Merry Christmas...

Christmas Day!  It's a bit strange going to a different house for Christmas because at home I know the whole routine of the day but being somewhere else you're never quite sure what will come next.  In the morning we went to the service at Scapegoat Hill Baptist Church just up the road from the house (although we still took the car).  It was a nice Christmas morning service with lots of carols and little talk.  Then it was straight back to the house to get the dinner ready.  With  7 of us already there we were just waiting for the other 4 to arrive - Ian, Sheena, Elliot and Lyndon.  Laraine couldn't remember what time she had told them to come so we were working on 1pm but by half past we rang them and they were working on 2pm so we delayed putting on the gravy!

Sally phoned at about 5pm while we were still finishing off dinner with cheese and crackers and they had opened presents, eaten dinner and were both sitting in their new pajamas already.  The rest of our day was then spent playing lots of silly games.  The highlights of the games were that I am now the champion of the 'find the dolly mixture' game, Robert is the champion of the 'throw the card into the pudding bowl' game and Laraine is the champion of the 'move the dried peas from the plate to the cup using only a straw' game.

We had our second Christmas Day in Stockton on the 27th when Rob and Sally arrived from their hotel in the lakes.  Again it was a lovely turkey dinner but this time with more presents in the afternoon as we had only taken a couple over to Huddersfield for the three of us so this was the main present opening Christmas for us.  I was given the task of distributing the presents from under the tree and managed to spoil the surprise for Mum's present by handing her the book for 'Learn to Play the Cornet' before she had opened the actual present of the Cornet.  Still I don't think she minded and she got straight into practising, having never had much practice at playing a brass instrument I can't say that the first attempt sounded very musical but more like a strangled cat but I know she will become an expert in no time! 

Happy Christmas Eve

This year for a change we spent Christmas away from Stockton and had a lovely couple of days over in Huddersfield with Robert, Laraine, Oliver and Alicia.  Christmas Eve we went out for dinner at The Hinchliffe in Mytholmroyd, we had pre ordered the starters and main so we spent part of the afternoon trying to remember what everyone had ordered while watching The Snowman on TV.

Dinner was great, the starters arrived almost as soon as we had sat down and while my chicken liver pate was lovely I was annoyed that I had let myself get put off by the sound of the Cream of Tomato soup - I thought that it sounded a bit too much like it might come from a Heinz tin.  When it arrived for Oliver it obviously wasn't as I had expected and it looked so good.

I decided to go for a main course of Fish and Chips to avoid having anything too similar to the turkey that I imagined I would be eating for the next week and that was also fantastic.  A huge piece of fish and big fat chunky chips.  I still found a little bit of room for the Apple and Sultana Crumble and the Orange Creme that Alicia and I were nearly fighting over but luckily a second one arrived just in time. 

 

Pictures of the Year

I don't normally look at the Telegraph website, I usually end up sticking with the BBC news to find out what's happening in the world even though I find the whole set up of the site very annoying (but that's another story). Tonight I happened to link through to a story in the Telegraph and saw a link for these picures of 2008. I think they are amazing, and I'm also shocked at some of the things that are depicted here that I don't recall happening, like this volcano erupting in Chile -


Now why is it that I know from the news all the ins and outs of the divorce settlements of McCartney/Mills and Madonna/Ritchie and the weekly details of the X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing contestants but I didn't know about some of these disasters?

And the best guess is...

....A seal on a snowball.

Well that's my guess anyway. I got to Monday and realised that I hadn't opened my advent calendar all weekend so I had three to open. Two of them followed the same general theme as the others with pictures relating to the nativity (with the odd exception of a Christmas Tree and a Holly wreath) but Saturday's was just strange. I couldn't decide what it is so my best guess is a seal on a snowball. Any other ideas?

Thanks Lovey

I don't think I've ever been called Lovey as many times as I was this morning. I took my car in for it's annual service and the guy on the Service Desk must have said it to me twice in every sentence and that was just when I dropped the car off. I went back to pick the car up and it carried on. How he managed to still get it into a sentence while telling me about his sick St Bernard that he'd had to stay up with all night, still puzzles me. Luckily I only take the car in once a year so I think I've had my fill of being called Lovey to carry me through to next December now.

New Job!

I had half a day in my new job this morning having a handover with the girl that is leaving. Bit of a shame to put annual leave in from one job just to go in and work at another but at least we finished by lunch time so I still had the afternoon to myself.

Thankfully the morning hasn't put me off working there! I was a bit worried that it might scare me so much that I would go back to my current job and beg to stay. That hasn't happened though so I can carry on my winding down of work and look forward to Christmas. My last day in work will be Christmas Eve and then I have holiday until I start with Yorkshire Housing on 5th January. It's going to be quite a strange start in January as the 2 permanent people that work in the HR Department now both leave before Christmas so I'll arrive in January with a new HR Manager, another new HR Adviser in Bradford and a vacant position to fill. Should be a challenge!

Let it Snow...and everything stops

I got up on Tuesday morning to find about an inch of snow had fallen overnight which I wasn't very excited about as I know many other people would have been. As Ruth and I have been walking into work now then she arrived ready to walk in as usual, it hadn't crossed our minds not to just because a little snow had fallen. So after a quick change of shoes after Ruth had skidded her way to my front door we set off on our usual route, but we didn't get very far. We were both slipping and sliding our way along the road so before we'd even made it to the next bus stop we had decided that it was better to spend the money on the bus than risk breaking numerous bones by continuing with the walk.

Wednesday was much better, the ground was just very frosty so we made it all the way to work with just one slip of the feet by me. Today was another matter though, when I got up this morning a few more inches of snow had fallen and it was still snowing. I needed to be at the other office in town today for a 9am meeting so I had already decided that I would get the bus in setting off a little earlier than usual. Off I went at 7.45am and was on the bus 5 mins later, it then took 2 hours for the bus to do it's usualy 30 min journey. It seems that when it snows here people get so surprised that everything either comes to a stand still or stops completely! There were numerous times that I wondered whether it would be better to get off the bus and walk but each time the bus would move a little further and as I'd paid for my ticket I wanted to get value for money! Suffice to say that arriving at the office at 9.45am meant that I'd missed my meeting so I just stayed for a cup of tea and a chat with people instead!

As it is officially winter now that it has snowed, I decided that this evening was a good time to put my Christmas tree up, so here it is.

Sunshine in November

I had a lovely week of sunshine last week, I can't believe I've not done a sunny holiday this time of year before. After a last minute plea from Liz to rescue her from going mad at work and strangling her colleague we book five nights in Tenerife at Los Gigantes. Like the week in Turkey earlier in the year the time away really wasn't filled with all that much! Reading, sunbathing, eating and sleeping pretty much was all that we did for the whole time. Just one walk out of the hotel to have a look at the sea before we went back to sunbathing.

This was the lovely sunset on one of the first evenings


For those that are interested during the time away I managed to get through four books -
Life Support by Tess Gerritsen, Perfect Match by Jodi Picoult, Labyrinth by Kate Mosse and The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamed.

Fifteen to One

I sit in an open plan office with a lot of people that don't work for the same company as me let alone the same department as me, and so annoyingly I can't tell any of those people to shut up when they talk so loudly! And there are a lot of them, I know so much about some people that I've never even said more than a hello to. There is one bloke that I notice talking a lot, probably because he sits fairly near to me, and probably because he does talk a lot and loudly. But the main reason I notice him talking is that he sounds exactly like William G Stewart, the presenter of Fifteen to One.

So now everytime I hear him, all I can think is "Question or Nominate?"

Heat

I've finally given in and put the heating on for more than an hour and it's great! It's warm and cosy and a lovely place to be. Now why didn't I do this weeks ago?!

Fruit Salad Berthdays

It was my friend's birthday on Wednesday and as she's a school teacher and spends the day with 6 year olds she planned a Fruit Salad Day. Now why don't I get to do things like this during the day! The day before they had to draw their fruit bowls and plan what fruit they were going to put in them and so that she knew what fruit to buy so that on Wednesday they spent the whole day cutting up fruit arranging it in their bowls and then eating it! I'm going to suggest this at work!

For the time in between making fruit salad they had some free time so they sat at the craft table and knowing that it was her birthday most of them made her a card. Some of them were so cute! As they are still in the early years of school they've been taught different word sounds and how there are different spellings for the same sounds. They've not really got as far as knowing exactly which ones to use yet so my favourite card read "Happy Berthday Miss Larner, I hoap you have a good berthday"!

I think that was better than the letter I had in at work on the same day, from someone a lot older than 6 years old, which I will give full marks for consistency but was amazed at the spelling of Cud and Cuddent (for Could and Couldn't in case you hadn't guessed!).

Another Change of Route

Thankfully not the scale of changes that I had last week to Glasgow but instead of the planned driving miles to Sally's this weekend I ended up having to add in a trip to Swindon before hand. So the driving miles were reduced 86 with just the trip to Mum & Dad's for amazing praise, while the train miles increased by approx 600. I usually take the train via London for Swindon as it is quicker than the cross country route which meant that I could get a lift across to Southampton Airport on Friday and just had to get a train ticket from Southampton to Reading on the Monday to be able to use my return ticket that I had from work. So it cost me £7 to have a weekend in Southampton - must plan it that way again!

The weekend was lovely, Alicia came over from Bristol on Friday night so that we could have an early start at the Bridal shop on Saturday morning looking at bridesmaid dresses. We had seen a dress that we liked already (and bought already) but we wanted to check that there wasn't going to be anything that we preferred at the shop. It turns out there wasn't, and we've decided on the ones that we already have, which I'm very pleased about because I love it! Looking forward to getting to wear it for the day, just need to find some shoes to go with it that won't cause me too much pain.

Amazing Praise

It turns out I can still play the Cello, just. After getting the music last weekend, 6 days before the concert I didn't have much time to practice this week - and then on some days couldn't seem to raise enough energy to try. So Friday night I spent 2 hours with Mum going through all the music. I don't think we did too badly but it was useful to play things at roughly the right speeds and figure out which parts I wouldn't be able to get no matter how much we practiced. I picked out one in four notes that I knew I'd be able to play in some sections and wrote in the names and fingering for the notes in other parts!

Thankfully there were two other Cellos that came to the practice and concert on Saturday so I managed to claim the second desk, nicely hidden away behind the harp. The concert seemed to go well, everyone said that they enjoyed it and the main thing is no one seemed to notice that I hadn't been playing exactly the right notes in some parts! There were some lovely pieces of music, my favourite being Gabriel's Oboe which I think I'll have to find a recording of somewhere.

Now that I've made it through the concert again maybe I'll stick with playing and find somewhere in York to carry on, or maybe it will be the same as last year and it will stay at the back of the cupboard for another year!

Change of Route

I made it to Glasgow this week for work but not without a minor diversion. As there was industrial action by the Scottish Signallers last week my journey to Glasgow took a slightly different route. I should have gone direct from York to Motherwell but checking the rail timetable on Tuesday night I found that train had been cancelled so I had three alternatives written down for me to pick from.

It was a very early start and after the alarm went off at 5.30am, I had a taxi come to pick me up at 6am - being the over cautious person that I am I was then at the train station half an hour early! In the end I decided to go for the journey with the most changes but the shortest travelling time, even though this was still an hour and a half longer than my original journey. So at 6.37am I got on the train and an hour later got off in Newcastle, I had half an hour to wait so I had breakfast at the station (discount with a Network Rail card comes in useful!). The next train was the longest of the journey - 90 mins from Newcastle to Carlisle. Unfortunately it was also the most uncomfortable train. It was one carriage and even for my short legs there was not enough leg room, somehow I did manage to fall asleep though, only to be woken up by a very loud Newcastle pensioner telling stories of her family.

From Carlisle I ran from one side of the station to the other in time to get straight on the next train to Motherwell. Unfortunately from there I felt the full effects of the strikes when I got to Motherwell asked when the next train was to Blantyre and they looked at me quite blankly and just said 'None'. Not particularly helpful for an information desk, then they offered 'Bus?'. Thankfully I had already warned my colleagues of the problems and they were already prepared to come and collect me if needed.

The journey home was much more straight forward, although no train from Blantyre to Motherwell still, I did go to Glasgow and from there direct to York. For someone who doesn't like trains, I think I'm getting the hang of this now!

Travelling

Mum complained that I hadn't blogged about anything for two weeks so I'm going to do a quick recap of the things I've done in that time.

I've driven 382 miles
- From York to Preston for work.
- From York to Manchester for Charlie's birthday - a lovely 2 days of mooching, shopping, walking, eating, drinking tea and admiring the new piano.
- From York to Kirklevington for another lovely weekend with Mum & Dad of eating (for Dad's birthday), shopping, reading and sleeping.

I've travelled approx 680 miles by train
- From York to Swindon via London Kings Cross for work.
- From York to Doncaster (twice) for work.

I've walked 34 miles
- From 7 days of walking to and from work.

In the next two weeks I should travel -
34 miles walking to and from work
400 miles on the train to Glasgow for work
600 miles driving to Mum & Dad's next weekend and Sal's the weekend after.

And during that time I will
- Be learning how to play the Cello again in time for next Saturday's Amazing Praise concert, having not played at all since December.
- Trying to find a place to hide the lovely chocolates that are tempting me to eat them so that when I get to Sal's in two weeks I fit into the lovely bridesmaid dresses.
- Get myself to Tesco because I've not had decent food in the house for two weeks.
- Clean the house, which desperately needs it and finally
- Throwing away the perfurme that felt like it had burned my neck this morning and has left it red and swollen.

Hole in the Wall

I had a quiet day today and watched a bit of tv, nothing all that good but the most bizarre and most hilarious has to be Hole in the Wall. I don't think I've seen anything so ridiculous! I'm sure it must have just been an after thought when the programmers realised that they had a half hour slot that they couldn't fill.

Dale Winton presents it, which gives you an idea of how ridiculous it's going to be and the two team leaders, Darren Gough and Anton du Beke are joined by two celebrities each. There are various rounds but the same idea runs throughout, which is that the celebrities have to jump through a hole in a wall - genius! As the wall comes towards them they have to make the shape of the hole otherwise they get knocked into the pool of water behind them. There are various different shapes of wall and some are individual walls and some are team walls. The worst thing about it is that the celebrities have to wear these awful silver lycra jumps suits which for most people look terrible anyway but for Dave Myers one of the hairy bikers, you've got to wonder at what point he decided that this would be a good idea.

A bizarre and very pointless programme but I have to say nothing else made me laugh quite so much on Saturday so if I have another quiet evening in then I'd have to say I'd definitely watch it again!

Sick Day

I've been off work for two days because I've got this stupid cold and rather than spread my germs around the office I've stayed at home. Yesterday I had a real sick day and just checked my emails a bit and ignored my phone, today I've failed at being 'off' sick and have decided to reclassify it as working from home day.

In the time that I have been at home I've watched 5 films so far Hairspray, Run Fatboy Run, The Bank Job, Ladies in Lavender and Michael Clayton. I've eaten much less than I would have done if I'd been in the office (and been fully well) and probably done more work than I would have in the office ;)

I also found out that I've got a pay rise this week - woo hoo! Now rather than putting some extra money towards nice lovely things for me, I can pay the ever increasing fuel bills :(

Famous people spotting

I realised this morning that Sal and I had both forgotten to put in our blogs of the weekend that we spotted a famous person in London! Sadly I do find it quite exciting if I see someone famous, I've never gone as far as asking for autographs or taking photos - except for Bobby Charlton in Burger King at Alicante airport 8 years ago but that was more of a sneaky picture pretending to take a photo of Carlie with him in the background but it did just turn out to be a picture of Carlie with a very dark background.

Anyway walking through Leicester Square on Saturday night on the way to see Hairspray I thought the man we were walking toward who was having a cigarette outside a cafe looked familiar. I was just about to say to Sal, 'that man looked like...' when she said 'that was Philip Seymour Hoffman!'. A real American film star famous person. I have to say I was very pleased to have spotted such a famous person! That beats seeing Steve Davis in York when the Snooker UK Championship was on in 2006.

Sunday evening blues

I've got that Sunday evening feeling. Even though work hasn't been too bad (in the last week or so at least), I still have that feeling that I really don't want to go to work tomorrow. I've had two weeks of being incredibly busy as we try to put a case together to convince the UK Border Agency that even though we haven't been entirely compliant with our work permits, they'd really like to let us keep the 6 guys that they are threating to send back to the Phillippines. I think as the deadline to that draws nearer (Tuesday), I'd rather delay it coming around by it never becoming Monday.

I've also got a sore throat that started this afternoon and I can feel already is going to annoy me for the next few days and become quite painful probably by Monday morning, another reason for not wanting it to become Monday too quickly. Saying that I think it's time for an early night and another dose of paracetamol and will just have to give in to the inevitable and wait for Monday to arrive.

Templates

I know I've mentioned this before but I'm still not happy with the background template for my blog. It's changed a couple of times since I set it up back in April and recently I've tried to stick with this blue one but I'm still not happy with it. I know I'm generally not the one that will spend as much time looking at that side of it but I'd still like something a little different. So please bear with me as I play around with it a bit and if one day it appears on something that you like please let me know!

Musicals, musicals, musicals

As usual Sally managed to blog about the weekend before me so if you want a full run down of all the musicals that we saw at the weekend click here. So rather than repeat everything that she has said already, I'll add on a BIG thank you to Sal for such a lovely weekend in London. This was my birthday present that she gets to enjoy as well so we had 2 nights in The Royal Trafalgar hotel at Leicester Square, which was lovely and very central so we didn't have to spend too much time on the tube and could walk to most places.

Friday night was Joseph at The Adelphi Theatre which we really enjoyed and could sing along with all but one of the songs. Saturday matinee was Spamalot at the Palace Theatre and Saturday evening was Hairspray at Shafetesbury Theatre. Hairspray just pipped Joseph to being my favourite of the weekend. One of the main draws for this one was Michael Ball, which after being a musicals fan for so long was surprisingly the first time that we had seen him in a show. The whole show was great with fantastic singing and dancing so now I have the soundtrack on order!

Other than musicals over the weekend we managed to do a bit of shopping on Saturday that mainly consisted of me trying on bridesmaid dresses and being very pleased to have found one that we really liked. It might not be the final choice in the end but definitely made me feel much better about wearing a dress! (not something I do very often, if at all). I also had chance to meet Kelda for lunch on Sunday who had been living in London for just 2 weeks after being in York all last year. Sally had to leave early to get a flight from Southampton to Austria so Kelda and I had lunch and chatted for a couple of hours before I had to get my train home. Being the over cautious person that I am I wanted to get to King's Cross no later than 15 mins before the train was due to leave. However after using Sal's oyster card all weekend it suddenly ran out of money just as I needed just one more trip (and only for one stop!). There were two counters open and two people at each having the longest conversations with people but for some reason at this point I hadn't even thought that it was getting closer to my train time. It wasn't until I walked up from the underground at Kings Cross to the platform that I realised I had just 4 minutes to get on the train. My reserved seat was in coach B so after walking almost the full length of the train I sat in my seat and the train immediately starting pulling away! I'm glad I didn't check my watch whilst waiting to top up the oyster card as I would have become quite panicked if I'd realised I was cutting it so fine.

It was a fab weekend altogether so another very big thank you to Sal for such a lovely birthday pressie xxx

Walking in the rain

It can be done. After a couple of months of trying to walk home from work more but always taking the bus if it's raining and I've proved that I can now walk home in the rain. There were a few down sides to it though, my hair was getting blown around so much it kept whipping me in the eyes and when you have your head down and umbrella as low to your head as possible it's difficult to spot the cow pats on the path through the field. A few close shaves with the cow pats but now that I've done it I can no longer always assume that I'm justified in getting the bus home in the rain.

I've also found a quicker route home as well which cuts about 10 mins off the previous one so although the extra 10 mins is probably better for me, I figure that when I'm still walking 40 mins home then it's not too bad to cut it down. Plus I'm more likely to walk more often if I know it's not going to take so long. One day I will try and cut the bus journey out but at the moment I think I'll stick with it for the mornings a least.

Next time I walk though I will remember to have my iPod charged, I set off this evening to come home and there was no battery left on it at all. The only song I had in my head was American Pie, which in theory I should have been able to sing through the full length version 4 times and then been home. I couldn't remember all the words though and I kept repeating verses so after 30 mins and I still wasn't anywhere near the end of the song I gave up on it. There's only so many times you can sing through "drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry..." before it gets really tiring!

A thousand dresses

Ok well maybe not a thousand, maybe more like 27 dresses, Sal and I had a day of trying on wedding dresses on Saturday. It was quite fun, for me anyway sitting down all day in 3 different shops waiting for Sal to appear in another dress. It was such a hard decision though, they all looked so lovely on her so we took Mum back on Monday to make the final decision. That was harder than we thought as well and in the end picked a dress that hadn't even been considered on Saturday.

Can't wait to see it again on the day now, 9 months (290 days) according to Sal's countdown. We had a chance at the weekend to see the church, the hotel and the car so now the plans are all coming together I might need to start looking for a dress!

Going Bananas

I've survived another weeked looking after 120 8 to 10 year olds, but only just! Being back at work was a real struggle this morning and I'm remembering why after last year I thought it was a good idea to take the Tuesday as holiday, oh well!

After prior warning to bring wellies I arrived on Friday night to a very muddy site at North 08. As I was once again avoiding the camping by staying at Mum & Dad's then the mud didn't bother me as much as it would if I was having to stay in a tent for the weekend.

Although it was exhausting it was a great weekend, the kids (for the most part) were great and it's about the only time of the year when I do all the actions to the songs! But for another year I'm now retiring the phrase Going Bananas.....We're Bananas and it will not be shouted again until North 09.

A new way to paint

I discovered this evening that there is a faster way to paint a kitchen. As soon as it happened so many blogging titles and comments sprang to mind but I decided just to let the photo explain it to you.

So my dinner was a little smaller than I anticipated this evening....

The Big 3-0 (part 2)

So after a lovely day on Friday, then official Birthday arrived on Saturday. So many people obviously thought I'd forgotten how old I was going to be so they kindly gave me lots of cards with a big 30 on the front to remind me.

Matthew, Charlie and Abi came round after breakfast and we started to get ready for my BBQ in the evening which involved putting up the gazebo that next door had kindly lent me in anticipation that the great English weather in the middle of August is not as good as you might expect. Auntie's Pauline and Sandra arrived after lunch which was lovely and then it was back to preparations. I think we would have planned to be a little bit further on in the preparation by 4pm but we weren't! So there was a lot of hard work put in by Mum, Dad and Sal - Big Thanks!

Then it was party time! Mum & Dad had brought with them some (not too) embarrassing photos of me spanning my 30 years, which were generally quite amusing - I still think the Noddy fancy dress costume was the best! I had a lovely evening so thank you to everyone that made it on the evening and to those who couldn't make it thank you for the messages, cards and presents.

Sunday was a fairly quiet affair, more fun with Abi who decided that at 23 months she is old enough to swig out of the wine bottle (don't worry it had been finished and washed out!) and to try on all of my shoes again, it was obviously so much fun when she'd done it on Saturday that they all got pulled out again!

So this is it, I'm now officially out of my 20s, no major lightening bolts, sudden aching bones, loss of memory...so maybe I'll survive my 30s after all :)

The Big 3-0 (part 1)

It finally arrived, after a year of wishing that my age would suddenly stand still (or start counting backwards), the 30th birthday still happened on Saturday and it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. In fact it was better than I was expecting thanks to lots of lovely family and friends.

Sally arrived on Thursday night so we got an early start on Friday morning with painting pottery at Rainbows Ceramic Cafe. It turns out neither of us are that creative, although I'm a lot faster at it than Sal. I painted a jug and while waiting for her to finish her bowl decided to paint a plate as well and still had to wait a while.... It was a lovely morning though and the painting is fun, I'm going to start planning now what I'm going to do next time!

After that we went for a lovely lunch to Cafe Concerto, there was a bit of debate over whether we should have cake or not but as that was the main reason for going then the decision was to share one.

Mum and Dad arrived in the afternoon and after a shopping trip we went to see The Railway Children at the National Railway Museum in the evening. It was a great performance by all of the cast and the staging was fantastic. The seating wasn't great, although we could see fine it was very squashed. For me being between Mum and Sal wasn't so bad but Sal was a bit squished by the rather large lady next to her...!

The painting gene

I don't have it. It must have missed me, Mum & Dad definitely have it, Sal has it, I don't have it. I hate painting. I knew I wasn't that keen on it because I have been painting before and found I get bored very quickly but I thought that was just a patience thing, but I spent Friday night and Saturday painting the kitchen and I hated it. Even when I thought I was being really careful my roller still managed to hit the bit that I was trying to avoid. The paint constantly seemed to appear on the worktop or the floor when I didn't even notice it dripping and at one point I'm sure there was more paint on my hands than my brush.

In spite of all that I finished it! Except for a few bits that I can see now that I should have sanded a bit more or filled that bit in then generally I don't think it looks too bad. This time I even remembered to take the blind down before I started instead of trying to paint around it! The fridge is now in it's place so the only thing left to do is to have the old fridge taken away which will be done this week.

A lovely weekend

As Mum has pointed out I also had a lovely weekend after leaving Keswick on the Saturday. On my way home I realised that I was driving past Catherine & Chris's house so I popped in to drop off the baby carrier that they had left with us for the remainder of the week. Having not seen or spoken to Catherine since last year at Keswick it was lovely to be able to spend a little bit of time with them this week.

It was then onto home to see Mum & Dad. After lunch I quickly sorted out two loads of washing and left them with Mum while I went to see Mark and Carlie. It was lovely to see them both but more exciting was meeting Noah who arrived about 6 weeks before. They were trying to get him into a bit of a routine which didn't go quite to plan as he fell asleep on me when he was supposed to be awake, but he was just so cute I couldn't wake him up! When I got back home a few hours later the washing was washed, dried and ironed - thanks Mum!

One of the reasons for going to Mum & Dad's from Keswick was because I was going to Katherine's in Dalton on Sunday afternoon so rather than driving back to York then back up to Dalton it made sense to stay in Stockton and go there on the way home. Katherine was having a baby shower with her bump due at the end of August and having just finished work it was a good excuse to have all the girls round. It was great to see her looking so well and it was a good chance to catch up with people linked to ASD that I haven't see for at least a year, particularly Louise who was there with her 8 month old Jack, and Becky and Jenny from Eversheds. Jenny's little girl Lucy was particularly useful when it came to present time, delivering the next present for opening to Katherine and of course helping to open them as well.

After that it was back home to get ready for a week back at work, now to plan the next holiday...

Keswick

I wasn't sure how to write about my week in Keswick so I've decided to go for the easy (but perhaps longer, sorry) option of trying to remember day by day details, so....

Saturday: I arrived at Keswick at 11am, narrowly missing getting caught in the traffic which would have added another 2.5hours onto the journey, unfortunately Helen & Colin weren't so lucky. As I'd been worrying about getting the tents up in the rain, it turns out I had no need to worry the weather was fantastic, so Matthew put my tent up, and then their tent, and then the trailer tent. The rest of the day was sorting tents out before going to the first meeting of the Keswick Convention.

Sunday: Another sunny day and a morning trip to the convention tent for the Family Service. Back to the tent for lunch and then while everyone else either walked Walla Crag or into town I opted for the afternoon in the sunshine on a blanket outside my tent, ending with an ice cream just as Matthew, Charlie and Abi arrived back from town. Again a trip to the main tent for the evening celebration.

Monday: A day I had been looking forward to, Sally and Rob were on holiday in Ambleside so had arranged to come and visit for the day. Starting with the morning seminar at the convention, they then went to town where I met them after the bible reading meeting. Looking forward to lunch at the Wild Strawberry we were disappointed that it was closed for the day, so we decided to go to Bryson's instead which was a great alternative and I recommend the apple pie. After that it was a bit of shopping while Rob stocked up on the things that Sal hadn't packed to bring with them and then Rob beat us both at Crazy golf, a very frustrating game where some holes are an easy hole in one and others were a very difficult 10 - for me and Sally at least! Dinner was a BBQ with lots of people I didn't know at first- Norton people and added extras from Wales. After the evening celebration with Charlie we stayed for the concert with Stuart Townend which ended with my jumper soggy with her tears and us both needing tissues - such girls!!

Tuesday: Another seminar at the main tent with Sally and Rob before they went back to Ambleside, while I stayed for the bible reading. In the afternoon Charlie, Abi and I had a trip to the Wild Strawberry having missed out on it the day before. Another evening at the main tent and then round to the Drew/Arnett house for a cup of tea and a catch up with Catherine before meeting Vicky and Matthew in the pub for last orders, and of course chips after the pub closed!

Wednesday: A lie in this morning while just going to the convention centre for the bible reading. To get a quick start on a walk we had lunch in town, eating sandwiches while sitting on the pavement. Then we set off to walk round Derwent Water. We lost a few on the way but I'm very pleased to say that I made it all the way round, Helen said it was about 6 miles but I'm convinced it was longer so I've done a rough route and calculated it as 8 miles so I'm sticking with that when I tell people about it. There was a strong temptation to get the boat launch back from various stops on the lake but I decided to stick with it and made it all the way round on foot. I took a break from the evening celebration to recover and to keep Matthew company as he spent all week on evening babysitting duty, I'm sure he wanted to read his book more but my constant chatting meant he only had 15 mins reading time before the others got back.

Thursday: Another visit from Sally and Rob for the seminar and bible reading, unfortunately I had to rush off afterwards to go to a work meeting in Penrith otherwise I would have been able to join them for lunch at the Wild Strawberry that we'd missed out on Monday. Meeting in Penrith wasn't too bad and I was back for 4.30pm in time for a little shopping before it was time for dinner at the Old Keswickian. It was then onto the Theatre by the Lake to see The Importance of Being Earnest (....a handbag...!), which was a really good and very funny production, still not sure why we needed 2 intervals though.

Friday: Final day of the convention, just went for the bible reading in the morning. Lunch at not Little Betty's (can't remember what it's called now, something about pickles?). Short shopping trip as it was now raining constantly, the annual purchase of Lemon Cheese from Ye Olde Friars, a visit to the Earthworks tent (the convention mission information tent/bookshop/fairtrade shop/coffee shop). The final evening celebration and as it was the final evening a last visit to the Keswickian for chips.

Saturday: After constant rainfall all Friday evening and overnight we woke to a very boggy field surrounding the tents so it was a quick breakfast of bacon sandwiches and try and get everything packed up and put the tents down as quickly as possible. Not knowing my way around a tent much I stayed in the car with Abi out of the rain. Although she did put up quite a fight to get me out in the rain, every time it started getting worse I'd sit in the car and shut the door only for her to insist "Jenny, Out"!

More photos of the week are here.

Justice on the buses

As I left work slightly later today I decided I was justified in getting the bus home instead of walking. Obviously the moral of the story is that I shouldn't have been so lazy. As I was waiting to cross the road one bus came past me, pulled up to the bus stop and left while I was still waiting for the lights to change. So I decided to walk past that stop and go to the next one, after waiting 10 mins I could see a bus approaching, the other guy waiting had already stuck his hand out to stop the bus but as it still seemed to be moving quite fast I did the same. Which made absolutely no difference whatsoever. The driver obviously decided he just didn't want to stop there this evening. This isn't uncommon, it's a very busy route and if they're full already they just keep going. But this one wasn't! I could see empty seats as it pulled past me.

So rather than taking the hint that I should really be walking home, I sat back down on the bench and waited for the next bus to come along ten minutes later and got home at the same time that I would have done if I'd walked straight from work in the first place.

There was one amusing moment on the bus though while the opposite lane of traffic was queuing at the lights and one particularly smug looking chav finished his cigarette and threw it out his car window but it hit the side of the door as he did. I saw it drop to the road but he didn't and there was that second of mild panic that crossed his face while he tried to decide whether it was better to check that the cigarette hadn't fallen inside the car or move off as quickly as possible as the lights were changing!

Is it worth it?

I thought I'd had a really good week this week with food, managing to stick to my weight watchers plan all week (well Monday to Friday at least). I also managed to fit in exercise everyday, going to the gym Sunday afternoon, Tuesday morning and Thursday after work, and walking home from work Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So did it pay off? Well not as much as I thought it would. Weigh day Saturday and I'd lost.....1lb. Rather disappointing but I'll blame it on the Chinese takeaway from last Saturday and try again this week. So is it worth it? With the bridesmaid dress looking like it needs to fit anytime from 6 months away, 1lb a week for 26 weeks...yes I suppose it is.

I'll just have to be more careful with what I eat when I'm not at home, the chocolate brownie at Susannah's last night won't have done much good, then there's the BBQ this afternoon and a whole week at Keswick with the best chip shop in the world....

And another step

I decided as I had a quiet afternoon today I might as well go up to Currys and I came home with the new fridge, toaster and microwave that I mentioned before. So now everything - except the electric can opener - all matches in a stainless steel theme in the kitchen. So here's a picture of that side of the room:

The fridge is still in it's box for now as it needs to sit for a while before it gets plugged in, but I also probably need to paint before putting it in it's place. Just need to decide on a colour now so I bought a few more tester pots this afternoon as well. The picture doesn't really show them very well but any thoughts - particularly on the one on the left?

One more step...

Thanks to another visit by my lovely parents, the kitchen is now one more step closer to being finished! Yes 3 months since it started and all it now needs is a bit of paint and then (I think) it will be finished - plus buying new fridge, microwave, toaster....but all in good time!

So in honour of the wonderful work done by Mum & Dad on the tiling here are a few pictures so that you can see what it is looking like now.

The curious incident of the recycling box swap

Someone has taken my recycling box. This wouldn't be the first time, twice before I have had to request a new box from the council and return home from work a couple of days later to find a bright new shiny box waiting outside my door. The last time it went missing was after a particularly windy day after the contents had been collected and I've no idea where it ended up after being blown around the street. This time though is much more curious. Everyday when I leave the house I notice my recycling box sitting in the little gap next to my front step and all this week there has been a little slug sitting on top of it.

Not Friday morning, no. I leave the house for work, do my usual glance down to the recycling box and not only has little slug disappeared but the box has been switched!! I know this because the older boxes were lighter in green than the current ones and this is an older box than my lovely clean (except for the slug) new, dark green box. Not that I mind, at least I still have a box but why bother swapping one green box for another one? It makes no sense....

But the most important question for me, what happened to the slug??

Miising

I meant to take a photo of this poster I'd seen just to prove to you that it was real but I think they've all been taken down now. On a missing cat poster that was stuck on every other lamp-post on the streets around my house last week was titled MIISING. At what point of staring at the computer, getting the wording right, putting the picture in the right place did they not think it would be a good idea to do a spell check? The poor cat, maybe that's why it ran away....

Frozen Mash

Did you know you can buy frozen mashed potato? Ruth introduced me to this concept the other day when we were discussing frozen vegetables - you can see our conversations are very exciting. At Tesco on Saturday while I was studying which frozen vegetables I would fill my freezer with and trying to find the frozen peppers round she came from the other aisle with two bags of Aunt Bessie's frozen mash.

So I decided for my first good meal of this week I would fill myself up on frozen veg, fish and a bit of mash potato. I had to study the packet for quite a while reading and re-reading the cooking instructions as I just couldn't believe that you just put these 3 pieces of frozen potato (which look like white ice hockey pucks) straight into the pan. I was convinced there should be a need to add some water at some point, so even though it wasn't in the instructions I put some water in with it as well. However it turns out the instructions don't tell you to put them in water for a reason - you don't need any, the little white frozen pucks just melt away and become lovely mash potato in just 5 mins! It's amazing!!

I think I'll have some more tomorrow and this time without the extra water so it doesn't go runny and over mushed like todays did :-)

At the end of the day

In my usual search around the BBC website at lunchtime today I found and article about 50 office speak phrases you love to hate. I've generally found that the phrase that winds me up the most is 'let's touch base' but the phase that I've heard a lot recently - and ashamed to say have said myself on occasion is 'we are where we are'. What a pointless phrase of course we are where we are - where else would we be! The phrase in the list that reminded me of Sally is no 13-14 - "The business-speak that I abhor is pre-prepare and forward planning. Is there any other kind of preparedness or planning?"

So then when I was on the bus home this evening I found myself listening to a woman repeating the phrase 'that's bang out of order' a number of times, which I also thought was a stupid phrase. When I got home I decided to look it up and found this site called The Phrase Finder so now I can look up all those random phrases and find out where they come from. Now I'm off to read about Ne'er cast a clout til May be out, hours of fun!

Still not finished

The kitchen is one more step closer to getting finished so I thought I'd post a couple of pictures to show the work in progress. The worktops were fitted the other day (mostly) although now that the tiles have been taken off I think it looks even more like it's still got lots of work to do on it.


The right hand side as you go in from the lounge has the worktop cut but it isn't fitted yet so this picture just shows a rough idea of what it should be like.

I blame Barry...

...for the inexplicable obsession with watching Deal or No Deal at the moment.

As Rob has pointed out before this is a ridiculous programme, there are no tactics that can be played other than the often used 'it's my special number so I'll save that until last' type plan for opening the boxes. But this week I have become obsessed with watching it because Barry is on it, so for 20 mins each day (I fast forward through most of it) I watch the programme and wait for the bit where Barry opens his box. Not exactly riveting stuff but I feel I need to do this to fully appreciated the full hour of the programme when it finally comes round to being 'Barry's show'.

Sad, yes but I will keep watching each one while I can sit here and point at the screen saying look there's someone I know on the telly!

Lovely weekend

Apart from hearing that both Sally and Ben had accidents on their bikes this weekend (but not too serious thankfully), I've had a lovely weekend as Abi and Charlie came to visit. We found the Farmer's Cart farm shop on Saturday which provided a few hours of entertainment and a lovely lunch. As well as the shop and cafe they have rabbits, guinea pigs, pigs - and piglets, pony, goats, sheep and chickens.

It was the day of the sheep shearing so that provided some more entertainment as we watched the sheep being made bald! It's amazing how quickly they can get one sheep done, and more amazingly I learned that you can have quite a jet setting lifestyle travelling the world as a sheep shearer. One of the men there was from New Zealand and he was telling us that he's travelled to Europe, America, Australia but hasn't been to Norway or Iceland yet. We also learned that they wear funny shoes while they are shearing the sheep made out of wool, I thought it would be so that if they stood on the sheep it wouldn't hurt the sheep as much as big heavy boots but that wasn't it, the wool creates better friction when they are standing on a wooden board shearing and stops them from slipping when the sheep is trying to push away.


In the evening we went to see the ballet of Sleeping Beauty as Matthew and Charlie's friend Amber was in the production which was by the English Youth Ballet. I've never been to a ballet before and I can't say that I'd rush to see another one but it was a really good and professional performance. Having never met Amber I had to wait until Charlie spotted her which took until just after the interval as a group of girls all with their hair pulled back in a bun and wearing identical outfits all look pretty much the same!

Sunday was a really hot sunny day so we had a wander around York, chasing squirrels in museum gardens, Matthew was with us by this point as well having arrived to babysit on Saturday night. As usual though a visit from Abi and I'm shattered and recovered by having a little afternoon nap on Sunday!

Sympathy or not...?

After waiting what felt like hours for a bus home this evening, but was probably only about 25 mins, there were loads of people waiting so eventually a small old bus turned up instead of the usual ftr. Thankfully there were still some seats when I got on so off I went to sit down. The last couple to get on the bus ended up standing near the front and I noticed that she was very pregnant but nobody nearby seemed to take the initiative to offer their seat to her. The woman standing next to me then made a comment about how terrible it was that nobody gave up their seat for her and I and the lady next to me agreed that it was shocking. Then I realised that there I was, also happily sitting in my seat having thought that the 20 people (yes I did count them) in the seats between me and the pregnant girl should all volunteer before I did.

While I was having a dilemma as to whether I should stand up from near the back of the bus and go and ask her if she wanted my seat, I realised that there actually was a spare seat near where she was standing so she must have decided that she didn't want to sit down. I also remember that before she got on the bus she'd walked past me smoking her cigarette so I decided I didn't have that much sympathy for her. I'm sure the distance of one stop that she had to stand up for before more people got off and she got a seat did her and baby less harm than the number of cigarettes that she must have smoked throughout the pregnancy so far. So I decided I didn't need to feel guilty or sympathetic....fair or not?

A weekend of eating out

I had a lovely day in Scarborough on Saturday visiting my old housemate Kate. Usually we end up meeting somewhere half way between York and Scarborough (last time was Castle Howard) but I decided it was about time I made the effort to go over there for the day. It turned out it was a lovely sunny day although I did doubt that for a while as I left York in warm sunshine and drove into some greyer clouds but it soon cleared up.

We had a lovely lunch in Scarborough, had a little wander round the shops before popping back to the house. We then went to Redcliffe farm shop nearby and sat out in the sunshine with a pot of tea and cake and a lovely view to look at including the chickens and the rabbits in the garden. A wander round the shop and I managed to resist buying any more cakes or biscuits to bring home.

On the way home I called in at Naomi's to give her a break from Maths planning and managed to stay for dinner as well which was lovely and nice end to the day. Sunday I went to the gym in the morning in preparation for another lunch out, this time at Gillian's with lovely chocolate pudding. I think I'm going to need to increase the number of visits to the gym or follow Sal's lead and get a bike to start cycling for some extra exercise.

The only annoying part of the weekend has been that next door have bought a bigger surround sound type thing for their TV which has quite a load bass on it so where I didn't really hear a lot of noise from the neighbours I've now got a more constant bass line trying to make itself heard over whatever I'm watching. Either I'll get used to it or I'll end up mentioning it at some point, at least it's only during 'sociable' hours so it doesn't keep me awake at all.

Extra parts for the kitchen

I forgot to add in on my description of bank holiday things that I decided to get my new oven on Monday. After searching various websites for hours I went for one at Currys and did the Reserve and Collect thing. Waited the hour it requested before going to collect and walked into the store looking for the Reserve and Collect counter as instructed, walked round the whole shop, didn't find it. Decided to go to the Customer Services and got sent across to the Tills to get it. The kind shop people carried it out to the car for me but then when I got home (after visiting B&Q, Wickes, Wilkinson and the other B&Q to buy a tap) I decided I could get it out of the car myself. I realise that sounds like there is a big story coming about a disasterous attempt to get it in the house but there isn't, it wasn't too heavy and pushed easily across the lounge floor to the kitchen.

I managed to get the old oven out and put the new one in, transferring the plug/cable that was already there and not electrocute myself. I switched it on for an hour and the smell was horrible (which it did warn about in the instructions) but hopefully the next time I use it it won't be as bad and should stop smelling soon. I was also pleased that it didn't set on fire due to my electrical skills although I did pop my head round the kitchen door a few times just to check that it hadn't. The only slight problems are that it is a bit narrower than my old one so the fixing screws don't have anything to fit into and it sits a bit lower than the old one so it looks like there is a bit of a gap between the top of the oven and the worktop. Once the joiner has come to fix the new worktop I'll look at what I can do to raise it up slightly and get it fixed more securely into place.

Now I just have to have the old one in the lounge for a while until I can see when Ruth or Naomi (who have both volunteered) can help me get it in the car - it's heavier than the other one - and get it to the tip. I'll post photos of the new oven in the kitchen once the worktop is in place so you can see it finished.

Swindon

I had to go to Swindon with work this week so I set off on Tuesday morning to get to the train station for 8.15am. The first thing that should have told me it was going to be a bad day was that as I was half way to the bus stop I could see a bus drive past the end of the road so I knew I'd missed that one, although the next one was a couple of minutes late I knew I still had enough time to get to the station before the train was due to leave at 8.27, or so I thought.... We managed half of the journey fine but then as we reached the stops at the racecourse the engine cut out everytime the bus pulled up at the stops from there and every stop all the way into town. I still would have had enough time if it hadn't also happened each time the bus stopped at the traffic lights so by the time the engine had started again the lights had turned red so we had to wait twice as long.

I got to the station thinking I had a minute or two to spare so I rang Susie as I got there to see where she was, to which she replies that she was on the train just as I saw it pulling away from the platform. That wouldn't have been too much of a problem, I could just get the next train and meet her in Swindon - except that she had my train tickets as well! So we decided I would get at ticket to Doncaster and meet her there. Sounds simple enough.....

As the train was pulling into Doncaster I rang Susie and she'd checked the tickets and decided we could use them to go via London which is the faster route. I was on a Kings Cross train anyway so I just needed to stay on it and she would get on at Doncaster. By this point the train had stopped outside of Doncaster station to wait for a platform to become free so I was then slightly panicked when Susie rang to say that she was on the train! She quickly pushed her way back off that train and ran to the other platform where my train finally pulled in and we managed to find each other at last!

The rest of the trip was quite uneventful, the disciplinary meeting I was in Swindon for wasn't that exciting but did last a bit longer than expected, when my notes run to 12 pages I know it's been a very long meeting and my writing hand begins to ache. I went to the gym at the hotel which I was quite impressed with myself for doing as in all the times I've stayed in hotels with work over the past 4 years I've never once used a gym in a hotel. We had a quick dinner because we wanted to watch The Apprentice and I was so pleased that Michael finally got fired, it had been too long in coming!!

Lazy Bank Holiday Weekends

I'm having a really lazy bank holiday weekend this weekend. After being on holiday for 2 weeks and then having Frances to stay for 2 weeks then most of this weekend has been spent catching on all the programmes that have been recorded. I've made my way through most of them now and I'm saving Heroes for Monday as Ruth is going to come round to watch them as well - also an excuse to have wine and take-away.

I have made it out of the house as well this weekend, Frances and I went to see Indiana Jones on Friday night which was quite good but I thought it was a bit far fetched at the end. I'll try not to give the ending away but when it starts to mention portals to another dimension then I start rolling my eyes.

Saturday night was Eurovision and I'm sure many will be shocked to hear that when it came round to it I could happily have missed it. I was falling asleep through the voting so I left before the end to get home to bed! By that point though it was looking certain that Russia would win and they were my country in the sweepstake.

The most energy expended this weekend has been on washing my car which is amazing considering I only cleaned it a week ago. Normally it would only get cleaned by me when it was absolutely desperate for it and then it might coincide with a trip home and Dad would very kindly do it instead! This year it seems to be suffering from being parked under the tree all day every day and the tiny leaves from the flowers drop onto it and the sap from the tree then sticks them to the car, it looks like it's been snowed on sometimes! Must arrange to get it cut down this autumn so next year hopefully anything that drops from it will miss the car.

This is also my last weekend before I start putting a lot of effort into fitting into a bridesmaid dress so I think I'll just have that chocolate bar that I've been saving....

Visitors

You can tell when I have someone else staying in my house because there is always some food that appears that isn't there the rest of the year. In the past this has included baked beans and olives and this week it has been peanut butter, thankfully Frances has said she will take it with her when she leaves so I don't have to find someone to give it to or leave it in the back of the fridge and end up throwing it away in 12 months time.

As Mum & Dad introduced her to Rocky biscuits last week there are also some of those in the house now as well, I thought it would be a nice treat for her, and I might help myself to one or two as well....

Congratulations!

...to Rob and Sally who got engaged on Friday night!



I'm still waiting for a phone call to hear all about it though but I have seen a picture of the ring which is beautiful, can't wait to see it for real. Which reminds me can I come and visit next weekend please....?!

I got my phone call thank you. Also forgot to say I was quite relieved to get this news because 2 days before Facebook had told me that "Sally Greenwood and Rob Harrop ended their relationship", so I'll never trust the Facebook news again!

Books

As it's been commented that I haven't said anything about the books that I read on holiday, I thought I'd better add in something about it. As usual I made my way through a few books while I was on holiday, I find that I get really bored sunbathing even if I'm listening to music so while Sal can lie there for hours just listening to her ipod, I end up reading the whole time, which also means my face doesn't always get much sun!

So this week I read:
Salem Falls by Jodi Picoult
Shopaholic & Baby by Sophie Kinsella
One Shot by Lee Child
Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

I was going to read Cold Mountain first and get it out of the way as I thought it would be a bit depressing but as I didn't start reading anything on the plane then for the first day of sunbathing I went for Salem Falls and pushed Cold Mountain down to second on the pile. Then I kept reading all the others until I had no choice but to read Cold Mountain on the last day and the way home. I've found it really hard going and quite boring at times, but I'm pleased to say that I have tried to stick with it and am determined to get it finished and not give up on it. Hopefully just one or two more rides on the bus to work and I might get it done!

I really enjoyed the Lee Child book so I think I'll pop back to the Oxfam book shop where I got it from and pick up the other 4 that were there and make my way through those next, maybe not quite as fast as I read that one, it's only usually on holidays that I can get away with reading a book a day.

UPDATE: 22nd May 08 - I went back to the Oxfam bookshop and there were no Lee Child books left in there! I knew I should have bought them all at the time - should never have thought it was a better idea to get the stupid Cold Mountain book! (which still isn't finished....)

Sun, Books and Hayfever

Sal and I had a lovely week in Turkey last week, Sal's written on her blog already so I'll try not to repeat too much. It was a really relaxing time of sunbathing, swimming (by me not Sal), reading, eating and watching tv. That was just interrupted by a day trip to Ephesus on the Thursday which turned out to be more of a guided tour than I had expected. I thought that we would be dropped off in the morning and just given a time to be collected in the afternoon but we had our own guide for the day who did the whole tour from the North gate of Ephesus and down to the exit at the South gate. It seems my memory is really failing me now because when I was showing Mum my photos I could barely remember what anything was. The main part was the Celsus Library and luckily in the middle of a rather overcast day with thunderstorms the sun shone as we reached the library so the photo's look so much better!



The rest of the day we also visited the Artemis Temple and a Mosque but the funniest and wierdest part of the day was the visit to the leather factory. It was actually just a shop that we were taken to but before we looked round the shop we had to sit through the 'fashion show'. It was the strangest thing, 10 tourists and a 6 month old baby sitting round the cat walk watching people model these leather jackets, lights dimmed, spot lights on the stage and music playing. Sal had unfortunately chosen one of the seats at the end of the cat walk so we had to watch these people walk directly towards us each time and feign interest in what they were wearing. It has to be the strangest part of a sightseeing tour that I've been on!

Annoyingly I spent the whole week suffering from hayfever, for some reason it never even crossed my mind that I would get hayfever when I was abroad . I spent most of every day sneezing and had to soak my eyes a few times because they were so itchy. I got home and of course have been fine since.