Time off
So I have been having quite a lot of time off. My contract ended mid May and the plan was to find another short term one but they are hard to come by so I am now a lady of leisure. Being a lady of leisure does actually involve quite a lot of leisure but it also involves some serious housewife duties such as making sure dinner is organised, dragging the giant Ikea bag full of clothes to the laundrette each week and vacuuming the floor with a dust buster. Luckily our place is so small the dust is busted within about five minutes. Nice! Going to do some serious blogging and let ya’all know what we’ve been up to as we spend our last few weeks in London. Getting a little sad about leaving.
happy birthday wishes!
Happy birthday wishes to the May ladies Amanda and Danielle – hope you both had lovely days and got spoiled rotten.
the euro tour
It’s taken me till about now to start getting excited about our upcoming European tour. It just seemed so far away, but now it’s really happening. Tim and I went van shopping on Sunday. It was sunny which made traipsing all over London quite pleasant. All the trains and buses were against us, and then we ended up in a place called Lewisham, which might be the most awful place I’ve been in all of Londontown. I don’t recommend it. Anyway this is a photo of a van we found for an incredible price. It was the first we looked at so we couldn’t buy it as of course, that would be silly! I’m still in love with it though.
Sweet!
coraline in eye-poppin 3d
I saw a 3D screening of Coraline this week for work. 3D has come a long way and it was loads of fun. The film is from the director of A Nightmare Before Christmas and is based on Neil Gaiman's book. It's incredibly well animated - a visual feast! Scary as hell though. Don't take small children. I found myself feeling a bit spooked! Check it out on IMDb - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0327597/
the delights of devon
The Ley Arms has been in the village of Kenn since the 13th century. It's very much the quintessential English pub and was a nice place to spend Saturday night.
Stunning photo of Martha against the beautiful hills of Kenn. We found out that incredible crop is called rape seed, although the teenage son of our hosts blushed a bit when he told us.
It made us giggle that all the place names seemed to involve 'Ken'. Someone called Ken must've made quite an impression many centuries ago. We joked that the Topp Twins would love it here.
At the Ley Arms, there was the best dessert menu I have ever seen with so many options. My sticky fig pudding did not disappoint (and no doubt helped me soldier on at the next day's half marathon).
Martha and I with giant smiles before the Great West Run began. There was a cool breeze and a feeling of excitement.
The B&B we stayed at had a father/son team competing in Kenn's annual go kart grand prix. This was another kart in the race. It was a lot of fun standing on that hill with all the locals, although scary seeing how steep the hill was.
Tim and I reenact Basil giving Manuel a tap with a spoon because we were in Torquay, home to Fawlty Towers.
Boat sheds - so beautiful. Ones like this along all the beaches in Devon.
someone get this museum an award
I went for a field trip with my workmates this week to the Slough Musuem which, despite the place looking like Fritzl’s favourite hiding spot, had been on my to do list since starting at Amazon. We went along at lunch to discover the delights of the museum, only to find it consisted of a very small corner selling Slough merchandise (including postcards created in the 1980s) and one room of very strange exhibits.
An alarmingly large part of the museum was dedicated to Slough’s history as the home to Horlick’s, a disgusting looking drink the Brits seem to love. Then there was a wooden model of a telescope celebrating William Herschel, who incidentally discovered Uranus. Our ages (all mid 20s-mid 30s) were thrown out the window as we giggled away at the idea of someone from Slough discovering Uranus. Too much.
Now I’m the proud owner of a colouring book celebrating Slough’s history and a few retro postcards. I’m going to be really sad to leave Slough and in the coming days I’m going to do a photo essay so I can always remember the good things – like the mothers smoking right into their babies’ prams and the endless sea of concrete and the jackhammers constantly drilling into the high street. Long live Slough.
Moving from the ‘Bush’ to the ‘Hill’
Sadley, team Uxbridge is breaking up. Red & Kelly are off to travel Europe in their van and Tim and I are going two stops along the central line to Notting Hill. Our new place is a cupboard but it is in Pembridge Square, a very swanky street in ‘the hill’. Will get lots of photos of our new ‘hood up when we settle in but here’s one of our new street I stole earlier.
Pembridge Square
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