wintry weekends

Life has been pretty quiet since our holidays finished. We have just let out another room for a couple of months, so there has been a lot of time spent cleaning, rearranging furniture and generally fixing up the house. My main achievement was to reseal the kitchen benchtops which were starting to warp from water getting in underneath around the sink. Adam's major achievement was to swap the furniture between the upstairs bedroom and downstairs study. And we have had a lot of freezing weather so it has been nice to be inside. Some days it has been so cold even the roads go white with frost, and the pond at work almost froze up completely. That is pretty cold for England.

Our old flatmate from Sydney, Mark, dropped by for a week, on his life after phd job hunt. And where else would you take an army reservist but the Imperial War Museum. We managed to spend 2 hours in there without crossing paths, because, not only is it huge and packed with information, but it has something for everything. Adam and I started on the top floor with Crimes against Humanity, and then headed to the Holocaust section. We only got as far as I got last time I went (2003). Next time I'll have to skip straight to where I left off or I will never finish it. Mark loved it - he started with the big boys toys, and then headed down to WW1 to spend some time in the trenches. For the first time, we could enthuse together over war stuff.

We headed off to Shepherd's Bush after the museum, for a quick birthday drink with Kate and some of the other London Aussies. Which of course turned into a rather long drinking session (for us light weights anyway), and a drunken dash for the last train (with alternating green faced swagger/obnoxiousness). The next morning it was up rather early and back on the London train to the FOOTBALL. Adam had snapped us up some fabulous late-release tickets to Spurs-Fulham. It was a warm (5 °C) sunny afternoon, and we were about 10 rows back from the corner flag - the very corner flag which Defoe and Jenas ran to after scoring their goals!! Excitement plus. Spurs won 3-1, all in all making it a fabulous day (heaps better than last season when we were in the back row and it was a nil all draw). We also had a couple of work friends along - we have spurs friends at both our works.

This weekend was much quieter. I have just finished a first aid course for work, so now I am certified to apply band aids. The weekend was warm for a change, but raining (24 hr of solid rain, and they call this a drought?). Our new flatmate moved in last night, so we had a few final things to get ready. We discovered that the farmers market in the next town to the west has an olives stall, so we overspent and then overate our delicious olives, cheese and baguette lunch. The kittens are still growing rapidly. We keep thinking that Seymour must be fully grown by now, then you see the size of the neightbourhood cats and realise he is still just a baby. Thanks to Adam's spoiling, their favourite foods are now smoked salmon and turkey breast. The garden is still bare, but if the warm weather hangs around for a while it won't stay that way for long. The florists are starting to be full of tulips now, so i had better get a move on if i want some in my english country garden.