Date Night: Breathless Anticipation...

Here we are at the 31st May...for me the last day of Autumn.  And I'm kind of peering ahead into the Summer months, hoping that the recent burst of glorious weather here in the UK is not all behind us, given that the sunshine-y top-down temperatures of yesterday have disappeared into gloomy greyness today.

I have just had 6 days off in a row and, as I'm feeling rather chilled and not at all like getting ready for work tomorrow, I have convinced the lovely J that we should go to see Sex & the City 2 tonight.

(I think I can just about hear your barely baited breath in anticipation of my critique but don't you worry...there will be plenty of opinions...as always!)

So toodles, cheerio and all that!  Date night has begun...

Happy Days...

So Mum is here for a visit and since her (and her partner Alan's) arrival last Wednesday, it has been a busy time with little chance of the daily blogs I'd planned to keep you all appraised of our Days Out (and In)...so here's a little summary thus far...

Wednesday - Arrival Day
Much chatting and catching up over their best coffees since the start of their trip on May 9th (Go London...yeah!).  Checking them into the local hotel, marvelling at how big the room is compared to everything else they have stayed in and then off to The Boaters Inn on the riverbank in Kingston to eat fish and chips, drink wine and gaze dreamily at the Thames (which, on Wednesday, was dappled in soft Autumn sunshine).  My specialty Spag Bol for dinner...with more wine.

Thursday - Lewes-and-Brighton Day

Off to the county town of Lewes this morning to see all the places that Alan remembered from his childhood there...as with all nostalgic meanderings, he said everything seemed a lot smaller than he remembered.  We also walked around the castle, through the gardens at Southover Grange and visited Anne of Cleves cottage before walking back up Keere Street...very steep cobbled street that apparently the Prince Regent who became King George IV drove his carriage down on the strength of a dare...and they say his father was the mad one! 

Then it was on to Brighton and a visit to the Royal Pavilion, the pleasure palace of King George IV whilst he was Prince Regent (is there a recurring theme of reckless behaviour here?) This was my second visit and I had forgotten how truly spectacular and OTT this place was so def. worth visiting and taking the audio guide on your visit.  We then wandered along Brighton Pier before deciding that we were rather peckish so we found a fab Italian place in Brighton's The Lanes and waddled out of there for the drive home at about 8.  Speaking of the drive home, we had a little trouble finding the turn off back to the main road and took a scenic drive along the coast for a while hoping to find another connecting road...Plan A having failed abysmally, we turned around, drove back to Newhaven and found the turn off...

Friday - Hop-On-Hop-Off-Bus Day
Friday was tourist day in the capital and I have to say that I enjoyed the top deck of the hop-on-hop-off bus very much...it was really quite relaxing to be absolved of the need to take any photos (because it wasn't all new and overwhelming like last time) and to just enjoy the ride in the sunshine (yes, sunshine again!  Very blessed we were...)  After a couple of hours of winding our way through the busy streets, we 'hopped off' at The Tower of London with enough time for lunch at gbk (scrumptious burgers) before meeting the Yeoman Warder (more widely known as Beefeaters) for our guided tour.  He had a few grisly stories to share, a typically English (dry) sense of humour and a 'way' with the ladies...but did you know that they come highly qualified for the job?  They have to have served a minimum of 22 years in the Army, Air Force or Marines and have reached the position of Sergeant Major and they (all 35 of them) live in the Tower of London with their families until retirement at 65...needless to say they kind of inspire 'good behaviour'!

We then 'hopped on' a river cruise back to Westminster Pier - more witty commentary and interesting facts - before 'hopping off' and wandering past the Houses of Parliament, up Whitehall (past Downing Street and Royal Horse Guards), into Trafalgar Square and then along Constitution Hill to Buckingham Palace... again I was struck by what an 'ordinary' looking building Buckingham Palace is, particularly when compared with Westminster Palace (aka Houses of Parliament) but if you are ever here in July-August, def. check BH out the inside - it's amaaaaazing!...

...and then the only thing left to do (well that we had any energy left for) was to 'hop on' the bus home....and have Chinese takeaway for dinner...

Saturday - Day-Off Day
Saturday was my relaxing, houseworking, catching up day so J was despatched with said parent and partner to buy satnavs and posting boxes (look out chicky, there are a-comin') before the visitors decamped to Hampton Court Palace nearby...in the drizzle...so I can't really tell you what they got up to other than that there was jousting, a mock wedding and a lost umbrella.  Then it was pizza and Eurovision with J and the kids last night...makes you realise how small these flats really are when there are 6 people in them!

Sunday - Getting-Organised-For-All-The-Other-Days Day
Today the sun has finally broken through the clouds and we are all just puddling around here at the flat and the travellers are having a little breather before they set off on their big NW odyssey tomorrow morning...

So there you have it...a longer blog than usual but consider yourselves updated!

Weird Science...

I was reading my free issue of Stylist this week when I came across a small box containing 'random science facts'.  My curiosity piqued, I read on to discover:

a) there are more living organisms on the skin of a single human being than there are human beings on the surface of the Earth (what, there are other human beings below the surface??)

b) the microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket (what was it doing in his pocket - chocolate is for eating?)

c) an inflated balloon contains about a hundred billion trillion air molecules (I can't even imagine this number but that's quite a lot, isn't it?)

and

d) our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing (I don't know whether to be worried about all the little porkies I've told or to try and measure my eyes!)

These facts (and some other ones too) were all courtesy of the Science Museum promoting something called Who Am I? which apparently opens on June 26th.  Which all sounded very erstwhile and count-on-able (and maybe even worth a visit) until I re-read fact number one in the box:

Scientists don't know what makes up 90% of the Universe!

Might just stay at home....

I Get No Kick From Champagne....

It's been a busy week following last Sunday's blog and there have been a number of highlights not the least of which was seeing Jamie Cullum live at the London Palladium on Sunday night.  This was my Christmas present to the lovely J so after much anticipation (about 5 months in fact), 7.30pm found us in our stalls seats brimming with excitement.

As with all shows, there's a support act that you don't really know much about which can be delightfully surprising or something that's just getting in the way of the main act.  Lucky for us Eliza Doolittle (yes that is her name) was the former - her uber-understated image made us really focus on her amazing voice and her songs had something of a Lily-Allen-esque quality which we both loved.

But we were there for Jamie and the show was amazing.  How can someone play the piano like that and leap about and sing...and still have the energy to have a 'little chat' at the mike every so often. I was exhausted just watching him!  'Gran Torino' is one of our favourite songs (the movie is a must-see!) and this ended the show nicely after an absolute rollercoaster ride of tunes. But my favourite for the entire evening was this amazing duet between Jamie and the guy playing the Double Bass (Chris?) - a rendition of 'I Get A Kick Outta You'.  It was so very very very cool...I didn't want it to end...I can still see and hear it now...and in fact, I couldn't sleep Sunday night for thinking about it all.

And being the sensible girl that I am, I am hereby ending this post before I get myself all worked up again...these days it doesn't take much!

Negotiation...Alfie-style...

I haven't written anything about Alfie Bear for a little while and I've been meaning to share another of his little adventures with you for some time now...his first bath!

This was not entirely enjoyable experience for young Alfie and it was with considerable trepidation (me) and squirming (him) that I managed to get him into the tub...

(Note the blurred pic...that bear is a wriggler!)

 I thought I had convinced him to be good, that it really wasn't so bad (basically to stop being such a big girl which he did not like a all) and it would all be over in a flash if he would just stay still.  But I turned my back for an instant and he was off - on a mission to get as far away as possible and completely undeterred by the steep drop from the bench-top to the kitchen floor...

...but quick as a flash, he was back in the tub, soaped up, rinsed off and wrapped up all nice and warm again...

Drying such a furry little thing in all his cuteness takes quite some time and although he protested to begin with, I think Alfie rather liked his post-on-high atop the drying rack!

And soon we had a sparkling clean (in a furry kind of way), honey-sticky-paws-less Alfie...

He is not, however, convinced that bathing is at all necessary and bath number 2 remains to be negotiated.

An e-Mother's Day...

So we've arrived at my second Mother's Day for 2010 (in my schizophrenic UK-Oz life) and my Mum is on a plane right now, wing-ing her way to the West Coast of the States, then to France...and then to me here in the UK! 

That's right, in just 17 sleeps, I will be at Heathrow Airport waiting to see my Mum for the first time in 3 years...

So in honour of this year's second Mother's Day, I thought I'd tell you about one of Mum's very special skills...something very few people actually know about my Mum (particularly since she stopped doing my hair ooooh about 35 years ago!)...RINGLETS!

I figured the best way to showcase this awesome talent was in a old family pic of Mum, me and my little sister (fondly known as Lil Chicky)...

...and yes, that is me in the ringlet pigtails.

I could go into a litany of trauma experienced under the auspices of said ringlets (but there weren't any) or trot out some other juicy tidbits that most people would not know about Mum.  But I do have other things to be getting on with today and I've just remembered that it's supposed to be a day to honour thy mother, not give her a complete (if gentle) roasting.

So here's to Mums everywhere (Mark 2) and especially to mine somewhere States-side...

Only 17 sleeps to go...


BTW, I thought that my Mother's Day e-card might make it before she left for the airport. But any hope of that disappeared upon opening Facebook and being reliably informed by Lil Chicky in her latest post that she had in fact been up since 4.45am Oz time to take said parent and travelling partner to the airport. Buggar! Best laid plans eh? But I figure the e-card is still out there in the ether and will hopefully provide a little e-surprise when Mum visits an internet cafe somewhere on her travels...

The Same Cup...

I was checking out the blogs I follow earlier today and was stopped in my tracks by  adbroad's latest post.  Whilst the post actually pays homage to paper-cup salesman, Leslie Buck (you can click on the link and read the article yourself if you want), it wasn't the story but rather the headline that grabbed my attention.

Before grande there was regular and everyone drank from the same cup

It reminded me of those 'simpler' times when we 'had what we had' and got on with the business of life rather than moaned about the whys and wherefores of what we have or haven't got or achieved or experienced compared with everyone else.

It also made me smile at the 'I want it just so' attitude that we've developed. A mere paper cup would simply never do when life should actually dish it all out on a big silver platter especially designed for each of us. 

But in the end it's not really about the cup is it...more about how we see the cup (personally I am a half full kinda gal) and what we do with it.  And in wondering what to do with a paper cup, I googled and came across this list of 101 Uses For A Paper Cup.  They've only got to 58 so far but here are the three I thought were the most ingenious:

16  A floating thing for a switch on a bilge pump
...because it sounds like the way I would describe something DIY-ish

22  Harley Davidson racing air filter covers in the rain.
...because I don't know what this is but it sounds clever
 
30  Beach Toilet
...because I've been there!
 
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At this point you may be wondering about the random nature of this blog post...and yes, you would be absolutely correct in assuming that I am simply avoiding doing the stuff I really should be doing...so I'll be off then, before my cup really does runneth over!

Lazy Sundays...

Well here we are, the Sunday of the May Day Bank Holiday Weekend here in the UK and it would appear that those recent gloriously sunshine-y days have been washed away and there has been nothing for it but to curl up indoors on my big green sofa and potter away at menial, been-meaning-to-do chores.  I am now just finishing off the last of a dark chocolate Green & Blacks Easter Egg, flicking through a foodie mag and gazing out the front window at how green the rain has made my garden...isn't that what Bank Holiday Sundays are for?