I am not in the office...

Actually, I am still at work - I'm waiting for it to be time to go and see Bond, but I've just come across this great story on the BBC website: -

When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed.

Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated".

So that was what went up under the English version which barred lorries from a road near a supermarket.

Interim Results Are In

I had my weight/body fat measurements taken again at the gym this morning. I've lost 2lbs of real weight, but that's not the full story: I've put on muscle and have lost 5lbs of fat. I'm pleased with that, as it hasn't really taken much effort - apart from 5 days a week killing myself at the gym ;). What I mean is, I have been basically eating what I like since I started my PT sessions with Ben, so if I can get those results while eating rubbish, I should be able to do even better now that I'm concentrating on eating properly as well as exercising.

A celebratory Victoria Sponge is in order tonight, I think ;).

Getting Prepared

Today I made, wrote and addressed 20 Christmas cards, and ordered presents for Rob, Jen and my parents online. This last week I took delivery of a load of Christmas presents I'd ordered from Amazon recently. Organised or what?

Actually, I'm trying to spread out the cost of Christmas a bit better this year, as I usually fork out a lot of money in December then spend January, February and March trying to clear my overdraft.

Bedtime now - 23:15 is late for me, but as it's daylight savings tonight it's really only 22:15...

Are you 18?

That was the question the checkout lady asked me when I bought a craft knife from Hobbycraft yesterday afternoon. I took great delight in telling her I was less than a month away from being 32...

Bridesmaids: Check

Jen and Alicia, my adult bridesmaids, came over this weekend and we went to the bridal shop on Saturday morning to try dresses on (and I also put my wedding dress on; still love it, so no panics there). As I mentioned in a previous post, I already bought a dress for each of them, and Saturday was just about making sure that there weren't any other ones out there that we liked better. There was one dress at the bridal shop that was a clear favourite, but we decided that it wasn't any nicer than the ones we already had (plus it was twice the price) so we stuck to the original ones.

This means that we now have a colour scheme for the wedding, so Rob can choose what he wants the men to wear based on the colour we've got for the bridesmaids - which was actually his preferred colour, so that's worked out quite well. I still need to buy dresses for my two younger bridesmaids, but there's no point in getting them until nearer the time as they'll have grown out of them by the time the wedding comes around if I get them now.

Still need to find a band, then that's the big things out of the way and I can stop thinking about the wedding till after Christmas...

Busted

Last night I took my laptop to bed - something I never do, but I had been out at a pub quiz all evening (which we won, despite someone in our team insisting that the Clifton Suspension Bridge spanned the River Severn) and when I got back home I wanted to go straight to bed but also check my e-mails.

This morning I woke up, noticed my laptop lying beside me on the bed, turned it on and signed in to Facebook before doing anything else - before even turning the light on. Then I checked out my RSS feed and there was a new entry from xkcd.com (Rob suggested I subscribe to it; some of the more techie ones go over my head but mostly they're good for a laugh), which went as follows: -

Caught red-handed.

Dancing and Marilyn Monroe

For most of the other entries I've written about theatre productions, I've tried to use a line from one of the songs in the title of my blog entry to sum up my thoughts on the show. But I can't think of anything suitable for this one, so you'll have to make do with two of the common themes in the songs...

Last night was the girls' trip to see Blood Brothers at the Mayflower in Southampton. What started out as just me and Clare turned into a group of 15 of us going - most of the girls from the office, plus wives/girlfriends/daughters of most of the men from the office - and I think everyone enjoyed it. Most of us went for a meal beforehand at the Italian restaurant near to the theatre, then we met up with the others just before the show started.

Marti Webb played the female lead, Mrs Johnstone, and generally was very good, although not as good as Linda Nolan, who played her when I saw the show 5 years ago in Manchester. The two male leads, Mickey and Eddie, and their friend Linda, were all excellent, really convincing first as 7-year-olds, then as teenagers and later as adults.

When I saw the show in Manchester, I lost interest a little bit in the middle of the first half, but not this time; this was probably due to the fact that I've listened to the soundtrack a gazillion times and I know all the words - this time I had to force myself not to sing out loud so the people around me wouldn't complain.

The show is clearly a favourite among English/Drama teachers as it definitely lends itself to a 'what can we learn as a society from this play' discussion. There were lots of school parties there, which made being able to get a good view less of a problem as there were little people everywhere, but it did detract from the atmosphere a bit - there were giggles every time someone dropped a bottle of Coke on the floor, for example, and the entire balcony let out a collective gasp when Mickey told his mother that Linda was pregnant.

The last scene was fantastic. What's amazing about this show is that the first scene is the ending, so you know how the play ends, then the rest of the show is a flashback of how they all got to that point. But even though I knew how the show would end, and even though the kids all around me were doing their best to ruin the atmosphere, I still welled up when they sang Tell Me It's Not True.

Go and see this show. Worth every penny, even the second time around. And it will be worth it when I see it for the third time too, although I hope I won't have to wait another five years to see it again.

Here Come the Girls

Two of my favourite girls have had a tough weekend, but both have seen great results at the end of it.

Sarah ran the Chicago marathon today in ridiculously difficult conditions, akin to those at the 2007 London Marathon - where 5,000 people needed medical treatment. In Sarah's own words, 'Hardest race of my life bar none. I struggled from mile 3 and nearly dropped out at mile 11. I can't believe I even made it to the end! Don't remember last mile. Apparently two men helped me cross the line and I collapsed, fitting. Don't remember anything until dunked into ice bath in medical tent. 2 liters of saline drip later and I was finally compus mentus enough to stop watch. 4.12. What did I actually do please?'

Well, she did an absolutely fantastic 3:37:58, in appalling conditions. Well done Sarah! That's two of the World Marathon Majors (Chicago and Berlin) ticked off the list; just three (New York, Boston & London) to go now!

Nikki, on the other hand, was fighting a different kind of battle. After a 36-hour labour, Evie was born on Saturday morning. In Nikki's own words, 'Blimey that hurt!'

Congratulations Nikki & Will!

Got My Wheels Back

I've been (almost) without a car for a month. My road tax ran out at the end of August, and the DVLA sends you a letter notifying you that your tax is about to run out, then you take that letter, along with your V5 (registration of ownership) form, MOT certificate and insurance certificate, to the Post Office and buy a new tax disc to display in your front windscreen. I didn't receive the letter this year, because the DVLA still thought that my car was registered to Rob at our old address (last year we had mail forwarding for 6 months after we moved, so that time the letter was re-directed to our new house). It wasn't until a couple of days before the end of August that I realised that not only would I not receive the reminder letter, I couldn't actually find the V5 in any case, although I did have my MOT certificate and insurance certificate. So I applied for a new V5 using the application form that people use when they've acquired a car but the previous owner didn't pass on the V5.

The DVLA's website said it would take up to 4 weeks to process my application for a new V5, and 'if your car tax runs out during that period, do not drive it'. Given that my tax had already run out by the time I sent my application form off, the bit about not driving definitely applied to me. The first week was fine as I was in Austria, but since then I've had to rely on Rob to take me everywhere.

I finally got my V5 through the post last Thursday, so I planned to go to the Post Office on Saturday with all my documents. But of course, when it came round to Saturday, I couldn't remember where I'd put my MOT and insurance certificates...

I spent much of the weekend looking for them, but when it got to Monday and I still hadn't found them, I had to call my insurance company to ask them to send a new policy certificate, and I had to go back to the garage where I had my MOT done and pay £10 (and wait half an hour) for a copy certificate.

So despite the fact that I have saved money by not having to fill the tank up for ages, I am nevertheless pleased to say that I got my car tax this morning and I am now legally allowed on the road again. I wonder where I might go with my new-found freedom? Probably to Sainsbury's. Woo hoo.

Progress

I'm on the fifth week of the fitness plan compiled by my PT, Ben. Four weeks ago, I cycled 4.52km in 20 minutes on level 12. Yesterday I cycled 7.67km.

Plus I got on the scales this morning for the first time in ages and I have gone down 4lbs in weight and also decreased my body fat by a couple of percentage points.

I've still got a long way to go (about 16lbs but more importantly, about 10 percentage points in fat) but I've got plenty of time - there's still over 6 months to go till my first dress fitting - and I want to take things slowly and steadily to minimise the risk of piling weight back on again after the wedding, but I'm pleased with my progress so far.

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika

Rebecca and I went to see the African Children's Choir on Saturday evening. I first saw the choir about 15 years ago - a different group of children, obviously. The organisation is now 24 years old and the group we saw on Saturday was the 32nd choir. They currently have five tours going on - four in the US/Canada and one in the UK - and the money raised from the tours goes to help up to 7,000 children in Africa get an education.

The kids in the choir we saw on Saturday were all from South Africa, which was a nice surprise as Rebecca lived in South Africa from the age of 9 to her early twenties, so it brought back lots of good memories for her and made her feel quite nostalgic. Having seen the choir before, I knew that there was a strong possibility that they would reduce me to tears, so at least I went in prepared for that this time round. I didn't turn completely into a blubbering mess, though - I managed to hold it together most of the time. One of the chaperones introduced the choir by saying that almost all of the children had lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS, and a couple of minutes later they came running onto the stage, singing, dancing, smiling, shouting, laughing... It really made me wonder what I have to complain about.

The chaperones who accompany the kids are all volunteers, and one of Jen's friends from university is a chaperone this year. She's one of the kids' teachers during the day and she makes sure none of them wanders off at night at the concerts - which is something that apparently they are prone to do, because they're all usually buzzing after a performance ;). Her husband is the sound and lighting engineer for the concerts, and once this tour finishes in December they will both go back to South Africa with the kids and teach in one of the schools that the choir's parent organisation, Music for Life, has set up.

It was fantastic to see results from the work that the choirs and Music for Life have put in over the last 25 years - the choir's conductor is a previous choir member, as is Godfrey, one of the chaperones who, as well as joining in with an incredible rendition of O Happy Day, also told us that his involvement with the choir meant that he was able to get good schooling and he's gone on to get a degree in Computer Science.

Check out their itinerary for concerts near you - you won't regret it. Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika - God Bless Africa.

I Give In

Well, I made it to October without giving in, but after sitting here in the middle of the day with a blanket round my legs, I have just succumbed to the cold and put the heating on because, in my Dad's words, it's perishing cold. It's strange to think that I was wearing flip flops last Sunday night, but during the course of the last 6 days it has definitely turned very autumnal indeed. At least one night last week I decided to go to bed early because it was warmer there than sitting downstairs.

In other news, I had two bridesmaids' dresses delivered this morning. After Jen and I tried a load on in London the other week and decided that one in particular was really nice, my Mum got details of a 15% discount offer from the shop that it came from. When she went onto the website, she noticed that the dresses were reduced already by 20%, which was great but it made me a bit nervous because I took that to mean that they were probably end of line and once they sold out, they wouldn't be getting any more in.

I've arranged for Jen and my other adult bridesmaid, my cousin Alicia, to come over in 2 weeks' time to try dresses on at the bridal shop where I got my dress, but I was worried that if we didn't find anything we liked, there was a chance that the ones Jen and I had already seen would be out of stock. So I bought two of these dresses the other day and if we see anything nicer in a fortnight's time I'll just send these ones back. They were delivered this morning and I'm really pleased with them, so even if we don't find anything better in a couple of weeks, we know we've got some lovely dresses already. And at a third off the retail price!

Tomorrow, Tomorrow...

I've realised that there's a pattern emerging with the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton. If they get to the week before a performance and there are still quite a few tickets left, they put out a 2-for-1 offer on the top price seats. It was this offer that persuaded Clare and me to go and see Hello Dolly in June, and last week I noticed that the same offer was being made for Annie this week. So we went last night. Clare hasn't seen the film, and I don't think I've seen it all the way through, but we figured it was worth £15 to find out what the play was like.

It occurred to me as we arrived that given the subject matter, there was a high probability that there would be lots of children in the audience, and I was right. Which was great on the one hand because it meant we had no problem seeing everything, unlike last time when the tallest people in Southampton sat in front of us, but it also brought with it its own problems, like the constant sound of sweets being opened and the more frequent than usual trips to the toilet during the performance. It didn't help that the floor isn't carpeted, so the sound of every Mum's high heels tapping on the floor resonated throughout the auditorium.

We didn't buy a programme, so we don't actually know the name of the girl playing Annie, but suffice to say that we got to the interval and Clare said 'I don't know what it is about her, but that girl's quite annoying!' Which kind of summed her up, although I remember from the film that she was a little bit annoying there too. So we gave her the benefit of the doubt, and we actually started warming to her in the second half. She was clearly a young British girl working very hard at a New York accent, so in places it seemed quite strained, but she did very well - no doubt better than most people could do at 12.

Miss Hannigan was played by Ruth Madoc of Hi-de-Hi fame, and I thought she would be pretty good, but she was only OK. That could be something to do with the fact that the part wasn't as big as the one in the film, but even so I thought she could have made a lot more of the part than she did.

But truly the star of the show was Sandy, the stray dog that Annie takes in. Again, this part in the play was reduced compared to the film, but for obvious reasons - what is it they say? Never work with children or animals? Well, this show had both ;). The dog was fantastic, sitting perfectly still when people were singing into his ear, and obeying every command - except the last one, when the cast came on stage to take their bows and he decided he was going to sit with his back to the audience, and no amount of coercion from Annie would persuade him to turn round.

As ever, I thought that the orchestra was amazing, but too loud for the voices, meaning the words of the songs were often lost, but the dog made up for all that. All in all, not bad. Not worth a full-price ticket, but a good night's entertainment for £15.