merchandising stalls.

We should have gone instead to the one that Freyja organised on Sunday, which was held at Ponds Forge and which had a circus theme. There were lots of stalls and there was a proper bar. The spectator seats are comfortable and well-lit And, of course, at Ponds Forge, there are lots of cafes and snack bars.

But we hadn't gone. We were at home. I was, in fact, in the kitchen, baking brownies and making baked beans and generally amusing myself by cooking, while watching the bout on the internet. You could hear the announcer nice and clearly (the one at the previous bout had been practically swallowing the microphone and was absolutely inaudible). I could see (although I would probably have been able to see if I had been watching the Nottingham bout on the internet, I guess). Lots of other people could see too - the announcer mentioned at one point that they could see people peering in through the gallery windows, presumably wondering what was going on. The announcer also announced that I was at home baking brownies :-D (I had mentioned it on the chat facility on the internet site; he wasn't being clairvoyant!!!)

Otherwise it was peaceful and relaxed weekend. I was at work on Saturday afternoon, but at Collegiate Crescent, where I very seldom go any more. So it was a bit like a little holiday. Apart from that we did almost nothing other than eat nice food and drink nice wine.

Freyja wishes to point out that there was absolutely no reason why we shouldn't have gone to both bouts. Attendance is not rationed. Taffa and Cally went to both. So did Gaz, but he was there in some working capacity at Ponds Forge. This is very true. But sometimes it's nice to stay at home, watch on the internet and bake brownies!

I have been a bit worried this week. We're deep into October. The mornings are darker. The days are shorter. There is mist and fog in the valley when we get up. So why is my diary almost empty this week? What, I wonder, have I forgotten to do :-S

October :-S

2011-10-04T20:09:00.001+01:00

I was listening to someone on the radio a little while ago who mentioned in passing that they were doing something in October but that "October is ages away yet".

No it isn't. October is never ages away. October is always there, lurking in the undergrowth, growling quietly. October digs silent little elephant traps and loiters by them sniggering soundlessly. October peeps at you over the hedgerows and glances at you among the Christmas lights and smiles at you sneakily on Sundays. October is looming on the horizon even on November the 1st. October lulls you into a peaceful, calm defencelessness through July and August and then abruptly and suddenly POUNCES

October has pounced!

The students are all back and my diary is filled with inductions, workshops, lectures, seminars, not to mention the desk shifts and other things that fill my time right through the year. It is true that I do all the lecturing and workshops and other things through the year as well, but not quite as intensively as in October. My diary quivers every time I approach it with a pencil. And it's only October 4th!

In the meantime, we have been enjoying some lovely weather. The weather that you might expect to get in July or August but which passed us by. Temperatures around us in the high twenties. Sunshine and blue skies. I dusted off my shorts and sandals (which I think I have worn once in England this summer!) and even rescued my straw sunhat. It all felt slightly odd. It had been quite chilly a couple of weeks ago and I had moved on to autumn food. We've had to make a quick slide back to summer! But it was really quite odd to have warm, balmy evenings, but to have the sun go down at 6:30. Pleasant. But odd. They say that normal autumn temperatures will be back with us in the next day or two. Good. I like my autumns to be misty and chilly in the mornings and sunny but cool during the day, cooling down again in the evenings. And I want to snuggle into the new, winter weight feather doona we bought recently!!!

We went back to Bishops' House on Sunday. After our visit there when we learned how to make butter, we joined the Friends of Bishops' House. And Tabitha registered as a volunteer - it's opened by volunteers at the weekends, which is the only time it's open to the public. the Builder and i thought that sounded like a fun thing to do, so we volunteered too. It's only half a day or so once a month. So we went for our first session with a more seasoned volunteer on Sunday. And it was quite busy - even if two ladies did come in just to buy pencil sharpeners. I assume they had been before and had bought pencil sharpeners previously. Otherwise, how would they have known that we had them?

Oh. If you are interested in life during October from the viewpoint of the (slightly more mature) student, you should follow @runrollerrun on Twitter. Her #lifeinhalls remarks are very entertaining

Manor Lodge, Sheffield. And food.

2011-09-26T10:14:00.001+01:00

Once upon a time there was a castle in Sheffield. It was comprehensively razed after the English Civil War, so much so that not a trace of it remains. They found bits of it in the 1920s but for all practical purposes it remains only in the name of the area where once it was. And the Castle Market is about to be demolished so there will be almost nothing to suggest that once there stood a castle on that site.

Possibly its most famous resident was Mary Queen of Scots

Anyway. There is also a part of Sheffield called The Manor. I surmised that once there had stood a manor house in that corner of the city but further assumed that when the Parliamentarians demolished the castle they had probably also demolished the manor house. But no. The manor house fell into disrepair rather than being destroyed (although I think that some of the owners might have helped the process along a bit!) And there are still ruins on the site, plus a complete turret house where Mary Queen of Scots lived in the summer months so she could take her annual exercise. There is a large park, once a deer park, and they have built a heritage centre. There's also a farm attached to the park.

On Saturday they were having an open day so Tabitha, Gareth, Cally, The Builder and I went along to have a look. I had absolutely no idea that so close to the city centre there was this large park. I had no idea that there were such beautiful ruins in Sheffield at all. And I had had no idea that the turret house was there. (And I must admit that I wasn't expecting Bess of Hardwick to greet us as we walked into the Turret House - but the lady who did greet us assured us that she was indeed the famous (and long dead!) Bess - and who am I to argue?!?!?

Manor Lodge, Sheffield.
Click on the photo to see the album

We wandered down to look at what was happening at the farm, with the intention of buying lunch at the farm shop/cafe. But the queue was so long that we gave that up as a bad idea and went for a wander around the farm area instead. The local pub doesn't do food. So we hopped back in the car and came into the city centre - which is only a couple of miles away. We ended up in the Rutland Arms, which does do food. Proper, home cooked, basic pub food. Nothing fancy. But what they do do is really rather nice. I haven't had a proper chip butty in years. The Rutland Arms does chip butties with cheese and bacon and spicy tomato sauce. It was delicious!!!!!

Cally had been having a lovely day. She was full of smiles and gurgles and happiness. Until, that is, the food arrived at the pub table. And none of it was immediately given to her!!! I think she thought that chips were being withheld and raised a strong protest against this appalling treatment. In fact, the chips were too hot for her and we were waiting for them to cool down. Gaz had to runnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn into the loos and run a couple of chips under the cold water tap so she could have her chips immediately :-D

Barb and her brother Greg were in Nottingham over the weekend at a book convention. They came on a bus to visit us for lunch on Sunday. The bus broke! They had to come a devious way round :-S But they did arrive and we had a lovely catch up and even rather a nice lunch. You can read all about the lunch on the Food Blog (there's a tab at the top of the page that will take you to the food blog). It was a good afternoon.

The sun has come out today and it's pleasantly warm. A little burst of late summer - although we can feel winter approaching. It's dark now when I get up and the mornings are chilly.

Oh - I meant to say. I was putting a new doona cover on the bed on Saturday morning when a movement outside caught my eye. I looked out the window and there on the hedge which separates Steve and Debbie's garden from the one on the other side was a large bird of prey, about the size of a buzzard, eating a collared dove. It probably was a buzzard, although you don't see many around our place. But it had a yellowy, creamy stripe over each eye which went round the back of its head and almost joined up at the back. I didn't think buzzards had stripes over their eyes. Anyway, it sat there for ages, peacefully eating its lunch, watched by The Builder and me, until Debbie went out to hang up her washing and it flew away. The pigeons sitting in the tree it flew into scarpered extremely quickly, I can tell you!!!!

The blog disappeared!!!!!!!!!

2011-09-21T08:38:00.002+01:00

It did. It completely disappeared. I went to update it yesterday and all I got was a weird error message. I tried again. Still the weird error message. So I tried in IE in case it was a Firefox issue. Nope. Still the same error message. And strangely, the kitchen, garden and hippo blogs were all still there. Freyja tried down in London on her Mac, in case Meanderings had taken against Sheffield, or Windows. But no. Meanderings = gone ;-(

And it's surprisingly difficult to report this. There is a Help forum (where the issue was being discussed, so it wasn't just me). But no real indication whether Google was listening or planning to do anything about it. And it crossed my mind that, although I back up the blog every January so I have the previous year both saved to a hard disc and even printed out - I didn't have 2011, which has been quite an eventful year in its way, backed up at all. Freyja drew my attention to the Google cache. I found the cached version of my blog (hello Meanderings - so good to see you, even if you aren't a live site) and now have a very crude back up Just In Case. Perhaps I should do this more frequently than annually!!

Anyway. It is, as you see, back now. But it was strangely disconcerting to find it missing. I was surprised by how troubling it was!!

Right. Back to normal. I have been talking to Stella (as I do :-D ) She reports that they have no less than three scrubbing brushes at their place. Two in the bathroom (why two?) and one in the laundry although she doesn't think the one in the laundry ever gets used. Lindsey says that she also has one in her bathroom. Now I come to think about it, I suppose we also have two in the bathroom, one real one and one for scrubbing grout. Although I am not sure where that is. Must have a look. And there is a brush in the kitchen, although I wouldn't call it a scrubbing brush. I use it for dealing with recalcitrant dishes and saucepans, so I guess it is a brush that scrubs. I have been being old fashioned in other ways as well. I made some more butter at the weekend, following on from the butter making event at Bishops' House. It is astonishingly easy if you have an electric whisk. I have invested in some wooden butter paddles which I found on Amazon. And I might need to lay in a mighty supply of muslin, although I usually do have muslin kicking around. I use it for all sorts of things. The Builder had homemade butter and homemade marmalade on his toast for Breakfast on Sunday. Pity it wasn't also homemade bread, but I hadn't had the time. I do, however, have buttermilk in the fridge. I should make some soda bread!

Freyja came back to Sheffield for the weekend, to captain the B team in a roller derby bout against Nottingham, which Freyja's team comprehensively won. The Builder, Taffa, Gaz, Cally and I went to watch. I had forgotten the minutiae of the rules. Must look them up again! She has now headed back to East London for the start of their teaching term. Our new students have rolled in for Freshers' Week this week. UEL has started a week earlier than most Universities to accommodate the Olympics next summer.

In the meantime, Tony and I both have Quite Interesting coughs, Austin is being blown to Kansas by typhoon Roke and Cally has decided that her new cot is fun for playing in but not for sleeping in, thus rendering her parents horribly sleep deprived. I don't think anything else of interest is happening :-P

Musings on domesticity

2011-09-17T11:04:00.000+01:00

A little while ago, Lindsey gave me a copy of the New Zealand book A home companion: my year of living like my grandmother by Wendyl Nissen. I read it and very much enjoyed it, but pondered that while life 80 years ago had many things to recommend it, I suspect my grandmothers would have thought I had gone barking mad had I decided to eschew the advantages of modern living in order to take up the disadvantages of pre-and wartime living.

I have not given up using modern cleaning chemicals, largely because, while it might make sense to use lemon juice if you live in New Zealand, or Australia, where lemons grow on trees in your garden, it makes no environmental or economic sense to me to use lemon juice as a cleaning product when lemons have to be imported into the UK. And I have not found vinegar to be as effective as proper cleaning fluids.

Nevertheless, I do use more traditional methods for many things. For example, we nearly always eat food that is cooked from scratch, that is seasonal, that is locally grown where possible and grown by us to a large extent, if you are talking about fruit and vegetables. On the other hand, I have freezers rather than kilner jars - if for no other reason than the dire, dire warnings I have always read about the likelihood of you inadvertently and rather abruptly terminating your family line if you fail to sterilise your kilner preserved fruits and vegetables properly. Then again, I do make my own chutneys, marmalades and jams.

This is what I have so far been doing today (it's not quite 10:00 in the morning as I write)

Clean and shiny and brushed

I was moved to clean the shower when I got up this morning - a task I do very seldom as it seems like a herculean activity (although possibly if I did it slightly more often, it would be lilliputian rather than herculean!!). I admit - I did use a chemical spray. But I also used possibly the most old fashioned thing I possess. A scrubbing brush. The Builder said when I bought it, in surprised tones, that his grandmother had had a scrubbing brush and he hadn't seen one for years. I assume my grandmothers had scrubbing brushes. I assume my mother had one. I had one too, a long time ago and in another place. And now I have another. And it is an absolute wonder. Much, much more effective than steel wool or cleaning wipes or anything at all at keeping our shower tiles clean.

Shower cleaned, I came downstairs and, in an activity that I suspect my grandmothers didn't indulge in, but which countless women have over the generations, I went out and fed the chickens, gathered in the vegetables, checked the flower and veg beds - and fed the wild birds and the fish in the pond, which I suppose earlier generations of women wouldn't have done. Then I came in and took some onions out of the freezer (not a grandmother thing to do!) and sliced fresh zucchini, tomatoes and chard from the garden and allotment to make a giant pot of late summer vegetable stew. Which will go into the freezer when it's ready. The Builder has been podding beans for winter stews. And I have pulled a pumpkin from the garden, some of which is roasting in the oven (along with the vegetable stews) which I will make into roast pumpkin soup with home made stock later.

Winter pies in the making

Now I have a pile of Bramley apples to deal with. They'll be stewed down and go into the freezer too. And sometime over the weekend I shall make some bread and some cake and I might even have a bash at making some more butter. But using an electric whisk rather than a hand churn!

Oh - and I have some stalks of mint leaves and flowers in a vase, gently scenting the dining room.

In the meantime, The Builder has been putting a lid over our backdoor, so that we don't have to stand out in the pouring rain, hampered by bags and packages and umbrellas when trying to get in, and so that we don't trek mud and grime directly into the kitchen. It was certainly working when we got back yesterday afternoon in what appear to be a monsoon. Marlo was sat, in the dry, outside the back door watching the tempestuous rain outside his "umbrella". It's not finished yet, but it's going to be a serious improvement when it is!

It's going to be a very useful dry space when it's finished

The Builder combining the old and the new with his feather doona and his laptop

Learning new things

2011-09-13T09:16:00.004+01:00

Roger and I had to go to London for a meeting on Friday. Other people at the meeting were surprised that we had come down in the morning - hadn't we left really early? Actually, we had left on the 8:30 train. Usually I am on the 07:30 train (but heading in the other direction) so it seemed like quite a late start to me!

We could have left even later. The meeting wasn't until 1 and we hit town at about 10:30. So we went to Foyles and had coffee and quite remarkably nice Chelsea buns and then pottered about assessing the bookstock.

We went to the meeting. The meeting ended. And I headed back to St Pancras where I did not catch a train back to Sheffield, but checked into a B&B about a 5 minute walk away. For Freyja was on her way down to London Town armed with a huge suitcase. I also had a suitcase packed with loads of her things. We had bags of her things. Freyja was Moving To London!!

We had a really nice meal in an Italian place in Bloomsbury.

We got up quite remarkably early on the Saturday.

We left on the 7:30 tube train (the underground is spectacularly empty at that time on a Saturday morning) and made our way by tube and the Docklands Light Railway to the University of East London, where Freyja is about to embark on the life of a student. I have to say, if you are going to be a student in East London and live in the Student Halls, then a residence right by the river is the way to go. It's really lovely. The London City Airport is right across the river. We sat on benches while we ate our breakfast sandwiches and watched people doing rowing training on the river, and small planes flying in and out of the airport.

I wonder if the rather nice little library needs a librarian?

Now. Remember. Freyja and I had separately come down with one suitcase each and one bag all filled with her stuff. She also had a small backpack. We dumped things in her room and in a couple of cupboards in the kitchen. We had forgotten one or two vital things - toilet paper being the most vital. Why do I NEVER think to take toilet paper when moving?!?!?!?!? But mostly she seemed reasonably well kitted out. We were a bit worried, therefore, when we were heading out for the afternoon and found that 18 year olds were being moved in by their parents with positively truckloads of belongings (including slabs and slabs of beer and slabs and slabs of coke. An odd combination in my view!). We wonder if we have undercatered for her tenure in her rather cute little room. On the other hand - where on earth would you put all that stuff?

Oh well. No doubt she has acquired toilet paper by now. And she's back up in Sheffield for the next few weekends. She can pick up other things as and when she needs them.

Some months ago and inspired by my baking and decorating those 80 cupcakes for Tony's birthday, Freyja and I had acquired vouchers for a cupcake decorating course. Given that we were both in London on the Saturday anyway, we had booked into a session in the afternoon. So off we went and learned how to make sugar bows and ice creams, and how to use fondant icing and cream cheese icing and how to pipe butter cream. It was a pleasant, if sticky, way of spending the afternoon. A late lunch in a nearby pub, then Freyja went off to meet Simon and to continue frolicking in London and I relocated to the Betjeman Arms at St Pancras and then came home.

A little while ago, Tabitha had drawn to our attention that the Bishops' House, a medieval house on the edge of Meersbrook Park was having guided tours and doing craft activities on Sunday. I have to say that I would gladly have stayed at home on Sunday. All the excitement of London had left me a bit tired. But we decided to go anyway. And I'm very glad we did. The guided tour was extremely interesting and informative (no bishops have ever lived in the house, for example). And in the afternoon we learned how to make butter - which turns out to be spectacularly easy. Quite a bit of hard work in the 16th century when you were effectively mashing cream in a jug. Less so when they invented rotating butter churns. And no work at all once electricity was discovered and food processors were invented!!! We made butter by mashing the cream. Tabitha, Gareth, Cally, The Builder and I all took turns to mash. But I commandeered the actual butter making. And now I know how to do it - I shall do it again. The butter was lovely!! (But given that electricity has been discovered and someone has invented the food processor, I might do it electrically rather than by mashing or churning!!)

So I learned lots of new things at the weekend. Some of them were even useful things :-)

Freyja's new front yard
Click on the photo to see the album of the weekend's adventures

Clumber Park

2011-09-05T11:59:00.002+01:00

I have been aware of the existence of a walled kitchen garden at Clumber Park for some years. For almost as many years it has been on my list of places to go and visit. But whenever we've thought about it, it's been raining, or something else has come up, or there have been other things to do and so we have never been.

I can't say that visiting it has been right at the front of my mind recently, so I am not sure what brought it to the top of my list of things to do on Friday, when we were considering what, if anything, to do on Saturday. The forecast was quite nice. There wasn't anything urgent that we needed to do at home or on the allotment. So we went.

It's a nice drive from our place to Clumber Park, across country through Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, passing through some pretty little villages and along some pretty little roads. Clumber Park itself is huge. An enormous estate, with people picnicking and fishing and barbecuing and strolling around. There used to be a mansion on the site but that was demolished many decades ago. There are still some buildings, including a seriously cute little cricket club house by the cricket field (where there was cricket match in progress), some older buildings, some new ones, including a visitor centre, a NT shop, a restaurant.

Click on the photo to go to the complete album

So we paused for lunch, and to note that there was a lake for strolling around and various other things to do. But on another visit, perhaps. Today we had come to inspect the walled kitchen garden. And that is what we did. But we will definitely go back and explore further. We might even bring a picnic next time - although the pea and bean pie I had was amazing and The Builder's sausage and mash were also extremely tasy (I, of course, had a taste!). And it would be interesting to have a look see during the winter, although the walled garden isn't open between November and February. Plenty of other things to look at, though

I imagine that they will also not be playing cricket over the winter. This is possibly just as well. We were wandering slowly along the grass by the side of the cricket field. I was half watching them playing and half reading a message on my phone. What I was definitely not doing was paying any attention to where I was going. I decide that I would visit the loo before heading into the garden and marched smartly off, still not paying attention to where I was going. Suddenly, I turned my ankle in a rough patch by the side of the road - and went flying. WHOMP! My phone went flying further. The hippos, who I had in a bag, did nothing to cushion my fall :-( The Builder was in a quandary whether to pick me or my phone up first. Sensibly, he collected my phone and then hauled me back onto my feet. I have a graze on my arm and a graze on my knee. But I think I might be quite bruised. I went whomp quite hard (it attracted a bit of attention, although not from the cricketers) and the whole of the right side of my body aches!!! Still, at least nothing is broken and I still managed to get around the walled garden :-) And we collected a really pretty bridge on the way home. I was quite happy, really.

So not a bad finish to a week off work (apart from the attempt to fly without benefit of wings!). We had a very quiet Sunday, which we more or less ate and drank our way through.

And now I am back at work. And all that cleaning, tidying and organising I was going to do in the house and garden last week remains utterly undone! Oh well. There's always the Christmas holiday :-D

A summery September the First

2011-09-02T04:01:00.000+01:00

The Met Office, for reasons which I am sure make sense to it, declares that the seasons begin on the first day of the relevant month. So, as far as they are concerned, autumn started yesterday. Everyone else is holding out for the autumn equinox on the 21st. Apart from Mother Nature who seemed to have decided that it started some time last week. So it was something of an irony that yesterday, the first day of September, provided us with possibly the nicest summer day that we've had for about six weeks!

So we drove into Sheffield, captured Tabitha and Cally, and took ourselves out to Our Cow Molly's ice cream farm. Molly and her ice cream first came to my attention when the sandwich shop across the road from SHU turned into a soup and stew (with pizzas) shop and I wandered over one lunchtime to see what was what and found that a well as soup and stew and pizza, they also sold Our Cow Molly's ice cream. The ice cream was delicious. Then I discovered that they had a farm on the edge of Sheffield. And then I discovered that they also have a farm shop. I've been meaning to go and have a look for months. So we went out to visit in the sunshine. And found that they have lots of lovely ice cream flavours, some local meat, Molly's milk and other bits and pieces in their little shop. So we each had an ice cream (not Cally - she was allowed tastes of ours) and I bought a rather nice looking piece of Highland Cow rump steak. The poor bloke who sold me this seemed very worried. He thought that I might think that a steak from a matured cow which had been properly hung might be off or something because it wasn't the pretty pink that beef from the supermarket is. I assured him that I seldom buy steak from the supermarket and he seemed much happier. And I went off to eat my ice cream in their garden in the sunshine. We shall have the steak tonight with our left over gardener's pie from Wednesday.

Click on the photo to get to the album

So that was all fun, but it didn't take very long. It was still a beautiful afternoon, so we decided to go to the alpaca farm outside of Ringinglow. We were nearly thwarted in our ambition because the alpaca farm has the wrong postcode on their website. Took us into the depths of a quite nice housing estate somewhere out near Lodge Moor. All very nice - but not alpacas! So I put the Ringinglow pub into the sat nav and off we went again. And found the alpacas frolicking in the sunshine. I must say, they have the most amazing views to keep themselves entertained. We had a potter around, inspected the little shop and then took Taffa and Cally home and ambled back to our place.

I took this week off work partly because it's quite enticing to have five days off for the price of 3 days leave but also with the vague intention of giving the house a proper clean and tidy. So far I don't seem to have cleaned anything. And it doesn't look like any cleaning is going to happen today. So far we've been out to Chatsworth to stock up on meat and fish and now we are heading out to The Nettle for lunch. I don't often achieve anything particularly useful after we've been to The Nettle for lunch!!

[LATER: I barbecued the rump steak on my griddle pan for tea this evening. It was mouth waveringly tender. And extremely delicious. Not cheap - but I might see if we can get some more when next we have a special occasion or visitors or something]

Bank Holiday Weekend Adventures

2011-08-30T02:00:00.000+01:00

Actually, apart from the excitements in the Swan's car park, the weekend was mostly taken up with feasting.

We went with Barb and Greg to a hidden pub, out in the wilds of the countryside near Warminster. The Cross Keys. A pretty little pub which I am not sure I could ever find again - it was hard enough finding it with Barb and Greg in tow, and they'd been before. There are chickens in the gardens and a Bassett hound in the bar, accompanied by a 12 month old Bassett Cocker cross. There are naked cricketers in the loo, a heron in the fish pond and a very amiable landlord overseeing it all. It was a good evening. Would suggest we try and find it again, except that the chickens, dogs and landlord are all off to go exploring Mainland Europe for the next 12 months. Still, maybe the new landlord will be amiable and have interesting things for us to play with. We shall send Barb and Greg on a reconnaissance mission after the new person has had time to settle in.

On Sunday we collected Gwen and meandered out to Whitely for lunch with Jeanette, Matthew, Rebecca and Evie. I've been trying to think when we last saw them and, according to my diary, it was after Christmas LAST YEAR!!!!!!! No wonder Evie had grown so much!!!!! Really must go more often. And not just because Jeanette makes magnificent cottage pies, and they ply me with wine and there are young people for me to tickle (although all these things are true :-D) I think we might have worn Gwen out though, with all the excitement of playing with Evie and trying to hear what we were all saying without benefit of her hearing aid (the batteries had gone flat and she couldn't get new ones without her New Battery Pass thingy, which she had forgotten to take with her).

Back at The Swan, we had a lovely supper. And I caused some level of confusion when, in a moment of inattentiveness, I asked if I might have a short black. I knew as soon as I asked for it that that was wrong. And simply couldn't draw to the front of my memory what it should have been called. So I drank my small, long black coffee with the addition of a little of the very delicious brandy that Carl had put The Builder's way. Next time I shall try very hard to remember to ask for an espresso. Not sure where the "short black" came from. I haven't been in Australia *that* recently!

Monday found us munching on steak and chips in the Wheatsheaf in Romsey before heading home. A fitting finale for a magnificent weekend of feasting.

As well as feasting, we have mooched around in the New Forest, visited the Lyburn cheesery, discovered that the New Forest Farm Shop has vanished without trace (unusual for a farm shop to go under), admired ponies, cows and piggies, got held up in an incredible traffic snarl between Stoford and Wilton (usually takes 5 minutes or so; took 40 minutes on Monday - an hour to get from the Swan to Waitrose, which is usually about 15 minutes), had a quick explore of Romsey, drunk a very little wine, and generally had a merry time.

SHU is closed today, so we will almost certainly mootle out for lunch somewhere today. And I have the rest of the week off :-)

Not a bad life, really.

You'll find all the pictures for the weekend here, if you missed the photo link of the Tarrant Hinton blog

No need to go to Tarrant Hinton next week

2011-08-29T00:43:00.000+01:00

"Bloody hell," said The Builder. Except he didn't say 'bloody'. "The pub's on fire!!"

I was sat on the bed, with my back to the window, reading the Saturday papers on my laptop. It didn't seem likely to me that the pub would be on fire. Why would the pub be on fire? And even if there was a fire in the kitchen, you wouldn't be able to see it from where we were. The kitchen is out the back. I looked round. There was indisputably smoke going up past our window.

"It's OK," said he. "It's not smoke. It's a traction engine turning into the car park."

This also seemed unusual, so I got up to look. And there was indeed a traction engine turning into the car park, followed almost immediately by another one. And over the course of the next hour more steam engines turned up until there were, all told, six or seven of them, with their little caravans and their trailers and other paraphernalia cluttering up the car park of the Swan@Stoford. It was all very exciting.

We ran across a rather quizzical looking Carl when we were heading out a bit later. Had he been expecting a load of steam engines to rock up into his car park? Seems they come every year, on their way to the Great Dorset Steam Fair in Tarrant Hinton, near Blandford Forum, which is held in the week after the bank holiday weekend. But there are usually only two or three of them! Still, all of the traction engine attendants were ambling around in the car park armed with pints of beer, so I guess he does all right out of them for food and drink. And they hadn't taken up absolutely *every* space in the car park. There was still room for us to park when we got back later. Although we noted that Carl had taken the precaution of moving all his notice boards off the lawn so there was extra parking if need be.

Being owned by a traction engine requires early starts. We were awake by six - but we are accounted weirdly early risers by our friends and acquaintances. By half six there were one or two hardy steam souls out polishing their engines. By seven all of them were out and about, stoking their fires, polishing their machinery, running a little sausage sizzle barbie, getting ready for the day. By the time we were ready to head off, they had started making their stately way out of the car park and were heading slowly and steadily off towards Dorset. They spaced their departures out so as not to cause too much disruption. But we headed off by a back way anyway, expecting there to be no steam engines left when we got back later that afternoon.

But there were. There were two more. New ones, whose people were sat in the same alcove of the pub as we were when we went down for supper. Nice people. 8 men, one woman and a lad, changed out of their Fred Dibnah gear, cleaned up and looking as though they had never been anywhere near a traction engine that day!

So it was something of a worry when we came down for breakfast this morning to hear one of the blokes cheerily informing whoever it was he was talking to on the phone that there had been a bit of a drama overnight. A bit? It surely counts as more than a bit of a drama when one of your party gets carted off to hospital in an ambulance at 5 in the morning after suffering carbon monoxide poisoning when his caravan fridge malfunctioned? I would call that quite a lot of a drama, especially since he had to be kept in hospital for a further 24 hours and therefore was out of action for the day's events!!! Carbon monoxide monitors are the way to go!

We left before they got underway so I don't know if the bloke was OK. But none of the rest of them seemed unduly worried so I suppose he was.

But we don't need to buy a ticket for the Dorset Steam Fair this year. Enough of the engines came to us to make us perfectly happy :-)

Steamy excitement in The Swan's car park. Click on the photo for the weekend's photo album

A sunny weekend

2011-08-22T00:00:00.000+01:00

I was talking to Lindsey at some point over the weekend and she was saying that it had been quite chilly in Ballarat but that the temperature had, over the weekend, climbed to a pleasantly mild 20d. This amused me not a little. 20d would be considered pleasantly warm in Derbyshire. The average temperature for Derbyshire in August is 21d and if it gets any warmer than about 25d it gets really unpleasantly humid. The temperature last week was a little down on the seasonal average, but had come back up again in Tupton over the weekend to between 23 and 25d. The sun shone. The breeze was mild. In our world - it was a beautiful weekend.

Hello :-) Wearing my best bib and tucker for Sunday lunch

So we trotted out into the countryside on Saturday and meandered our way to Chatsworth to raid the farm shop and then trundled out to Clay Cross to raid Tesco (our local Sainsbury's is closed for a week for renovations and while Tesco is not my first choice supermarket it seems ridiculous to drive past a brand new and rather large Tesco in order to reach another Sainsbury's several miles away!). Then we went to the dairy for milk and cream and then we just pottered about. It was all rather relaxing. And on Sunday Taffa, Gaz, Cally and Ginger Rich came for lunch. Marryk was supposed to be coming too, but he piked. He *said* he had picked up a bug. We ponder whether the bug came in on a wave of alcohol!! Oh well. All the more for us. Although there was almost nothing left when everyone went home. Cally, it transpires, likes Mr Sainsbury's carrots a great deal more than she likes our home grown ones. It is true that I would be sadly disappointed if our carrots tasted the same as Mr Sainsbury's - but they're not that bad, surely? I assume it was because we don't peel our fresh dug carrots. And they taste carrotier. She also emphatically did not enjoy her first taste of mashed potato. I shall add chocolate sauce next time. Everyone likes chocolate sauce!!

Sunshine, Taffa and Cally

And so to Monday. And the weather remains glorious. Seems a terrible waste to be sat in an office. The Builder, on the other hand, is stuck in the house. He is awaiting a delivery of some guttering pipe and can't go out until it arrives. He doesn't actually know when it is going to arrive. He considers it an even greater waste to be stuck in the house on a day like today. At least I get paid for being in the office!!

Is it safe to get down? Has the small creature gone yet?

Birthday bash

2011-08-20T10:17:00.000+01:00

It was Freyja's birthday on Wednesday. She goes skating on Wednesday evenings so we couldn't meet for tea. And Wednesday was the one day last week when my diary was particularly busy, so that scuppered lunch. So she and Simon went out for lunch instead. And she went skating in the evening.

We celebrated her birthday on Thursday instead. She and Simon, Nate and Duncan (her ex housemates), Taffa and Cally, The Builder and I and Stephen, a work colleague of Simon's all got together to party at Fired Arts in Sheffield. Tabitham, Cally, The Builder and I got there much too early, so we tucked Cally under our arms and snuck her into The Banner Cross Pub - which doesn't allow in anyone under 18 but didn't argue about the baby! A swift one later, it was time to meet at Fired Arts.

And it was a good evening. We all selected something to paint. We had all come with snacks and nibblies and things. Someone had bought bottles of wine. There were other groups of grown ups there too, also eating and drinking and painting and generally making merry. No children apart from Cally - but we had made her an honorary grown up for the evening :-P I had thought we might only stay for an hour or so, but suddenly it was nearly 10:00!! Charlotte, the host, brought around a birthday plate for Freyja. Duncan drew a hippo on it. I coloured the hippo in. Then Charlotte made finger print animals from a print from each of the guests, around the rim of the plate. I am very much looking forward to seeing those when the plate is fired and ready to go and live with Freyja.

Only thing, though, is that I am really getting too old to go out to play on a school night. It was quite late by the time we got home, had a sit down and a nightcap and eventually went to bed. It was a serious struggle getting up out of bed on Friday morning!!

Back at home

2011-08-13T13:03:00.002+01:00

We got back into London late-ish on Tuesday evening, after staying in a very budget hotel at Narita airport on Monday night. It might have been budget, but it was less that 5 minutes from Terminal 1, it was clean - and it was twice the size of the hotel in Nagoya. Did us perfectly well!

We had a 4 hour lay over in Vienna, which seemed a bit daunting until I remembered that I have a lounge pass through my bank account which gives me free access to airport lounges 4 times a year, and access for guests at a cheap rate. So we sat in the lounge in Vienna and drank their wine and ate their cheese and salads and cakes. It was really rather pleasant. And above all - it was quiet!

So was the bit of London that we were in. There was looting in parts of London, not to mention parts of Birmingham and Manchester. But only an idiot would try to loot anything near Heathrow. Mind you, only idiots would try looting anywhere but it would have to be a particularly dim idiot who tried it near the airport. The police in Britain are not routinely armed. They are at Heathrow!!!

We came home in an orderly manner on Wednesday. All was quiet in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire. All was quiet at our place, except the garden had run riot (but a rioting garden is OK) and the cat was deliriously delighted to see us. He remains so! I don't mind him sitting on my lap when I am still in bed, but sleeping on my head is not entirely comfortable. Well, it is obviously comfortable for him, but not for me!!!

On the first Sunday we were in Tokyo I got out of the shower and found I had a dry rash on my left shin. On Monday I had a rash on both shins. By Tuesday it was all getting quite painful, the rash was spreading and was beginning to look cross and grumpy. Fortunately, we were travelling with Lindsey, so there was no need to kidnap Austin and head to a Japanese hospital with Japanese doctors who speak, funnily enough, Japanese and not English!! Lindsey handed over a course of antibiotics (doesn't everyone travel with a spare packet of antibios?) and my leg began to get less cross. Lindsey thinks it started out as a contact allergy. Ian thinks it was bedbugs (it is true that we were all getting bitten by something, not including the deer in Nara). I don't know what it was, but it was certainly complicated by the addition of a heat rash on top of whatever was causing the infection. Happily, the antibiotics seem to have done the trick and my shins and ankles are more or less restored to normal. Although they still ache if I stand still for any length of time.

We also travelled with a small, nagging mystery. Before we left, I bagged up a supply of Yorkshire Tea bags. I distinctly remember putting them in a bag. The Builder saw me bagging them up, but didn't see what I did with them. We got to Tokyo, went hunting for the tea bags - and couldn't find them anywhere. We unpacked everything. We searched everything. We hunted. We fossicked. We both looked in all the pockets of all the bags. No tea bags to be found. So I bought some Japanese black tea bags in a supermarket and on we trundled. But from time to time we pondered the whereabouts of the Yorkshire Tea bags.

We got home, assuming that there would be a bag of tea bags on the dining room table or on the dresser or in the kitchen. But no. No sign of the tea bags anywhere at all. It was very, very peculiar.

The Builder decided that his travelling backpack had been on its last travels. It is fraying and unravelling and needs replacing. He decided to throw it away. Before it hit the bin, I decided to have a last check of all the pockets and stuff, not wishing inadvertently to throw away a credit card or a membership card or a stray yen. And there, right in the very bottom of the backpack, was a wodge. I investigated. And there was the bag of tea bags.

So the only mystery now is, where was that bag when we both searched the backpack? Because we would both swear that they were not there when we were in Tokyo!!!

And that, I think, is that. Freyja and Simon are on their way back from Osaka as we speak. Lindsey, Ian, Austin and Kaori are in Hong Kong partying. Everyone else is back at home and back to normal. I am even back at work. They called for volunteers to work today while I was away. I decided I would volunteer. A summer Saturday is not an unpleasant way of getting back into the swing of things. Back to work properly on Monday

After wedding frolicking

2011-08-08T23:12:00.004+01:00

So what do do on the day after the wedding?

Christian, Cass, Ant, Jess and Emily went home at the crack of dawn.

Austin and Kaori stayed in the Hilton and ate bacon.

Freyja, Simon and Ross vanished into deepest, darkest Nagoya - which is possibly the hottest place in the world at the moment.

The rest of us went to the Nagoya Castle.

While we were planning this, Lindsey mentioned that there might be time to go to the electricity museum. Why, I wondered, would anyone want to do that?!?!?!?! Seemed that Ian wanted to do that. So did Freyja and Simon. The Builder thought it might be quite interesting too. So in the afternoon all of them, plus Ross went to play with power. Lindsey, Judy and I had a spot of lunch and then went to the Noritake Gardens to play with china, pottery and dinosaurs (an odd combination in my view!)

Austin, Kaori and Zoy went back to the wedding venue to collect various things that had been left behind.

We all met for dinner.

And then it was Monday. Lindsey and Ian were off to Hiroshima. The Builder and I accompanied them as far as Kyoto, had lunch and returned to Nagoya. It really does seem to be hotter in Nagoya than anywhere else. We walked up to the Noritake gardens so The Builder could see the dinosaurs. Alas, they are closed on Mondays. Even more alas, we turned too early on our way back to the station and had much too long a walk in the heat and humidity back to the hotel to collect the luggage. We met Austin and his entourage at the station and farewelled Zoy who was on his way back to Melbourne. Everyone else went to explore the bottle shop. The Builder and I took the shinkansen back to Tokyo. and now here we are in a budget airport hotel, very handily located next to Terminal One ready to leap out and head back to London.

Austin - we would have made the 17:33 Narita express with about 5 minutes to spare. But I would have been Very Stressed Indeed about missing it. And it was no hardship to wait at the station for the 18:33. We found a seat and ate rice thingies and drank coffee and watched commuters squishing themselves into very very crowded trains.

Oh - and my phone charger eventually turned up, hiding in a generally unused pocket in my backpack. So I thin that is all the lost things now turned up again - apart from a couple of train tickets but they were not too onerous to replace

What the hell is happening in London? I don't know - turn my back for ten minutes and they start rioting!!

Thank you everyone for a really lovely time in Japan. It was great to see everyone. And a great privilege to be at the wedding

Nagoya Castle. Click on the photo for the rest of the album

A wedding in Nagoya

2011-08-07T22:49:00.000+01:00

So small group by small group we all assembled in Nagoya. Christian, Cassie, Ant and Jess came from Hiroshima and Osaka. Freyja and Simon w returned from Tokyo. Judy and Theo moved from Kyoto. We five arrived from Nara. Ross had flown in from Melbourne during the week. We were all assembled, except for Zoy who was due on Friday evening.

After a boisterous dinner, a few of us went to meet the train he was due on. We waited, and waited and waited and waited. And *finally* up turned Zoy. Without his luggage!!! All he had to wear was his t-shirt and jeans. And it would be considered uncouth to turn up to any wedding dressed like that and what the Japanese would think about this doesn't bear thinking about.

So while the rest of us were prettying ourselves up on Saturday morning, Zoy and Judy dashed out shopping. There was a slight panic about this because the shops don't open until 10:00.

The rest of us made our way in an unhurried, unflustered way to the wedding venue. Zoy and Judy hurtled back to their hotel and got changed.

We were siting in an air conditioned anti-chamber, drinking tea. Zoy, Judy, Theo and Ross were scootling as fast as the subway system would take them, Ross getting more and more stressed as the signing in time of 11:30 came and then went. He thought that that was when the wedding actually started. But no. It started at 12 and they were there in plenty of time for that!

Freyja picked up a stray bloke on a subway platform. Turned out he was a mate of Austin's and was on his way to the same wedding. It did seem a bit random when he came up and asked her if we were all going to a wedding. I know we were dressed in our best frocks, but we weren't carrying an "off to a wedding" sign!

So at 12:00 we were all sat in the chapel and in came Austin. He strolled down the aisle and collected white roses from the guests. These were then made into a bouquet at the front. Kaori and her dad came in. Austin handed her the bouquet and Kaori put one rose into his top pocket. Then the ceremony took place, all in Japanese. There was a very great deal of clapping! And a Japanese hymn. Now either my Japanese had improved miraculously during the course of the ceremony - or those two women were singing in English!

Stella and Tony dropped in from Mount Martha to attend the ceremony and then went away again. The wonders of modern technology, of iPads, dongles and Skype's web conferencing facility!

Austin and Kaori came out and were showered with petals by the families and guests.

Then we went in for an amazing reception with wonderful food, nice wine, speeches, hilarity. Ross made the opening toast. Austin's Japanese teacher made a speech. Christian made a speech. Kaori's dad played his guitar. Zoy sang a song. Ross had made friends with a gaggle of girlies. He said they were hanging all over him - until Zoy began to sing!!!

There was a candle relay, where Austin lit a candle at each table from his candle and then that person lit the candle of the person next to them until everyone had a lit candle except for Kaori. Then he lit her candle and we all made a wish for their future happiness and then we all blew our candles out together. It was lovely.

Then we came back to our hotels on a coach and had time for a bit of a sit down before going out for the evening entertainment, at a pizza place. Old fossils don't usually go to the after party but Austin insisted that his ancient furry ners should be present. And so we were.

Then the young people rocked on to karaoke and the fossils went home to bed.

It was a lovely, lovely day. It was also, to say that we mostly didn't have to do very much, strangely tiring

Click on the photo to see the wedding album

The after party photos are here

Things I have learned in the last 24 hours

2011-08-04T09:14:00.006+01:00

The rapido train from Kyoto to Nara takes 30 minutes. If it should happen to be cancelled, the local train takes 80. It's a nice train trip
There are deer in downtown Nara wandering around the streets. They cross at the zebra crossing!!
Little, tiny 8 seat bar restaurants cook the food in front of you and serve delightful, top class but slightly Westernised food
I do not eat raw chicken, no matter how well cured it is!!!!!!!
If you are wandering through the extensive Nara parklands and have deer biscuits in your hand, you might want to give them to the deer. Otherwise they nudge you. And push you. And even bite you. They stop biting you if you smack them lightly on the nose
Apparently, some deer have learned to bow if they want to be fed. I saw no bowing deer!!!!!!!
Little cafes in shopping arcades will sell you delicious but Americanised toast and eggs for breakfast
Little cafes out off the beaten track will sell you inexpensive but authentically Japanese tempura dishes
If you already have a blister on he ball of your foot, it would be wise to wear a pair of socks with your sandals, no matter how much that is frowned on. A band aid might not be a bad idea either
If you have trouble locating toilets, heading somewhere hot and humid would be a plan. You can drink gallons of liquid and barely need to pee at all.
The Japanese provide umpteen public loo facilities and signpost them well
If you book into a hotel which offers you the choice between a new room (Lindsey and Ian, Emily) or an old style one (Frannie and Jim) take the old style one
Nara is beautiful
You should all come at once. The Nara festival starts tomorrow :-)
We are going to Nagoya tomorrow and miss the festival by one day. On the other hand, Nara is quiet and peaceful and unhurried. This might not be the case during the festival!!

Deer, the signature animal of Nara

Click on the photo for the Kyoto & Nara album

Losing things

2011-08-03T01:34:00.003+01:00

It all started on Monday when Lindsey, Emily, The Builder and I were running around on the subway in Tokyo and I lost my day pass. This struck us all as odd because I routinely got through the barrier and immediately stick the pass in the coin part of my wallet. But there it wasn't. We dismantled my pouch and my wallet. There it still wasn't. This was a bit perplexing. It was, of course, possible that I had dropped it. But The Builder had been behind me and hadn't noticed. So I bought a new one, in the sure and certain knowledge that the original would immediately turn up again. As, indeed, it did. The back of the passes are black and you couldn't see it against the blackness of the inside of my wallet! But this was, to some extent, fortuitous for Lindsey's pass had stopped working and she couldn't go through the automatic barriers. So she had my original pass. (And Austin later had Lindsey's - a station person fixed it!!)

Then Freyja lost her ticket when we were going to the Ghibli museum. But hers was only a single trip ticket, so that wasn't too hard to replace.

And so we move to Tuesday, where during the course of the day we managed to lose not one but two phone chargers, although one later turned up (not sure at all what happened to mine. It has totally vanished. I can only assume we left it in the hotel in Tokyo, although both of us scanned the room to make sure we hadn't left anything).

Much, much more alarmingly, we managed to lose Judy and Theo!!!!! We were supposed to be meeting them to catch the train to Kyoto together. First they had a doggy-related drama back in Ballarat. Then they couldn't get tickets for the train. Then they couldn't find the train. Then they did :-) This was all very well for them but we were at Shinagawa station wondering how we were going to tell Zoy that the last time we had had word of his parents they were in the bowels of the earth in an earthquake zone!! On the other hand, it did mean that we found a mighty food hall which sold loads of truly delicious things for us to eat on the train.

And so we trundled sedately on the shinkansen to Kyoto. Although Austin, who seems to have some quite complicated plans for the coming weekend had decided not to come playing with us in Kyoto but to hop off the train at Nagoya and go home. So he did. On we went. Then Lindsey had a phone call. Austin had lost his train ticket. He had his seat reservation and Theo's seat reservation but no actual train ticket. They wouldn't let him out of the station!!! Lindsey checked to see what Theo had about his person. He had the train ticket but no seat reservation!! It was all sorted out by the railway staff. The station people rang the train people, who consulted Lindsey and then allowed that perhaps Austin should be liberated from Nagoya station and be allowed on his way.

Fortunately, we didn't lose the hotel. They run a coach up from the station, which Lindsey and Ian have used before. You could very easily get lost in the labyrinthine depths of the hotel - but we have a compass and a fine sense of direction. Judy and Theo didn't get lost, as such, as they made their way to join us for dinner - but it was a much, much longer walk than they had expected.

And we haven't so much *lost* Ant, Jess, Christian and Cassie. We know where they are. But they are not where they were intending to be. They had intended to go to Mt Fuji but had failed to pre-book a bus and you can't get tickets on the day. So they have gone to Hiroshima instead.

I have poorly, poorly ankles. They started out red and flaky on Sunday. They have got progressively redder. Then yesterday they got all puffy as well and started to hurt. Ian thinks I have been bitten by bed bugs (something has certainly been biting us - both The Builder and I have bite marks and so, I think, does Emily). But Lindsey has decide that my leggies are now getting infected and is threatening to chop them off with her electric carving knife. Mercifully for me, she hasn't brought it with her!!

Oh - and Freyja and Simon stayed in Tokyo. They are moving to Austin's place today. Ross is arriving today. Then our party is complete, apart from Zoy who is coming only for the weekend and arrives on Friday.

Not something you see everyday. Trains are usually delayed in the UK because someone has nicked the copper wiring. Earthquake a much more acceptable reason

Wandering about

2011-08-02T01:53:00.001+01:00

It seems that not only can I sleep through earthquakes, but I can also sleep through Lindsey trying to reach me by text message, mobile phone and other means of communication. She finally managed to wake me by ringing the hotel bedroom phone. This did not, however, induce me to get up out of bed and go with her to collect Emily from the hostel she had been staying in. I sent The Builder instead!!

It seems that we have all gathered in Tokyo precisely so that Lindsey could visit the Mac shop in Ginza and buy a red cover for her iPad. They don't sell them in Melbourne. Although - I am not absolutely sure how she knew that they made red covers for iPads, since they don't sell them in Melbourne. But they do make them, and they sell them in Tokyo, and Lindsey now has one.

We spent the afternoon with Austin, Emily, Freyja and Simon at the Ghibli museum and had a really nice time. It would possibly have been slightly more informative had The Builder and I actually watched either of the two Ghibli animations that I have on DVD at home. But we hadn't. Haven't seen any Ghibli films. Enjoyed the museum anyway :-) Then Freyja and Simon disappeared off somewhere. Austin and Ian went Mac shop hunting and then went looking for the elusive Turkish restaurant. Lindsey, Emily, The Builder and I came back to the hotel, allegedly for a rest before dinner. Except that Lindsey decided that she and I had not walked far enough during the day and took us down to the supermarket and to the 7-11. Twice! Fortunately, my sandals are extremely comfortable!

Ian and Austin FOUND THE TURKISH RESTAURANT and invaded the Turks. This especially amused Theo who is, as you might guess from his name, Greek!! The food explained why Ian had been so determined to find the place!!

There was another earthquake last night. 6.2 this time. And this time The Builder and I were still awake and noticed it. I have to say though, that had I been asleep the gentle swaying of the room and bed probably would not have woken me. The hotel is obviously extremely well engineered!

Right. Must go. Off to Kyoto today :-)

Down and outers at the Shinjuku Gyoemmae station

Asakusa

2011-08-01T01:39:00.000+01:00

You must, you really must go to Asakusa, said Freyja to me. You'll really, really like it.

So on Sunday, after Lindsey and Ian had lobbed in from Melbourne, we hopped on the subway and took ourselves off to find out why Freyja was so insistent. (She and Simon didn't come - they had gone off with Austin, Christian and Ant; Jess, Emily and Cassie had wandered off elsewhere). We contacted Theo and Judy who decided that they too would come to Asakusa.

And wat there was in Asakusa was a large market full of craft type things and tourist tack and other fun things to play with. What else there was in Asakusa was a large Shinto shrine and a Buddhist temple. There were also a very large number of people in the market, and in the shrine, inhaling smoke and lighting incense sticks and making votive offerings, and in the temple praying. It was noticeable just how very well dressed all the young people were, and how devout they were being. We were neither smartly dressed nor being especially devout!

Ian found us a lovely little restaurant off a side lane for lunch. We went for a nice walk along the river and counted bridges. We bought little things to take home. and Freyja was absolutely right. I did really really like Asakusa.

We went back to our hotels for a little rest, and then reconvened in Shibuya, by the dogs, to meet the girls. We got lost :-S It took AGES to find the dogs. Then we lost Emily. She had somehow found herself in a large supermarket and couldn't escape from its foodie clutches. Finally we were all together and made our way to Shinjuku to find the boys and Freyja.

We've gone to the dogs in Shibuya

Ian was very keen that we should visit a Turkish restaurant that he, Austin and Kaori had been to once. Could we find it? Could we heck. Austin and Ant had gone for a reccie but had no joy. So we walked into the first restaurant that looked as though it might be willing to host an entirely unexpected raiding party of 14 and were shown upstairs to two booths (youngsters that way please) where we ate lots of food and drank lots of wine. It was a good evening.

I woke up on Sunday morning to Facebook telling me that there had been an earthquake of 6.9 in Tokyo at 3:30. It had woken most of us, in our various hostelries, up. The Builder and I had slept right through it, entirely undisturbed. So, it seemed, had Theo. But it can't have been a collective hallucination - it was reported in the Melbourne Age!

Tokyo

2011-07-31T03:01:00.004+01:00

It turns out that there is absolutely no need to worry if you have a whole 1 hour and 20 minutes to make a connecting flight in Vienna and your first flight leaves 25 minutes late. No need to worry at all. You might need to worry if you are trying to get to Tirana or to Dubrovnic and you have a mere 40 minutes turn around time - but even then, the Austrians are likely to put on a special mini bus and get you to your connecting flight OK.

There is no need to worry about taking the train in to central Tokyo and then navigating the subway system to your hotel. There are luxury coaches that go to the various hotel districts of Tokyo, and very pleasant they are to travel on indeed. Then a taxi from the drop off point to our hotel, drop the bags, wait for the son and the nieces and nephews to turn up - and off The Builder went with the boys to play golf and snooker, and off I went with the girls to take in the view from a super tall building and to tour the shops.

Excellent.

A bit of a worry though that the restaurant we went into for lunch turned out only to do sashimi during the day. Absolutely couldn't convince my hand to put spoonfuls of minced raw tuna into my mouth!! Not all that keen on half cooked poached egg either. The egg custard with prawns was ok. The miso soup was fine. But we really should have gone into one of the places with the plastic food outside. At least then you have some idea what it is that you're likely to be offered!!

But it was a good day. Jess and Emily did a grand job of getting us around on the subway. And it was lovely to see them and Cass, and to meet Judy, mother of Austin's best mate Zoy.

In the meantime, The Builder was belting golf balls around a driving range and eating curry with the boys. Not a bad way of spending a day in Tokyo.

Click on the photo for the Tokyo pictures

Getting ready for Japan - yes, really, this time!

2011-07-28T16:44:00.000+01:00

Goodness me, thought I on Tuesday evening. We really ought to do something practical about going to Japan, otherwise we'll be spending all our travelling money not on food and wine and tourist attractions, but on clothes and toiletries and things. I realise I don't usually pack quite so early, but we're off after work on Thursday, and out on Wednesday evening so that more or less leaves now!

So I armed myself with a glass of wine and set to. I packed rather more than I usually do for a trip away, although quite a lot of it seems to be stuff for other people. But even so, there are more clothes than I usually take for us both. Never mind. It's done now, and at least the suitcases are on wheels.

Marlo, in the meantime, is suspicious!!

I think that's done. I have my laptop at work, and all the travel documents (was exciting when there was a fire alarm and we all had to evacuate! Really wouldn't do for the passports and travel money to go up in a burning building right now this very minute!!). The Builder has the suitcases and his laptop. I have worked out how to get to the guest house. I have checked in to tomorrow's flights (though couldn't print out a boarding card; but at least they know we're coming). I've backed up my laptop on the external hard drive (no point doing The Builder's, alas). All ready to rock and roll :-)

Last evening, then, Taffa, Cally, The Builder and I met at Freyja's allotment, partly so The Builder could inspect the peas and potatoes, and put tape up to deter the pigeons, and partly because Tabitha had never actually found it and didn't know where it was (and she and Gaz are in charge for the moment). The peas have come up, and so have some of the potatoes. We're impressed about the potatoes, for they had gone in quite late and had gone a bit soft.

Peas looking quite healthy

Potatoes gamely struggling on

Then we went back to Nettleham Road for a bit of a sit down, and met Gareth, when he had finished work, at Kito's (where we went with Freyja after that first amazing adventure, hunting for the allotment and not going to Japanese class) for pizza. And then we went home, arriving in good time for me to have my regular Wednesday evening chat with Tony.

Right then. Time to go. I hope that the next time we commune, that I will be in Tokyo :-)

Not getting ready to go to Japan

2011-07-26T15:25:00.001+01:00

So Freyja has moved out of her room in the house on Violent Bank. Or more or less she has. I dropped round there after work on Friday and helped her shove boxes and bags and bin bags down into the cellar, off into Tabitha's spare room and round at Simon's place. We dusted and vacuumed the room. Then I went home and Freyja went to Motosushi.

And there she and Simon now are, hanging with Austin and Kaori and generally having a good time.

I, in the meantime, spent the weekend not really properly getting ready to go to Tokyo. I really ought to think about packing. We're going on Thursday evening! I have told the bank that I'm going, and my phone company. I did organise with Tammy next door to feed the chickens and Marlo - but that was a few days ago. Perhaps I should remind her! I have printed out the plane confirmation and ALL the hotel confirmations. We have bought presents for Kaori's parents and brother (but not the dog - I forgot the dog!!!). Freyja has a present for Kaori with her. I have passports at the ready. I have yen. We're pretty much ready, I reckon! But not packed. And not having gathered up all the chargers and cables and things

We had a nice time on Saturday (not getting ready to leave for Japan). We went to Chatsworth and to Bakewell and sat on a wall by the river in the sunshine and had chips for lunch from one of the new chip shops (not as good as the original chippy, it must be said - but also nothing like the length of queue) and watched the ducks and the trout in the river. It was all good.

I am, however, worried about Vienna

Away Day, Salford

2011-07-21T07:33:00.002+01:00

It is our team's habit to go away somewhere for the day, once a year, to work on the team plan and to visit somewhere relevant to one or more of the subject areas that our team supports. This year we decided to go to The Imperial War Museum North which is based in Salford, near Manchester. History is one of our subject disciplines, and the history students study (inter alia) World Wars I and II so it seemed an appropriate choice of venue.

It was a more appropriate choice of venue that we had first thought! I knew that the BBC was considering moving some of its production and program teams to Salford, but otherwise had paid absolutely no attention at all to anything that might be happening there. So it came as something of a surprise, as we approached Media City on the new tram line, to find that they have been engaged in a massive regeneration project around the old docks. In one fell tram ride we had added my subject areas of Planning, Architecture and Urban Regeneration to our subject mix for the day!!

I have to say, I think it all looks lovely. You can see that once they have finished and when the trees have grown and a few boats have moved in and the buildings are finished that it could be quite a desirable place to live. If I had a spare hundred thousand or so, I'd be tempted to buy a flat before the area becomes up-market and the prices go up! No sympathy with the BBC bods who are complaining vigorously about having to move to the uncultured Northern Wastelands. They should grasp this opportunity with both hands! (I have some sympathy with the ones who are reluctant to move for family reasons, but none for those who seem to think that anything north of Acton is uncivilised, uncouth and perilous).

We had a good time. The Imperial War Museum cafe people had been kind enough to set a table aside for us to have our meeting. We made a good morning tea and an excellent lunch. We spent an hour or so looking at the exhibitions and pottering about. Julia decided it would be a good place to bring her children. I decided it would be a good place to bring The Builder. Rupert and I ascended the Shard to admire the view. We lost Paul. We found him again. Then we all came back to Sheffield. Was a good day :-)

We even got loads of work done on the annual plan!

It was very disconcerting looking out at the water and this huge eucalyptus tree. Felt as though I should be in Melbourne!!

Click on the photo to get to the album

A(nother) weekend of feasting

2011-07-18T16:41:00.001+01:00

Back in February, when we were in Ballarat, we met our friend Pat for lunch. It turned out that she was heading to the UK later in the year and was planning to come and stay with us. Alas, at the very time she was planning to come to our place, we were planning to be in Japan. So we arranged to meet in Chester, where she would be attending a conference, instead. We put it in our various diaries and went on our various ways.

And suddenly, the trip to Chester was upon us. I had been planning to take a picnic. I had a menu all planned and everything. Chicken and ham pie, salad, potato salad, cake, lemonade. Then we saw the weather forecast for Chester for Saturday and changed our minds! No picnic for us. Not partial to picnicking in the rain are we!

So I sat down and did a quick and dirty Google for pubs serving food in the Cheshire countryside within striking distance of Chester. And came up with The Pheasant Inn at Higher Burwardsley. Never heard of Higher Burwardsley, but the Pheasant looked all right. We decided to give it a go. After all, taking adventurous foodie chances can throw up some delightful discoveries as well as the few that you might wish not to repeat!

In the meantime, Tabitha and Cally had invited themselves along. I think Freyja might have invited herself along too, but then there wouldn't have been room in the car for Pat once we got to Chester. Seems a bit pointless to go all that way to have lunch with someone, and then to leave them behind while you wander off a-feasting!! Gaz didn't have the opportunity to invited himself - he was working.

It was raining when we woke up on Saturday morning. Lovely, steady gardeners' rain. It rained quite hard when we were about to leave Tabitha and Cally's place. We put the departure off for a few minutes. It poured, briefly as we crossed the Pennines. By the time we got to Chester, the sun had come out. But it was very wet underfoot. We could probably have had a picnic, but we might have got very wet bottoms. We found Pat where she had said she would be, at Chester University, kidnapped her and took her out to Higher Burwardsley.

The Pheasant was beautiful. It's a lovely building with amazing views out in gorgeous countryside. The food was delicious. My burger with the lot soundly defeated me. Had I realised it was going to be quite so mighty, I wouldn't have indulged in the mixed sharing platter that Pat had suggested we have as an entrée. But I only grudgingly stopped eating it. I ate the two huge onion rings and all my chips though. The Builder had the hugest, biggest, most humungous piece of haddock that I think I have ever seen. He ate every last scrap. And all his chips. Neither he nor I felt any need for anything to eat in the evening after that. And feel sorry for poor Pat - it was the conference dinner that evening!!

It is a truth that is pretty much universally acknowledged (That would be a good opening line for a book :-D ) that no matter how full you are, there is always room for ice cream. And along the way to The Pheasant, we had seen loads of signs pointing to an ice cream farm. After lunch we went to investigate. And found this: The Cheshire Ice Cream Farm There were about 30 different ice cream flavours. And it was amazing ice cream. I think we must go again one day and have a proper look around.

Then we took Pat back to the conference, Tabitha and Cally back to Sheffield and went home.

We had bought the ingredients for making a raised chicken and ham pie so I decided to make it anyway. We had it for Sunday lunch, with potatoes from the allotment and vegetables fresh from the garden. And very delicious it was too.

It was nice to see Pat. It was a weekend full of lovely food. All in all it was a very good weekend.

Except that I managed comprehensively to bugger The Builder's laptop.

And I rendered entirely inoperative Freyja's brand new bicycle chain with combination lock.

But apart from that ...


The Pheasant Inn.

(As ever - click on the link to get to the album)

A picnic in the garden and other adventures

2011-07-11T07:32:00.002+01:00

When I first started working in the Adsetts Centre there was an American working on the team. Kelly. She lived not far from where I lived and we would sometimes walk home together. Then after a time, she moved back to America taking her (British) husband with her. She still has the husband and now also has two daughters.

We more or less lost touch. Then she found me on Facebook and we got back in touch.

So it was very exciting when she announced on Facebook a few weeks back that they were all coming to England for a holiday and did I want to meet up.

They came for lunch on Saturday. We were extremely lucky with the weather. The Builder put up the gazebo. I prepared an Australian-style picnic and went and collected Kelly, Steve, Rebecca and Sarah from the coach station (having realised only the evening before that I didn't actually know how to get to the coach station's car park!!) and brought them back to our place for lunch. Marlo beat a hasty, horrified retreat when he realised there were children about the place. The chickens were intrigued and watched them with very considerable itnerest - although they were on the other side of a fence!

Kelly and Sarah

Steve and Rebecca

It was lovely to catch up. And nice to be able to sit outside for our lunch

Then The Builder took them back to the coach station and they went on their way. I think they've gone to Bath for a couple of days.

Sunday also dawned bright and shiny so we went into Sheffield to have another look at Freyja's allotment. And for the Builder to have a first look. This was a slightly more complicated adventure than I had anticipated, for the main road between Chesterfield and Sheffield was closed for maintenance. So I told Kathy the sat nav to ignore the A61. Which she did. Entirely. And rather than taking us round the Barlow and then Bradway as I had expected, she took us through Barlow then right around to the other side of Sheffield, via Owler Bar. This had the huge advantage that we entirely missed the horrendous traffic in Woodseats!

The Builder says that the photos I took of Freyja's allotment on Thursday evening do not do anything like justice to the true horror of the amount of rubbish and chaos and mayhem that is on Freyja's allotment. So I have taken some more. But she has decided to keep it for the time being and see what happens. Tabitha and Gareth might be interested in growing some things on it. And she has some friends who might also be interested. Just not sure what we do with all the rubbish!

The Builder, in his guise as the Under Gardener, is going there this morning to make a start on a bed or two and we'll see how we go

More photos of Freyja's allotment. Click on the photo to get to the album

Freyja's allotment

2011-07-08T07:25:00.012+01:00

Something like 4 years ago, Freyja was minded (for reasons I have never entirely fathomed) to ring the Sheffield City Council and ask what steps you needed to take to apply for an allotment. I don't think she was actually intending to apply for one. She just wanted to know the procedure.

Somewhat to her surprise, they put her on a waiting list pretty much there and then.

Then certainly I, and I think also she, completely forgot all about it. So she was somewhat surprised to get a letter telling her that she was now at the top of the list and that her allotment was waiting for her. I was extremely surprised, having not thought about Freyja in allotment terms for at least 4 years!

So yesterday Tabitha and Cally went and collected the key to the allotment site (no keys required in Tupton or, indeed, in Hangingwater) and Freyja and I arranged to meet each other and then Tabitha and Cally to go and inspect the said allotment, before Freyja and I went to our evening Japanese class.

So far, so easy.

Tabitha and Cally had successfully collected the key to Allotment #10, Meersbrook and headed off in the direction the allotment people said the site was. Hmmm. Key didn't fit. So they headed to another allotment site in the same local area. Hmmm. Key didn't fit. Tabitha rang Freyja.

In the meantime, Freyja and I had no idea where we were going, so headed to Meersbrook Park. Ambled into the Park Office just as it was closing and followed the instructions the nice lady gave us and headed to the allotment site, where we met Tabitha and Cally (who had already been there once that afternoon). The key definitely did not fit. But the gates were open, do we headed in and parked the car.

A nice man came past and informed us that these were not the Meersbrook allotments but the Norton Lees allotments. The Meersbrook ones were down that hill there. Somewhere. He and I consulted our road atlases and decided that we could probably make out where we should be going. It wasn't any of the allotment sites that had been drawn to our attention or that Tabitha had visited!!

At this point, Tabitha and Cally, having spent a pleasant afternoon wandering around various Sheffield allotment sites in the sunshine decided to cut their losses and go home. Freyja and I programmed the sat nav and headed off, determined at the very least to find the site before heading to Japanese.

The key fitted - although the padlock was extremely awkward to get to. But we did manage to open the gate. Of the Heeley, rather than the Meersbrook, allotment site

Right. So where is #10. Freyja thought the map she had seen suggested it was up towards the top. So towards the top we headed, passing variously allotments ##64, 69, 239, 375, 420, the number sequences apparently being random. We went back down and decided to see if we could find any order to the numbers.

Time marched on. We got lost!

We headed back to the gate and tried again. Can't be that hard to find, surely?

Time marched on some more. We got lost again. And we really, really need to leave RIGHTNOWTHISVERYMINUTE if we are going to go to our class. But we also by now REALLYREALLYREALLYREALLY wanted to find this elusive allotment.

And how do we get back to the car?

We headed back to the gate. NO CAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was the wrong gate :-S

At about this point I remembered that I had a smart phone in my pocket and decided to have a look on Googlemaps and see if that might shed any light on (i) where the car was and (ii) where the allotment was. It didn't. But the allotment website did. It had a plan of the site!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We were definitely at the wrong gate.

Eventually we found the right gate (and the car) and following the plan managed to find allotment #10 in short order. I wonder why it didn't cross my mind to consult my phone until 45 minutes had passed and we had got lost several times?

The allotment itself has obviously, once upon a time, been much loved and much looked after. I have absolutely no doubt that it was held up as a shining example of a beautiful and productive allotment. Alas, that is no longer the case. The rather magnificent glasshouse is in dire need of repair. The shed has no roof. The allotment is overgrown and full of nettles and bindweed and real rubbish. It would be the sort of challenge The Builder and I would probably relish, had we not already got an allotment and a large garden (and also not living very handily either to Heeley or to Meersbrook). But we would certainly find it a challenge. Freyja is a novice gardener. Many new allotment holders are novice gardeners. It is no wonder new allotmenters tend to give up quite quickly if this is the sort of thing councils present novice gardeners with!

We will take The Builder round with us one evening to have a look at it, and we can all three have a proper assessment. It is complicated by the fact that Freyja is moving to London to go to Uni in the autumn and will only be around for some weekends. But if nothing else we can get her some peas and potatoes and maybe even some beans and zucchinis before then.

I'll keep you informed!

Freyja's allotment. Click on the photo to get to the album

We didn't get to the Japanese class in the end. We went to Woodseats and met Tabitha, Cally and Gareth for pizza instead. The poor Builder missed out on all this unexpected excitement. He was at home eating left over pork stew and watching telly

The aftermath

2011-07-05T19:48:00.000+01:00

It was a great evening. It really was. The only problem was - Sunday's breakfast!

At the Blue Waters B&B you have to have your breakfast in your room. This is not a problem as far as I am concerned. You have to order your breakfast the evening before. Also not a problem. Except that when I ordered my breakfast early on Saturday evening I was quite hungry. When my cereal and yoghurt and full cooked breakfast arrived the following morning, I wasn't hungry at all, and wasn't likely to be ever again! This made Sunday breakfast something of an ordeal :-S Fortunately, The Builder stepped into the breach and ate quite a lot of mine in addition to all of his. No more food for him for a while!! You'd think I would have remembered from last year though. Enormous quantities of food and wine the evening before do not leave you gasping for more food the following morning!!!!!!!

The weather continued to be glorious and we drove slowly from Devon and into Dorset. Ordinarily we would have met my friend Farishta for lunch if we were anywhere in the vicinity, but she has moved to London so no chance of meeting her by the beach on Sunday. We decided to head into Lyme Regis anyway, partly for a walk along the seafront but mostly so we could go to the wonderful fish shop down by The Cobb. Mission accomplished and much fresh fish acquired, we made our way in a seemly manner to Bridport where there is a Waitrose and I wanted to do some Waitrose shopping. We struggled a bit to find the carpark but parked up eventually. Shopping accomplished, we mosied from Dorset into Hampshire, in search of some lunch. And lo. The Wheatsheaf is in Hampshire. And they do lunch :-) I'm not sure I really did my lunch justice. I still wasn't particularly hungry. Even The Builder failed to finish all his vegetables. But I certainly enjoyed my lunch. And either they were very busy or Matthew has decided he isn't talking to us. He and his two waiting staff ran about like scalded things. And there seemed to be LOTS of people hanging about at tables outside. (But he did recharge my iPhone, so he can't have gone off us that much :-P )

And then we came home again.

I had yesterday off to catch up with things. We went to Chatsworth to the garden centre and to the farm shop. We went to Bakewell to go to the gift shop to buy new wallets. While we were there, I picked up a new peg bag. I realise the peg bag was nearly £7 but it looked quite sturdy and I thought it was cute. Up to the till I went to pay. I wasn't quite sure that I had heard the lady correctly when she announced the total and sort of stared at her, open-mouthed. So she showed me the till receipt. £41? FORTY ONE POUNDS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! For a peg bag and two wallets? I don't think so, thank you. I'll just have the peg bag. Went out into the market and bought two wallets which were absolutely identical from a market stall for £20. Much closer to what I had been expecting!!

They sell zebra meat in the Bakewell Farmers' shop. I don't think it's farmed locally though. I have never seen zebras wandering around the farms in the Peak District :-P

Chatsworth Farm Restaurant

River Cottage Summer Party

2011-07-04T09:53:00.049+01:00

So what, you may wonder, had taken us down to Dorset/Devon for the weekend? And what, you may ponder, had caused us to book it while in Melbourne, so much earlier in the year? What might it have been that had inspired me to go wild - and put on a skirt? It was, of course, the River Cottage Members Summer Party which we went to last year and which we really, really enjoyed.

And this year it was even better!!

The weather was absolutely beautiful and we greatly enjoyed our elderflower champagne while wandering around the gardens, nibbling on canapes. A cat came up to talk to us. There were cheerful chickens. The RC broad beans are not as high as ours, but the gardens were looking lovely. And the borage plants were amazingly flowery.

Borage flowers

I don't think there were quite so many people there this year as last. Certainly, I wasn't as cramped on my seat as I had been last year.

Not bad for a tent!

And our neighbours at the table were lovely. It was a chatty, happy evening which was worth absolutely every penny the whole weekend cost us. The food was delicious. The English white wine was definitely more-ish (nearly put Moorish, which would have been very appropriate for the Moroccan inspired main course!!). I went outside at one point and found a sunset the like of which you almost never see in England. It really was just a lovely evening.

Tuscan sunset in Dorset

I had completely forgotten to do anything about organising a taxi for the evening and rather alarmed the lady at the local taxi company when I rang after breakfast to book one. Getting out to River Cottage HQ wasn't a problem. "But," she said, "it might be more difficult to get you back. We're pretty much booked up for the return trip. What time did you want to come back?" This was a worry. Unless you are a teetotaller you really don't want to be driving back from a River Cottage do. Fortunately, I have no wish to stay until midnight. I can't hear anything over the band, once it starts. And in any case, my bedtime is usually 10 or 10:30. midnight is usually a great struggle for me. The lady at the taxi company was mightily relieved when I asked for a return at 11. But I must remember to book it much sooner next year

No idea what he said!

The photo album is here

Sunny Seaton

2011-07-03T09:30:00.007+01:00

For weeks now I've been telling everyone that we were going to Dorset for the weekend. I've been waiting patiently, patiently, patiently for my weekend in Dorset. I like Dorset. I also like having weekends away. This weekend was booked way back in February when we were, in fact, in Melbourne. I booked tickets. I booked a B&B. I booked a long weekend off. And now, quite suddenly, the weekend was upon us and it was finally time to head to Dorset.

I'm not sure that we even passed through Dorset on our way down!! Somerset, yes. Dorset, no, not that I noticed.

Seaton, where we were staying, is actually in Devon. We were having a weekend in Devon!

Oh well. Devon will do. And the B&B was beautiful and the weather was glorious and we were remarkably close to the sea and it was all good.

We had dinner sat outside at the Harbour Inn in Axmouth on Friday evening, and breakfast in our room, sat in a pool of sunshine on Saturday morning. And then we went out to explore. First, up to Axmouth Harbour which we had driven past a couple of times on Friday evening. Over what is alleged to be the oldest concrete bridge in England (once carried traffic but is now a footbridge) and along the path by the mouth of the Axe out to look at the sea. Then back and along the shingle beach down into town. The shingles were, on the whole, quite large. Our thighs, knees and ankles were not entirely delighted with this adventure!! And then for a potter in Seaton itself, which is a delightful seaside town with some interesting shops, more importantly with some banks with cash machines, and a few pubs.

On Friday evening I had been talking to Tabitha on Skype and she had been investigating what there was to do in Seaton. Amongst the things she discovered was a tram system which she thought we should investigate. So we did. And it turns out it's old trolley cars running up the estuary for about 3 miles. So we bought tickets and off we went. And it was absolutely lovely. The scenery was beautiful and very, very green. The estuary hosts large numbers of birds. There are bird hides and boardwalks along the way. There were loads of rabbits. And canoeists enjoying the water and ramblers enjoying the paths and all sorts. It was a lovely way of passing 90 minutes or so.

We had lunch in the Eyre Court, back in Seaton and went for another stroll along the seafront, admiring the blue blueness of the sea and the sky. I don't think I have ever seen the sea so blue in England. It was just stunning.

And then we headed back to the B&B for a rest and a scrub up before heading out for the evening.

It really was the most beautiful day.

You'll find any foodie news you might be interested in over on the food blog And the photos are here

It's all Edward's fault

2011-06-25T10:24:00.001+01:00

When I first came to Sheffield, intending to stay only for a year or so, I put in applications for a couple of library posts in various parts of England. Given that I wasn't intending to stay in England there was nothing riding on the applications, but I was a bit surprised that I didn't get an interview for any of them, given that I easily met the selection criteria. In the meantime, I had managed to get a clerical job at Sheffield Hallam University, working first in the HR department, and then in the Admissions Office.

I happened to mention this, one day in passing, to the head of the Admissions Department, herself a refugee librarian, and she suggested that I amble over to the relatively new and cutting edge Learning Centre and speak to Edward, one of its deputy directors, with whom she had been at University. She said that he was a wise and clever man who might be able to explain why I hadn't got any interviews and give me suggestions for improving my chances. I was still, at that point, planning to return home eventually, but decided that I might was well come over and meet this person.

So I did. And a few weeks later an application pack turned up on my desk in the Admissions Office, for a part time job in the Adsetts Centre. I figured I might just as well apply for it. It would be good practice. So I did. And much to my surprise, I got the job. So I worked part time in the Admissions Office and part time in the Learning Centre for a year or so, before moving full time to the Learning Centre. Where I still am. Some 12 or so years later.

In the meantime, the Director left and a new one came, very, very briefly. Then a box of frogs took over and a hurricane of chaos overtook us. Then the frogs disappeared and a new, uber-department was formed from several of the support departments, with a sane uber-head, and a certain level of calm reappeared. Then Edward was appointed to what was effectively the position of Director of the Learning Centre (although that is not what he was called). And the building has grown and developed and been renovated, and our services have developed and changed, and our job descriptions have noticeably changed, and staff have come and gone. And sanity has more or less prevailed

And now Edward too has gone. He retired on Friday. Lots of people came to his retirement do. It was like watching a history of the Learning Centre walk through the doors!

So that's 4 directors I've seen out. There's a new one coming in September. I wonder if I'll outlast her as well!

But in the meantime, the fact that I seem to have been swallowed up by SHU is almost entirely Edward's fault. I followed his advice on filling in library application forms absolutely to the letter. And look at what happened!

Poorly sick

2011-06-22T11:30:00.001+01:00

It is my habit on Sunday mornings to talk to my parents in Australia on Skype. (See, I said people mostly talk to us on Skype and not the landline). This last Sunday we spoke as normal, and Tony said that he had had a slight sore throat and a deaf ear for a few days. Interestingly, I had noted about ten minutes earlier that I had developed the very slightest of slight sore throats. Anyway, it didn't particularly inconvenience me and I paid little attention. Tony's sore throat didn't seem to be inconveniencing him very much either - although he was finding the deafness extremely irritating. Clever of him to infect me from the other side of the world, I thought.

I noticed yesterday that I had also developed a slight tickly cough. Paid no attention.

Woke up at 03:45 this morning absolutely frozen, with a hacking and very painful cough, aching arms and legs and a definite sore throat :-( The Builder said that I wasn't frozen at all but really rather hot. I tried to speak. Nothing :-(

Funnily enough, I haven't gone in to work today. And Skype has come into its own as a means of communicating with The Builder even when I am sat right next to him :-D

You can tell that we don't get sick very often. I found in the back of the bathroom cabinet some manuka honey cough sweets that Lindsey brought over in 2009 when I had what we assume was whooping cough. One bag hasn't even been opened. The other has had about two sweets taken from it. They are six months out of date. They seem still to be working, though!

And Tony can hear again. His GP syringed out his ears and lo - his hearing came back :-)

We obviously don't use our landline very much

2011-06-21T05:30:00.002+01:00

We turned the SKY box on over the weekend and a message came up suggesting that we would have more interactivity if we connected the box to a phone line. This came as something of a surprise. As far as I was concerned, it *was* connected to a phone line. I investigated further. The SKY box was plugged in. All seemed OK. Apart from the little matter that the phone line was absolutely dead.

Except that we still had the internet. Odd. But a cursory investigation showed that the phone line and the internet use different parts of the telephone signal. That's why you have to have a splitter. So not absolutely cut off from the outside world.

And come to think about it, almost nobody rings us on the landline anyway. At least, not for personal calls. They Skype us, or send us text messages or even put messages on Facebook and Twitter. Call centres in India use it and people trying to rort money out of The Builder use it, but that's about it. We didn't really even know how long it had been out of action. The Builder had had a phone call from India earlier in the week but the line could have gone down at any time after that. We didn't even know if it was a problem at our end, at BT's end or even in Tupton itself.

So we did nothing for a day or two. We had internet. We had mobiles. We didn't care very much. But then it crossed my mind that we pay for a full service and couldn't presently use it, so perhaps we ought to do something about it. So I filled in an online form, ran a diagnostic check and lo - there was a problem at BT's end. Which they had had fixed by the end of that day. Have to say I was impressed with their problem fixing.

But we still haven't used the landline - except that I rang home on it to check that it really was working. Mostly if I want to talk to The Builder (when I am not there with him) I use Skype or his mobile!

Nether Edge Farmers' Market and Summer Fair

2011-06-20T17:18:00.003+01:00

Sunday was the Nether Edge Farmers' Market, coupled with their summer fair. It was held on Nether Edge Road, which is just round the corner from where Freyja lives. Tabitha, Gareth and Cally were intending to go - after Cally had had her inoculations. Funny medical practice that does inoculations on a Sunday at lunchtime!

It was a nice day. The Builder and I didn't have anything very pressing to do. So we decided to trundle into Sheffield and join them.

We didn't expect to see Freyja, close though it all was to her house. Her Sunday afternoons are mostly devoted to Roller Derby so I assumed she'd be off skating somewhere. And indeed, skating was amongst her plans. But not until later, on this occasion. So it was good to run across her and, briefly, Simon, as well.

The fair was very crowded. People turned out in their droves to enjoy the sunshine and the yummy things on offer (chocolates, pies, cakes, nibbly lunchy things) and the farmers' market offerings (meat, bread, vegetables, fruit) and loads of craft temptations. There was croquet on the bowling green lawn. The bar was open. It was small, but lots of fun. I have made a note of the September and December dates - though there are many options for the September Sunday (York food festival, Malvern Autumn show, Nether Edge farmers' market ...) Definitely worth going, I'd say. We bought a lovely piece of pork belly for next Sunday. I'm going to try the blueberry glaze I saw on Saturday Kitchen

It was a good afternoon. And we finished it by going home and having chicken schnitzels for tea, some nice wine and going to bed rather later than we had planned

In the meantime - Freyja has been busy

http://www.theshreddingplanner.co.uk/news/worlds-luckiest-sub/

I've just bought our plane tickets for Japan. It is *extremely* scary the way money abandons me!!

Birthday burgers

2011-06-15T16:13:00.001+01:00

It was, you may remember, Tabitha's birthday on Monday. Yesterday was Cally's quarter birthday. We couldn't all celebrate Tabitha's birthday on Monday because Freyja and Simon are doing a Boot Camp Japanese course on Monday evenings, and Gareth does a computer course. So we decided to celebrate on Cally's quarter birthday instead.

Woodseats has a plethora of reasonably cheap eating places so we decided that we'd investigate one of those, and went to a fairly new American style diner. Taffa and Gaz have been before and quite liked it. I have to say that the diner itself is really rather nice. And The Builder really enjoyed his pizza. Can't say I enjoyed my burger much - I am not a big fan of processed, frozen burgers (even when they've been cooked!!). The fries were nice, though.

But having said all that, the evening itself was lots of fun. I left from work and cadged a lift to Woodseats with Bea and Steve, who happened to be heading that way at the time I was planning to go. The Builder met Taffa, Cally and me at Nettleham Road, and then we made our way down to the main road where the diner is. Gaz came from work. Freyja came from Heeley (though quite what she was doing in Heeley is a mystery). Simon came from wherever he was on his bike. We all had a very merry time. We ate and drank and chatted. Cally was remarkably good - she smiled and churtled and wriggled. It was all good.

We must suss out some of the other eating places around there. But I'd go back to the American diner. I'll just have pizza or something else next time!

But I am getting a wee bit old for going out to play on a school night. Despite Marlo's best efforts I found it veryveryveryveryveryVERY difficult to get up this morning!!!


Birthday girls :-) (If you click on the photo it should take you through to the album)

Yummmmm

2011-06-13T06:00:00.013+01:00

That was a weekend of some really rather remarkable food. And quite a lot of wine, now that I come to think about it.

We ambled off down to Warminster on Saturday afternoon for afternoon tea with Barb and to admire her really lovely courtyard garden. We had scones and jam and cream and white wine and admired the garden (but were driven in by a really rather ferocious looking black cloud) and played with Polly the kitty and generally had a good time.

Barb's courtyard looking verdant and pretty

Then we relocated to The Swan in Stoford, where we had lovely food and more wine and slept in an ever-so-comfortable bed and woke early and watched the swans on the river and made a good breakfast and spoke to Stella and Tony on Skype and slid slowly and gently into Sunday

This was a really lovely avocado salad, everything was fresh and light

So we drove through the lovely rain into Salisbury and visited Waitrose and pottered slowly on to Nunton where we collected Gwen and drove on out to Braishfield for lunch in The Wheatsheaf, where we had more lovely food and more wine and a jolly good time. The rain did not inconvenience us at all. The Wheatsheaf has a roof!!

Ginger and elderflower jelly with summer berries; perfect for Sunday dessert

And then we took Gwen home and came on home ourselves - and drank more wine and The Builder watched the Grand Prix and I messed about on my laptop.

So it was a lovely peaceful weekend in which not very much happened

Except that Then Builder nearly had us on washing up duty at The Swan when it came time for us to pay so we could leave. Persistently and wantonly he kept putting the wrong PIN for his card into the card reader, so that his card was blocked! Fortunately, I had my wallet with me. Somewhere. In one of these bags. Rummage, rummage, rummage. Just as well that I found it. I think that doing the dishes at The Swan might be a rather time consuming means of payment, especially on a Sunday!

And we were much too early in Salisbury for collecting Gwen so had to go for a drive around and were sucked into B&Q and oh-so-nearly bought a rotary washing line (until I remembered that B&Q quality is such that you might just as well take your pound coins and throw them in The Avon) and a hanging basket basket - until we realised that it had been put in the £4 shelf by mistake and was really nearer to £12. Not spending £12 on a basket to hang outside!!

We were a bit worried when we went down for dinner on Saturday evening at The Swan, for the place was nearly empty. Fortunately, by an hour later it wasn't empty at all. And no such worries at The Wheatsheaf on Sunday. The place was already quite busy when we got there and was very nearly full to capacity when we left. This is all good. While I, of course, wish there always to be room for me, I also want both places to be Very Busy Indeed

It's Tabitha's birthday today. She's positively ancient. And it's Cally's quarter birthday tomorrow. She's getting quite ancient too, now

Just as well Ian didn't see this - might have been difficult to steal it! But he definitely ought to have one

And another lovely, peaceful weekend

2011-06-07T19:30:00.020+01:00

... which passed without incident and without very much to report.

We did a bit of gardening and a few, useful domestic things.

We went to the DIY store and bought a few useful things (As an aside, I was shocked, shocked, SHOCKED to discover that Focus is closing all its stores (think Mitre 10 in Australia). Who would expect a chain of DIY stores to close down, even in these straitened times!!)

We ate and drank and ambled up to the allotment

And that was pretty much it.

And then I had to come back to work :-S On a Monday ;-( It was a horrible shock to the system. And has put me a day ahead of myself all week. I was quite convinced that today was Wednesday!!!

Tabitha and Cally came to meet me for lunch on Monday. We went to the soup and sandwich place across the road (although they also do pizzas and, in summer, some lovely salads). Cally is getting quite active. She smiles and talks and tries to throw herself at you for cuddles. She enjoyed watching the world go by as we sat outside to eat out lunch. She was fascinated by the pigeons that kept going past. And quite astonishingly - she is now 12 weeks old.

When I first started at SHU I naturally got a staff card. That card ran away one day when I was on my way to work and had to be replaced. We were also given blue proximity cards, which gave us electronic access to the staff only areas of the building. Not long after I got my replacement card, it was decided to do away with the blue proximity cards and to issue staff with staff cards which themselves gave electronic access to the staff areas. I have had that card now for years and years and years and years. Recently it has been getting reluctant to let me into the staff areas. Could be persuaded, but really didn't want to. This morning I had a proper look at it. It was getting all frayed around the edges. The picture and writing were wearing off. The pink colour was disappearing. As a form of identification it was completely useless! So I went to the SHUcard people and requested a new one. Three minutes later, I had one, and the old one had been retired. The new one is an excellent form of identification . And it obdurately and resolutely refuses to let me into any of the staff areas of the building AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh - I meant to say ...

2011-06-02T06:50:00.000+01:00

when I wrote up the blog yesterday. And I forgot.

I am usually pretty good when it comes to Buy-one-get-one-free offers. If I really only want one and can't see how I can store or preserve the second one, then I usually manage to restrain myself and only buy the one - to the occasional incredulity of checkout people.

On Sunday we went to the supermarket. Amongst the things I intended to buy was a bottle of something fizzy and wine-like. But only one, for The Builder is not a keen imbiber of fizzy wine. He'll have the occasional glass, but usually when there isn't anything better on offer. So I was slightly tempted by the supermarket's offer on white and rose Spanish fizz, but not greatly so. One bottle would do nicely. But which colour to have?

While I was pondering, The Builder decided that probably I really did want two bottles. I looked a bit surprised. Then realised that one bottle cost £11. The offer wasn't that I could have two for £11. The offer was that I could have two for *£10*. An offer too good to miss. I bought a bottle of each colour!!!

I wonder if they were finding them hard to shift. They weren't hard to drink, it must be said.

A lovely long weekend

2011-06-01T06:37:00.001+01:00

We have just had a lovely four day weekend. Monday was the Spring Bank Holiday. Yesterday was one of those stray Tuesdays SHU hands out. And it was a lovely, lazy four days in which we didn't really do anything very much and just drifted lazily through the days.

I'm trying to think exactly what we did do. We went into town yesterday and did a few useful in-town sort of things, like going to the bank and visiting the market. It rained on Monday and we didn't do much (apart from listen to the garden purring loudly!). Come to that, we didn't do much on Sunday either. Mostly we just pottered, and ate, and drank. Typical Sunday stuff - except that we had Sunday three times, more or less

But that, alas, is the end of my May Monday's off. From next week I have to go back to a full five day week :-S I fear it may come as something of a shock!!

Our new office

2011-05-27T17:00:00.019+01:00

So, I wandered up onto the desk this morning, nice and bright and early. The Level 2 office looked like this

All my stuff has been packed up and is gone

When I came off the desk at 11, Peter's stuff, and mine, had made their way up to Level 7. By the time I left to come home this evening, the new office looked like this

This is Peter's desk

And this is mine

We even have a window which you can see out of

We look out over the Sheffield City Centre. Not a bad view

And there's not a student in sight!!

Could get used to this :-)

All alone in the Level 2 office

2011-05-21T08:57:00.002+01:00

The University is planning a big refurb of Levels 2 and 3 over this summer, bringing those levels up to the standard that was set by the amazing redevelopment of Level 4 last summer. This of course means that the staff offices have to be vacated. If you are having a major redevelopment done and the floor is closed to everyone, it would be slightly unreasonable to expect the staff to abseil into the offices through the rather small windows!

We've know that this was coming for some time and have been getting ready, throwing things away, sorting things out, packing up.

And on Friday, moving people came and moved all the staff from our office into a bright, sunny, shiny office near the coffee shop on Level 4.

All the staff, except me ;-( There's no room for me in the new office. I am left, a little oasis of life, in an otherwise abandoned and deserted landscape.

(There are still some students out on the floor, and Peter is still in his office next door, but it is definitely very quiet in the office all on my own. Even quieter given that I don't have a printer now, or even a working telephone.)

I am obviously going to have to hone my abseiling skills!!

(Or move with Peter, next Friday, up into a little, sunny, bright office up on Level 7, pro tem)

More food

2011-05-17T17:53:00.001+01:00

And it was another weekend filled with food, although we decided not to go to any of the food festivals that were on offer over the weekend. Instead we pottered about at home and close by. We went out to Rowsley to the mill for some bread flour. We went to Chatsworth to the garden centre and the farm shop. We pootled in the garden and pottered in the kitchen and ate and drank and generally had a good time.

I am not working on Mondays during May. The first and last Mondays in the month are bank holidays. I booked yesterday off so I could go to a meeting of sorts. That got moved to the previous Monday so I booked that one off as well. And that left one lonely, sad, unbooked Monday all on its own. So I booked that off as well :-) I have to say I have been enjoying my long weekends. It's going to be a horrible shock when June trundles along and I have to start working on Mondays again!

Yesterday we went into town. We don't often get the chance to potter about in Chesterfield, unencumbered by time constraints. The Builder took the opportunity to go into one of the banks to cancel his account (its an extraneous one that has long outlived its usefulness). While he was doing that I went for a roam around the market and the shops. I ventured into the tourist information centre. I had a nice walk around. And eventually he emerged from the bank and we went to the Rutland for lunch (good, plentiful, inexpensive pub food, you may remember). Then we went home and I settled in for some serious afternoon and evening television watching and The Builder went to an Allotment Meeting in one of the local pubs that we have never ventured into. It's not a food pub so I don't suppose we'll have much reason to go in - we don't tend to go drinking in pubs; more eating.

My weekend sort of drifted into today. I'm on an evening shift at Collegiate and spent the morning at home making ice cream and biscuits and other yummy things. A nice gentle, deferred start to the week :-)

Dishcloth swap

2011-05-16T17:05:00.001+01:00

Some months ago Lindsey drew my attention to some self-sufficiency type blogs that she follows. One or two of them I then followed as well. There's one in New Zealand, one in Queensland, one in the UK. I don't follow them daily, but I do keep in general touch.

A few weeks ago the Queensland based blog decided that it would be fun for people who read the blog and play in the forum to knit dishcloths and then swap with a partner selected by one of the organisers. Sounded like fun to me, so I signed up and began making squares. Crocheted, rather than knitted in my case. Months and months ago I bought on eBay a bundle of wool scraps and I have been occupying myself on the train to and from work crocheting the little squares.

Then I crocheted them together

Then I decided that it needed a backing square. So I made one

And then I crocheted them together

I must say that I think it's really rather lovely, though it has turned itself more into a pot holder than a dishcloth.

But there was something of an irony that, with people in four or five countries for my swap buddy to have come from, she should live in Mornington, a mere ten minutes away from where my parents live!!!!!!!

In the meantime, it crosses my mind that if I made large blanket like squares I could have lovely and cheap (if remarkably old fashioned!!) reupholstery for the lounge room furniture which is beginning to look rather tatty

Lots of food

2011-05-10T06:23:00.002+01:00

It was definitely a weekend filled with food! We had a jolly evening in Zeugmas with the work team on Friday. They do cheerful and hearty plates of food for not a whole lot of money. I have learned not to have a starter!! I really enjoyed my lamb shish kebab. The Builder very definitely enjoyed his mixed grill. I am not usually a big fan of long grained rice - but Zeugmas rice is delicious!

Then on Saturday we decamped around to Tabitha and Gareth's place in the evening, armed with what was essentially a vegetarian moussaka (minus the yucky egg plant!) and a couple of bottles of wine. Ginger Rich joined us (armed with what I thought initially was a jerry can of petrol, but it turned out to be a jerry can of beer from a shop which allows you to buy various different types of beer and have them decanted into receptacles of your choice). Freyja did not - she was off to a birthday party and therefore not available. It was a good evening. But next time I might make pasta and have lasagne instead. Or I might do something entirely different!

Sunday we had our regular Sunday roast (slow roasted shoulder of lamb) with baby Jersey Royal potatoes, asparagus from the garden and sprouting broccoli not, alas, from the garden. We followed that with a rhubarb flan made with home made pastry, home made custard stuff and allotment grown rhubarb. It was even moderately healthy. I made the custard with low fat milk and creme fraiche, to offset the butter in the pastry :-P

All of this partying (Easter, Royal Wedding, Workers' Day, this weekend just gone) has been a lot of fun and very delicious. But it hasn't half played havoc with my waistline. I fear another diet may be upon us, unless we want to buy new party clothes for the wedding in August!!

About a week ago, The Builder woke up one morning to find himself profoundly deaf. Since then he has hardly heard anything.. He could hardly hear the telly unless it was turned up so the whole of Tupton could hear it. Fortunately most programs have subtitles. He couldn't hear the radio. He couldn't hear me, even if I was asking if he fancied another glass of wine. He went to meetings and heard not a word. It was all deeply frustrating for him. Not to mention for the rest of us as well!! He's been pouring olive oil into his ears (he wouldn't let me add vinegar, garlic and basil!!!). And yesterday it was finally time for him to go into Clay Cross and visit the practice nurse. And lo - he can hear again!! He is very profoundly relieved. He definitely did not enjoy life in a world of slightly hissing silence!

For a variety of reasons, I am not working on Mondays during May, so I went into Clay Cross with him. Tesco is not my supermarket of choice, but there is a brand new and very large one in Clay Cross which I thought it might be interesting to drop in and have a look at. I have to say that I was very impressed with the fish counter and fairly impressed with the wine choices. I have added it to my list of emergency, 24 hour supermarkets. Not that I often have overnight supermarket emergencies, but if I did, this one is probably the closest of the 24 hour ones. And the next time I am planning something fishy or seafoody for dinner, I might be persuaded to go and fossick among their fishy offerings.

I was remarkably unimpressed to be woken by the phone at 04:00 this morning. Not because I object to talking to people in the middle of the night. If you have something interesting to tell me, then please feel free to do so. But I would really prefer it if you did not ring in the middle of the night and then giggle and hang up when I answer. I can, however, tell you that it is pretty nearly light at 04:00 at the moment. And that it had been raining but wasn't at that moment. And that the birds think it is a mighty fine time to be singing and making merry

Chit Chat

2011-05-06T11:48:00.024+01:00

Ross is now back in Australia. He went to London on the lunchtime train on Wednesday, waved off by Tabitha, Gareth, Cally and Freyja. Then they came across the road to my office to say hello to me.

We knew they were coming. We could hear Cally objecting strongly for at least a minute before they came into the office! I wondered if she perhaps had an objection to being in a library, or maybe being surrounded by students. But it turned out she was objecting to a distinct lack of lunch!! You can see her point. I object when lunch is lacking too!!

Cally had her lunch. Freyja trundled off back to work. Tabitha, Gareth, Cally and I ambled over to the Millennium Gallery and armed ourselves with ice cream and then went for a stroll through the Winter Gardens and the Peace Gardens while we ate them. Then we all went our separate ways and I came back to work.

Our Japanese classes started again last week after the Easter holidays. This seemed a bit odd to me. I know that Sheffield schools had gone back after the break but Chesterfield ones hadn't. And it was a very short week, what with the Easter holidays weekend and the Friday Wedding bank holiday and everything. Plus both lots of Uni students were still on vacation. Last week really seemed like a vacation week to me. So I wasn't really looking forward to my Japanese lesson. I wanted to go home.

Freyja was having similar thoughts up in her office at T'Other Place. She was tired and also wanted to go home. She communicated this to me by email. We were just deciding that nevertheless we Had To Go to class when - in popped an email into my inbox from the school announcing that classes on Thursday had been cancelled because of a problem with the water main. Freyja and I were a bit startled. We were unaware that our psychic powers extended to bursting water mains just so that we could go home early!!!!! We are going to have to be more careful in future in what we wish for! We went to class last night. It was a bit of a worry how much we had forgotten in three weeks. I really must get back to listening to my language tapes, and to using all that online material I bought!

I had lunch with Tabitha and Cally again today. They had come into town for a health check up and to check out the shops. We went to the soup and salad shop across the road from the Adsetts Centre and sat outside in the sunshine. Was very pleasant. And I'm off out to dinner tonight as well. The work crew and partners are all off to a Turkish food place on London Road this evening. I do like Turkish food :-)

Bangor

2011-05-01T07:30:00.062+01:00

For a little while Freyja has been considering the possibility of a move to Bangor. None of us knew very much about Bangor, other than that it is in North Wales and that it is pretty much the gateway to Angelsey. Tony tells me that I went there when we went on holiday in Prestatyn - but I would only have been 5 or 6 and have no clear memories of Bangor at all (though I do remember Lindsey and me having a great time in the holiday camp playing with pedal cars). I have been there since, when I was staying with a friend in Llandudno, but only passing through on our way to a visit to Angelsey. Neither of these really armed us with sufficient information for Freyja to make a decision.

So yesterday we all piled in the car, Freyja, Simon, Ross, The Builder, a picnic and me - and off we went for a look see.

We decided to go across country, rather than along the motorways, partly because you get to see more of the countryside, but also so that the Builder and I could investigate the "how we get there to visit" options should Freyja actually decide to run away to the country. It was a very pretty drive and I really enjoyed it. Alas - it didn't do much for the comfort of those sat in the back of the car. The roads were very winding and twisty and the stomachs in the back found it all a bit of a struggle. fortunately, the last bit of the trip was along a straight road with magnificent views of the sea.

We had a lovely time in Bangor. We had our picnic in the grounds of the rather cute cathedral. Ross went for a look at the church and then for a stroll through town. Freyja and Simon went up to inspect the very imposing University buildings high above the city. The Builder and I went to look at the High Street and its surrounds. Then we all met in the tea room at the end of the pier for a nice cuppa and an assessment.

The Builder and I thought that the High Street was looking very pretty and festive and summery. It was decked out in summer and Royal Wedding bunting and the sun was shining and there were people milling about obviously having a good time. But off the High Street there were lots of empty shops and a general down-at-heel feel to the place. It looked like the kind of place that is lovely in the sunshine but deeply grim in the winter! And we felt that if Freyja was going to move there she would need to give up her interests in film and roller derby and take up shooting, kick boxing and drinking (there were LOTS of pubs, many fish and chip shops, plus a couple of kick boxing places and a gun shop!).

Freyja could see the romance of becoming a recluse by the sea in a remote-ish part of Wales for a couple of years, taking tea on the pier, reading and studying, not doing a very great deal. But Bangor is difficult to escape from if you don't have a car. And it would be unfortunate if, having got there, the romance of it all palled very quickly (which I think it might very well do) and you found yourself stuck there with no practical means of escape. Nice place for a day trip, a weekend, even a holiday. And perhaps even as a place to live for lazy middle aged people who are happy just to veg along. But maybe not for someone in her mid-20s.

Freyja has decided not to move there. And The Builder and I have decided that we might go for a weekend visit to Angelsey one day when time allows. We didn't get around to collecting either the Menai or the Britannia bridges and I really would rather like to.

We came home along the motorways. No twisty roads on them. Well - not until we got to the Snake Pass to get us from Manchester to Sheffield. But you have to drive that quite slowly and gently and the views are such that no stomach would object!

Easter holiday

2011-04-27T06:50:00.001+01:00

We have had a lovely Easter holiday. The weather was beautiful - although cloudier and cooler on Easter Sunday itself.

Roger, Kate and Richard came for the Easter Feast. We sat inside, rather than out on the patio, and ate cheese and fruit bread, then turkey and apricot parcels with Jersey Royals and asparagus, followed by little meringues with raspberry ripple ice cream, and we chatted and told stories and generally had a lovely time. I was a little worried, though. Ordinarily when people come for a feast I am all too aware of time whoooooooooshing past and of there not quite being enough time to achieve everything that I want to achieve. On this occasion, however, I was pretty much ready by 10:00. In the morning, yes. It was a bit disconcerting!

We were reasonably active over the weekend too. The Builder has started the repairs to the fish pond. We have begun clearing up the patio. We went into Chesterfield on Tuesday (which is not nationally a holiday but which is observed as a closure day at SHU for historical but mysterious reasons) and got The Builder's new glasses and had lunch in The Rutland. We have been to the DIY store a couple of times and to the supermarket and while The Builder has been outside I have made cupcakes and meat pies and tasty food. I did have to apply medicinal beer to The Builder when he dropped a bag of cement and nearly ripped a finger nail off. And he has gone quite deaf. This means I can say all sorts of things and he can't hear me :-D

And now I am back at work for two days, and The Builder is out with Richard shovelling horse manure.

Freyja has become a steel skater. I think this means that she is pretty much ready to start bouting for the A team

Good Friday in Graves Park

2011-04-24T06:30:00.003+01:00

It was an absolutely delightful day on Friday. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, the temperature was in the mid 20s or so. Freyja was off into town to do Roller Derby stuff. Ross was off to church. But Tabitha, Gareth and Cally weren't doing anything. And neither were we. So I packed up a picnic and we trundled around to their place. From there we strolled down into Graves Park.

Now, I had never been into Graves Park, peculiar though this may seem. We drive past the top end, where there is are putting greens, pretty much every time we come into Sheffield. I knew there was a gate into the park further down, by the Woodseats shops. But I had never been moved to go in, even though I knew there was an animal farm somewhere in the park. Tabitha and Gaz have been in a few times since they moved back to Sheffield and suggested it might be a good place for a picnic. And they were right.

In the first place - it's ENORMOUS. There are woodlands and parklands and playing fields. There are ponds and streams and lakes. There is a rose garden, there are flower gardens and huge swathes of grass. And there is the animal farm. It's really lovely.

And we had a lovely picnic. We had chicken legs and hard boiled eggs and salad. We had wine and ginger beer and orange juice. We had poppy seed rolls and ginger biscuits. It was all very lovely. And lots of other people were having a lovely time too. There were dog walkers and kiddy walkers and baby strollers. There was a little train. There were people playing ball and other people playing cricket. There were loads and loads and loads of people in the animal farm - including one young man who greeted me cheerfully and said he knew me. I looked a bit blank - I was fairly certain that I didn't know him! Then he explained that I had been teaching a referencing class that he had been in. That makes sense! And I got into trouble when we were looking at tiny baby ducks bobbing about on the lake and I opined that they would make very tasty starters dipped into tempura batter and deep fried. The woman in front of me turned around, shocked - and said: You can't say things like that!!! She was even more shocked when her husband agreed with me but said you would need several threaded onto a skewer to get a decent sized starter!!!!!!!!!

We strolled back to Nettleham Road, from the top corner of the park and down through Norton, a suburb that I have not previously explored. Must go back and have a proper look at the cemetery.

And then The Builder and I went home again having had a really nice day out. Must do it again some time.

A spontaneous Tuesday evening out

2011-04-20T06:41:00.001+01:00

I was sat in the office yesterday afternoon, gazing out at the little patch of sky we can see from our office windows, and thinking that when I lived in North Carlton on my own, it was that sort of afternoon when occasionally, rather than heading home after work, I would head to Williamstown or to Geelong and buy fish and chips and go for a walk on the beach.

At about that point, The Builder happened to contact me. I said to him that I felt it was the sort of afternoon when we should head to the beach for fish and chips. Rather to my surprise, for he is not much given to spontaneous excursions out, he agreed and asked where the nearest beach was. Cleethorpes is, I think, probably the nearest beach to us. About an hour and a half away.

In the meantime, Tabitha and Cally were sat at home, on their own. Gareth was working until 8. Freyja was at work only until 5, but then she and Ross were heading out for the evening. So The Builder came and met me at SHU when I finished work at 4 and off we set to kidnap Tabitha and Cally and take them beachward with us.

I had forgotten in the 25 or so years since I last had a baby lurking about the place quite how long it takes to kidnap one. They need to be fed and watered and changed before you go, then changed again when they wee all over their nice clean clothes. They need an enormous supply of kit and caboodle bundled into the car. Just as well Tabitha was a willing victim is all I can say!!

And off we set. It was a beautiful evening. The sun shone, the temperature was pleasant. It's quite a nice drive to Cleethorpes. Cally was quite happy tucked up in her car basket. All was good.

Except that when we got there is was VERY windy and noticeably cooler than it had been in Sheffield. We had a potter about on the seafront, a quick and brisk trot out onto the pier and then trundled off in search of somewhere to have the fish and chips that had brought us there.

Didn't find any pubs, but did find a rather nice hotel (the Dovedale) which was perfectly happy for us to take in a five week old baby, and which did fresh local fish with fabulous chips, and which also did the most enormous plate of pork spare ribs for Tabitha, who doesn't much care for fish. It was all very good.

And then we came home.

If we had been able to leave earlier in the day we would probably have gone to Whitby or Bridlington or even Scarborough. And it has to be said that Cleethorpes would not be my destination of choice if I were heading away for a weekend, still less a week. But it's not a bad place for a quick dash for fish and chips by the sea. And looking at the maps, I think there is probably more to do and see than we noticed on our very quick trip. We'll head there again one day and have a proper nosey about. We have been once before, The Builder and I. But it was back in 2005 and we only stopped long enough for fish and chips and a bit of a potter about. Pretty much like yesterday, then - but without the getting stuck in Grimsby first!!

It's a beautiful day again today. But I think we won't head to the seaside this afternoon.

There are photos here

The Builder's birthday

2011-04-12T20:29:00.000+01:00

Well now. I hope The Builder enjoyed his birthday weekend, because I certainly did.

His birthday was actually on Saturday, but I had taken Friday off so we could have a nice, leisurely long weekend. And the Weather Dogs rolled up in party mood, and gifted us warm, sunny days with blue skies and light breezes. And we pottered about and trundled around and sloped through our little taster of summer.

We ate lots of nice food (seafood stew on Friday, chicken and vegetable curry on Saturday, pork and scallops on Sunday) and drank wine and lazed.

The Builder had an eye appointment early on Saturday afternoon, so we dropped into town a bit early and had lunch in The Rutland, which does humble pub food, but does it extremely well. They do nice beer too. Not that I had beer, but The Builder did. I had wine. Oh - and they do the most amazing onion rings. Proper thick rings of onion in proper batter. None of this oniony-flavoured puree stuff in something solid and indigestionous!

He organised a new pair of glasses and I had a potter in the market.

We went out to Chatsworth on Sunday morning and admired the magnificent stags and the pretty deer, and avoided running over the sheep, and decided that the people who were out having picnic brunches by the side of the river probably had a good idea. But we weren't out for picnics - we had food waiting for us at home.

So as you see, we didn't really do anything very much. And very delightful all this not doing very much was too. We did do a bit of light gardening and I washed everything that could be washed - not wishing to waste God's air dryer but nothing very onerous.

A good way of spending a birthday weekend, if you ask me

A birthday celebration and Mothering Sunday

2011-04-04T13:11:00.001+01:00

We were down in Salisbury to help The Builder's mother celebrate her 86th birthday, which was on Friday, and to mark Mothering Sunday - which obviously enough was on Sunday.

We stayed, as is our habit, at The Swan in Stoford. I enjoy staying at The Swan. It's in a pretty location, it's handy for Salisbury, the food is excellent - and the beds are amongst the most comfortable I think I have ever slept in. It is EXTREMELY hard to haul myself out in the morning. The only way I manage is the siren call of a tasty breakfast wafting up from downstairs!

We de-Lented for the weekend. There is no point in going either to The Swan, or to The Wheatsheaf near Romsey if you are going to stick to your Lenten diet. No point at all. They're foody places And we were in The Swan and had Sunday lunch plans for The Wheatsheaf! And if you are going to crash your Lenten Diet then you could do a great deal worse that to crash it with The Swan's slow roasted pork belly with a really lovely vanilla apple sauce. I think that the red cabbage and star anise possibly might have been ok in a Lent diet - except that it tasted far too nice to belong on any diet.

And looky here at my Sunday lunch at The Wheatsheaf.

Not by any stretch of the imagination Lenten fare! And nor was the creme brulee I followed it up with.

But you really can't fast when celebrating an 86th birthday. It would be remarkably self-righteous. And Gwen seemed to enjoy her day. She ate nearly all of her main course and every last scrap of her apple tart and ice cream. (So did The Builder, but that is not newsworthy!!) She even had a glass of wine! And she was absolutely delighted when Matthew @ The Wheatsheaf presented her with a Mother's Day pot plant and a pretty little fairy cake.

It was a good weekend. Even the weather held for us - except that we were chased by some quite malevolent rain storms up the M5 on the way home!!

I have just had my lunch. My Philly-lite and salad sandwich with a banana chaser was rather nice and indisputable very worthy - but it seemed a bit dull in comparison!!!!

Well fed and satisfied after a mighty fine lunch

A small diversion off the motorway

2011-04-03T21:29:00.008+01:00

We have been heading down to Salisbury on a fairly regular basis for about six years now (Six? Are you sure? Is it really SIX YEARS?????? And, erm, yes it is :-S ). We have a variety of routes that we take, but our main one has us on the M5 from Birmingham to Cirencester. And as you pass from Gloucester towards Tewkesbury there is, to the left, a truly pretty meadow, with a river running through it, boats moored along the banks, a pretty looking church sat above it. I look out for it as we pass along the motorway. It seems to be rather a happy place. And I have for a very long time wondered where, exactly, it was. Not its location. I could pinpoint its location with amazing accuracy. But I wasn't sure which village it was or even which river it was on.

On Saturday we decided that we had time, the weather was fine, the time had come to find this village. So I set Kathy the Sat Nav to a village which looked likely on the map and off the motorway we came, ready for adventures.

And we found it. The village is called Bredon, and it sits alongside one of the many rivers Avon. This one decants into the Severn at Tewkesbury. And I have to say it is a very pretty little village. There is, of course, the church. There's a rather nice looking pub. It seems there is a National Trust property thereabouts. There are walking tracks and there is the river. We didn't really have time for a proper exploration but have decided that over the summer we will leave quite a lot more time and go by and collect the church and the NT barn and possibly even have lunch in the pub. It really was worth the effort of turning off the motorway and going out in search of it.

And we were not the only ones. As we returned to the car from a gentle stroll through the village a couple of people stopped us and asked if there is a walking track along the river. They too have been travelling up and down the M5 for several years and had been wondering where that pretty looking village and marina were and had also chosen that afternoon to come and find out!!

Looking out across the meadows

Walking down through Bredon

Looking up towards the marina

Looks like a lovely place for a little holiday

Looking down river towards the M5

Goodness me

2011-03-28T06:49:00.008+01:00

It crosses my mind that it is 5 years exactly, to the day, that we first came and looked at The Sidings and then, that afternoon, put an offer in to buy it. Five years!! How did that happen? I have to say, hand on heart, that it doesn't seem anything like that amount of time. You would easily convince me that it was a couple of years, but five?!?!?!?!?!?!

Perhaps we ought to wake up, get organised and kick on with some of the things that we intended to do with the house when we first moved in.

On the other hand - the house pretty much works. Might wait a bit and get a round tuit later :-) And let The Builder carry on with the gardens and the allotment for the time being

In the meantime, on Saturday afternoon Tabitha and I took Cally for her first trip to the Sainsbury's in which her mother usually works. It all went well, until we got to the checkout area. She dozed and gazed and beguiled the other shoppers quite happily. Obviously remembers the sounds of the supermarket from before birth. And just as obviously has learned from her mother not to like the checkout area! She was positively furious, until we took her away from the scanners and the tills.

She's two weeks old today. Had her first visit from the health visitor and seems now to be thriving. As are Tabitha, Gareth and Ross, apparently.

We had a lovely and quiet Sunday pottering around and not doing anything very much. And I have now worked the last of my three Saturdays in a row. Looking forward to NOT working next Saturday! Actually, I couldn't work even if I wanted to. We're going to Salisbury next weekend to celebrate The Builder's mother's 85th birthday. Am looking forward to that too.

Oh - and our clocks went forward yesterday morning. Australia's clocks don't go back until next Sunday, so the time differences are unsettled this week :-)

Working Saturdays - but not Sundays

2011-03-21T11:45:00.048Z

Looking up towards Tupton from the farm

I am inclined to agree with Freyja that working five days a week and having two off doesn't really lend itself to getting lots and lots of non-work things accomplished during the course of the week. The weekends seem to go so fast. And it is, of course, nice to have a bit of time just to blob about a bit. This is even more the case when you factor in hospital and home visiting on weekday evenings. And it becomes even more the case if you are working on Saturdays, even if only in the afternoons.

It does make you value Sundays even more, though!

So on this Sunday we decided to make the most of the sunshine and the fact that I wasn't working and try to get lots of useful things done.

I was up fairly early - but I usually am on winter Sundays. I talk to Stella and Tony on Skype at 6:30 on Sunday evenings, Melbourne time. This is 7:30 on Sunday morning in Tupton, from November to the end of March. So yesterday I was online at 7:30 and rang as usual. Tony came on, accompanied by quite a lot of saxophone music. In fact, all I could hear was saxophone music. I could see his mouth opening and closing. He was obviously talking. But I couldn't hear him. So I hung up and tried again. Exactly the same thing happened. I hung up. And turned off everything on my computer, apart from Skype. Tony did the same at the other end. He rang me. Nope. All I could hear was music. We hug up again, and I Skyped their home phone. No saxophone music. So it probably wasn't at my end!

After I had spoken to him on the phone, and while I was talking to Stella, he Skyped Simon's computer. nope. Still saxophone music. He investigated further. And found that somehow his microphone had turned itself from broadcasting his voice to broadcasting Surf FM. Hence the music. But I'd love to know how it did that. I can't see how to make my microphone do anything other than broadcast me!!

And then we launched ourselves in to a busy and quite productive day.

We had a seriously delicious home made fruit bread for breakfast.

We hopped out to the Chatsworth and Dunstan Hall garden centres and acquired a few useful things and a nicely established morello cherry tree.

We went for a lovely walk around the nature reserve, along the baby Rother, round past the wetlands and home through the farm (It's a public right of way; we weren't randomly stomping over Farmer David and Farmer Jayne's field).

We went up to the allotment and The Undergardener planted the shrubs we bought last weekend.

We had roast (18 month old) lamb for dinner, followed by stewed rhubarb.

And we have now reached slightly more days on the wagon for 2011 than we managed for the whole of 2010. Which is slightly embarrassing given that we had intended 2010 to be largely alcohol free, and had no such ambition for 2011. But (i) it is Lent and we would normally be alcohol free in Lent anyway and (ii) we are saving up to go to Japan in August and need the wine money for air fares, so there is purpose to our alcoholic frugality this year!!

Look what we found on our way around the wetlands walk


This one was close enough to stroke!

These are new cattle from last year. These don't have any horns and last year's had HUGE, BIG horns

Looking across the wetlands towards the railway line.

More of the wetlands

(Sings) Oh where, oh where have Taff'n'Cally gone?

2011-03-19T12:27:00.043Z

So. Freyja and I had been at our Japanese class on Thursday evening and decided on our way home to call in to visit Taff, Gaz and Cally. Wandered in through the back door to the most delicious smell of dinner. Ambled through in to the lounge room, and found Gaz playing a computer game. No sign of Tabitha or Cally - but I assumed they were upstairs in bed, or in the bath, or that Tabitha was in the loo or something.

Engaged in some general conversation with Gaz. Then Freyja mentioned that the kitchen smelled wonderful. Gaz agreed, and then said that it had been intended for Taffa's dinner. At which point I asked where she was. And come to that - where's the baby?

"In the hospital," said Gaz - in a tone which suggested that really, we ought to know that.

"Why?" I asked.

At which point, Gaz looked at Freyja, silently. She looked at me. No point looking at me - I don't know. I thought they were at home.

It seems that the midwife had called in earlier in the day and had weighed Cally. She had weighed in at about 0.4 of a gram over the 10 grams (or whatever) the allowable weight loss from birth was. So they had to go to the hospital to have some tests done and for Cally to be assessed by the neonatal paediatrician. Ross went too, to keep them company.

We called in to the house at about quarter to ten in the evening. At about quarter past ten, Tabitha was told that she and Cally were being kept in overnight, that that had been decided some hours ago and that someone should have told her. She wasn't entirely delighted. She had missed out on dinner, both at home and at the hospital. She didn't have her toothbrush. She was, in fact, entirely unprepared for night in hospital.

She did get a single room though. With an en suite bathroom and everything.

And the one night became two. Freyja, The Builder and I called to see them last evening. And found that Cally - who has been quite fractious since birth - has been put on a three hourly feeding regimen and has been given a couple of pipettes of supplementary formula, and is now calm and peaceful and sleepy. A much happier little splodge. It seems she has been hungry! And Tabitha also has had food. And we took magazines and chocolate. Plus she has television and internet access in her room. So she's quite happy too.

And now she is back at home, as too is Cally. And I, now at work for the afternoon, have prepared the makings of a beef and tomato pie for this evening. The Builder is meeting me at five and we're heading round to Nettleham Road armed with pie ingredients, potatoes and vegetables and will join Tabitha, Gareth and Cally for dinner. Freyja is out scrimmaging with her roller derby team. And Ross is about somewhere, but can't join us for dinner.

So let's hope now that Cally will thrive properly and there will be no need for random returns to the hospital.

And we have sacked Gareth as the Town crier and message bearer. He hasn't been keeping Freyja, The Builder or me In The Loop at all!!!!!!!

Cally

2011-03-14T12:01:00.000Z

... has *finally* landed. I was beginning to think that she had caught the wrong plane, or headed to the wrong hospital - or, more likely, that she was really a teenage boy sequestered in his room, prefering solitude and sulking, to coming out to party with the rest of us. And I have to say that her arrival gave good evidence for this conclusion. She was clearly in no hurry to come and join us. Reluctant in the extreme to be removed from her nice comfortable boudoir. In the end she was forcibly removed with the aid of forceps and is now assimilated into The Family.

So welcome to Calliope Cecilia Elsie Gillard, born 14th March 2011 at around 11 am, weighing in at 3.7kg (or 8lbs and 3oz). May she live long and prosper

Japan

2011-03-13T12:39:00.009Z

Oh dear. Poor, poor Japan. An earthquake. A tsunami. A potential nuclear disaster. All inside 24 hours. Anyone would think it was the plot for a not very believable End of the World disaster film. But no. It's real. And it's awful. And there's no sign of it stopping any time soon.

It was told to us on the news before I left home for work on Friday. I knew that Gifu was about 250 miles south west of Tokyo so wasn't especially worried about Austin and Kaori. But people were starting to ask me if all was well, and I hadn't actually spoken to Austin. And it seemed a bit foolhardy to declare that he was absolutely fine and dandy without confirmation. It would look remarkably foolish of me to be declaring that he was fine, only to discover later that he had been dead for three days! So I sent him a message asking if there was an Austin in the house. And discovered that he was, as usual, off to his Friday evening Japanese class. No worries there!

As it happens, they are both fine. Kaori's work building shook and swayed in Nagoya. Austin's school might well have implemented earthquake evacuation procedures - except that school had just finished for the day and the children were all outside. I believe that things are fairly stable and normal in Nagoya. There is some concern about the nuclear reactors way, way up the coast. But no immediate concern for Austin, Kaori or her family.

The video of that tsunami, though, is mind-boggling in its intensity and its ferocity and its implacability. I think there were very few buildings that were toppled in the actual earthquake. But that series of waves was absolutely relentless in its destructive power. It's no wonder that the death toll is likely to be so staggeringly high.

London

2011-03-10T07:45:00.003Z

I have to say that I didn't really want to go to London on Monday. I seem to have done quite a remarkable amount of traipsing around lately and a bit of time not leaping on and off various bits of public transport seemed like a nice plan. But needs must. It's not a bad way of starting back at work after three weeks off, a meeting in London. And the train tickets were booked and paid for (and even for the right day this time!!!!). And besides - people were expecting me.

So off I went. I caught the 9:30 train, which was a pleasantly laid back start to the day. I trundled happily down through rather nice sunshine. I got to London on time and set off on foot for Liverpool Street Station, near where the meeting was to be held. It's not a part of London I know, so I was armed with a map. I still managed to get slightly mislaid, however. And the sunshine was nice and warm, but the wind was cold. I was beginning to wish I had brought a pair of gloved by the time I arrived!

I rather enjoyed the meeting. It was the inaugural meeting of a new User Enhancement group. We had a lovely lunch and an interesting conversation. They (from a commercial background) definitely seemed to learn things; we from the academic sector also learned things. It was, all in all, a useful afternoon.

Roger was also at the meeting and we had, quite coincidentally, booked ourselves on to the same train returning to Chesterfield. The meeting finished with quite a bit of time before the train was due to leave and we couldn't catch an earlier one. So we repaired back to Bloomsbury and had a late afternoon tea in the tea shop at the London Review of Books. We had a stroll through the British Museum. And managed to catch our train back to Chesterfield.

The Builder, in the meantime, had spent the evening at a rather fractious Allotment Group meeting. I think I had the better time of it!

And now I am properly back at work. The M1 was closed this morning between Junctions 29 and 30, which drew the inevitable chaos into Chesterfield. Took me 25 minutes to get from our place to the first main roundabout (usually takes 6 or 7). Once there, the roads were clogged up with trucks, which was when I began to suspect something amiss on the motorway. So I diverted off the main road and went up through town and down around the back roads. Was quite a nice little diversion in the early spring sunshine. Still took an inordinately long time to get to work though. Ordinarily, if I leave in the car at 7:15 I am sat at my desk by about 8:00. Was 8:30 this morning. And yes, I know I usually come by train. But Thursday is my Japanese class evening and I tend to bring the car if I can. Makes it easier to get home again in the evening. But had I known about the M1 before I left home, I would have come on the train. The Builder could have come and got me this evening!!

Home again

2011-03-06T18:41:00.005Z

Actually, coming home in a hire car worked really quite well. It was a lot more expensive than a pre-planned cheap rail ticket (although nothing like as expensive as an on-the-day rail ticket). And it was extremely comfortable. We took a taxi from the hotel to the car rental place, transfered our bags into the hire car, paid over a wad of dosh, and moseyed on home. Then we took the car into Sheffield on Friday to drop it off. It was all good. I'll look into doing it again. It's possible that if we booked and paid in advance we could find a deal. Plus, there are some companies that have depots in Chesterfield, which would be even more useful!!

And so we are home again. The cat was *extremely* pleased to see us. The chooks were fairly pleased - but I think they would be pleased to see anyone bearing food! We've had quite a nice weekend, though I must say that I am very disorientated. I am having some trouble working out where I am - I keep wanting Melbourne things to be handy (wanna go and meet Simon's new puppy!!!) :-S. And my body appears to have moved permanently onto Athens time. Which would be fine - if we were in Greece. But we're not. Must move onto Tupton time sometime soon. Now would be useful. I'm supposed to be going to London tomorrow for a meeting.

Saving up now for a Tokyo:Melbourne:Manchester jaunt in August. This will be do-able as long as I eat grass and drink pond water between now and then. Thank goodness for Lent is all I can say :-D

Oops!

2011-03-04T06:23:00.001Z

It wasn't a bad flight at all, really. Made it to Hong Kong in good time and having had quite a good sleep on the way (the advantage of catching at flight that leaves at nearly midnight!!). Waved vaguely in Simon's direction when we got there - at least in the direction of the city, which is where Simon is. We saw Ross from time to time - entirely coincidentally he was flying on the same flight. We made it back to London in equally good time, though I could have done without spending 20 minutes circling around high over London at the end of the flight. And I am extremely confused about where I am. I kept looking for Melbourne landmarks as we circled. And of course, they weren't there!

I have to say that Qantas premium economy is a very pleasant way to fly. It's quite pricey, but there was more than enough leg room for The Builder to feel comfortable. The seats were roomy and comfy. The food was quite nice. The wine was plentiful. It is, of course, not as luxurious as business class but if finances don't stretch to business class then premium economy is a good way to do long haul.

And here we are, back where we started, at the Jury's Inn in Hatton Cross. The food hasn't improved any in the last three weeks. You wouldn't think that there would be much you could get wrong with a plate of new potatoes and green vegetables, but the kitchen here managed!

We were very early to bed last night. Which meant, of course, that we were very early awake this morning. This, in hindsight, was rather fortunate. I was moved to sort out my document wallet and was looking at the train tickets checking that I had the time right for the service we were booked on, and which seat numbers we had. I had the right time. I know what the seat numbers were. It is just slightly unfortunate that the seats were booked for 10:50 on the 3rd of March. Today is the 4th!!!!!!!

Buying tickets today was going to cost nearly £190 :-S

The coach options were tickets for £40 at either 8:30 or 11:30 from Victoria. We'll do that then. And aim for the 8:30. Doesn't really matter if we miss it. There's always the later coach and we don't have reservations. Just lots more sitting around might be necessary. Right. Let's plan timings.

Then I thought. How much will it cost to hire a car and return it to to Sheffield? £85. Pick up at the airport. No sitting around required. We can sit here instead. Let's do that then. I have booked us a small car for the day, to be picked up in a couple of hours. All we need to do now is figure out where to pick it up. I'm sure that can't be beyond us. People hire cars from airports all the time. We can have breakfast while we work it out - and see just what horrors they can inflict on toast and eggs and things in the kitchen here.

But it's just as well I was moved to check the train tickets. What has been a minor irritation and inconvenience would have been an expensive calamity had we not noticed until we got on the train and it had left the station. Our tickets were extremely cheap and were for the train we were booked on only. We would have had to have bought standard tickets on the train with a penalty included. Easily £250 I'd have thought!! Not sure quite how I managed to book the wrong date. Ordinarily I am absolutely obsessive about checking and double checking and triple checking these things. And the cost of making a mistake and not noticing until you are aboard is the main reason why!!

LATER: They must have a different chef or perhaps even a different kitchen on breakfast duties. The breakfast we've just had wasn't too bad at all. Positively palatable :-) Now we just need to sort out the car, which isn't due to be picked up for another 3 hours. But maybe they'll let us collect it early

Last couple of days in Melbourne

2011-03-02T21:00:00.004Z

So, Christian, Yvette and Sam joined us for a very pleasant steak night on Monday evening. I must say, I do like the steak night salad that Lindsey makes. I might make up a big bowl of it for us (assuming I can find all the ingredients at not too extortionate a price) but for weekday lunches rather than for Monday steak nights.

Tuesday saw Lindsey back to work - and me needing a new USB cord for my iPhone. So The Builder and I ambled into town and dropped into the newly restored and very glorious Myer, which now boasts a Macshop on the top floor. Alas for us, the Macshop doesn't sell parts, only packaged devices. And it seemed slightly extravagant to buy a whole new iPhone when all that was wrong with my existing one was that the USB cord had frayed! So we trotted up Elizabeth Street to a real Macshop that does sell parts and acquired a new cord from the very helpful people in there. Finding ourselves pretty much outside Melbourne Central we went up one of the little undercover alleyways that lead into it. And entirely by accident found a little place that did us a remarkably nice lunch. So we didn't go into Melbourne Central after all but had lunch in Era and then strolled slowly back to East Melbourne in the sunshine.

Tuesday evening found us back in the Prince Patrick with Ian, Christian and Cassie, but not, alas with Lindsey, who was at a meeting. My steak was absolutely lovely. Although not, of course, as lovely as the King Island steak that Lindsey gets for steak night.

Lindsey and I were up in good time for our early morning walk today - although I fear that Lindsey does not properly appreciate the need for a Proper Cup of Tea before engaging in extensive exercise at 07:00!! This is a walk that Lindsey does regularly when in East Melbourne. I do it too, when in East Melbourne. This walk is seldom as exciting as it was this morning. First, there were five hot air balloons hovering over the Fitzroy Gardens as we went past. That was quite exciting all on its own. But then, when we got to Federation Square, we found there were people giving away pot plants for office workers to put on their desks, thus restoring their "Plant-Life Balance". We acquired a fern and a tiny bamboo plant and made our way onwards. They were doing it in all the capital cities except, I think, Darwin. And THEN, as we headed back up towards East Melbourne, we found six fire engines, two police cars and a helicopter surrounding one of the tall buildings near Parliament. We don't know why, but it certainly added to the excitement levels of the walk. Not sure the car drivers who were now stuck found it equally exciting, however!! By the time we got back to the apartment we were in great need of egg and bacon sandwiches to recover!!

The Builder and I occupied ourselves during the day by heading back to Fed Square and grabbing another couple of pot plants for Lindsey's surgeries, and then wandering across to Southbank for a really unexciting lunch in one of the Italian cafes. My wrap was so unexciting that I abandoned it and brought myself a proper souvlaki to munch on while we ambled along the Yarra and trundled back to the apartment. I would recommend against lunching at La Camera in Southbank. Even The Builder's spag bog was pretty ordinary. On the other hand, the food in Cafe Italia off Lygon Street is definitely not ordinary. Lindsey, Ian, The Builder and I met Ant and Jess there for a delicious dinner before heading to Ant and Jess's place for a last cup of coffee and a rummage with Krumm. Then Ian headed back to East Melbourne, Lindsey went to Ballarat, and The Builder and I are at Tullamarine waiting for the plane to take us back to Tupton. Not that the plane will take us all the way to Tupton (would be fun watching it trying to land!) but it will get us to London, which is close enough for jazz.

Thank you everyone for a really lovely time, we've really enjoyed it. We'll see some of you in Japan in August. And if we can manage it, we may drop by on our way home from the wedding. I'll keep you posted

Happy 80th birthday Tony

2011-02-28T00:34:00.049Z

It was, I think, a well celebrated 80th birthday.

Lindsey, Ian, The Builder and I relocated to a unit in Mornington and set up home there for the weekend. And from there we took off to Mt Martha to give the birthday boy his presents (an iPad from the family generally, and a copy of The Times printed on the day of his birth from the English and Japanese contingents, whom The Builder and I were representing). Then we all went back to Mornington to The Royal for a rather nice birthday dinner, then back to Mt Martha for a celebratory glass of 1972 port each. Even Stella had a small sip or two in celebration.

On Sunday morning it was raining ;-( I had to be up early ;-( and go out in the rain ;-( For Tony and I were going to church. I have to say that I went out into the weather with some reluctance, but the church service itself was lovely. Tony plays the flute, and there is a pianist and someone playing the recorder. There is a small choir. The congregation was under its usual numbers but sang the hymns with gusto and joined in with enthusiasm. I was greeted and welcomed. And then - several people said: "Excellent; I'll see you at lunchtime". Tony had invited the choir :-S They all knew my name. I had been able to call them by name at church - they were wearing name badges. But they wouldn't be at the party :-S !!!

Lindsey, Tony and I went to set up the hall at the Mornington Golf Club ready for the party. The cup cakes had all arrived unscathed, except for the pink ones which had got slightly squashed en route from Melbourne. And then it was party time. The rain had cleared away and the sun came out. The family rocked in. Old friends turned up. The choir arrived, minus name badges. Other people who I didn't know appeared. There was wine and beer and soft drinks. There were fish and chips and mini quiches and little sausage rolls, tiny dim sims and other yummy foods. There were balloons and a banner and a collage that Wendy and Susie had made. There was lots and lots of noise. There were cup cakes and cheese and fruit. It was all a very great success. We toasted Tony (being careful not to set fire to the club house!!) and then the visitors went away, Simon went to Hong Kong, the rest of the family went to their homes, and Wendy, Lindsey, Ian, The Builder and I accompanied Tony and Stella back to their place for a post-party natter and then we left them to it and all went away.

Was a good birthday bash!

And now Lindsey, Ian, The Builder and I are off back to Mount Martha for morning coffee. Then we are heading back to Melbourne for lunch, a walk with Emily, and Steak Night with Christian, Yvette and Yvette's boyfriend Sam - and our last couple of days before going home

Making cup cakes

2011-02-26T00:23:00.012Z

You have absolutely no idea how hard it is when you are baking 80 cup cakes which are supposed to be a secret, to remember NOT to post anything on Twitter or Facebook!

On something like Friday, Stella and Tony had realised that they wouldn't be able to get a birthday cake through the golf club where The Party was to be held, and passed the problem to Lindsey to sort out :-P

We weren't quite sure where we could get a nice, commercially made cake in a week. Anyway, opined I. Wouldn't it be just as easy to bake one? Yes, said Lindsey! Cup cakes. We can have cup cakes. So we bought a cup cake book in Sydney and came back to Ballarat and while Lindsey and The Builder were re-building the duck run in order to thwart the fox, I set to, to bake 80 cup cakes.

I so, so wanted to report progress on Twitter and Facebook ("Memo to self: do the chocolate cup cakes last!!" "Keep great dane out of kitchen when baking, lest she eat the butter". "Hooray, cakes baked, now for the icing". "Oops! piping bag has exploded and pink icing has gone everywhere :-S " "Cocoa has a tendency to take over the whole known universe and splash everything in brown") but both Tony and Stella read both Twitter and Facebook and might just have been a tiny bit curious as to why precisely I had felt the need to bake loads of cup cakes so I had to restrain myself.

And now the cakes are baked and iced and packed. We just have to get them to Melbourne and thence to Mount Martha and all will be well. The fox has, apparently, been thwarted. And it's time to get back on the road. We have a birthday to celebrate

Warragul

2011-02-25T00:16:00.016Z

And so the road train trundled on, only by plane rather than train, back from Sunny Sydney to equally Sunny Melbourne. And on we travelled this time to Warragul so I could torment William, admire Sage's beautiful singing, inspect the gardens and the vegetable patch, eat home grown potatoes and vegetables, not to mention roast beef (not home grown!), play with the dogs and the cat, chat to Belinda and catch up with Matthew.

The sun continued to shine.

Lindsey and The Builder came too.

Ian remained abandoned in Melbourne (which I suppose is better than being Abandoned in Sydney!!).

Matthew claims that he had carefully cleared the bungalow of spiders, snakes, drop bears and bunyips. So when I found a humungous, builder-eating sized huntsman in the bungalow at bedtime, we summoned Matthew to deal with it. Which he did. But not with his dustpan and brush which proved insufficient for the mighty task. He had to use a box and a piece of paper!

It was a good evening. Must do it again :-)

Sydney

2011-02-23T23:34:00.000Z

Mostly, in Sydney, we walked.

Lindsey started it off by going for a pre-breakfast stroll and sending a message to say that she hda found the Queen Mary in a bay on the other side of the botanic gardens. We could see the botanic gardens from our window so after a delicious breakfast (no skimping on the bacon at this place!!) by the side of the harbour, looking at the QE, we set off for a stroll to admire the QM2.

All ocean going liners admired, we ambled off towards town. The skies darkened. The drizzle started. As we were crossing the road outside the Gallery of New South Wales I looked back and saw the advertising banners for the terracotta warriors. Entirely in jest I suggested we should go in and look at them. "OK," said Lindsey. "I wonder how much it is." I was joking, really I was. We saw the exhibition when it was in London. "Ah," said Lindsey. "But I haven't." So she and I went in to visit, leaving The Builder loitering in the gallery. We weren't very long. Lindsey wasn't interested in all the historical stuff. She just wanted to see the warriors. And the horses. And the beautiful, beautiful birds.

And when we emerged we found that the clouds had gone, the sun had come out, and a rather sharp rain shower had gone away. So we walked into town, ambled through the Victoria Building, through into the Galleries building, into an English and Japanese bookshop (which sells picture books for very young children in hiragana :-)) and thence back to Circular Quay where we took a ferry to Manly so we could have rather pleasant fish and chips overlooking Manly beach. Then we dashed back, by ferry, to Sydney Central so we could meet Kashi, a long standing friend of Ant's, for coffee.

In amongst all of this, we had missed the QE sailing out. But we got back to the hotel to find that Kashi was no longer meeting us for coffee but was now joining us with his partner Wen Lu for dinner. Ian was in the apartment. It was half an hour before the QM2 was due to sail. So we all encouraged our rather tired feet and walked back to the bay on the other side of the botanic gardens to join most of the rest of Sydney to watch the liner go. She left about half an hour late and backed, slowly, slowly, slowly out of the bay and slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly up the harbour, stopping only *this* *much* before taking out the harbour bridge!!!!!!! Then off she sailed, farewelled by many onlookers and a small flotilla of yachts, sailing boats and other craft, who were being farewelled in turn by the passengers and some crew.

And we headed back to Circular Quay for yet another ferry, this time for Darling Harbour, where we met Kashi and Wen Lu for a truly delicious seafood dinner at (I think) Nicki's fish bar. Ian and I had the most amazing seafood platter - which we very nearly finished, assisted ably by our dinner table companions

Seafood platter, adorned by a mighty crayfish

But I think it will be a long, long time before our feet forgive us for unexpectedly making them walk quite so many steps in one day

I seem to be in Sydney

2011-02-22T20:56:00.001Z

So we trundled down to Melbourne, having first potted up the marmalade (which I think may need re-boiling on Friday when we get back to Ballarat - I'm not sure that it is properly set). Then we mooched out to Clifton Hill to collect Jacob and take him to cricket training in Ivanhoe. The Builder stayed to help with ball retrieval and a bit of bowling at Jacob while Lindsey and I proceeded purposefully to Heidelberg to collect supplies for steak night.

Zoy came for steak night :-) So did Ant and Jess. Plus all the usual suspects.

Tuesday saw Lindsey, The Builder and me out for an pleasant early morning walk before breakfast, then The Builder and me for a pleasant walk through the park back to Carlton where we met Robert for a delicious lunch in Donnini's on Lygon Street. Then we went for a pleasant stroll up and down Lygon with Robert before sending him on his way, pootling about in Readings, meeting Lindsey on Elgin Street, driving out to the airport and relocating to Sydney. Where Lindsey, Ian, The Builder and I went for a pleasant evening stroll along the waterfront and out around the opera house.

I think The Builder's feet are about to go out in protest. He can't cope with all the pleasantness!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I haven't been to Sydney for about 40 years. I'm sure I haven't. I remember coming in my mid-teens but I can't think that I've been since. I didn't come when Lindsey and Ian lived here for a year 30 or so years ago. I didn't come 20 years ago when Ross brought the children to play while I was doing library school things for a few days in Canberra. I really don't think I've been since I came to stay with some family friends when I was about 15.

Ian had to come up yesterday for a couple of days on business, so Lindsey, The Builder and I came to play too. And I have to say that around the harbour is a very pleasant place for a couple of days holiday. The Queen Elizabeth liner is in town (we can see her from our apartment). So too is the Queen Mary 2 , which we can't see. Their simultaneous presence is generating a very considerable degree of excitement amongst Sydneysiders. There were lots and lots of people out armed with cameras and tripods last night. One of them is due out at about midday today, the other later in the afternoon. It might be worth hanging around when the QE goes out - it would be interesting to see how they get such a big boat out of its little berth!!

It is a little disconcerting when you have landed on the ground on your plane, taxied to the parking bay, the seat belt signs go out, and just as The Builder is opening the overhead locker to get down the bags - a dolorous, grave voice comes on and quite loudly, but slowly and earnestly declaims "This is an emergency announcement". I mean - what kind of emergency can you have when you are stationary at a parking bay? One, it seems, which requires oxygen. The Earnest Man said so. For technical reasons we needed to breathe oxygen normally, while the plane descended to lower altitudes. Not sure how much lower than the ground it is desirable for a plane to descend!!!!!!!!! And on he intoned, to the giggles of the somewhat surprised passengers. I think the crew were surprised as well! A somewhat surprised First Officer came on and said we should ignore him. Which we were doing anyway. But the Earnest Man kept on and on and on. Eventually the crew turned him down, since they clearly couldn't turn him off!!!!!!!

We have decided to keep breathing oxygen normally, indefinitely. And I think that makes it Lindsey's third, failed attempt to knock us off (exploding coke, suicidal wine glass, withdrawal of oxygen supplies). I'm not sure she makes the world's most effective secret assassin.

You know how Australia is a dangerous place

2011-02-20T22:45:00.001Z

... full of snakes and spiders and other things that bite and scratch and dedd you ...

They don't warn you about the exploding wine glasses which fling themselves in your direction while you are peacefully making marmalade and minding your own business, and then crash into a zillion pieces on the slate floor!!! (They don't warn you about the exploding coke cans either :-S )

Back to Melbourne later this morning. Must go and finish the marmalade