Singapore #1

Well that was an exciting day.

It didn't start out in a particularly exciting way.  Was a quite unremarkable start to the day.  Apart from the fact that we all woke up at around 4 in the morning, and The Builder has a cold.  But we made our way in a calm and measured manner for breakfast and were delighted to find watermelon and cantaloupe and cheese and other yummy and healthy things (although I'm not sure the pastries were particularly healthy).  Then we took the hotel's shuttle bus to Suntec where we were hoping to find the Duck Hippo Tour desk.

Suntec is huge.  Absolutely enormous. Gigantic.  And made up of several buildings dotted around the outside of a huge roundabout.

Signage is almost impossible to understand.  The signs are in English (all the signs in Singapore are in English) but working out how to get anywhere is almost impossible.

It was more by good luck than good management that we looked out through a door and noticed Duck Tour vehicles outside.  We asked one of the drivers where the stand was and it turned out we were about three steps away from it when we diverted through the door.

A Duck Tour submersible

So Lindsey bought two day passes for the Hippo buses (tourist hop on hop off buses) which included trips on the Duck Tour and the Singapore Flyer. And off we set on the Duck Tour.  Which is kind of fun because the Duck Tours are run on Duck submersible vehicles which are land and river craft.  Gave us really good views of Singapore from the river and the guide was clear and informative.  Did you know that the marina area used to be part of the sea and is now partly reclaimed land and partly a freshwater reservoir?  No - neither did I.  They've built a dam to block off the sea and freshened up the water and claimed some land back.

Then we headed on a Hippo bus to the Singapore Flyer, which is at the moment the tallest observation wheel in the world. It's not as elegant as the London Eye - but neither were there the crowds that you find in London,  and it moves ever so ever so slowly so that you are hardly aware you are moving.

The Singapore Flyer with the F1 pit building below

Right.  Lunchtime.  There are restaurants and shops in the Flyer complex. We gave brief consideration to a seafood restaurant, but decided that the roughly $40 per main course was a tad on the expensive side for lunch and repaired to an area that was made up of street food style stores and had sweet chilli prawns, fried chicken, sautéed pak choi and rice for lunch with tiger beer.  Coming to a grand total of $50 all told.  Much better, and very tasty.

The remains of our lunch

Right, said Lindsey. Let's go over the Helix Bridge that Frannie wants to collect and we can go for a stroll in the City Gardens.  So we did. And were having a lovely potter about admiring the trees and the metal flowers and the buildings - when the real excitement of the day came upon us. We noticed a storm blowing in. So we moved fairly sharpish towards the visitor centre which has plenty of cover and watched a monsoon like thunderstorm whoosh in.  After about ten minutes the paths were awash with water (I have to say that the drainage system is extraordinarily good) but the intensity of the rain was lessening.  We have rain ponchos and umbrellas with us.  It is, after all, the rainy season.  Right, said Lindsey. The rain's not too bad now. Let's make a bid for the main road and a bus home.  The Builder objected.  The pavements were still awash with water and he only has one pair of shoes here.  OK, said Lindsey.  I'll go up there, under cover, to the loos and we'll see what's what when I get back.  Off she went.  And a minute or two later there was a distinct, loud and quite disconcerting HISSSSSSSSSSSS and FIZZZZZZZZZZ above The Builder and my heads, accompanied by a spark of lightening and a huge, enormous and very loud crash of thunder. It wasn't scary so much as very, very disconcerting. I have never before ever actually heard lightning.  I think, if we had been out in the rain, we would probably have been OK, because there are lots of very tall metal things around that area which would have been hit first.  But I am profoundly glad that we were not out in it.  It made the hairs on our arms stand up as it was.  Imagine if we had been wet! We left our sheltered area when we noticed that locals were beginning to leave!!!

We never did find the place where the Hippo bus we were after left from. But we did find a taxi rank and came back by taxi instead. In the rain.

Then Lindsey and I griddled our lions and put our ponchos back on and put our umbrellas back up and headed down to Orchard Road to find the little supermarket we had discovered on Sunday evening.  While we were pottering about I noticed that there were twiglets and cheese balls from England, Cold Power washing powder from Australia. Italian cooking sauces from England and Italy. Things from all over the world - but nothing much from Singapore.  It's an import store! That's why the lady in the Japanese restaurant on Sunday evening had asked if we minded a Cold Storage supermarket.  So last night I made dinner with Australian beef, Chinese shitake mushrooms, Italian spaghetti (but via the Waitrose Essentials range), Taiwanese Oyster sauce, Japanese soya sauce, Malaysian salad and Singaporean tomatoes.  Was quite tasty considering!!

The Builder was in bed by 8:30.   I think 48 hours of virtually no sleep had caught up with him.  Lindsey was in bed by just after 9.  I held out until 10:30.  And we were all awake bright and early this morning ready for another day of excitement and adventure.  No more audible lightning overhead though, please Oh Weather Dogs.

Just a bit of rain.  Click on the picture for the Singapore photo album

Let the GWT begin

It probably wasn't ideal, the GWT having been over 12 months in the planning and 6 months in the organising (not that I spent all of that 6 months actively organising, of course) to wake up at 04:00 on the day we were due to fly with a most horrible pain in my left eye.  Horrid, it was.  And it made my eye and my nose cry with enthusiasm.  I ended up with the sort of headache that you get when you've been crying for hours (not that I do, often, cry for hours).  We weren't ready to leave by any means and although I had intended to get up quite early, I hadn't intended it to be as early as 04:00 and nor had I intended to be weeping from one eye while I was doing the packing!!!

But pack I did - although it was extremely haphazard, and I seem to have bought a few more clothes for me than for The Builder :-S

The beds were made up ready for Barb and Greg who are coming on Monday for a few days of winter holiday in the Peak District.

Lindsey drew my attention to the fact that airports usually have pharmacies in them and suggested that I should take my eye to visit one when we got to the airport.  This reminded me that we actually have a pharmacy in the village so I pottered up there. The pharmacist diagnosed and eye infection and gave me some ointment.  This seemed to help quite a bit - although it is remarkably odd trying to see through an eye which is already blurry and which is now also covered in a thin film of grease!!

Our flight was due to leave Manchester at 17:45.  I really do prefer flying from Manchester if I can. It's a much more pleasant experience than flying from Heathrow, even if your flight does leave from Terminal 5. Which ours, being a Lufthansa flight, would not. It usually takes about an hour and a half to get from our place, or from Sheffield, to Manchester airport. But if the motorways are clogged it can take much longer. So we arranged to meet Gareth and Cally, who were coming to the airport with us, at midday.  And lo, the motorways were not clogged and nor were the roads and it took the expected hour and a half for us to get there.  Gareth and Cally took possession on the car and disappeared off to visit his family in and around Glossop. And we strolled in to an astonishingly empty airport. There was almost nobody about.  The blokes in security were so bored they decided to run proper security checks on us - they tested my pouch for explosive and my phone for things to make the explosives go off and our backpacks for all sorts of things. I don't think they were really expecting to find anything though.  And funnily enough - they didn't.

So there were were, airside, with hours left before our flight.  As part of my bank account subscription I have a travel package which provides travel insurance and access for me to some of the airport lounges.  So I paid for The Builder to have access too and we ambled in to one of the lounges and ate nibbles and drank wine until it was time to leave.  All nice and quiet and civilised, with comfy chairs and room to spread out.  Then we caught our flight to Frankfurt, where we went through a much, much busier security procedure and then Whooooooooooooooooooooooshed our way to the departure gate for the flight to Singapore which we got to just as people were standing up ready to board.

Eleven and a half hours later we were in Singapore.  So were our cases.  But where was Lindsey who was on a flight from Melbourne which was due in at much the same time as our flight from Frankfurt?  No sign of her.  My phone had died from lack of battery and I really do not enjoy using The Builder's phone.  But more to the point, Lindsey wasn't answering her phone.  Probably not arrived yet then. More to the point, I couldn't find her flight on the arrivals board.  I wonder if that might have been because we were in terminal two and her flight was due in to terminal one?  So we joined the remarkably huge queue for a taxi, figuring that rather than wandering aimlessly round the arrivals area, we might as well go and wait for her in the reception of the place we were staying.  At which point The Builder's phone rang.  Lindsey had arrived!!  So we abandoned the taxi queue and took the Skytrain to terminal one where we could see Lindsey waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for her luggage.  She FOUND her luggage.  And came belting out of the luggage area - and completely vanished :-S  Thank goodness someone invented mobile phones is all that I can say.  Took ages to track her down!!

The taxi queue in terminal one was minute compared to that in terminal two so we hopped in one and came to the apartment that Ian had found for us to stay in.  A remarkably good find, I must say.  All the more remarkable given that he isn't coming to Singapore.  This is where we're staying.  It's about a ten minute walk to Orchard Road and is really rather nice.  I was a bit surprised at the paucity of resources in the kitchen.  Two saucepans but no sharp knife (and no wok, which seems odd given that we are in South East Asia!).  We did eventually find the sharp knives and a bottle opener.  But still no wok.  We also found, in our wander down to Orchard Road, a useful little supermarket and a rather nice Japanese restaurant.  Alas, there was no space for us in the restaurant. But the supermarket provided us with gyoza and munchy things and wine and we had a light supper before heading off to bed.

The Builder has developed a cold.  And although my eye is now very much better, I think the other one is going out in sympathy.  Not sure how Lindsey is.  It's only quarter past five in the morning (it's Monday December 3rd - the blog thinks we're still in the UK) and she hasn't appeared yet

Food, wine, food, more wine and a bit more food

It was most definitely a foodie weekend. And equally definitely not a good weekend for the diet.  In fact, I think that the diet has been abandoned for now, to be picked up again in January when we get home.

But it crossed our minds that we hadn't been to The Nettle for simply ages and ages and that we were about to abandon the UK for 6 weeks. So we went for lunch on Saturday.  And my burger was, as you would expect, delicious. And my chips were, as you would expect, delicious. And we were both very happy little vegemites when we went home.  We did not have any dinner.

On Sunday we came in to Sheffield and met Tabitha, Gareth and Cally for lunch in the Rutland. It was pretty much our Christmas meal.  The Rutland has transformed over the years and is now also quite a serious foodie pub.  I like it. It has lots of atmosphere.



Sunday lunch fish ..



.. and chips for me



Roast beef for The Builder

So that was Sunday lunch. We might also have had a little bit of wine.  Or beer.  Except for The Builder who was driving.

After lunch, it being really rather a lovely afternoon (it had rained absolutely torrentially overnight - the main bridge and the road to the motorway in Chesterfield were flooded and all the traffic was being diverted down the Chesterfield to Sheffield road when we left home.  That was fun!) we went for a potter around in the Christmas market on Fargate and for a wander around the winter gardens.

And then we went home and The Builder got his wine and we watched the final of Masterchef Australia.  We've run out of Masterchef Australia episodes. What are we going to watch now?

Frank is drinking the wine



Cally is not drinking wine



Cally is eating dried fruit pieces

and plotting plots with The Builder

I wonder what they're up to

Cally enjoyed her mashed potato

Look! It's Taffa

Cally for some reason licking the gravy off the chips.  She wouldn't actually eat the chips

In the Peace Gardens

The full photo album is here

Stella is home from the hospital.  All seems to be well

Well now, that was a lovely day

... although you might be just a trifle surprised to discover that we celebrated Sunday by going to .... MEADOWHALL!!!

The last time we went to Meadowhall was almost exactly two years ago when we went through mountains of snow on my birthday with Lindsey.  We have had neither the inclination nor any reason to go since.  However, I have recently received a Lakeland catalogue in the post and it was full of lovely things and I wanted to go browsing rather than internet shopping.  And Meadowhall houses the nearest Lakeland to us.  So we went.

It was not entirely encouraging when we got there to find that the absolutely enormous car park we were in was chockerblock full.  But fortunately (or otherwise, depending on your perspective)  The Builder found a hidden away part of the car park which no one else much had discovered and lo - there was somewhere to put the car.

And so we made our way to Lakeland and made our purchases (I was mugged, positively mugged I was, by a box of cake/biscuit cutters for making a gingerbread house with which threw itself at me and absolutely insisted that I buy it and take it to Ballarat with me!!). We called briefly into the Apple shop - which was the most crowded that I think I have ever seen a shop, with the notable exception of the Myer toy department on Christmas Eve.  We didn't stay.  We went to the Build a Bear shop instead and played with the toys.

And then we went to Bishops' House where they were having a medieval craft fair.  Tabitha, Gareth and Cally were also there.

So were loads and loads of visitors.  And the Beekeeper string ensemble was playing upstairs and there were lots of beautiful things to look at (and to resist the temptation to buy).

Tabitha and Cally outside Bishops' House

The Builder inside Bishops' House

Volunteers at the medieval craft fair

And then we went into the Sheffield City Centre where the Christmas market was being launched and the Christmas lights were being turned on. And finding the market was a touch too crowded, we all, along with Tabitha and Gareth's friend Moira who we had picked up along the way, repaired to the Rutland Arms for a quick drink.

Peace Gardens

Apparently the illuminations were provided by Blackpool

They were very good it must be said

Can't say I was expecting the dalek and tardis though

Reindeer much more seasonal

The apparition of Neil Armstrong was a bit startling

Cally exploring the market

Cally in the pub eating chocolate

Gaz is doing Movember. Taffa does not approve of the facial decoration. I quite like it

And then The Builder and I went home and caught up on a few episodes of Masterchef Australia and drank wine and ate steak and garlic mushrooms.

I also spoke to Stella and Tony on Skype on Sunday morning.  Both seemed to be in quite good health, although Stella is now back in hospital with more heart problems.  She had better get better very soon. She is supposed to be coming out to lunch with us.  I was going to say that this would be difficult if she had popped her clogs before the appointed lunch date - but then it crossed my mind that my uncle, Peter, had taken us out to lunch three times and on a boat trip in the year after he died.  So not impossible to have lunch with someone who is clogless - but better fun if they are not. Makes it easier to have a proper conversation.

There is now only one more Saturday and one more Sunday before we embark on the GWT.  And I have Singapore dollars (I already had Aussie dollars and Japanese Yen). We are nearly ready to go

Voting

In my world voting in elections is compulsory.  Even in my head I consider it to be a civic obligation, a right that has been hard won by our forefathers and foremothers and which we have a strong duty to take advantage of.  I believe firmly that if you choose not to vote and someone truly horrible gets elected then by your indolence you have colluded in their election.  But it was nevertheless very difficult to know what to do yesterday.

The government, in its wisdom, decided a while ago that with the notable exception of London, all local authorities should have elected police commissioners. Nobody, apart from, I assume, a few people in the government, really seems to understand what these elected police commissioners are going to be doing . Nobody really knew anything about the candidates.  I do not believe that we need elected police commissioners - the previous system seemed to work perfectly well and it seemed an unneccessary and very large expense at a time when money could be spent on other, more useful things.  But the election had been called, we had voting cards and my conscience pricked everytime I thought that maybe I wouldn't bother.

So I had a quick trawl on the internet yesterday to see if I could find any information at all about Derbyshire's candidates. And The Builder and I, voting cards in paw, duly attended the Tupton Village Hall and cast our votes.  At the time we arrived (around 17:15) only 60 of around 1000 eligible voters had bothered to turn up.  So we fulfilled a useful purpose at least in that we gave the election officials someone to talk to.  Briefly! 

Then we left them to it and went home for a warming glass of wine and homemade salmon fish fingers, oven chips and veg.  The poor election officials were stuck in their empty and chilly Village Hall until after 22:00 (and they had been there since before 07:00 when voting opened).

A Foodie Weekend

It's just as well we suspended our pre-GWT diets this weekend for there was a lot of food.  A very great deal of food.  A positive gargantuan mountain of food.

We went to Wiltshire for the weekend and stopped for Saturday lunch at The Swan in Stoford, where we were supposed to be joined by Barb.  Alas - she had taken a fall a few days earlier and decided not to join us after all.  But we stopped for lunch anyway and had a really rather nice plate of pollack and chips each.  I do like a nice piece of pollack!  Then we called into the Wilton Garden Centre just because we quite like it and then mosied on to Barb's place in Warminster.  Warminster, for those who keep asking, is about 45 minutes drive west of Salisbury.  There were snacky things at Barb's place.  And wine.  And there was Carribbean style steak for dinner.

My kind of B&B!

But the bulk of the feasting was on Sunday.  The Builder and I went in the morning (after a visit to Barb's personal Waitrose store at the back of her place) to Salisbury and collected Gwen, The Builder's mother. We took her back to Barb's place where Barb had spent all morning peeling and chopping and blending and mixing and roasting and simmering and had produced this

Christmas lunch in November

We, of course, will be in Australia at Christmas and Barb and her brother Greg might not have the opportunity to see Gwen for Christmas so Barb had decided to do us all an early Christmas lunch with turkey and roasties and sprouts and the Christmas table cloth and Christmassy napkins and all sorts.  It was exceptionally delicious and very convivial.  A lovely Christmas in November



Happy lunchers



Barb and Greg also happily lunching



Hmmm - you don't seem to be eating your parsnips Frances.  I'll have them instead!




Yum, yum, yum, yum




Thank you Barb for a lovely lunch

 And then we took Gwen back to Salisbury, narrowly avoiding been held up in Warminster for the Remembrance Day parade.  We got out a few minutes before the roads were closed.

You would think after all that that we would have been dieting all the more vigorously this week.  So far that hasn't happened.  And it doesn't look like it's going to.  Back to it with extra vigour next week - when there will be only two weeks to make my summer clothes fit nicely :-D

It was quite a good weekend, in the end.  It had loomed as quite busy and a bit scary.  We were booked to do Bishops' House on Saturday morning, then we needed to do a bit of shopping.  Then we were booked to stay at Tabitha and Gareth's place overnight to babysit Cally while Tabitha went to a Leaving Do and Gareth went to a birthday party.  THEN I was supposed to be working on Sunday from 9 - 3:30.  Complicating all of this was the fact that if I don't do various domestic things on a Saturday morning, they don't get done until the following Saturday morning.  And next Saturday morning we are heading to Wiltshire for the weekend.

So I LEAPED out of bed bright and early and well before dawn had cracked on Saturday morning.  I flung together a batch of lemon cupcakes and put them in the oven.  I washed up Friday evening's dinner dishes.  And I made a start on the ironing, for as it stood I really didn't have any clothes that were both ironed and suitable for wearing to a Open Day at work where we want to impress the visitors.

Text message!  Nearly ignored it because it was, after all, still very early and in any case I was ironing and in a hurry. Fortunately I decided to look at it and found it was from Tabitha.  Cally had been awake pretty much since 3am and so Tabitha had decided not to go out that evening.  No need for us to babysit and stay over.  So now no need for rushing about.  Suddenly the day took on a much calmer hue.

So I slowed down with the ironing and took the cupcakes out of the oven nicely baked and we moseyed into Sheffield in a calm and orderly manner.  We did call in at Tabitha and Gareth's place on the way home - they were holding our wine to ransom.  We found that Tabitha was at work, Cally was absolutely dead to the world in her pusher and Gareth was peacefully sleeping on the couch.  We soon fixed Gareth's peaceful slumbers!!

You might wonder how long it took me to make the connection on Sunday morning between showing Stella and Tony the frost on the roof of the house across the road, and the frost on the branches of the trees and the frost in the garden - and the possibility that the car might also be just a tiny touch frosty when I left to head to the Open Day.  You might think that I would have thought that the car would need scraping down and have left extra time. But no.  The first I thought of it was when I got to the car and found it covered in thick permafrost-like freeziness.  I set to to scrape the windows.  Unsuccessfully. I put the heater on and the rear demister. Still no scraping action. Eventually, a bit of ice decided to give up.  I was making slow but steady progress when The Builder appeared to find out why I hadn't actually driven away yet.  Three scrapes from him and the ice was gone and I could make my way back into Sheffield!!

I have to say that it was definitely a grey, gloomy and chilly day. But at least it wasn't snowing.  I had a text message from Barb in Warminster at about 9:15 to say it was snowing at her place. And the lunchtime news reported quite a lot of snow across Wiltshire.

No snow for us, although I think that visitor numbers were a bit down. But the visitors who did come to see us were happy and cheery and friendly and it was a good day.  I must admit that I was really rather tired by the time it came to an end though. Went home, had dinner, had a couple of glasses of wine - and was absolutely out to it by the time Countryfile came on.  Fortunately Gareth wasn't about to disturb my sofa-y slumbers :-D

Our kitchen tap has been dripping with enthusiasm for a few weeks.  Both The Builder and I are perfectly capable of changing the washer in a tap, but ours is a combination tap so more difficult to deal with - and it is almost impossible to turn the water off in the kitchen. The tap which does that is hidden underneath and at the back of the fridge (not hidden by us, I hasten to add) and in any case doesn't work. We pondered where we might find a plumber who would be prepared to turn out just to change a washer.  And lo, in the Chesterfield Shoppers' Guide (a monthly, free publication which normally is not terribly useful) there was a plumber declaring that no job was too big and no job was too small.  So The Builder rang him and within a couple of hours he had turned up, changed the washer, discussed various other plumbing alterations we have vaguely in mind, and gone away again, leaving The Builder a mere £40 lighter in his wallet.  Excellent.  And the tap no longer drips.

It was four weeks until the start of the Grand World Tour on Saturday.  It'll be here before we know it!

Richard

I was pottering about up on Level 7 quite early on Friday morning when a voice boomed: "Aha! Just the woman!".  I looked around.  Not only was I, as far as I could tell, the only woman about, I was also pretty much the only animate thing i could see.  Then, from behind a shelf, emerged Maurice - who is not a small man; it was quite impressive that he had managed to render himself effectively invisible!  It turned out that he did want me.  He wanted me to get a message to Richard to say that the person who Richard was supposed to be meeting later for coffee might not be able to make it. 

So I sent Richard a message to that effect.  And got one back saying: "No worries.  You'll do.  I'll have coffee with you instead. Or as well".

And so an unexpected cup of coffee with Richard I had.  (And Richard's original assignee had also managed to make it so he got two coffee drinkers instead of one :-)  )

On Saturday, The Builder and I were at Bishops' House in the morning.  It was a cold, damp, gloomy day so it came as no surprise to us that we had no visitors at all. There were few people out and about in the park; few people walking their dogs; few people walking their children.  All was quiet and silent until about quarter past twelve when a large, black, enthusiastic labrador came bundling into the shop, hotly pursued by its apologetic owners.  The owners had never actually looked around the house, so they left their friendly labrador in our keeping while they went for a potter about.  Suddenly the door to the shop burst open - and in erupted Richard, who had been passing by and seen The Builder through the window. He had espied the dog - and wondered how we had acquired a large black labrador so quickly. And why we hadn't mentioned it to him.  And Rose the labrador and Richard thus unleashed a positive torrent of visitors. Between 12:15 and 13:00 we had 11 visitors (not including Rose).  I'm quite glad we hadn't had that level of visiting throughout the whole morning.  We'd have been exhausted!

Sunday was another University Open Day, which I had volunteered to work.  Pootling around, in between tours of the Adsetts Centre, I was and who should bound into the building  - but Richard!  He was on his way from church at the cathedral to the station and though he would drop in to say hello - since I had mentioned that I would be working.

I haven't seen him today.  Do you think I've somehow upset him?

Sorry about the long silence

Things have been remarkably busy in my world and the last two weeks seem just to have vanished.  It was busy last week with lots and lots of teaching sessions.  Julia and I had the first year Geography and Environment students in the first half of the week and the final year Construction and Surveying students in the latter part of the week.  The week, which had loomed in a threatening manner over the whole of the previous weekend, in the end passed off relatively painlessly.

The previous weekend had been busy too. I had volunteered to work three weekend shifts at the University's open days.  Each open day, irritatingly, falls on a weekend when we were already doing something on the alternate day!  On this occasion, we had Roger and Kate, Bea and Steve and Richard coming for lunch on the Sunday.  So we did all the shopping for our Sunday feast after work on Friday. I went to the open day on Saturday (and I must say I had a really good time).  I even had time for a glass of wine in the pub after work with some of my colleagues.  Then I went home and did some gentle preparation for Sunday's feast.

And a feast it was.  Richard told me quite sternly that self-praise is no praise.  But I must say that I really was very pleased with my steamed pork and ginger wontons and the steamed prawn and squid wontons.  (I have treated myself to a new bamboo steamer and it's LOVELY).  I was really, really pleased with my fried vegetable spring rolls. I wasn't unhappy with my crumbed pork and Japanese curry sauce, nor my fried noodles, but I do those quite often so was relatively confident.  We had Chinese style chicken with a plum and soya sauce and various vegetables for our main course and rather boringly fruit and cream for dessert. There was, of course, a lot of wine. There was soft drink for the drivers. I really enjoyed the afternoon.

And then, after the visitors had all gone away I had a lovely snooze in my armchair, while The Builder washed the dishes :-D

And now we are at the start of a new week, in which thing look much, much quieter. The weekend just gone was beautifully peaceful. Nothing at all of any interest happened :-)  And there's only five weeks to go until the start of the Grand World Tour!!!

Do you like our new mantel ornament?

Marlo. Saturday morning, early

Ketchup

It's been quite quiet lately.  Disconcertingly so at work.  It's the beginning of October so also the beginning of the academic year.  I would expect to be really quite seriously busy.  But no.  My diary for last week was remarkably quiet.  My diary for this week is likewise quiet.  I would be worrying that I had forgotten to put something in - but so far no one has rung asking why I am not where they were expecting me to be so I assume all is well!

It wasn't such a quiet weekend though.  We were at Bishops' House on Saturday morning. Not that it was frantically busy there - we had no visitors at all for the first hour and only around 8 between 11 and 1.  But it did mean that we had to be up relatively early and get moving on Saturday morning.  I have to say that it was a glorious morning for being at Bishops' House.  The sun shone and it was pleasantly warm and the air was beautifully clear.  There were some spectacular views over Sheffield.  Ross and Cally came to say hello and stayed for a cup of coffee. Then they went off to play on the swings, the afternoon volunteers arrived to take over, and The Builder and I moseyed on home.

Sunday I really did have to get up and get moving.  I was booked to speak to Stella and Tony at half past seven then at quarter past eight I left to come into work for the Unviersity Open Day.  A little band of us had volunteered to come in and show visitors around the Adsetts Centre.  I must admit that what had seemed a good idea when I had volunteered seemed much less so when I left home in the early morning sunshine yesterday.  But the GWT is only 8 weeks away and if the University is minded to pay me at double time for working six hours on a Sunday, then work for six hours on a Sunday I will!  There are two more Open Days coming up.  One on Saturday in a fortnight, and one on Sunday in four weeks.  I shall be working them as well! Actually, I quite enjoyed it.  Sheffield was shining in the sunshine, the visitors were all happy and cheerful and it was nice to show people around our building.  I wiswh I had had a pedometer though. I'm sure I walked several days worth of steps in the course of my six hours!

Otherwise there isn't much to report.  Life is trundling quietly along.  Which is good, of course.  Even if a bit disconcerting in October.



Click on the photo to reach the album