life

i’m looking at introducing a new directory enquiry service (no honestly, i am).
here were some people advertising 11 88 88. and you thought you had problems (or maybe it was me who just thought that).

a country path

style guru

three girls in a row

it’s an exciting weekend ! not only is it a bank holiday, meaning a lucky bonus day off work, but it’s the Reading Festival weekend. Jane and I are going for the day tomorrow.
it’s also exciting as i’m entering my first photo competition (hence the trip to Swallowfield earlier in the week). it’s at the Swallowfield Show see. Go to the site and enjoy the music !
i’ve entered 7 different categories, but had only 5 photos at the beginning of the week. so i had to take and print the last two this evening (they have to go to be displayed tomorrow).
Here is one of my last minute photos. i hope the judges are surrealists …

judging happens Sunday, but we aren’t going until Monday so I’ll find out what happened then. gulperama.

when you have nothing to say, should you just shut up, or tell people you have nothing to say.
macaroon macaroon macaroon

i posted my experience of using a couple of the new directory enquiries numbers last night.
imagine my surprise when I saw the headline of the Daily Mail this morning in the newsagents:

“118 the great phones fiasco” which refers to the new DQ services !
Where this blog leads, the popular media will follow.

have you used the new 118 numbers for directory enquiries yet ? I phone both 118 118 and 118 500 this evening …

Read More »directory enquiries

it dawned on me this evening that my life doesn’t really get dark anymore. i don’t know if it ever did get dark even. everywhere i go is surrounded by either daylight (thanks to the sun) or streetlights (thanks to the local authorities).

Read More »deepest darkest berkshire

i had lunch in the British Museum with the author of Dragoon.

The British Museum is full of smiling faces:

Maybe one day i’ll investigate some more …

and so the transport misery continues. i think it’s a given that my journeys to and from work will take at least 2 hours each way for the next two weeks 🙁

bad morning for transport. looks like being a very bad fortnight. my train line has been reduced to hardly any trains and the ones that are running are stopping at every station. yeah. packed hot slow trains. great.
it’s all explained in a nice press releasefrom thames trains.
it’s a pain for commuters and anyone trying to get to the Reading festival this bank holiday weekend.
Someone else who was having a bad monday morning – a car randomly crashed in to a parked car. two police men but no driver at the scene.
i suspect it was driven by a badger. badgers are notorious bad drivers, partly as they can’t see out the window and press the pedals at the same time. this is why they usually drive automatics.
this was a manual car. they were asking for trouble.

we had a family trip to Calleva today. It’s an old Roman town and once was as important as London. now it’s just a some falling down walls in the middle of some lovely countryside.
however, today there was an archaelogical dig in the middle of it arranged by Reading University. They have a website about it

esther even got to have a little dig in a pit of mud:

here is kezia and her grandma at the ampitheatre entrance:

i got the train in to reading this morning. took about 1.5 hours door to door so had a bit of waiting.

whilst waiting i read an oftel explanatory document on rules for service providers under the new regime in case any one is interested in how i spend my time during the day 😉
I then met Jane in town and swapped her my train ticket for the car keys and drove myself home (she’ll come back later with the kids on the train). but not before paying for the car park.
the first pay machine i put my ticket in first said £2 to pay, but it owuld not take notes or cash. instead it said go to the machine two floors below to pay by those methods. so i went down two flights of stairs, inserted my card and it told me i had to pay £3 ! When i looked at the ticket it had just rolled over to another hour. how completely annoying.

we had our friends andy and gill round for tea last night. candlelit meal in the backgarden. my feet got bitten lots, but i didn’t realise until this morning.

I entertained annoyed our guest by using the night time setting on my camera to take lots of photos. none came out except this one which is a shot looking directly up at our apple tree. It was illuminated by candle light hence the weird colours

esther has gone to stay with my mum this weekend, so we took kezia to the steam rally. we sat in front of this steam organ for 20 minutes waiting for some dancers. The music whilst we were listening was very nice. the dancers when they arrived were a little long in the tooth and it proved to be very disturbing. we went home soon after they started.
here is the 100 year old musical instrument

concorde is stopping flying soon. it’s sad because it’s a beautiful plane and gets you to america quickly (if you can afford it). On the down side it flies over our house twice a day and is INCREDIBLY noisey. the sound certainly won’t be missed.
here is a photo i took of it this evening as it went over

a sniffly spikey creaturey thing

Much thanks to our friends the Newells who surpassed themselves with Birthday goodies (albeit 3 days late!). Here is a picture showing the beautiful ballerina pen holder that Tony and I give to each other every present-occasion (Xmas and B-days). You can also see the rather neat card and a bit of the fantastic drawing produced by Catherine and Anna.

our friends paul and liz came round for lunch today. we were a little tight for time as jane, esther and kezia are off camping in the Gower for a few days.
I was in charge of barbequeing which was a very bad idea. I didn’t put enough charcoal and the heat ran out half way through the cooking. actually, we didn’t even get halfway through. I put some more charcoal on and the skewers caught fire and bits of mushroom fell all over the place.
result: much late and burnt food (better than early and raw).
BBQing is a stupid idea anyway. we all understand how ovens and grills work (or at least someone in our house does). idiots shouldn’t be left in charge of fire. i proved that 🙁

i took the girls to Trilakes Animal Park today. It’s a funny place but has some really nice lakes and random animals wandering about. There was a particularly attractive cockerel on a bench, but when I went to take a photo of it my camera informed me that i had forgotten to load my memory stick. d’oh.

i went to two pubs with my brother in law (b-i-l)this evening. you know, the one who likes to raise his toilets a couple of inches (with a jack-see). anyway, we were talking and all of a sudden a giant bright blue starfish threw itself off the top of the coral reef in our local pub. incredible thing. b-i-l looked round, but the starfish had already landed so there was nothing to see. but i had witnessed something beautiful.