Our Week at Sal's House by Martin & Julia

[Apart from my Mum and Dad being here, this has been a slow news week, and while I'm not given to blogging just for the sake of boosting my numbers, it's nearly the end of April and I've only posted 5 times ;). My parents don't have a blog, but if they did, their post about this last week might look something like this...]

We arrived at Sal's a week last Thursday, and on Friday we stripped the wallpaper off the wall in the spare bedroom. On Saturday the three of us bought paint for the walls, and Martin painted the ceiling while Julia and Sal sanded the woodwork, then we put one coat of paint on the walls and hoped for the best. Unfortunately it did need a second coat, but we did that Sunday lunchtime and painted the woodwork in the spare room and the ceiling in the en suite on Monday.

Tuesday was an historic day for Southampton, which is the UK's main cruise ship terminal and the home of the Cunard shipping company. All three of Cunard's cruise liners (Queen Elizabeth 2, Queen Mary 2 and Queen Victoria) were in port that day, for the first and last time. We went down to Mayflower Park to have a look. Victoria, the newest addition to the fleet, and QE2, which is being retired later this year to become a tourist attraction
and floating hotel in Dubai, were docked next to each other, while QM2 was docked a little way away, meaning it was practically impossible to get all three in one camera shot and still be able to tell what they were. If only we'd taken Sal's new lens with us! We got some pictures from Mayflower Park of the two boats together, then we took a trip on the Hythe Ferry to get a better look at the QM2.

On Wednesday we drove up to Newbury to visit Paul, Martin's friend from University, and his wife Collette. Colin, another University friend and Martin's best man, and his wife Jen also drove up from the New Forest to spend the day with us. Then on Thursday, we spent the evening with Fiona, the then-girlfriend of one of Martin's colleagues while he worked in the Scottish Highlands 40 years ago, who now lives a mile away from Sal in Hedge End. Small world.

Friday we put the spare room back together, and after Sal got home from work she and Julia put pictures up on the walls and got a couple of photos before Sal messes it up again...



It was great to see Sal and Rob and they were very grateful for our help with the decorating! We're off to Bedford today to spend a week on a houseboat. We've hardly spent any time at home in the last year - the South of France last April, Prague in June, Poland in August, Spain in October, Australia, New Zealand, Bangkok and Singapore earlier this year. It's great being retired!

Follow the Highway Code

I went running in the rain this morning. Although after the first few minutes, the rain coming down didn't bother me too much; it was the cars driving through puddles at the side of the road that caused me more problems...

The pavement between Chilworth Roundabout and the office is also a cycle lane. There are lots of big expensive houses along that road, and the pavement has give way markings to remind cyclists to check for cars coming out of driveways. I was quite tired (and very wet) by the time got to one of these give way markings this morning: lucky for me it also said 'SLOW', so I duly obeyed. Let no one accuse me of not heeding road markings... :).

Three Reasons to Smile

1. My Mum and Dad are on their way down to visit us as I type - haven't seen them since Christmas;

2. Our new admin girl started work on Monday and she's brilliant;

3. I was in the car just now and Michaela Tabb, UK snooker's only professional female referee, was being interviewed. Which means it's World Championship time again!

I don't much go in for the UK's favourite pastime, football (that's actual football, not the game you play with your hands), although I used to be quite a fan in the past and still keep an eye on what's going on. But I would much rather watch some of the less popular sports, like golf and snooker. I spent quite a lot of time last weekend wondering whether staying up late each night to watch the Masters from Augusta was a good idea - then deciding it was and staying up - and this weekend is the start of one my favourite two-week periods in the sporting year: the Snooker World Championships. And yes, I know it's weird, but I don't care.

Another favourite spectator sport of mine is darts - even stranger than snooker, I know, but Ben will testify that it gets quite exciting. We watched the finals of the World Championships in January while he was living here - he wasn't sure what to make of it at first, but by the time Rob came in and wanted to change the channel, we were able to out-vote him two to one!

More Congratulations...

... to the unstoppable Sarah, who ran the Paris marathon last Sunday in a fantastic time of 3:35:41 - a whole 31 minutes faster than Berlin last September...

... to my colleague Andy and his wife Julie, on the birth of Molly Victoria on 26 March...

... and to the lovely Nikki and her husband Will, who are expecting their first baby on 30 September.

Congratulations! Nikki, now you have to log in and leave a comment to say thank you...

It hasn't snowed down here all winter...

... which I'm glad about - I don't really like snow. Last week, the first week of April, it was warmer than usual for this time of year. As the song says, what a difference a day makes: this is what the back garden looked like at 09:00 this morning:


It didn't last too long, though; this is what it looked like four hours later:


The snow was melting so quickly off the trees at the front that it sounded like it was raining. It looked nice while it lasted, but I'm pleased it wasn't forecast to last long...

My first Safari Park visit

Rob and I went up to visit James, Sal and Jack near Birmingham today. They took us to the West Midlands Safari Park, which was great. Between us, Rob and I got some great photos. Unfortunately my camera battery ran out towards the end, so I missed out on the giraffes, emus and camels - not to mention I didn't get any shots of Jack, or three-month-old Joe, who came round this evening with his Dad, Adam, to say Hi - but we managed to get some good pictures of the lions, tigers, elephants, deer, wildebeest, rhinos, wolves, zebras...

I've been meaning to blog about my new camera lens for ages - Rob bought it for me in January, and it's ace. The lens that came with my camera is an 18-55mm; the new one is a 65-300mm one. Most of the pictures we took were on the maximum zoom, and look like the animals are really close. Although we didn't need to zoom in for the picture of the lioness on the road - she came really close to the car and stopped traffic for quite a while...

Here are some of my favourite pictures:









Afterwards we went to the safari theme park next door. James, Rob and Jack went on a few of the rides - actually, they took advantage of the fact that it wasn't very busy and went on some of the rides more than once; they went on one of the water rides 6 times... We were just about to leave when the black cloud overhead couldn't hold out any longer and we got caught in a hailstorm for a few minutes, but the boys were all wet anyway from the water rides so it didn't really matter. We went back to James & Sal's for pizza, said Hi to Adam and Joe, then came home again. What a great way to spend a Saturday.

More photos are here. We took about 300 altogether, so be glad there are only 53 in the album...