More Tales from the Tank: The Cycle of Life

More fish news.

The 4th round of fishies have come into the tank, as of last week. We now have two Otos mooching around somewhere. These little chaps are catfish who will attach themselves to any part of the tank decor and eat all the algae they find. I kept being pestered by Elspeth to sort out the algae in my tank, and these are my solution. They're quite hard to spot in the tank (5 points per spot, a bonus 5 if you can find both of them), but I have managed to get a photo or two.





The other bits of news in the tank concern the platys. I may have mentioned before that one of them is looking a bit sad. The other two males seem happily paired off with the two females, and this one is on his own and gets bullied by the other males. He never seems to come up for food and is always hiding and looking generally distressed. Having endured a week of this to see if he gets better, I decided today that it would be better if I took him out of the tank and bashed his little head in (believe it or not, the preferred method of humanely putting a fish out of its misery). I tried to catch him earlier to do so but had no success, so he's still in there unaware of what is to befall him, while I have his fate hanging over my head. It's quite difficult really.

On the other hand, there is some good platy news. One or other or both of the platy pairings have had some babies! A couple of days ago I noticed a tiny little fish hiding among the plants - I don't know how long it had been there. I was very excited; Elspeth less so, as I woke her up to get her to come and look. The lady platys have been looking fat for a while, so it doesn't come as a big surprise. Earlier this evening I saw two of the little fellas (see below), and I don't know how many more there might be or whether there are more to come. It's all very exciting - I seem to be drawn to small cute things (reference 7th May 2005), and these fish are very small and cute. I'm not sure what their future will be, what the chances that they will survive into adulthood are, but it'll be fun to see. Oh, and by the way, in this photo it looks like daddy fish is looking after the baby fish. It's probably more likely that he was trying to eat them, before you get too sentimental.

Bedford is turning into quite a cosmopolitan little town... we now have a sushi bar! Tim and I went to try it out for dinner last night and were very impressed - a good selection of sushi, all of which tasted lovely. It's one of those places with a little conveyor belt so you sit and wait for the next delicacy to trundle past, then grab it and eat it. Great fun.

The restaurant was no where near full, so I hope it catches on otherwise we'll have to go back to italian or indian for a meal out!

A Welsh weekend

Well, a week ago we were enjoying a very sunny weekend in the Brecon Beacons, along with the usual gang. We came back with some sun tan/burn, uneaten gingerbread and custard (!) and some new in-jokes. WE also managed to have a very impressive curry at the campsite on the Friday night, and an extremely rubbish curry in Brecon on Saturday. Next time we'll book at the pub...

Overall, we had a great weekend and it was good to meet up with everyone again. A good way to spend out three-month-iversary, woulcn't you agree?

 

Chris 'helps' with dinner on the first evening!



The trig point on the first day.



The default bridge photo.



Look! Sunshine and a view in Wales :-)

 

Ian looking a bit - well - solitary ;-)



Tim and Chris playing some (non-invasive) frisbee.

Sadness

When we got home from Elspeth's parents on sunday there were only two happy swimming around rainbow fish in the tank, and one rather unhappy not swimming around one. My first death in the tank, after about 10 weeks, and I am a bit unhappy about it.

The other fish all seem fine, so I suspect that it's an isolated case, quite possibly related to the stress of being chased about a bit too much by the other male rainbow, although this is speculation. In any case, the two remaining rainbows seem to be getting on better now - I didn't see any over-boistrous behaviour when I was watching them last night.


Hohum.

Watermelon

We've just got back from a weekend away visiting my parents. When we got home, Tim finally made me do my least favourite task in the whole world - vacuuming out the car. Still, it turned out to have an unforseen benefit, as our next door neighbour Mr. Bibi offered us a large chunk of the watermelon he'd bought for his family. According to his daughter, who delivered it, he'd bought an extra large one so that he could look after his neighbours as well! What a nice man. Tim and I are now stuffed with watermelon - yum :-)

Bad Science

...is so good this week I'm posting it here in it's entirity:

· Last week I asked: what's the most stupid thing anyone has said to you about science at a party? And it would seem that the great British sport of moron-baiting is more popular than ever. Lots of you encountered philosophers. Guy Davidson was told that "science doesn't tell you about the real world, only an ideal version of it". Yup. Well, light still travels faster than sound no matter how you look at it. Balthazar Florentin-Lee met someone who told him his discussion was flawed because it was "based only on logic" and someone whose email I lost got: "Logic isn't real, you can prove anything you want with logic. It's meaningless." Edwin Whiting was told that "science is how the devil perverts God's will" (bravo!), and the popular idea that "science is a way of life you choose just like religion" (via Yaniv Chen) perhaps explains why party philosophers then moved on to "not everything is scientific" (via Heather Bayley) and "science can't tell us everything" (via Conor McGeown). We never said it could.

· Most interesting were "folk" theories about the natural world. Amanda Fergusson had the misfortune to spend some time on an intensive therapy unit where she heard someone solemnly explaining the workings of the ventilator to relatives: "The machine slowly brings her back up to atmospheric pressure: when she's there, then they disconnect her and she can breathe for herself." Max Zavood was told that evolution obviously wasn't ongoing because there "weren't any new species of humans" ("how do you know what they'd look like?" was his sinister reply); Stewart Hotston was told that copper bracelets worked by "creating energy", "just like petrol creates the energy needed to drive a car". John Frizell was told that "global warming is nothing to worry about because energy and matter are interconvertible", and Derek Sellars got: "Science will never unravel the basic structure of the universe because when we think about subatomic particles it affects the way they behave."

· Lastly, pity William O, a sensitive soul who answers customer queries for a supermarket chain to fund his science career, and so finds himself explaining to baffled angry customers why the quoted number of calories per 100g on the label of powdered soup should go down when you add water (dilution), that GM foods are not radioactive (they're just not), and why the amino acids in shampoo won't burn your scalp. "I feel arrogant and guilty when I get frustrated with these people ... but I just can't help it." This man is a saint.

(the original article can be read here. http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/story/0,12980,1536986,00.html

There's something fishy going on

As we hurtle towards 100 posts on the blog (this is 99, apparently), I'd best do as the wife says and blog my fish news.

I've now got 12 fish in my tank (at least I did this morning), after buying 3 more last weekend. There's space for a few more, but narrowing down my list of possible candidates for the next additions will take some time, so this is it for now.

Platys:
My, haven't they grown! I've tried to get a picture so you can compare against my first fish post, but have so far been unsuccessful. The women in particular have been putting a lot of weight on. Females do grow larger than males, but I'm still suspicious of the size of their stomachs and am expecting babies some time soon. Then again, I have been for about a month. Another thing adding to my suspicions is the way that one of the men follows one of the women around all the time. He was even chasing away others who came near her the other day. Quite cute really, if a little needy.

Cories:
They're still very shy, which is a shame. If they see you coming they'll shoot off and hide, but then you can trick them by waiting for a while and they'll come out again. Their favourite hiding place is under a log in the corner of the tank, and it's quite fun when they're all huddling up there in a little row. Here's a nice little picture of one of them coming out for his tea.


Rainbows:
The new guys. Dwarf neon rainbowfish melanotaenia praecox. I've seen rainbowfish arouns and they're always described as "a bit boring when they're young but nice and colourful when they grow up" or something. I really like them and these chaps are very nice - they don't grow too big which is one of my criteria for the tank. Having said that, when I was in Mr Fish at the weekend I saw some very VERY nice banded rainbowfish, which are currently high up in the running for my pair of larger fish which I will have at some point. Anyway, these guys have got a lovely shimmery blue body and red/orange fins. Photos really don't do them justice, but here you go:

One with the lights on


And the same guy with the flash on, showing his nice blue scales


I have 3 of these, as I said: 2 males and 1 female. I think one of the males is bossing the other one around a bit, as the smaller one is always hiding in the plants and has lost a lot of his colour since I put them in. I'll have to monitor the situation. One of the fun behavioural things that the big guy does is to sprint across the front of the tank, then put the brakes on and extend his fins as much as possible. It's quite amusing to watch him showing off. I'm looking out for signs of a love triangle here - surely the lady will fall in love with the small, dull one and spurn the advances of the bully? Watch this space.

Scrabble

I think I need to remedy the situation since Elspeth cast doubts on my geek status. So I'm going to blog a game of scrabble that my dear wife and I have just played.

Ok, not really. The real reason is that I came up with possibly my best ever scrabble word. Witness it:


Elspeth wasn't too impressed, as she was winning by a good 67 points until I hit EQUITY (there, I have learnt something in my new job) with Q on a triple letter and a double word, then the magnificent EXPUNGER using all of my letters, before making it EXPUNGERS the following turn. I was quite pleased.

Elspeth did manage WEE though, which was pretty good.

Geeks

We went to a BBQ yesterday with Tim's work mates - a very enjoyable event. On the way home in the car, we commented on the fact that almost all of Tim's colleagues are married - in fact, only two of them are single. In contrast, the majority of my co-workers are single. At this point, Tim commented disdainfully 'well yes, all your work mates are GEEKS!' Ouch. Obviously now he moves in the world of corporate finance he no longer feels that geekery is a good thing...

Another weekend...

...which means another two days off work - bliss :-) I was ayaw in bristol for two days this week, being trained in using a piece of software I already use regularly. Still, it was good to have a couple of days away from the office to really concentrate on learning. If I'm at work there's always something else I ought to be doing... one of our more senior members of staff left on Friday, so we're all going to be even more busy. We're looking to recruit two/three new people by October, so if any of you know Maths/Engineering/Physics-type people who are looking for a job, let me know!

I should point out that Tim has bought yet more fish. Hopefully he'll post some pictures soon...

Not a good weekend

I just thought I'd share the experience of one of my work colleagues this past weekend. She and her boyfriend have been in the UK for about 8 months since moving from Switzerland. In this time they'd never really got out of London, so they had planned a nice weekend away in Exton, Rutland (very close to where Elspeth and I stayed at the start of our honeymoon, coincidentally). My aforementioned colleague spent the previous week finding a nice hotel with rooms available, and generally looking forward to exploring some of the country. Her boyfriend picked her up from work on friday and off they pootled.

She told me yesterday that the weekend wasn't great: they took a wrong turning on the way. Unfortunately, that wrong turning was to follow a route to Exton, Devon. And they didn't realise they were going South-West rather than North until they got to Exeter. That's a 9 hour round trip to get nowhere. Ouch.

Bizarre Badminton

As some of you know, Tim and I play badminton with a group of friends every Friday. We haven't been for a couple of weeks, as the sports hall has been closed due to private functions, but badminton was back on yesterday. We usually have about 8 people there using one court, so can swap around and play lots of different games. Yesterday we had 4 people - for two hours - and I was the only woman! We were all rather hot a tired by the end, though we did have some good games. I get frustrated as I *know* what I need to do to improve my game (run around more and cover the sides as well as the middle of the net), but I never do it!

Last night was a bit bizarre as we played to a non-stop accompaniment of Michael Bolton songs played over the sound system. The obligatory key change at the end of each song was slightly off-putting, as was the fact that I knew most of the words as I used to own 'the best of Michael Bolton' on CD. I like to think my tase in music has improved since then...!

Graduation part 2

Tim and a proud wife :-) 


Yes, Tim is now officially a Doctor! We spent a very enjoyable day at Reading last Friday, meeting up with all of Tim's year plus a few others and laughing at them in silly hats. I got to sit in the great hall for it and applaud all the PhD's very loudly, but Tim extra-specially loudly :-)

Tim looking pensive... 


PS Thanks to Helen and Tim for putting us up the night before and plying us with far too much red wine and rum...

Not nice news this morning, with the attacks on the tube/buses in London. Thankfully, all of our friends are OK, and Tim got in to work late but with no problems.

I'm not sure how I feel about the media coverage of it all. Both BBC and Gurdian sites have got minute-by-minute coverage and pages of experiences e-mailed in by readers. Somehow it seems a bit excessive, and doesn't actually give any useful information. Makes me think that perhaps 24-hour news coverage is not always a good thing?

Green fingers?

While Tim has been busy admiring his new fishes this weekend, I have finally got around to doing a bit more gardening. This bed at the rear of our garden was a mass of weeds yesterday, but looks much better now! It's early days, but eventually these plants should be a mass of evergreen shrubs, hiding the nasty corrugated iron wall. On the far right you can see our compost bin, and a very small gooseberry bush next to it, the start of out 'fruit patch'.

The rest of the garden still needs a lot of work, but I'm quite pleased with this as a start. I have realised that I'm turning into my Dad, though - I'm incapable of walking past a plant stall these days without stopping to look. My Dad reads this blog sometimes, so is hopefully quite proud of me!  

More fish!

It's been 4 weeks since I got my first fish for the tank. There haven't been any major incidents to blog (no floaters James, thank you, and no babies yet, although one of the ladies looks a bit pregnant) so I've been quiet on that front. The platies have all grown considerably, and are very friendly. Elspeth woul say nosy, but I prefer to think they are just happy to see me. More likely they're after more food, but never mind. This evening I'm giving them their first bloodworm which I'm expecting to be rather messy.

This afternoon, on our way home from a band gig in Hitchin, we stopped off and bought some more fishies. We now have 4 corydoras catfish (corydoras trilineatus) which are settling in well I think. There seemed to be a little bit of tension between the new arrivals and the established fish, but they're getting on well now: the platies seem to be exploring moreof the tank now, and one was certainly following one of the corys around earlier on!


Here is one of the new fellas, with another one hiding behind. These are easier to photgraph as they generally sit around on the bottom of the tank and don't go in for swimming around too fast. That said, they're a lot twitchier to sudden movements outside of the tank at the moment than the platies are. Maybe this will change as they settle.


The corys and platies playing together. Or something.

You're welcome to come and marvel at the fish next time you visit us!

Graduation part 1

We journeyed to Cambridge on thursday for the first family graduation of the season. My brother Andy is now a Master of Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts, and probably has a certificate to prove it. It was a nice day, reminding me of my own graduation in the same senate house 4 years ago. Next week's graduation will probably remind Elspeth of hers!

We went with my sister Rachel and nephew Samuel. I can thoroughly recommend to anyone who is going to a graduation at Cambridge to take someone's small child with you, as we got moved to the front of the queue and were placed in prime position on the front row. After the ceremony we mooched around for a while, then headed to Trinity, Andy's college, to have some lunch on hallowed turf, enjoy the playing of a good quality brass quintet, examine the treasures of the Wren library, etc. It rained quite considerably just as we were finishing lunch, but this didn't dampen the fun of the day. Congratulations again to Andy on his degree success!


Quite pleasant robes really, considering. Not quite as showy as the Reading PhD ones though...


Not all memories evoked from the day in Cambridge were good ones. The moment I espied the chap in red I was transported back a number of years to a maths lecture series I really didn't enjoy.


Andy having a Cambridge moment.

A musical weekend

Gosh, where does the time go? I feel like we havn't posted in ages. I suppose it's a combination of both being busy, but not with interesting stuff!

Anyway, what have we been up to? This weekend was nicely musical, with my choral society concert on Saturday evening and Tim's first band gig of the summer on Sunday. Both went well - I've now got no more rehearsals until September, while Tim is booked up almost every weekend with various gigs. We're also heading into graduation season, with Andy's on Thursday and Tim's next week. I'll make sure I get some good photos of Tim in a silly hat! I think we're getting some more fish this weekend too, so hopefully there will be some pictures of those too. Look at all these things you've got to look forward to... ;-)

'tis the season to be sneezy...

So the hayfever season has started in earnest now - lots of sneezing all round the offices today. I've been suffereing for the past few days with itchy eyes and mouth and a very runny nose, but I'm keeping going with the thought that it's much better than when I lived in Reading. Plus, my hayfever usually goes after a couple of weeks and then I'll be fine for the rest of the summer. I suspect Tim can't wait - being woken up every two hours over night when I blow my nose can't be much fun!

Still, at least we're having a bit of summer. Our garden is in no fit state to sit out in at the moment, but we're working on it - Tim karate kicked the pampas grass out of the ground on Saturday, so the bed is ready for digging over. I'm starting to plan a vegetable patch for next year... how domestic am I?

A geeky advert

I hope those of you with televisions will be tuning in to channel 4 on Saturday night for 'The World's Biggest Airliner: Building the Airbus A380' - a two hour documentary! It starts at 7 p.m. so yes, it does clash with the finale of Doctor Who. But you know the daleks won't win, and the A380 is much more exciting :-)

Sorry, geek-moment over. We spent some time today talking about the aircraft-after the aircraft-after the A380 - planning ahead just a bit...

On a non-work-related front, Tim's brother Andy came to visit last night so I cooked a meat bolognese for the first time - another culinary milestone. We spent the evening looking at wedding photos and playing our new formula one board game . I won on a two lap race of the monaco circuit - I like to think it was all down to my tactical use of gears and brakes, but really it was just luck with the dice rolls...

One of the many questions of life

Why is it that the chain only ever falls off my bike when I'm wearing a cream top and have no tissues with me to clean my hands afterwards? And why didn't I notice I had my gloves in the side pocket of my rucksack until after I'd put the chain back on? These are the imponderable questions of life.

Still, at least I'm cycling to work these days. It's quite a nice route, up a fairly steep hill but mainly on cycle paths or quiet roads. The last part runs along by the fields - I nearly ran over a pheasant the other day. I've been noticing a lot recently how generally pleasant Bedford is as a place to live. It's a nice small town, so everywhere is easy to get to, there are some lovely parks and walks along by the river and the surrounding countryside is lovely - gently rolling hills and picturesque villages. OK, Bedfordshire isn't on any tourist trail and it's not great for WALKS but I think it's a pretty good place to have ended up in - for the moment at least!

Fishies!!!

Yay! I have finally, after years of waiting, got myself a fish tank! Well, that is, Elspeth and I have got a tank, but it is most definitely mine from the point of view of looking after it. I'm perfectly happy with this: as long as I can watch my fish all day long.

Here is a photo of the tank taken last week when it was sitting with no fish in:
 

For fact fans, it's 125 litres and is maintained at 26C.

After leaving it all of last week to equilibrate to temperature and for me to wait until I could get to the local fish shop (Mr Fish - a quite different prospect to Mr Cod), on saturday I went and bought my first fish. You have to start off with only a few fish and build up slowly, so that the happy bacteria which break down the toxic ammonia the fish produce into nitrites and then nitrates have time to build up in the filter (and yes, for you chemistry fans, I do mean nitrosomonas and nitrobacter).

Anyway, I have five of these little fellas  

(for photography fans, taking good photos of fish is bloody difficult) in my tank. They are red wagtail platys and are currently about an inch long, although they'll be about twice that size when they're bigger. They are absolutely fantastic and I can sit for ages just watching them swimming around. They really do have lots of character and are lots of fun. I haven't had any noticeable problems yet, so I'm rather happy.

Expect to see a lot more on the blog about my fish in the future!

Marks out of ten?

Just to prove we did go on one walk on our honeymoon, here is a 'sports action' shot of Tim crossing a stile with style. 


Not that Tim will be doing anything so athletic for a while - he took a nasty tumble at badminton on Friday and has sprained his ankle. So our plans for a walk this weekend were scuppered. He's still able to walk/hobble although stairs are painful - just as well he's got a loving wife to run up and down them for him!

Wedding present bonanza

A large John Lewis lorry turned up yesterday, containing all our gift list presents. We spent a very enjoyable morning unwrapping them all from the acres of bubble wrap they had been encased in - there was so much of the stuff we got bored of popping the bubbles! So we now have a house full of very nice things, courtesy of all you lovely people. Thank you - official letters of thanks will be in the post in a couple of days, when we've bought some more envelopes...

We made the most of our new stuff this evening - we had roast chicken for dinner (me stuffing a chicken was an interesting experience), carved with our new carving set, accompanied by gravy in our new sauce boat. We ate it sitting at our new dining table, covered in our new tablecloth, with napkins and napkin rings as well as a carafe of water. And it was romantically candle-lit with our new candlesticks! What more could you ask for? Except perhaps dessert of home-made ice cream using our ice cream maker - yum.

You'll be pleased to know that I'm getting the planning itch again, so I'll have to start planning some parties when you can all come over and use all this stuff - after all, we got it to entertain :-)

This is a photo of Swarkestone Pavilion, our 'home from home' for the first week of the honeymoon. It was a lovely, intimate little Pavilion, with one main room with a bed, chairs and table, a staircase in the left hand turret and a kitchen and bathroom in the right hand turret. It also had a very large enclosed lawn in front of it, perfect for playing Kubb. Tim seems to have an interesting throwing action in this shot. Still, he won the game after my initial strong start, so his technique obviously worked. 

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...  

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 :-) 

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.

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

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:

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!

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 ;-) )

Quote from a politician on the Today programme this morning:

"It's not just right, it's completely correct"

glad that's definite then...

Split personalities

We've finally got round to setting up different identities on the blog - so now you should know whether a post is from me, Tim, or both of us! Pictures will probably always be joint, so you'll just have to cope with that ;-)

Not much to blog about at the moment - we're both pretty busy at work so haven't got anything else to report. Tim is working in Cambridge for the next couple of weeks so has claimed the car, forcing me to cycle to work. Meanwhile I'm training one of our new members of staff so that he can carry out some contract work while I'm away. Both of us have suddenly been hit with lots of overtime, so the honeymoon is now more appealing than ever!

Girl on top.

A proud moment!

Tim went to the library yesterday, and came back with a selection of books including this one... worryingly, it's due back on the 7th May! 

Table for one?

Tim is away for a week on an exciting course in Northampton, so I'm on my own in the house. It feels quite big when there's only one person in it! My toothbrush looks very lonely on it's own in the bathroom, so I'm looking forward to Friday when it'll be rejoined by Tim's brush.

Still, at least work is keeping me busy so I don't have time to mope. My deadline of Friday for delivering my latest work has just been shrunk to today, so I should really be working rather than blogging! The trip to Toulose will now be after the wedding - probably straight after we get back from our honeymoon. Hmmm. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing!

Th house in pictures 2

Look! We own a dining table now - I feel all grown up... 

Look! A plane

I seem to have spent a lot of time complaining about my job recently - I've not been very busy and I'm not feeling particularly challenged. The busyness seems to be about to change, finally, and I suspect that from next week I'll have lots of people wanting me to do lots of things and get them all finished by yesterday. I'm probably off to Toulouse again for a few days straight after the hen/stag do's, which is interesting timing in terms of the wedding...

Anyway, yesterday I had day doing something a bit unusual. We went to visit a customer to discuss doing some CFD modelling for them, and ended up wandering round their aircraft hanger looking at *real* aircraft and discussing which bits to put in the computer model - "yes, keep that wing, but ignore the fuel tank" sort of discussions, whilst standing right next to the bits in question. It was great fun, and very different from my usual desk-and-computer working environment. So I may complain about my job but every now and again I realise that it is pretty enjoyable. Shame it doesn't pay better!

The house in pictures 1

First photo of the new house...


Ok, so it doesn't really give you an idea of what the house is like, but the rest of the house is so messy that we couldn't possibly publish pictures of it yet! All in good time...

In any case, one of the things I like best about the house is the rainbows that spread over the hallway on sunny afternoons courtesy of the glass in the front door, so you've got a photo of that.

Tim

Another wedding...

Weddings must be in fashion at the moment. Tim and I were at another one this weekend - this time Tim's cousin (Paul) marrying Su. It was a good day, and meant I have now met all Tim's uncles, aunts and cousins. I'm not promising to get all the names right at our wedding though! Only having one aunt, one uncle and no cousins, I do find these extended families slightly strange.

We got home in time to watch the second half of 'Look who's talking' - what more could you want from a weekend?

Incidentally, tomorrow we're going shopping (again) for, among other things, a digital camera, so hopefully we'll soon be brightening up the blog with some photos.

Bad Science

I love Thursdays - it's the day that Bad Science is published in the Guardian. A wonderful column for the science geeks of the world, as he comments this week.

In other news, Tim and I finally went jive dancing again on Tuesday. We've been meaning to go for months but never got round to it. Still, we haven't forgotten too much and we learnt some new funky moves to add to the repertoire. This means we should look OK on the dance floor at the wedding - as long as I work out how to jive in a wedding dress!

Hmmm, I don't seem to have posted for a while - right, prepare yourselves for an entry which doesn't mention brass bands!

Hope everyone had a nice Easter break. We spent Friday doing lots of DIY around the house, so how have some working smoke alarms as well as mirrors on various walls, none of which have fallen down yet... I also attacked the pampas grass in the garden and removed a lot of dead wood and handfulls of snails, which appear to have been living very happily in the middle of it. Not any more .

Saturday was spent at a wedding at Church, picking up hints for ours. It takes approx 40 seconds to walk down the aisle - a useful fact to know! Then, because no weekend is complete at the the moment without spending money, we went sofa shopping. It's amazing how many different styles there are, most of which are hideous/too hard/too soft/too big/too small. Still, aided by the free champagne which the sofa stores kept giving me (Tim was driving), we have now purchased a sofa and an armchair. ETA is four weeks, so they may arrive before the hen/stag weekend...

Sunday/Monday was spent at Tim's parents house in Norwich, along with the cutest child in the world, Tim's nephew Sam. Much fun was had playing with his stacking cups - now I know what to buy Tim for his birthday!

Now that's what I call music 2!

Now it's time for a report on our second brass band event of the weekend. We went along to hear Black Dyke Band playing at the Bedford Corn Exchange, in aid of Keech Cottage children's hospice. Black Dyke are one of the top brass bands in the world, and are the current National Champions of Great Britain. The concert was superb - it's quite a while since I've sat and listened to a top brass band playing, and I really enjoyed it. I think Elspeth did too! The highlights for me were Joseph Cook playing Czardas - a tuba solo, and the finale - the march from Resphighi's Pines of Rome. The solo was fantastic, both from an entertainment point of view and for me to marvel at his technique! I've never heard the Pines of Rome live - although I have it on CD, and I would thoroughly, thoroughly recommend anyone with the chance to hear it played live by such a class ensemble to take the chance, because today's performance was phenomenal. I'll run out of superlatives if I try to describe the sound the band made, but I was blown away. All in all, a great weekend of banding, which has made me proud to be a tuba player and a bandsman.

Now that's what I call music!

Tam O'Shanter's Ride. It's a piece of music written by Denis Wright about a chap called Tam who goes out and gets pissed, happens by an old church where there's a bunch of witches and warlocks dancing to the devil's piping, gets chased away but ends up safely at home, only to be nagged by his wife. It's quite a nice piece of music, though why anyone would want to listen to it 17 times in an afternoon is beyond me. However, this is what has been happening in Stevenage this afternoon.

I've had my first taste of proper brass band contesting today, playing with Hitchin band in the Londen and Southern Counties region 3rd section, and I have to say I quite enjoyed it. The thought of spending 4 hours a week (plus much private practice, of course) working on the same 13 minute-long piece of music for 2 and a half months for the privilege of having one person judge you against 16 other bands of a single performance is quite incomprehensible to most people, but this is what brass bands are all about. To quote somebody at work, "So, it's like Brassed Off then?". Quite. Except that the national finals of the championship section are in the Albert Hall, whereas the national finals of the lower sections are in Harrogate. From our section, in our region, 3 bands qualify for the national finals.

We played off the 13th draw and thought we made a pretty good job of the piece. An hour and a half later, all of the bands gathered together to hear the results. When the adjudicator said that 4 bands stood out from the rest, we were convinced we'd end up 4th and miss the qualification. We hadn't produced a winning performance, but we thought we'd played well. So when 4th and 3rd were announced as Potters Bar and St Sebastians (Wokingham), we assumed we'd come further down - probably still in the top half, but a disappointment anyway. You'll have guessed what's coming next - I'm not a good storyteller. "2nd place goes to the band who played 13th". Yay! The excitement of the moment was infectious, and although we didn't win on the day, 2nd of out 17, along with qualification to the nationals in September, and promotion to the 2nd section due to consistently good results over the last 3 years, I'm dead chuffed.

Now all I need is for England to win the rugby. Where's my pint?

Awayday

We find ourselves in the unusual position of Ian's blog being the most recently updated. I thought I'd rectify that.

Yesterday my team at work had an awayday. I'd been looking forward to it for a while - a day off work is always good, and I've wanted to get to know the people here better outside of the work environment. So we went off to Walton on Thames and did a bit of Archery and some quad biking, followed by tea in Regent's park and dinner in a swiss restaurant in Soho. It was a really good day, although my dreams were invaded by the fondue. More specifically, all manner of things covered in the stuff. I also had a couple of problems on the quad bikes - as a cyclist, by natural inclination when things go wrong is to put my legs out. This is not a good idea, as you're likely to have your ankle ridden over by your own bike. I didn't quite manage that, but I have a sore ankle and bruised leg from the fun. I'm looking forward to another go at the stag do!

Tim

broad-minded?

It was the church annual meeting yesterday. We went along to show support, and also as there was tea afterwards, and Priory do a good line in catering :-) After the usual financial review, which boiled down to the fact that we all need to up our donations slightly, we split into small groups to discuss the churches 'what we believe' statement. The group that Tim and I were in ended up having a good discussion on whether the church really is broad-minded, both theologically and in styles of worship. We ended up deciding that it is - lots of different things go on, and if people aren't keen on one particular aspect of the worship, or a particular service, they don't mind as they understand that other people are attracted by or enjoy it.

In the final discussion at the end, when all the groups came together again, we put these points across. Then one of the other groups summarised what they had talked about - which seemed to end up being a list of complaints and their dislikes about the services, with no understanding of other groups at all!

So maybe our church isn't as broad-minded and tolerant as I thought... still, we're making some friends and get on well with lots of people there, so I think we'll keep going. And we don't have to talk to any of the narrow-minded people if we don't want to... ;-)

shopping and cocktails

What a surprise - we've had a rather busy Saturday. Today was down in our diaries as furniture shopping day, so that's what we did. We have now ordered a dining table and chairs, two wardrobes, two bedside tables and a chest of drawers. We've also bought and brought home a computer desk and a TV stand, both of which are now in position. So we're feeling rather poor now!

Tim's parents popped in for a cup of tea and a hot cross bun in the afternoon. They were very impressed with the house - it's always nice when other people like it!

We haven't stopped yet... Tim has been cleaning the glass in the study door, while I've been faffing about with bits and pieces. We stopped for dinner, though, when Tim surprised me with a cocktail made with the shaker we got for Christmas and ice from the ice compartment in our new freezer :-) Very decadent!

Friday lunch

I've just got back from a team lunch - to see off one of our team and to celebrate a birthday. It has helped me to identify the key difference between doing my PhD and working at PwC. Previously, I could happily let a friday lunchtime pub visit stretch well into the afternoon, and maybe make it back to my desk before the end of the day. Here there is very little chance of that happening. However, the lunch and all of the drinks were on expenses...

Blocked up Bedford

Lots of people in bedford are going to be very late for work today: there appears to have been a rather bad accident, right at one of the busiest road junctions, on one of the two routes heading East out of town. I was lucky - I was going in the opposite direction, so drove past the police cars blocking the road and the two ambulances treating people. The cars trying to get out of town were tailed back for miles in each direction from the junction, though - and no hope of moving for quite a while! I have to admit I felt a little smug as I sailed past them all. But then I remembered the person on the stretcher... hope no one was hurt too badly.

More singing

Choir again last night - there are now whole movements where I know what note is coming next, and have a vague idea how the Russian should be pronounced! There are also movements which feel like I've never sung them before, though. The concert is in April, so hopefully it will all come together in the next few weeks.

We were all slightly put-off last night by a just audible whine, which kept changing note - it sounded like someone's hearing aid playing up. Of course, it was never on the same note as we were singing! No one owned up to it being them - I'm not certain it was a hearing aid, but I have my suspicions who it might have been... and he's the sort of person who wouldn't admit he was doing something wrong!

The next big musical event on the horizon is Tim's band contest in Stevenage next weekend. If you're lucky, he'll tell you all about it at some point...

Home sweet home

You'll be glad to know that we now have a cooker which works without blowing the fuse - my nice friendly and helpful electrician came round yeaterday and found the problem. Some twerp had replaced a floorboard and screwed right down through the electricity cables - how they managed not to electrocute themselves in the process I don't know! The wire was almost burnt through, so it looks like we got it fixed just in time...

Having a cooker that I'm not afraid to use has really started to make the house feel like our home. We're spending this weekend on a big furniture hunt as well, so hopefully we'll sort out wardrobes, a sofa and a dining table. How exciting!

On a completely different note, we went to Oxford on Saturday for Ian's reunion wind orchestra. Tim was playing, and I poppe dover in the evening to listen to the concert. It was all very impressive - I couldn't believe the musicians had only had one day to rehearse. It was good to meet up with Ian for a quick drink afterwards as well.

Sunday was spent at John Lewis, sorting out our wedding list. We got a fun barcode zapper to play with, and free tea and coffee to sustain us. We've ended up with a rather random assortment of things on there - we already own rather a lot of stuff, so it seemed silly to repeat ourselves! You'll be glad to know there's a new duvet and pillows on the list... ;-)

IKEA Hell

We had another busy weekend: a wedding in Birmingham on Satruday, followed by yet more house shopping on Sunday. Seeing as we were just down the road from IKEA, we braved the hordes on Sunday and had a look round. We came away with some bookcases and a step stool, but impressively no tea lights and not much else. There are a few other, larger, items we'll eventually buy, but they wouldn't fit in the fiesta!

I have to say that I wasn't as impressed by the IKEA furniture as I have been in the past. Mind you, one is supposed to be opening in Milton Keynes soon, so I may change my mind again when it's just around the corner...

Skipping back a day, the wedding was good fun in the end. I got a bit tipsy on red wine as no one else on the top table was drinking it. When the karaoke machine came out, and the teenagers started yelling Eminem songs we decided it was time to go... but Jo looked lovely, and Darren looked suitably adoring at her all day. I think we'll next see them at our own wedding - only 9 weeks to go!

Snow!

We've finally got the snow the forecasters have been promising us for the last week. OK, so it's not as impressive as Colerado, or even Yorkshire, but it's coated everything with a nice layer of white :-) I'm always amazed by how quiet snow is!

I have discovered that the best way to enjoy the snow is standing at the window of our back bedroom, by the radiator, with a cup of tea. Lovely!

Hectic weekend

Well, we're in - we moved out of the flat and into the house at the weekend, so we can't find anything now as it's all packed away in boxes, which of course we didn't bother to label! This evening's task is to go back to the flat and clean it from top to bottom so that we get our deposit back. What fun!

Catriona and her new boyfriend, Ian, came over to help us move. We hadn't met Ian before, so it was good to meet him before the wedding. Seems like a nice bloke, and he was very good at carrying furniture and advising on DIY so he passed muster! Mum and Dad haven't met him either, so I had to report back last night. I gave him a thumbs up, so hopefully Catriona will be pleased!

Anyway, as we were waving Catriona and Ian off on Sunday Chris and Sian turned up, having been at a Haskoning shindig in Kettering the night before. As the cooker was still playing up we ended up having take-away curry for Sunday lunch - I've never seen so much orange food in all my life! It was all very tasty, though, and it was great to sit down, relax and not unpack anything for a while. Chris and Sian liked the house and were very impressed by how organised we seemed. Little do they know...

The washing machine is now plumbed in and not leaking - this involved sawing holes through a couple of cupboards to fit in the waste water pipe, then actually moving one whole cupboard about an inch to the right to fit the washing machine under the counter. We're feeling quite proud of our DIY skills on that! The cooker still isn't right, though - it keeps turning itself off which is very annoying when you're trying to cook and also rather worrying. Looks like we'll be getting another visit from the electrician...

A tragedy

I have just read this story http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4276553.stm, and I have to say that I am disappointed. This does explain why, when the radio turned on this morning to wake us up, the first thing we heard was "firing an orange smarties lid across the playground".

A man in demand

It's all happening today at work. After managing to charge absolutely zero hours to contract in the first half of January, my time now seems to be heavily in demand. In fact I am booked out on projects until 22nd April, and have had to turn down a couple of projects due to clashes. I realise that I'm so popular because I'm cheap, but it still feels good to be wanted.

How romantic

We spent yesterday evening at the new house - Tim was putting together a new chair we've bought for the dining room, and I was playing with the new drill we've just bought. We'll have to get a tool box for all the bits and pieces we're collecting! Moving date is Saturday, which is when the furniture will be moved. At the moment we're just moving a few boxes each time, and putting them all in the spare room. Once we've moved in we can unpack them all...

My sister is coming over on Saturday to help us with the move, and bringing her new boyfriend, Ian, with her. I'm looking forward to meeting him - at least then I'll have met him before the wedding! I shall report on him later...

My parents are stars

My Mum and Dad came down on Thursday night and helped me get lots of stuff sorted in the new house - being retired, they've got nothing else to do and they seemed to enjoy it! Dad put up curtain rails in the sitting room, dining room and bedroom, while Mum cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom then made curtains for the bedroom. Meanwhile, I moved a doorknob from one room to another and drilled one hole in the bathroom ceiling, so I did some DIY as well ;-)

Unfortunately, Powerhouse managed to completely muck up delivering our white goods. I'm giving them until lunch time tomorrow to sort it out and want all the delivery charges refunded! If that doesn't happen, I'll be going round after work to stand in their shop and complain very loudly. I shall let you know if I win...

On the wedding front, we spent Saturday buying outfits. Tim's dad and brother came over, and all the men went to MK and bought suits, shirts and waistcoats. Meanwhile, Mum and I went shopping for the 'mother of the bride' outfit. She's got a lovely suit and a very funky hat to wear now...

We seem to have rather a lot to get sorted in the next few weeks - I'm starting to get stressed! I'm sure we'll get everything done, but I think I'll be spending a lot of my time at work on the phone. Hope my boss understands...

Our house...

... now belongs to us - well, to Nationwide really, but we've promised to pay them back. I'll go and pick the keys up after work and see if it looks the same as we remember it!

Ironing television

I don't mind doing the ironing - in fact I quite enjoy it, as long as there's something suitable to watch on the TV while I'm doing it. It has to be something I can follow without really watching and which isn't too taxing on the brain. So last night I finished off the weekends ironing in front of 'the 100 greatest music videos' on channel 4. Perfect ironing TV - lots of music and useless facts with various 'famous faces' talking abotu them, joined together by Jimmy Carr being mildly amusing. Unfortunately, in the end we stayed up until midnight to find out the number one (Thriller, not a huge surprise) so we're both a bit tired this morning.

Next Sunday evening is the '100 greatest tearjerkers', featuring missed penalties and probably Elton singing candle in the wind. So I'm saving the ironing up until then!

Exciting house news

I have just had a phone call from our solicitors to say that we have exchanged contracts on the house - hooray!! We should complete on Tuesday, so from then until the end of the month Tim and I will have two residences in Bedford. This also means that from now until the end of the month we'll be packing, moving, unpacking, sorting out utility bills, getting quotes from builders, buying white goods and getting them fitted and other things I'm sure I've forgotten at the moment. But at this precise moment in time none of that worries me as we've survived the stress that is buying a house!

Visitors will be very welcome - give us time to put up some curtains and buy a sofa :-)

Subtle marketing...

I went to Sainsbury's at lunchtime to pick up a few bits and pieces. No sooner had I walked in the door than I was assailed by the smell of freshly baked hot cross buns, even though the bakery is at the back of the store... right by the door, though, was a large basket full of packs of said buns, marked with '2 for £1.00' - very tempting! But I resisted their subtle marketing and didn't buy them on impulse. I'm feeling quite proud of this, though I suspect that Tim won't be impressed...

A good book

The more observant of you may have noticed the 'currently reading' section at the top left. I don't intend to comment on all the books I read - that's not what this blog is for - but I have to recommend my lastest read to everyone as I think more people should read it.

'The Twins' by Tessa de Loo tells the story of two sisters who are separated at 6 years of age when their parents die, and are reunited 70 years later - after the second world war. One lived in Holland and the otehr in Germany, so they led very different lives and had very different views of the war. Most of the book tells their life history in flashback, alternating between them.

This book was beautifully written (well, translated as it was originally written in Dutch), and I found it very hard to put down. Both the sister's stories made me realise how terrible the war was for those who lived through it, although 'survived' through it might be a better phrase. I've never really though of what the war was like for ordinary german people before, and this made me realise that they suffered as well. It also made me want to find out more about the war - I only have a very basic knowledge and I think I should know more. It's been quite a timely read, with all the news stories on Auschwitz recently. So go out, get a copy and see what you think!