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!