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 ;-) )