Day Out in Dorchester

We had a lovely day yesterday. We went to the Dorchester Beer Festival which was held in the Corn Exchange (pictured). It was a good event and I tried a couple of halves whilst Peter got well stuck in to sampling the beers he had listed to try from the website.

About an hour before the end I withdrew from the Festival and found the local Costa and settled on their most squidgy of sofa's with a coffee and a book (Wide Sargasso Sea - which is a prequel to Jane Eyre by Jean Rhys); I love spending time in a coffee shop and reading and people watching. Peter came and found me at 3.00pm and we had a round of lattes before having a mooch around the very pretty town.

I'd forgotten how uplifting it is to venture into a different town for a change and just be a 'tourist' for the day.

Day 2 Snowbound

Day two of my work place (an educational establishment)being closed so I'm doing bits of work from home but without phone calls to answer! What did we do before remote email access I wonder? I guess businesses just went to sleep and nothing at all happened - as this freezing spell could go on for weeks the amount of money businessse are losing must be collosal.

It is interesting to observe how animals cope in the snow - our friendly neighbourhood squirrels definitely don't like it and try to find bits of fence to sit on which aren't covered in snow (their poor little feet!). The homemade fat square that I put for the birds (which contained whole peanuts) has been of much interest to the squirrels and was last seen being dragged across the garden towards the bushes to be attacked under cover.

This sort of weather provides the added bonus of more time for reading and I'm currently devouring The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths which is a forensic murder mystery set in Norfolk (one of my lovely Christmas presents). I'm really enjoying it and having fun working out which places in Norfolk the author is describing. Do you know that Lynn is Celtic for the 'place by the pool' or 'spreading waters' and it was originally Bishop's Lynn before being 'upgraded' to King's Lynn? Facinating stuff.

Well, time to check the works email again, bye for now.....

First Post-Christmas Expedition

Today we went to the outskirts of Southampton to a well-known charity shop haunt. We are on the hunt for a second-hand bookcase and Oxfam have an excellent store there. I realised whilst in the car that it was my first proper trip out since Christmas Eve - I really did need to get out and about.....

As forecast, it was tipping down with rain, but we still spent a pleasant couple of hours bargain hunting. We picked up some books but no bookcase on this occasion, although the Oxfam shop did have some gorgeous arm chairs - if we could have squeezed them into our house I would have been tempted.

We were back home in time for lunch and this afternoon have just crashed out and watched some taped Xmas telly. I keep looking out of the window for the anticipated snow but no signs as yet.

One of my Christmas presents from Peter was an ice-cream maker so my first batch is 'churning' whilst I'm typing this. I've gone for banana as we happened to have all the ingredients to hand for that flavour.

The great thing about have time off over Christmas is that you do get a lot of time to read and I'm currently very much enjoying 'Howard's End is on the Landing' by Susan Hill - it's about Susan's year of not buying new books but taking time to read what she already has (something, I should really do). I'm so enjoying it that I'm rationing the chapters to a few a day.

Well, the ice-cream maker is sounding laboured in the kitchen which means it must be thickening, best go check.

Bye for now.....

Christmas Day Thank Yous

Just a quick blog on this rainy Boxing Day morning to say I hope everyone had a really lovely Christmas Day and to thank all my relies and friends for all the wonderful gifts we received and to Peter for the wonderfully thoughtful and intuitive presents he chose for me (he knows me better than I thought!).

The day started with me waking up at 6 and 'patiently' waiting for the alarm to go at 7.00am and for Peter to 'come to'. Then it was stocking opening time (yep, big kids that we are we still have them).

Mum and Dad were due to arrive at 10 O'clock so we had some Bucks Fizz and chocolate croissants and opened our presents before they arrived. Amongst the CD's I got was Susan Boyle's debut album - it is brilliant. Usually new 'TV discovered' stars are given dull covers to sing but this album is different - all the songs are personal to Susan and are stunning -'wild horses' is outstanding and totally haunting - go buy it people!

The day went well, Christmas Dinner was a success (I think!) but thank god we have a dish washer! Board games were played, and much sofa lounging took place.

Mum and dad left at about 8pm and the perfect end to the day was the very welcome comedy shows on Beeb 1 (The Royle Family and Gavin & Stacey).

Today we plan to stay in our night attire all day, look at and appreciate the lovely presents we received yesterday and consume leftovers. Perfect day ahead I think....

One of my presents from Peter yesterday was a Chinese Lucky cat (pictured above) with a waving paw - may he bring luck to everyone in 2010!

Wot No

Christmas Eve, Eve

What a day Tuesday was - what was 'supposed' to happen was:-

.)Peter goes into work and goes to his team's Christmas lunch
.)The Tesco online grocery delivery arrives between 9.00am and 11.00am
.)Two of my friends come over mid afternoon for a present swap, chat and mince pie

All very calm and festive.

What 'actually' happened:-

.)Tesco's rang at 9.00am - they won't be making any deliveries today as roads too icy
.)Peter got stuck on his train at Southampton and came home as the live rail had frozen
.)Friends couldn't come round cos of the weather

What we did about it:-

.)Went to Tesco's to 'collect' our online shopping - spent 15 minutes circling car park for space, 10 minutes at customer service desk and quite a while in delivery bay whist the drivers unloaded our shopping from their vans.
.)Called in on friend number 1 and exchanged presents. Friend number 2 turned up unexpectedly (hadn't brought her present with us)
.)Got home and had lunch at about 3.30pm.
.)Delivered present to friend number 2's house at 7.00am Christmas Eve. Venutred into a shop (on Christmas Eve - am I mad?) and purchased an essential item that I had forgotten from our Tesco list - loo roll!

Back home now and I ain't going out again for at least two days .......I am now officially holed up for Christmas

Saturday Night & Sunday Morning

Last night I had a night out with two girlfriends, we are all a bit overspent at the moment so we went to Wetherspoons. We got to town about 7 O'clock and the place was reasonably quiet but by 9.30pm it was full of 15-18 year olds - oh how we felt our ages when we started commenting "god, she'll catch her death in that outfit". Anyway, by 10pm we were back at one friend's house swapping pressies and watching "Live at the Apollo" - we know how to live you know! Friend's husband had, as usual, gone to town on the garden Christmas lights - complete with moving reindeer - fab-u-lous. Friend's daughters are 17 and 20 and both have boyfriends so they are at the stage where they want to spend lots of time at Christmas at their respective boyfriend's places - it's hard for my friend who dearly wants everyone at home - the joys of having children eh?

Today I've only ventured as far as the garage to get a paper and Peter has braved the cold to dig up a 'test' parsnip from the garden. Said parsnip is great - a prince amongst parsnips. So we'll be digging up some more for Crimbo dinner later in the week.

Peter has also been baking chocolate chunk cookies today (a Hugh F-W recipe) and pretty delicious they are too. Peter will blog with the recipe later I think..... a man who bakes - great :-)

I'm currently watching 'Love Actually' - one of my favourite films - sniff sniff. The bit where Emma Thompson thinks her husband has bought her something thoughtful for Christmas but it turns out it was present for his mistress (but she doesn't let on she knows) is heart breaking....

Talking about films, I've been looking about to see what films are coming out that look good to cheer up January - so far they are:-

Sherlock Holmes


It's Complicated


Lovely Bones


Nine