Test drive!

This was us today! Sands drove too but the pics are sun bleached.

Nice motor, non?

Raks posing

Me posing. On my drive the heavens opened. Joys.

Raks again.


That's all I have to say for now, I'm too tired.

Grumpy Old Woman

I love Clare's 3BT very much, but sometimes you just have to grump, so here goes. This will be an anti-3BT, if you like.

1. Bad grammar. Your and you're are not interchangeable, neither are there, their and they're.

2. Commuting is dull. I'd been pepping it up for the past few months by travelling illegally - my season ticket was London to Staplehurst, when it should have been London to T Wells. (This is only a different route for the last 10mins of the journey, and I really couldn'd be bothered to change it. The price was the same for both.) But it expired and my new ticket is for the right route. My flicker of excitement as I approach the station is rapidly dulled these days by the realisation that I don't have to be scared of the conductor any more. Rats.

3. Bloody numpties. Why am I surrounded by them??

Special bonus addition:

4. Cover versions of pop songs. About half of the music they play in the gym is a cover of stuff I remember from when I was at school. Write something new, you bubblegum pop mannequins!!

Long weekend in Scotland

Ivan and Helen organised an amazing weekend in Gargunnock in Scotland. It's near Stirling, and the house belongs to the Landmark Trust. I recommend it for large houseparties, possibly with an Agatha Christie theme. BYOButler!

On Saturday we walked up nearby Ben Ledi (at 800m or so). A good way to work up an appetite! This is us having lunch and contemplating the climb.

Well, some of us contemplating the climb, others just discovering the Best Skimming Stones In The World Ever.

Nearly at the top...

There were sixteen of us and we had a great black tie dinner on the Saturday night. Check out those oryx heads on the walls- there were four of them, and in a normal house you'd have to negotiate them through the door and then share the room with this massive stuffed head with scary beady eyes. In that dining room you hardly noticed them!


Other great things about the weekend:

The weather was amazing

The drawing room with a grand piano which Chopin may have played (along with all the other grand pianos in that part of Scotland, in the space of two week's holiday or something.)

The smoking room and the library

Having an open fire and an old boy in the gatehouse who just waved us at the log pile and told us to help ourselves

The row of bells in the servants quarters, and the bell pulls in all the big rooms

Ria and Jake cooked up this amazing array of curries on Sunday afternoon for an inpromtu feast in the evening

Visiting Doune Castle which is just down the road, which is where they filmed most of the castle scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Chatting to lots of new people about what they do. Mainly they have PhDs in molecular biology, and play a mean Dirty Word Scrabble

Elliot let me drive his Lotus Elise. *:)

Thanks Ivan and Helen for a great weekend!

Birthday

Sorry these are a bit late, but better than never.

Pics from birthday, excuse the long shots from the evening - across the club in the dark, I thought the camera didn't do too badly!

Champagne tea at the Savoy.

Madame JoJo's...

Trannies singing Abba, Miss Terry doing an excellent Kylie, lots of backchat - all hilarious!

Hilarious and worrying

My flatmate has a large collection is fascinating, brilliant, hilarious and intriguing books, pamphlets, instructions on life and other paper-based products. She's just dug one out called Moonflower - A Manual of Menstrual Mysteries. This is a fantastic home-produced manual which has had us in tears of mirth for about an hour. Here is a small extract:

Circle Dance
Red flood
Tidal blood
Heartbeat of fertility!
Circle dance
Lunar trance
Invoke the new reality!
Drumming sound
Underground
Awake the inner power!
Re-birth
Lady Earth
The lotus is in flower!
Vein throb
Breath sob
Vesuvius outpouring!
Don't fail
Sunder veil!
The ocean ever roaring!


How many exclamation marks does one need?? And Vesuvius outpouring???? What is this, the Exorcist?

Another rather disturbing rhyme:

The Wine of Life
Monthly brewed
Claret wine, securely lapped
Unique vintage of a single earth.
Drink deep of scarlet
From the sacred chalice.


Good grief. Is it me or is this rather sexually dubious?

Samwise Kitten

We got a new kitten on Easter Sunday. Following the farm theme where all the pets are named after characters from LOTR, he is called Sam, or Samwise when he is naughty (which looks like being quite often). He is from a family of hunting cats so watch out rats and rabbits!




He likes to ride on your shoulders like a parrot. He sits there and purrs.

In the space of three hours, and despite being only six inches high, he has also stared down the Cat and two of the dogs. God help us all.

Les Francaises

I had a business trip to Paris.
Pros:
1. Paris is lovely
2. I got to travel business class
Cons:
1. I had a meeting
2. I had to stay in a 'business' hotel - faceless and dull
3. I had no time for sightseeing and shopping
4. I had to have dinner with the managers, rather than my friend in Paris who I'd not seen for ages.

Cons win. Although travelling business class was great.

Also, I have a date. *:) Via tinternet. In fact, tonight will be date five and I am very much looking forward to it.

And thirdly, next week will be my last week of being twenty-something. I am terrified.

Baby knitting 2 - The Bear

In between redecorating the sitting room (tedium...), I've done the bear from the Erika Knight book. Can't decide on an outfit for him yet though, what do you think?

Outfit 1:

Outfit 2:

Aaaawwwww!!

Aaaawww aaawwwdadadaaaawwww!

Sorry. First baby item (for friends, I hasten to add) that I have made, and they are super cute!

Pattern adapted from Erika Knight's book Simple Knits for Cherished Babies. I added some eyelets (first time yo) and then had a go at knitting an i-cord for the laces (another first effort).

Not bad, non?

Also, welcome to anyone browsing in from the article about Tunbridge Wells bloggers in the Courier.

Cocktail demons

Lou and her mother have cracked the recipe for some hot cocktail that they have when they're skiing, made with advocat, rum and whipped cream. Clare and Lou were making a batch at the weekend. I think they were enjoying it - Lou was telling me the story and that they 'put too much rum in so we had to dilute it with advocat'.

Dilute it? With Advocat???

Machines are evil

This is the message that our boiler gives us if we expect it to heat the house for more than three hours at a time:

That is seriously taking the piss.

It snowed again! Twice in one year - very unusual. Here are some pics:

Out of my window. There is a quite fit bloke who lives in one of the houses opposite and also a fat loony bloke who was hanging out of his window naked this morning directing the cars trying to get out of the lane. Nice.

Quite a groovy snowman in the park. I think if he was real and alive and stuff he would be a snowboarder. What do you think?

The Grove looking rather pretty.

More snowmen outside the Assembly Halls. Quite ingenious use of grass I thought. Is it hair? A wig? A tam o' shanter? A sophisticated Phillip Treacy hat??

Well done children of T Wells who made the most of school (mainly) being cancelled. And for me for making it to my first aid course. And for all the other people who made it too, including one girl who had to extract her car from a bush when she slid off the road on the way. Impressive.

What is it with men?

I'm sure someone once told me that if you show a man any interest they will immediately think that they will likely be getting some action at some point.

At what point in the Feminism cycle did this situation reverse?

Both Dear Flatmate and I have been sort of seeing blokes recently and thinking that perhaps, after quite some time, this would be the start of Something. But no. Apparently blokes are now supposed to do the leading on.

Well, dammit, NO! That is not the way it is, you men out there. Emancipated woman is now allowed to speak her mind, but she does not want to have to do the club-bashing and dragging back to cave routine herself these days. I for one am very pleased to be looked after and ushered through doors and so on.

So instead of spending hours agonising about what not to do in case one appears clingy / desperate / stalkerish, how best to write carefully drafted light, unpressured but definite texts etc, DF and I have decided that these men are not worthy of our emotional efforts, and they can, quite frankly, stuff it. If they want us now they are going to have to work at it. Which is quite the way it should be.

More tea while we wait, darling?

Our non-PC Office Mouth

The office football team arrived back just now and announced that they have actually won a game! Our Office Mouth (aka The Gobby One) promptly demands 'Who were you playing? Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder??'

Too funny.

A Brave New World

This is the funniest thing I've read for ages - check out the comments.

http://tinyurl.com/25erma

I am crying here. Seriously, you guys.

Train nightmares

It was a bit windy and the British transport network ground to a halt. Plus ca change. I left work at 3.20pm and got home at 7pm. Schedule ran thus:

3pm - check the web and see that there are two hour delays on trains.
3.20pm - leave work
3.30pm - arrive at London Bridge and discover it's closed. The whole station. No reason being given. (Later we discover that part of the roof has blown off.) However trains are still running *through* London Bridge from Waterloo East and Charing Cross.
3.35pm - get tube to Southwark and walk through to Waterloo East.
4pm - sign boards covered in Delayed notices. Decide to get a train in to Charing Cross, and there is usually more info at the terminuses (termini?). Plus possibly more chance of getting a seat.
4.10pm - the gods were smiling! The train I went into Ch X on turns out to be the one going back to Tonbridge. Get a big whole seat all to myself. *:)
4.30pm - go through London Bridge again (one hour later)
5pm - train hits a large branch (aka 'a tree' - I think there would have been a larger clunk) the other side of Sevenoaks. Train stops quickly and driver gets out to inspect the damage.
5.30pm - train OK and we get going again.
5.40pm - arrive in Tonbridge
6pm - the next train to T Wells also hits a branch outside Sevenoaks.
6.05pm - I call Paul V and enquire as to whether he is near Tonbridge and/or bored.
6.30pm - Paul V aka The Cavalry aka Archangel Paul, having extracted himself from HMV, arrives and picks me up ('I'm parked opposite Lidl and opposite the sex shop.' Wha?? And this is supposed to help me, who never goes to Tonbridge?)
7pm - arrive home.
7.30pm - feed PaulV dinner as a thank you.

Actually, all this was not that gruesome. I left work early, so it didn't get stupidly late, and us commuters are learning to be very pragmatic at delays, so people just take it easy and after about two hours Actually Start Chatting. (Commuters deviating from the Norm of Silence only happens in extreme circumstances.)

Also, my half hour wait in Tonbridge station was the funniest people-watching session I've done in ages. People rocked up and looked at the board which basically said Delayed in long lists and went 'Oooooh... that doesn't look good.' Other people were asking the ticket people, 'Can I get to London?' and they were replying, 'Well, there are serious delays', which means 'No! Don't try it!' 'But I've got tickets to The Sound of Music!' they wail. I should have told them it had just taken me three hours to get there. Some builders arrived and asked, 'What are the chances of getting to Essex?'. The ticket man refrained from laughing at them, just. Some lady's husband dropped her off and you could see he was trying to telegraph to her not to go, but couldn't say it, as she was all dressed up and clearly looking forward to her night out. I hope she didn't have to sleep in a station in her posh velvet trousers.

Housemates

Having a good housemate is a great thing. I love coming back from work and finding that the dead flowers have been thrown away and the vase washed up, or the washing hung out, or the dinner started. I hope I do similarly nice things like tidying up and taking the bins out. It's great sharing with a girl! Sharing with a bloke means coming home either to find him lounging on the sofa in a cloud of crisp crumbs, watching football while scratching his nuts, or not back at all because he's still 'networking' in the pub after work. Yeah right. Does anyone know a bloke who does not conform to these trends??

Other good thing about female housemates:

1. They can approve completely unnecessary shopping purchases like shoes, because the shoes were beautiful and they were also about two-thirds off in the sale.

2. You can discuss knitting with them.

3. You can have a giggle with them.

4. They will never look at you disapprovingly for eating lots of dinner, because they will be naughtily eating lots of dinner with you.

5. Between you, you can source helpful men to help put shelves up.

6. They look suitably impressed by the other managing to successfully use the power drill.

What a tangled web we weave

Two options on this post:

1. Double pointed needles are a nightmare, but just try using them with doubled yarn (mixing two yarns) on the train with no elbow room. Argh. I thought knitting was supposed to be therapeutic??

2. Is it just me whose life is not like an episode of Eastenders? I met someone recently who turns out to be a bisexual pagan. Someone else at work has the Family Life from Hell, with his sons alternatively coming home to sleep on the sofa when they are kicked out of their various girlfriends' council flats. One got married, had a daughter, his wife had an affair and kicked him out / he left, she took up with the other man and got very difficult about letting him see the kid, then she broke up with the other guy and wanted her husband back, but turns out she's pregnant by the other guy. Meanwhile the mothers (in-law) are alternately falling ill and making large demands on time, while the rest of the family (in-law) causes other untold grief. Good God. I think I'll just stay in my sleepy village and keep my head down.

Up, Up and Away

It's all systems go here at the moment! Broadband is up, the cleaned curtains are up, and the new hook on the door for my dressing gown is also up (with successful use of power drill - no one was maimed, all is good). And, best yet, our first proper order on the wool from Someone We Don't Know! Hurrah!

Has everyone done New Year resolutions? I never normally do, but this year I think I should set myself some goals. Something along the lines of:

1. Start dancing again regularly
2. Join a choir
3. Not have a nervous breakdown at work, and to be more assertive with colleagues when they are pissing me off
4. Pay off my visa bill every month
5. Go on some fun dates
6. Sit down and write a plan for Aragon Yarns for this year. Should we go to farmers markets? Should we go to the stitch show at Ally Pally? Should we start stocking other people's yarns?
7. Proactively call my friends instead of them always calling me.
8. Schedule time to relax. Preferably a day a month - a Sunday specifically in which to do nothing. Ah, bliss.

I think that's enough to be going on with! Hope January is going well for you guys.

Happy New 2007!

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a good night, whether it was staying up getting horrendously drunk, or watching Jules Holland's Hootenanny, or going to bed early with a cocoa. I have a good feeling about 2007. It's going to be a great year!

I went out with some friends of friends on Friday night - we went to a gig at the Forum. I have not felt so ancient for quite some time. All the kids were about 17! Including the bands. Some of the F of Fs were parents of the band that was headlining. They were pretty good - Seven Story Down - also playing on 6 Jan. Keep an eye out for them.

I'd not been to the Forum for at least 12 years, not since I saw my very mild and well-spoken uncle sing with his band - I walked in to be confronted with him wearing leather trousers screaming Ace of Spades while several guitars were thrashed. Surprising, to say the least. The decor in there is pretty much exactly as it was last time I was in there, although they did make a token effort at some Xmas decs - there were white house lights around the stage, and a white camo net was suspended from the ceiling. It seems the vogue with the kids at the moment is big hair - definitely long, and if you want to backcomb it into a birdsnest and stick it up with goop, then all the better. There were a lot of boys there, all at the age when they are still waiting to grow into their noses. Grungy preppy seems to be in. (I'm only telling you this in case you are thinking of going at some point - don't want you to stick out like we all did - who are that group at the back? Oh that will be the mums and dad and over-30 hangers-on!) After getting our ears mangled for a couple of hours, I had a five minute walk home. I think I am going to like this living in T Wells thing.