Yesterday we went up to Hook to meet up with Rob's best man and his girlfriend. We had a really lazy couple of days - it was bliss. Spa treatments on Saturday afternoon followed by a dip in the jacuzzi, afternoon tea (heavy on the cakes again, not so much with the sandwiches) then a walk round the grounds, a delicious evening meal and a celebratory bottle of champagne - which I felt compelled to drink most of, as the others weren't drinking, and I didn't want to see it go to waste…
Today we were back in the spa for an hour, then we had a lovely lunch before setting off back towards our respective homes. Good times.
Sunday, 23 August 2009
Monday, 17 August 2009
Time Flies
It only seems like a few weeks ago that I was flying up to York for the weekend to celebrate Jen's 30th, and it's her birthday again already. I drove up this time, on Thursday, and for once I got a really good run; it took less than 4 hours to get there. Which may or may not have been due to the fact that I was flouting the speed limit :).
On Friday we went to Harrogate, which is only about 20 miles from where Jen lives and only 40 miles from where I was brought up, but I can't remember the last time I went there; it must be easily 20 years ago or more. We spent the morning in the Turkish Baths, which was basically a series of steam rooms, ranging from warm through hot to very hot, plus a freezing cold plunge pool. The 'warm' room was just the right temperature for the two of us to sit and chat, then we jumped into the pool (and jumped straight out again - brrr!) every half-hour or so to cool off. Lovely!
We went for lunch at Betty's, Harrogate's other famous landmark. We had afternoon tea, which in hindsight was possibly a bad idea: there was a lot in the way of desserts and not a whole lot of savouries, but it was still delicious. We were amazed at the number of all-male groups eating there - it's most definitely a girls' restaurant, and I would have imagined any men who went would have been taken by their wives/mothers etc, but there were plenty of male-only business lunches going on, and even a couple of builders at the table next to us. We did a bit of window-shopping after lunch, then drove back to York.
Saturday was a fairly slow morning, but we did manage to make it to Cafe Concerto, one of my favourite places to eat, in time for lunch. Then we made our way over to the pottery painting place (I've really got a thing for it at the moment!) and met my lovely friend Sarah who'd driven down from Stockton to meet us. We spent the afternoon painting pottery (surprising, I know) - Sarah and Jen did mugs; I did a square plate. Again, I didn't spend any time beforehand thinking about what design I might paint, but I did find a Mackintosh-style rose to copy. I spent far too long on it and Sarah & Jen were finished well before me, as is apparently becoming the pattern on these occasions. In fact, I still had a big chunk of the plate in the top-right corner that was untouched, but we had run out of time and I noticed a sign on the wall saying 'we can add a clock to any piece for £5', so I asked them to do that ;). And seeing as it isn't 17 August and I do actually have the glazed, finished article, here's a picture.
I was a bit disappointed in the paint coverage of the lines - it was really difficult when the paint was wet to tell which parts had been covered once, which twice and which more than that. Plus the tick-tock of that thing is LOUD! Still, it goes perfectly with the decor in the spare bedroom, so it will live in there.
Saturday evening Jen had the girls round for drinks and nibbles, so we spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for that, then on Sunday, Jen's birthday, Mum & Dad came down and we all went out to lunch at a great little pub. We had a very lazy afternoon back at Jen's before I left at around 18:00 to drive back home.
On Friday we went to Harrogate, which is only about 20 miles from where Jen lives and only 40 miles from where I was brought up, but I can't remember the last time I went there; it must be easily 20 years ago or more. We spent the morning in the Turkish Baths, which was basically a series of steam rooms, ranging from warm through hot to very hot, plus a freezing cold plunge pool. The 'warm' room was just the right temperature for the two of us to sit and chat, then we jumped into the pool (and jumped straight out again - brrr!) every half-hour or so to cool off. Lovely!
We went for lunch at Betty's, Harrogate's other famous landmark. We had afternoon tea, which in hindsight was possibly a bad idea: there was a lot in the way of desserts and not a whole lot of savouries, but it was still delicious. We were amazed at the number of all-male groups eating there - it's most definitely a girls' restaurant, and I would have imagined any men who went would have been taken by their wives/mothers etc, but there were plenty of male-only business lunches going on, and even a couple of builders at the table next to us. We did a bit of window-shopping after lunch, then drove back to York.
Saturday was a fairly slow morning, but we did manage to make it to Cafe Concerto, one of my favourite places to eat, in time for lunch. Then we made our way over to the pottery painting place (I've really got a thing for it at the moment!) and met my lovely friend Sarah who'd driven down from Stockton to meet us. We spent the afternoon painting pottery (surprising, I know) - Sarah and Jen did mugs; I did a square plate. Again, I didn't spend any time beforehand thinking about what design I might paint, but I did find a Mackintosh-style rose to copy. I spent far too long on it and Sarah & Jen were finished well before me, as is apparently becoming the pattern on these occasions. In fact, I still had a big chunk of the plate in the top-right corner that was untouched, but we had run out of time and I noticed a sign on the wall saying 'we can add a clock to any piece for £5', so I asked them to do that ;). And seeing as it isn't 17 August and I do actually have the glazed, finished article, here's a picture.
I was a bit disappointed in the paint coverage of the lines - it was really difficult when the paint was wet to tell which parts had been covered once, which twice and which more than that. Plus the tick-tock of that thing is LOUD! Still, it goes perfectly with the decor in the spare bedroom, so it will live in there.
Saturday evening Jen had the girls round for drinks and nibbles, so we spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for that, then on Sunday, Jen's birthday, Mum & Dad came down and we all went out to lunch at a great little pub. We had a very lazy afternoon back at Jen's before I left at around 18:00 to drive back home.
Sunday, 9 August 2009
Waiting...
Ben, Jill, Rob and I went into London yesterday to see Waiting for Godot. Actually, we didn't go to see that play - we went to see Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart star together in a play, and it just so happened that the play was Waiting for Godot.
Having got home and read the wikipedia entry on the play, it appears that there are numerous ways you can interpret it. The most obvious interpretation to me was that the play is a metaphor for life (although not my view of life) - nothing of consequence happens in the play, and the point of it is that there is no point - we're born, we go through life one day after another and we die. As I said, not my opinion at all, and it made me feel quite sad in parts.
McKellen played Estragon (with a fantastic Lancashire accent - just how he would have sounded if he'd never left Burnley) and Stewart played Vladimir, while Simon Callow played Pozzo and Ronald Pickup played Lucky. I would have paid to watch such great actors just stand on a stage and do nothing, so it was nice that they put on a play while I was there, but I can't say I would be desperate to see this play again. Apparently it's one of the most influential plays of the 20th Century - which only solidifies my view that the enjoyment factor of a play/film/TV show etc is inversely proportional to the amount of critical acclaim it receives. Remember The English Patient? And Gone with the Wind? And Casablanca? And Cabaret? And Children of a Lesser God? And... you get the idea.
As we were standing in the lobby before the play started I felt something sharp on my thumb and wondered how on earth I could have been burned by a cigarette while indoors. I raised my hand to see what it was and there was a wasp attached to my thumb. I shook my hand up and down to the point of hilarity and when I looked again only the wasp's stinger and half its body were still there. We were half an hour early for the play, so I had time to remove the stinger and hot-foot it to the nearest Tesco for some TCP and cotton pads. So if you were sitting in the balcony of the Theatre Royal Haymarket yesterday afternoon and wondered what the awful hospital smell was, that would be me.
Having got home and read the wikipedia entry on the play, it appears that there are numerous ways you can interpret it. The most obvious interpretation to me was that the play is a metaphor for life (although not my view of life) - nothing of consequence happens in the play, and the point of it is that there is no point - we're born, we go through life one day after another and we die. As I said, not my opinion at all, and it made me feel quite sad in parts.
McKellen played Estragon (with a fantastic Lancashire accent - just how he would have sounded if he'd never left Burnley) and Stewart played Vladimir, while Simon Callow played Pozzo and Ronald Pickup played Lucky. I would have paid to watch such great actors just stand on a stage and do nothing, so it was nice that they put on a play while I was there, but I can't say I would be desperate to see this play again. Apparently it's one of the most influential plays of the 20th Century - which only solidifies my view that the enjoyment factor of a play/film/TV show etc is inversely proportional to the amount of critical acclaim it receives. Remember The English Patient? And Gone with the Wind? And Casablanca? And Cabaret? And Children of a Lesser God? And... you get the idea.
As we were standing in the lobby before the play started I felt something sharp on my thumb and wondered how on earth I could have been burned by a cigarette while indoors. I raised my hand to see what it was and there was a wasp attached to my thumb. I shook my hand up and down to the point of hilarity and when I looked again only the wasp's stinger and half its body were still there. We were half an hour early for the play, so I had time to remove the stinger and hot-foot it to the nearest Tesco for some TCP and cotton pads. So if you were sitting in the balcony of the Theatre Royal Haymarket yesterday afternoon and wondered what the awful hospital smell was, that would be me.
Thursday, 6 August 2009
More Wedding Photos
Fed up of hearing about the wedding? Well, keep it to yourself if you are, but don't worry, this is positively the last post I'll put up about it (I think).
The hotel provided two disposable cameras per table, which we thought was nice. But a combination of the cameras not being particularly high quality - they said on them 'not recommended for indoor use' - and the fact that most of the photos were taken by people under 10 years old meant that I paid £88 to have them all put onto CD and find out that it probably wasn't worth paying to have them put onto CD...
Still, there are some nice pictures, and a couple of very nice ones, although as I say, the picture quality isn't great. Anyway, if you'd like to have a look, I've put the better ones here, and my favourites are below.
The hotel provided two disposable cameras per table, which we thought was nice. But a combination of the cameras not being particularly high quality - they said on them 'not recommended for indoor use' - and the fact that most of the photos were taken by people under 10 years old meant that I paid £88 to have them all put onto CD and find out that it probably wasn't worth paying to have them put onto CD...
Still, there are some nice pictures, and a couple of very nice ones, although as I say, the picture quality isn't great. Anyway, if you'd like to have a look, I've put the better ones here, and my favourites are below.
Saturday, 1 August 2009
Check These Out
Instead of a guest book, we asked everyone at the wedding to sign a picture mount, then got the photographer to print us a black & white copy of one of the photos he took to put inside the frame. Thanks for the suggestion, Jill - I'm really pleased with how it turned out: -
We also got this beautiful applique tapestry from Nikki, Will & Evie. We opened it on the morning after the wedding and I cried :)
Finally, for the last 20 years my Mum has made some fantastic embroidery samplers as wedding gifts for most of the weddings she's been invited to (and even some she hasn't). After all these years of admiring the ones she'd done so far, I was quite surprised to find out that she wasn't making one for us, but Mum said she thought I wouldn't want one (I guess the hint-dropping chain broke down somewhere, eh Jen?). So, with three weeks to go before the wedding, she put this together and Dad presented it to us during his speech on the day.
Finding a spot to hang the photograph was easy - our hallway lends itself very well to black & white pictures, so I just had to re-position two B&W shots of the New York skyline to give the new picture pride of place. Picking a spot for the other two is proving more difficult. All the pictures we have on the walls downstairs are meaningful to us - embroideries of the houses I've lived in, photos, paintings, prints and maps of places we've been etc - except for two large pictures of flowers in the lounge. I have a feeling they won't be in the lounge much longer...
We also got this beautiful applique tapestry from Nikki, Will & Evie. We opened it on the morning after the wedding and I cried :)
Finally, for the last 20 years my Mum has made some fantastic embroidery samplers as wedding gifts for most of the weddings she's been invited to (and even some she hasn't). After all these years of admiring the ones she'd done so far, I was quite surprised to find out that she wasn't making one for us, but Mum said she thought I wouldn't want one (I guess the hint-dropping chain broke down somewhere, eh Jen?). So, with three weeks to go before the wedding, she put this together and Dad presented it to us during his speech on the day.
Finding a spot to hang the photograph was easy - our hallway lends itself very well to black & white pictures, so I just had to re-position two B&W shots of the New York skyline to give the new picture pride of place. Picking a spot for the other two is proving more difficult. All the pictures we have on the walls downstairs are meaningful to us - embroideries of the houses I've lived in, photos, paintings, prints and maps of places we've been etc - except for two large pictures of flowers in the lounge. I have a feeling they won't be in the lounge much longer...
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
End of an Era
I was very sad to hear of the death on Saturday of Harry Patch, the last surviving World War I veteran in Britain and one of only four surviving WWI Veterans in the world (Briton Claude Choules now lives in Australia; Frank Buckles is American and Jack Babcock Canadian). Harry Patch was 111, and his death came only a week after that of fellow WWI veteran Henry Allingham, Britain's oldest ever male and the world's oldest man (113 years, 42 days) at the time of his death.
Part of the reason I was so annoyed at the numpty who called the office last November during the two minutes' silence at the Remembrance Day service was that I was actually semi-crying, having watched Harry, Henry and Bill Stone (who died on 10 January this year at the age of 108) each lay a wreath at the Cenotaph. It was very poignant, watching these three frail men so utterly determined to stand up out of their wheelchairs and lay wreaths to commemorate the lives of their friends and colleagues who died in service to their country. After Henry Allingham died a couple of weeks ago, I remember thinking how sad it would be to see just one veteran at the Remembrance Day service this year; I imagine for Harry Patch it would have been a lonely moment, so perhaps it's better that he passed away too before November.
We have lots of reasons to be thankful to these men, and to the thousands of others who fought in that conflict and all conflicts since then.
Feeling melancholy today. Normal service will be resumed next time :).
Part of the reason I was so annoyed at the numpty who called the office last November during the two minutes' silence at the Remembrance Day service was that I was actually semi-crying, having watched Harry, Henry and Bill Stone (who died on 10 January this year at the age of 108) each lay a wreath at the Cenotaph. It was very poignant, watching these three frail men so utterly determined to stand up out of their wheelchairs and lay wreaths to commemorate the lives of their friends and colleagues who died in service to their country. After Henry Allingham died a couple of weeks ago, I remember thinking how sad it would be to see just one veteran at the Remembrance Day service this year; I imagine for Harry Patch it would have been a lonely moment, so perhaps it's better that he passed away too before November.
We have lots of reasons to be thankful to these men, and to the thousands of others who fought in that conflict and all conflicts since then.
Feeling melancholy today. Normal service will be resumed next time :).
Sunday, 26 July 2009
Wedding Season Rolls On
This weekend it was the turn of Becky and Rob (her Rob, not mine, obviously), and we had a great afternoon watching them get married and chatting in particular to Rob's aunt, uncle and cousin who'd come down from Scotland for the wedding. Becky was in on a secret plan for Rob's sister to fly in from South Africa for the week, and she had spun Rob a yarn about a super-duper sale at Debenhams as the reason she had to go out at 5am on Friday, when she was actually driving to Heathrow to pick up Caroline. It was a really lovely day, and Cathy, who made my wedding cake, did a fantastic job yet again on Becky & Rob's cake.More photos are here.
Friday, 24 July 2009
So Far So Good
Work went from one extreme to the other this week. Monday and Tuesday were really quiet as all the staff were away, many of them in Uganda. Thursday and today, on the other hand, were the opposite - everyone back from Uganda, but most people going away again this weekend so trying to get a month's work done in 2 days. Chaos, but I loved it.
There wasn't a great deal for me to do this week, as I mentioned on Sunday, and there won't be for the rest of the summer, so I'm just going to do three days next week and possibly only two the week after. I'm going to try and get the office running really smoothly while things are quiet; we'll see how that turns out...
There wasn't a great deal for me to do this week, as I mentioned on Sunday, and there won't be for the rest of the summer, so I'm just going to do three days next week and possibly only two the week after. I'm going to try and get the office running really smoothly while things are quiet; we'll see how that turns out...
Sunday, 19 July 2009
... And New Job
I'm starting my new job tomorrow. I'm working 20 hours a week (5 hours a day every weekday except Wednesday) as Operations Manager at our church. I've been volunteering there a few hours a week since March, and was offered the job a couple of months ago. I'm really looking forward to it - the rest of the summer should be quite quiet in the office, but from September it will get a lot busier.
Now that the wedding is over, I'm really glad to have something to occupy my time. I loved not being at work for the last 6 months, but without the wedding to organise I imagine I'd get very bored very quickly :).
Now that the wedding is over, I'm really glad to have something to occupy my time. I loved not being at work for the last 6 months, but without the wedding to organise I imagine I'd get very bored very quickly :).
Friday, 17 July 2009
New Hair...
After we got engaged, I grew my hair so I would have more options when it came to a style on the wedding day. While I loved how it turned out on the day, and while being able to tie my long hair back came in handy in Japan - my straighteners didn't work there because of the difference in electricity voltage, and the humidity turned my fringe into a frizzy mess, so I pulled it all back, something I wouldn't have been able to do with shorter hair - nonetheless I was sooo glad to get to the hairdressers yesterday. I still wanted the option of drying it wavy or straight, so I had about 5 inches off the length and had my layers cut in again.
Here's straight:
And wavy:
Plus, I can just to say get it into a pony tail for the gym :).
Here's straight:
And wavy:
Plus, I can just to say get it into a pony tail for the gym :).
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