Tuesday, May 31, 2005

We couldn't go to the Lake District without stopping off at Mosedale... I think it was some sort of initiation test, as I had to map-read our way there along very small, gated roads, and have my photo taken outside the 'Mosedale Meeting House', and this holiday cottage! Still, nice to have a bit of the Lake District named after me, in a manner of speaking...  

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Back in the UK...

This is a little souvenir of my trip to Toulouse, from the Airbus canteen. Only in France do you get wine with your lunch - for 1.5 Euros a (little) bottle! The label commemorates the first flight of the A380, the supr-jumbo that was all over the news a couple of months ago. rom the office I was working in we could watch it take off every morning on it's test flights, which was pretty good for an aerodynamics geek. It's very quiet when it takes off, and looks good in the air, which can't be said for all the Airbus aircraft!

Toulouse itself was very nice, though I was homesick all the time. Usually I enjoy being away with work, but six nights away after two weeks on holiday was hard going - by the end of the week I wanted to be curling up on the sofa for a nice simple dinner, not going out to a restaurant for three courses plus wine! It's nice to be home with the husband again :-) 

Thursday, May 26, 2005

The Mosedales are in the house. Well, actually, only one of them is as Elspeth has gone away with work for the week. But that's not a snappy title.

We're back from our honeymoon, and I think I speak for both of us when I say we had a wonderful time. I won't bore/titillate you with the details of everything we got up to, but I am sure there will be some photographs of our adventures and stuff cropping up here every now and again when we feel the need to blog. We'll probably also relive bits of our wedding day through the medium of blog, so you've got that to look forward to. Here's a quick rundown of the last couple of weeks:

Saturday May 7th: Hail in the morning, followed by a wedding ceremony and smiles thereafter. We had a top day.

Sunday: stayed overnight on sunday in a nice hotel on Rutland Water. Decided we were fools not to have discovered this lovely area of the country sooner, given it's proximity to home. Extolled virtues of www.laterooms.com through which we got the room half price.

Monday-Friday: The Swarkestone Pavilion, just south of Derby. Absolutely fantastic, and we're now converts to the Landmark Trust. A more suitable place to relax for the first few days after the wedding can't be imagined.

Thursday: Alton Towers. Spend the day trying to identify a manly way to scream, in pursuit of enjoyment on the rides. The best I manage is a throaty roar.

Friday-Monday: A weekend in York. Visited important tourist attractions such as the York brewery. Ate in musically themed restaurants: Cafe Concerto, El Piano, and Harkers (Hark the glad sound. Tenuous.)

Monday-Saturday: Augill Castle in Northwest Yorkshire. Very luxurious, we were the only guests for much of the week. Repeatedly struck by the beauty of that corner of England and vowed to return soon, to indulge in WALKS.

Saturday: Returned home. Ate fish and chips, somehow not indulged in while away.

Sunday: Elspeth leaves for a week in Toulouse with work.

Thursday: Tim blogs. Awaits Toulouse puns.

Sunday, May 08, 2005

We're off on our honeymoon for the next two weeks - see you all when we get back!! Posted by Hello

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Quadruple the fun!

Well, nearly 2 weeks later I've found time to put a few photos of the stag do on the blog. We had a great time, playing football and penultimate frisbee in the park, dancing and chatting the evening away in La Fontana restaurant with the girls, and then playing quad bikes and monster truck rides the following morning. It was all great fun! Thanks to all that came and commisserations to those who didn't.

Cameras being physical objects, they can only be in one place at a time and so I have no park photos (Elspeth kept the camera to take no photos at the hens' pamper party) and no dinner photos either. But here are a selection of the quad biking ones. Unfortunately I can't put the classic 'Andy crashes out' video on the blog as it's many hundreds of megabytes, but you're all welcome to view it next time you're round at Coventry road. Also, the batteries died before we got to the monster truck so I don't have any of those.

Tim and David power down the back straights:


Vince, the gentleman, does all the hard work:


Chris finds some more wheels for his wagon:


Samir wonders where it all went wrong at 'Andy's corner':


Andy's joy at only crashing once on the previous lap:

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Holiday planning

Nice to see someone enthusing about Landmark Trust properties in The Guardian today - I'm looking forward to our stay in a posh pavilion! Like the author, I can browse through the trust's handbook for hours, planning amazing holidays. There are lots of places suitable for larger groups - anyone fancy a joint holiday with a great holiday 'cottage' sometime? I'll need something else to organise next year!

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

More furniture...

Tim and I are now the proud owners of two bedside cabinets, a chest of drawers and two wardrobes (one assembled, one to go). So the house is now full of cardboard and polystyrene again, and another trip to the tip is imminent. Buying solid wood furniture seemed like a good idea at the time, but carrying it all upstairs and putting it together has been hard work! Still, I've managed not to break any nails in the process, so hopefully they'll all be looking good on the wedding day.

We're into the final countdown now - only two days of work left, and an ever shortening list of things to do. Just got to printout and put together the orders of service, confirm details with the florist/the DJ/the Church/the transport people, pay the church, decide on a list of required photographs, sort out music for duringthe meal, tidy the house so there is room for people to stay, and book the first night of the honeymoon. Oh, and at the end of it all remember to get married! It will all be worth it in the end... :-)

Invasion of 'fresh air'

Our offices have been gatting their yearly spring clean over the last week or so - this involves actually cleaning away all the cobwebs and scrubbing the light fittings so we can see again. An important final step seems to be putting an air freshener in each office, as presumably opening the windows doesn't give us enough fresh air. I don't know about anyone else, but I can't stand air fresheners! The one in our office 'fell' into the bin very quickly, but I've noticed them multiplying in all the other offices. At the last count there were three in the ladies toilets, which seems a bit excessive...

(P.S. Apologies for the lack of posts over the last week or so. Life got a bit hectic after the stag/hen do's, and the blog fell of the list of things to do! Still, I'm sure we're still more up to date than Ian ;-) )