Suspect Youth & Missing Bags

Set off to Andover this morning to meet my friend. On route I stopped at the Co-Op to buy a paper. Walking back to my car, a boy of around 16 passed me wearing the ususal fashion of 'hoodie' etc. I felt instantly wary of him and instinctively clutched my handbag tight and got into my car. He marched straight up to the car next to me and tried the door and was looking through the window. I just sat their staring at him and we made eye contact. He continued to stand there and I continued to sit there watching him thinking to myself "he's not going to break into that poor persons car while I'm around". Then a young woman came out of the shop, walked to the car and let the boy in. I felt really really bad for having suspected him - oh dear!

The day did get better after that - I went to a Christmas Fayre with my friend and it was really good. Amongst the pricey items there was some reasonably priced stuff too and I bought a few Christmas decorations. One was a beautiful little knitted christmas pudding tree decoration - sounds mad but it's so sweet and it was only a £1.00. I also bumped into a colleague from work - luckily it was someone I liked.

Next we went to a charity shop as my brother had put on his Christmas list that he would like some old picture frames. I struck gold there - I found three old pictures of caricatures of cricketers from the early 1900's and they were all in absolutely beautiful old frames at £3.50 each! After I got them out of the shop and looked on the back I noticed that a another charity shop had previously sold them for £20 each so I got a bargain! Gosh, I wonder if I should get them checked out on Antiques Road Show before I give them to my brother.

I spent the afternoon at my friends and then headed home to put up our Christmas decs as we are busy the next couple of weekends. It took me about an hour and a half and the house looks lovely and Chrismassy now - this year I've confined the decs to one room rather than spreading out round the house like I usually do.

After my busy day I'm now slouched on the sofa with the fire on (it's flippin freezing out) watching a DVD of Gavin and Stacey whilst browsing a couple of magazines that came in the post today. Bliss!

Not a Pretty Site!

And another weeks flies by ......

On Sunday we went bird watching at Blashford Lakes nr Ringwood. God it was cold and I so wished I'd taken my gloves - although I did have my very long scarf to wrap around the extremities. Peter saw a rare duck I think but I've forgotten the name - I'm sure he'll blog about it eventually.

On Monday I met a pal after work in Costa Coffee - it was really nice sitting inside the window in the comfy sofas watching people rushing by with their Christmas shopping and the Christmas lights are on in town of course.

The rest of the week has been pretty normal. There have been a few laughs at work too. The 'firm' is running a photography competition for both staff and students and up to today its been quite serious - you know 'Flowers', 'Insects', 'Animals' and today? a couple of students pictured drunk in the town centre of our other location -one wearing a bright green 'mankini'- not a pretty site! Other things followed and then the website got taken down - shame! The picture above shows a mankini on a fully clothed man - I didn't think I shock my readers too much with the real thing!

This evening I've been writing out my Christmas cards (yes I know it's still November!) and we watched the second episode of 'Lead Balloon' starring Jack Dee - I LOVE that show - it's so dry and witty.

This weekend is forecast to be very cold and very foggy and tomorrow I'm seeing a friend and Sunday I shall be putting up the Christmas decs.... Ho, Ho, Ho.

Thrifty Tips

Gosh nearly a whole week has gone by since my last blog - this time of year the weeks seems to just fly by.

The great news this week is that my parents won their fight against the people who had put in a planning application to build a totally inappropriate 'fairground ride' repair site right next to their house. The Council voted unanimously against it which is a huge relief as mum and dad have been worried sick about it.

We've got some busy weekends ahead leading up to Christmas so we are making the most of this one as we have no particular plans other than to maybe go bird watching at some point.

Oh, nearly forgot, I won a small prize this week of £20.00 as I sent some 'thrifty tips' into the local Echo (it's a regular feature in the paper don't you know). My tips were:-

Squirt a small blob of shaving foam onto a bathroom mirror and buff to a shine and it won't steam up.

If a garment gets damaged by lily pollen - hang it in a strongly sunlit window for a few hours and the stain will disappear.

So now you know folks.............

Talking of competitions. I had a reply to my complaint to Utterly Butterley about their competition basically saying "sorry, their server failed so the wrong prize picture was flashed on the screen" - um, sorry but I don't thinks that's good enough. If you are notified you have won something you should receive it, server failure or not, the saga continues.....

Intend to do some gardening this weekend and some reading. I've started Susan Hill's 'Woman in Black' which is supposed to be excellent.

Wrap up warm everyone it's going to be a cold one!

Tis the Season ...

Nice steady day at work until it came to 10 minutes before I had to leave and within that 10 minutes I had a complaint to deal with and had to try and re-book a hotel I had been asked to cancel only half an hour before. Why is it that when you need to leave on time that people seem to sense it? Anyway, I managed to leave only 5 minutes late and dashed off to meet a friend. She has recently lost two close relatives in a car crash so she really needed a chat - poor thing.

Left my friend around 6-ish and drove home along the route I thought Peter would be walking from the station in the hope that I could pick him up but must have missed him by just a few minutes. It's quite shocking how many people I passed either on bikes or crossing the road on foot who were almost invisible as they had such dark clothing on and, in case of the bikes, no lights - really really scary.

Peter is developing his second cold of the season and has gone to bed for a few hours. He wants to watch 'I'm a Celebrity' so I shall pop up then to see if he's awake - if not I think I'll leave him be as he needs the rest.

Friends & Shopping

Had a couple of friends come over today. P dropped us off down town as the shops opened so we could do some Christmas shopping and picked us up afterwards - it was lovely not to have to worry about parking the car. I got a few more pressies and cards and then we headed home for lunch.

During the afternoon we watched a rather nice Christmas film 'Noel' starring Robin Williams and Susan Sarandon.

After my friends left we are chilling and are looking forward to watching the madness that is "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here". I predict fireworks. Any place with Robert Kilroy Silk and Esther Ranzen in is surely going to explode.

It's been a nice and very social weekend but, all the same, I'm looking forward to next weekend which we have purposely kept clear to be by ourselves as we haven't had a totally clear weeknend for a while.

'Utterly' Crap

Today we:-

Went to drop our recycling off at Tesco's points giving recycling machine. Unfortunately there was a couple with a van there who had a, I kid you not, van sized load of recycling to process. We decided not to wait the hour they would have taken and to call back later.

Went to our much loved second hand book sale and purchased a load of books. However, Peter did get massively 'out elbowed' by another purchaser who marched up to the Transport Section with his wife and took the whole lot of books in one swipe. However, there was a car in the car park with the registration plate 'EBAY 1' - nuff said I think!

Then it was off to our favourite charity shop and the newspaper shop before meeting my parents for lunch at the Hungry Horse. We had a nice meal and P and I shared a huge chocolate sundae for pudding.
Back at my parents, my mum produced three tubs of 'Utterley Butterly' (like you do!) and suggested I entered the online competion on the pack. The competion had several prizes ranging from £10,000, 50 x Nintendoo Wii and other lower prizes. I duly filled out the quite complex entry page which took some time and when I got to the third entry a screen appeared saying 'You have Won' and showing a picture of a Nintento Wii - one of the top prizes - much delight all around as you can imagine. A few hours later at home I opened my emails to see one from 'Utterly Butterley' announcing I had in fact won a voucher for a tub of their crap product. I was initially disappoingted, obviously, but now I'm just angry. Imagine if a child had entered - they would have been dancing around the room with excitement that they had won only to be terribly disappointed. I'm not going to let it drop (do I ever?) and am going to complain firstly to Utterly Butterly and then to whichever organisation monitors competitions like this as it simply isn't right and is very underhand and misleading.

We ended the day with our humour somewhat restored watching 'We are Amused' on the box which show-cased some excellent comedians including the Wonderful Bill Bailey.

Pubs and Reading Groups

Blimey is it mid-week already? The weeks are going so fast at the moment.

It's been a good day so far today. Work was fine and I met a friend for a drink afterwards in a nice cosy pub. I was quite excited to hear that she knows of a reading group that is established locally - they meet one Friday a month in a book shop. I've been wanting to re-join a reading group for quite some time now so have asked her to find out more.

Sunday

Up early again today and P made me some delicious marmite on toast before he set off bird watching.

Whilst P was out I made my two Christmas cakes. I decided to stick to a Delia recipe and I must say they have come up beautifully.

P came back at around 11.30am as I needed the car so I could pick my brother up from the station. My brother had come down to buy a second hand car and see me and P on route – albeit that I gave him a lift to where the car was as good sisters do! The car trip took about 3 hours all told, what with test drives and the like, so I was glad to get back home and cosy up on the sofa with P and watch a couple of films. We watched Alfred Hitchcock’s classic ‘Rope’ and laughed at the 1950’s fashions in clothes and food – boob shaped blamanch anyone? Next, whilst eating a tea of good cheese and biscuits we watched the first of The Omen films. P always tells me that he doesn’t like horror but he actually laughed at the bits that were supposed be shocking so that’s ok. I shall break him in gently before I show him the Exorcist (mind you that’s probably tame these days compared to the likes of ‘Saw’).

Fell into bed about 9.00pm and read about a page of my new book ‘The Woman in Black’ before drifting off. A busy weekend.

Cars & Cakes

Lots of short car trips today. First one was to get the paper early in the morning so escaped the house under cover of semi darkness looking like a scruff bag with no tights or make up on. Managed to see hardly anyone and congratulated myself when I was back in the house. Started to do the first thing on my list of the day to make two Christmas cakes (one's for a relative) and found I had no baking parchment to line the cake tins - arhhh. Nothing for it, have to venture into Tesco Metro down town - a quick Google reveals they have been open since 6.00am. Got down town in record time, decided to chance parking in the high street without getting a parking ticket and darted in there. Found all the baking stuff easily enough but no baking parchment. Asked a supervisor and found it in an entirely different part of the store - wouldn't you think it would be with the baking ingredients? Headed to check outs; only two open with, you guessed it, people with full trollies in front. Luckily the till supervisor took pity and opened another till. Back to car and no ticket - phew!

Once home lined the cake tins and started sorting out all the ingredients. Christmas cake ingredients cost a bomb and it would have been far cheaper to buy them but there's nothing like home made and the smell of brandy in the house when you are 'feeding' them. Anyway, got all the ingredients together and then remembered I needed to soak all the fruit in brandy for 24hrs before committing them to the cake mix. No short cut on that one so had to stop production and the fruit is now marinading away and making the house smell lovely.

Once Peter had left for football I did a 2 hour blitz on the housework, followed by some leaf raking in the garden. Discovered that we have enough fungi in our garden to start up 'fungi tours' as they are all different types and quite fascinating. I made sure I washed my hands twice when I came into the house as I dare say most of them were of the poiseness variety.

During the afternoon the rain set in so I stuck a film on 'Timber Falls' which I knew was a horror but it was actually a rather 'nasty' horror with not much plot and gratuitous and sick violence. Stuck it out but was glad when it finished and I could watch the much more genteel Midsomer Murders.

Late afternoon my parents phoned, wanting a lift from the bus station as they'd just come back from their trip to Germany. Picked them up and then we headed off to the train station to get Peter. Once home mum and dad stopped for tea before heading home - we have been storing their car all week and luckily we have managed to keep it in one piece and I've managed not to reverse in to it!

We ended the day watching the X-Factor - what a travesty the results were. Clearly Dannii or Rachel should have gone this week. Laura and Ruth sung their hearts out as the two possible evictees. Ruth in particular really went for it singing 'Knocking on Heavens' Door. She is always given ballads to sing but she is clearly a rock chick at heart. Ruth deserved to stay in as she really blew everyone away.

Finished reading 'The Man in the Picture' by Susan Hill. It was okay but not the best read I don't think. I never seem to get on very well with short books, I need a thicker tomb to get my teeth into next I think.

Staying Awake

Busy day today; got into work early to prepare for my Tuesday morning meeting (dropping off our recycling on the way). Went down to check on the conference room at about 8.00am and good job I did as the IT had failed. Managed to get it up and running just before the first people arrived at 8.25am - phew!

The rest of the day I was busy with typing up of minutes, drawing up rota's etc. Managed to order a few xmas pressies on line at lunch time though so that's something accomplished off my personal 'to do' list.

As I left work I noticed that the light was already starting to fade and it was really cold - winter is definitely arriving. Whacked on the heating as soon as I got home and made a very early tea as I'm on a sort of one meal a day diet thing at the moment. I have a smoothie for breakfast, a smoothie for lunch and then a proper meal in the evening. So far so good; sure I'm hungry when I get home but nothing I can't cope with.

This evening I have to keep awake until gone 11pm to pick Peter up from the station. I find nights like this really difficult as my natural 'pass out' time is about 9.30! Trouble is that there's nothing good to watch on the box - Tuesday nights are dire at the moment.

Back to Work and Bargain Beer

Oh dear back to work today - boy it was hard getting out of bed, especially as it was so dark. On the way into work I popped into Sainsers and purchased a few stocking filla's for someone close to me. Yep, we have stockings and advent calendars. I think, if you don't have kids why miss out? I have to be careful when purchasing the advent calendars though as some come with 24 windows and some with 25 and there may be major tantrums if they aren't the same (tee hee).

On arriving at work I discovered that the new copier/printer that has been ordered for our office is 'huge' and juts out right into the room and means that anyone copying would be banging into the back of my chair (grrhhh). By mid morning this was really getting on my nerves so I have now rearranged the furniture so that I don't feel like a sardine. The rest of the day was ok though, I was on my own for most of the day so got through all the emails that had built up whilst I was away.

After work today I darted over to see my Andover friend to give her some money I owe her and to pick up two cases of beer she has bought on offer in Tesco's for Peter (£5a case - bargain!). Then came back to Eastleigh to meet Peter in Lidls to purchase more beer!! This is 'special' beer though; Hobgoblin which is only a £1 a bottle at the moment. Well that's the Xmas booze almost sorted - not sure what I'll purchase for me yet - I usually buy Baileys and then have about one tumbler of it and it stays rotting for the rest of the year - must find another Christmas tipple I think.

Friends with Sad News

Today the rain has thankfully stayed largely away - good job as our garden is like a bog and we have drips turning into trickles coming into our lean-to at the back of the house. Nothing that a well placed sandwich box won't capture though.

Sadly I had two emails from friends today conveying tragic news. B (who has recently lost her husband) heard from a friend at the weekend who lost her 17 year old son within 7 hours of him becoming ill this weekend. He woke his mum at 1.00am in the morning to tell her he couldn't breath and she called an ambulance. The hospital found a tumour the size of a football around his lungs and heart and by 8.00am the next morning they were turning off his life support. He had showed no symptoms whatsoever and the doctors reckon it was a fast growing tumour that took 3-4 weeks to grow.

My other friend, C, emailed to say her brother's ex wife had died in a car crash on the A30 nr Exeter at the weekend. The accident investigators don't really know what happened, witnesses say she suddenly veered off the road and down an embankment into a tree. She was carrying her two daughters in the back of the car, one aged 14 and one aged 12. The 12 year old also died and the 14 year escaped injury. Imagine how bad that must be to lose your mum and sister like that.

Both things are so utterly tragic and totally out of the blue - life really does hang by a thread.

As always, it puts my own pathetic little problems into perspective.

Today, we've both been what we call 'pottering' - doing a bit of housework/gardening, intersperced by doing stuff we like. This evening we are catching up with taped Autumn Watch.

Back from the East

We got back from Norfolk at about 5.00pm yesterday. We had a lovely time; the weather was very cold which I actually didn't mind at all and we hardly had any rain.

On Monday we went to a National Trust place at Sutton Hoo - it's basically lots of park land and woods and ancient burial mounds in which they found a ship containing treasure (very rare, they were usually looted). The mask is a reproduction of one of the treasures found. It was a lovely sunny, but cold, day and we had hot chocolate outside overlooking the park before going on a long walk.

Tuesday it was into Norwich for the Beer Festival - I went in for the first hour and played some pub games and then left Peter in there with his brother in law whilst I went to lunch at the Slug and Lettuce with Peter's sister and niece. Norwich is a lovely city and still retains its outdoor market which is lots of little wooden huts. Nice lot of department stores too.

Wednesday we met up with Peter's sister and went to Penthorpe http://www.pensthorpe.com/ (they filmed Autumn Watch and Spring Watch there in past years). I was very impressed with the place - bitterly cold again but walking around kept us warm and we made a pit stop in the cafe at lunch time. Their gift shop had some lovely Christmassy items in it - I know, I know it's probably too early for most people - but not for me :-).

Thursday we had to ourselves and went to another National Trust Property at Anglesey Abbey (http://www.angleseyabbey.org). The house was gorgeous and had surprisingly cosy rooms for such a large house. Most National Trust Properties now have second hand book shops in their outbuildings which is a very nice addition I think, so needless to say we made sure we made a trip in there.

Friday we headed back slowly - the journey was ok except for M25 which was like a car park - how do people commute on that road every day? We got home just as it turned dark and swiftly put a 'no trick or treaters' sign on our door. Call me a party pooper but I really hate it. Anyway, compared to last year when the door bell was ringing every half an hour we were thankfully left alone.

I was tired last night but this morning I woke up at 4.00am and couldn't get back to sleep - laid in bed for about an hour and then gave up and came downstairs and sorted all the washing out and watched the 6.00am Coronation Street omnibus (I gave Peter a rest from my soaps whilst we were away).

Peter is going to football later and I'm looking forward to a day inside in the warm, surfing the net and reading. I loved our break but it's also nice to be home.