life

this cucumber is on the street outside my office and represents a slip hazard. but is it as bad as a vol-eu-vent ? Popular classical songsmith Charlotte Churchslipped on a vol-eu-vent the other day whilst walking past an ex-boyfriend.
She probably could have complained in a french accent that she had been briefly stolen-by-the-wind. But it did make me think how slippy are vol-eu-vents.
my thoughts are that if it were upsway down, then standing on it would expel slippery sauce on to the floor, whilst the pastry mixed with a smaller amount of sauce would stick it to the shoe, thus creating ideal slippage conditions.
i may attach a couple to my shoes for everyday use when i need a little extra speed. we could have a few races.

on the subject of racing, i am proposing a different kind of race with my work colleagues for this lunchtime as the weather is perfect for paper boat on puddle racing. we have wind, big puddles and at the moment it’s not raining. we’ll haev to see how we are doing by lunchtime …

here is a dead dove which has been at my train station for the last week. the disturbing thing is the position of the wings. i hope you don’t mind me sharing this with you. (it was very dark when i took the photo and i didn’t want to flash in public before 7am)

how do you like your custard ? i’m definately thick. very thick.
jane made some custard which was very thick indeed. the test is whether you can take a spoonfull, turn it upside down and see if it can be defeated by gravity.
this custard put up a healthy fight and i loved it. you could even stand the spoon up in the jug. lovely. you can tell by my face i’m loving it.
just recently i’ve become extremely unphotogenic. for this i apologise.


and here is a boat we saw in henley today, coincidently called ‘The Flying Custard’:

when i used to live in sheffield i used to help our at a breakfast project at the cathedral for the homeless and needy. it involved getting up at 6.30am i think which was quite early for a student who had been dancing at the discoteques until the early morning.
anyway, there was a chap who used to come along who lived in the local mental hospital. every morning he would ‘escape’ and end up at the cathedral for his breakfast.

Read More »tab ends

here are three glasses containing soapy water sticking up above the bubble line in the sink. they had a certain beauty in real life which is somewhat lost on this small photographic version

i have a very complicated ritual for breaking new boots in. Today i’ve gone back to my old boots until my blisters get a bit better. The beauty is that it allows my old boots to have their last few journeys and gives them a chance to remind me how comfortable they had become.
unfortunately, because it’s chucking it down with rain in london, my 40 minutes walk to work also revealed how holey they are. the result is soggy feet which will probably end up infecting my blisters and i’ll have to have my feet amputated.

one good thing is that the rain has washed all the mud off.

change is always painful.
my second prediction came true. And today i’m wearing the new boots. I’ve had them on for two hours now (i booted at 6.30am) and the pain is significant.
It’s a good way of discovering pain receptors which i didn’t know i had. little toes, top bit of foot (whatever that’s called), heal, ankle, lower leg. I shall be stopping by a chemist later for some plasters.

i told you a few days ago how bad i am at DIY. It seems Esther has a similar affinity for the genre. here is her attempt to nail a nail in straight to a piece of wood.

she does nailing at pre-school which i think is great. i was ‘mother’s help’ once and got to supervise 3-4 year olds hammering real nails in to real wood.
they were scared. i was scared. we were all scarred (mentally).

i’ve been trying to fill jane’s tax return in, but the inland revenue site is broken (nice plan) so i thought i’d do some DIY instead.
when it comes to DIY i am rubbish. totally.
my limit is a dripping tap. that’s just about doable i thought. just a matter of turning the water off, unscrewing the thing and cleaning the doofa and puttting it all back together.
so i went to our airing cupboard where i thought the stop cocks would be. and this is what i found was a load of pipes (note the absence of anything turny):

so i followed the pipes (some hot some cold) and found this under some floorboards:

i haven’t got a clue where anything goes, or what it supposed to do. it’s all too scarey. so i’ll put up with the dripping tap for a few more weeks until jane’s dad’s available to do it for me point me in the right direction
meanwhile brother edd is a few miles away rewiring someone’s house. either he got all the practical genes or the household he’s rewiring should be very scared.
erk – this has got to be my most boring blog entry to date. i apologise.
back to work tomorrow so normal mis-service will be resumed.

we had a great squelchy puddly muddy walk this afternoon. both esther and katie fell in the mud which (luckily) they both found really funny.
get your wellies on and jump in some muddy puddles. don’t forget to climb a gate and have a ponder.

my predictions are this:

Read More »new years predictions

i’m rubbish at new year’s eve.

i’m much happier going to bed early and getting it all over a done with than partying like a mad thing. that said, we were invited round to a neighbour’s house for a hogmany do which i quite fancied, but lack of babysitters prevented us popping out (and it would have been bad form for one of us to go and not the other).
so we sat in chatting whilst fireworks exploded around and about. we just assumed they were fireworks from all the noise. i like to think it was actually our neighbours wandering up and down with inflated crisp bags, popping them occasionally to give the impression they were having a good time and we weren’t. the loud deep explosions were obviously the kettle crisp bags
hang on to the old year i say. let’s have an old year non-party instead.

my supposition is this. the world is going mad thanks to kids toys.
.
how so ?

Read More »i fear for the future

we have some friends who seem to cancel at the last minute everytime we go to visit them. they have some good excuses, but i suspect they simply just don’t like us.
in order to break the cycle of not seeing them, they invited themselves to some other friends’ house so we could all meet up near where we live. unfortunately they cancelled (surprise surprise) but it was ok because we could eat more of the fantastic lunch provided by our host Tanya.
esther and catherine with the shepherds pie and profitable rolls


It was also the first opportunity to have some crackers. Tony bought them because they were half price. they were also unwrippable causing much mirth and merriment

what a fantastic day !
we started off with an excellent service at church (we were playing and i don’t think we stuffed up too much). there was a nice kids song to wig out to which is always handy for a bass player. there was also a massive party for the kids so they had a great time too (and one of our friend’s children got baptised)
then we were invited round for lunch spontaneously at some friends house which was fantastic. the unplanned nature of it made it even better ! whilst there we saw some friends we see about twice a year who have just popped back to see their folks over christmas.
after that we came home, dropped off the music kit and went out to the Christingle service with some other friends. i was asked at the last minute to light a few christingles during the service and given a box of cooks matches. however, when my moment came i was trumped by a man with an automatic gas cooker lighter thing. he went whizzing up and down the church before i had even lit my first one. it was SO unfair !

after tea, coffee, cake, biscuits etc we headed off to some other friends from church’s house for a party. this was really nice too. especially this table decoration which is a melting skull candle adjacent to a couple of butter knives ! very festive. they also have a knitted nativity.

finally it was back to our house to put some decorations up, kids to bed. jane’s gone off to sing in another carol service and i’m about to tidy up the house !
today’s been a great start to christmas, covering all the main themes. friends, family, church and melting skulls.

today was a good day for sunlight shining through things. here is a beam at paddington station and a beam in the wood in apsley (wherever that is).

i felt considerably peaky this morning. if i knew i was ill i would have stayed in bed, but i don’t know if it’s just something i ate yesterday as i had some pudding with egg in and that makes me bad (incredible hulk style). if it’s my own fault then my employer shouldn’t have to suffer as a result. so i’ve come in anyway and will just feel like death on a plate for a while.
meanwhile there was a fantastic sun rise this morning. i watched it out of the train window. by the time i got to london the main bit was over, but there was still some dramatic sun-through-steam-on-buildings type things

update: i started feeling even more ill so went home. rest of the day in bed with laptop 🙁

i haven’t been home much this week because of work stuff in the evenings and various meetings for other stuff. i got home around 9pm last night and jane greeted me with a potato which had been in the oven for 2 days. it was tuesday’s tea i think. ooops.

there were no blue ones. so we requested them. then they were mostly blue. so we ate them and gave one to a man in a suit. modern life is far from rubbish

here is a comprehensive website on the blue smartie phenomenon