I never mean to have opinions of other people's boyfriends and girlfriends, but as some of my good friends know, I can become troubled by my friends' choice of partner and then moan about it lots. I'm sure that never used to happen, I was much more easy-going. I'm just hopeful that being opinionated is an isolated rarity. It's a puzzling question worthy of many hours on Radio 1's "Sunday Surgery", how much can a friend have opinions before it counts as interfering? I won't answer that because... well, because they spend enough time discussing it on the Sunday Surgery.
Anyway, I have been to several weddings this year and they have all been wonderful. I have approved of all brides and grooms, which has made the day easier. But weddings are wonderful. They are really special and romantic, also a great time to catch up with old friends and make new ones. The most recent one was of Cousin Ruth, who married Mark. Mark is an excellent bloke, and Ruth is wonderful too (not sure I have mentioned her on here before so it's worth mentioning that she's cool). So there is a new person in my ever-expanding family. I'd better get married quickly because the larger the family gets, the less likely any friends will be able to fit in the wedding venue!
At Ruth's wedding there were all the usual wedding things like a church service (talking to people afterwards, everyone seemed to have had tears in their eyes at some point, whether during the choir singing, the with-gusto-sung hymns, the vows or when various people walked up and down the aisle) and a reception. Also photos cake cutting speeches ushers first dances confetti bouquets nibbles champagne dancing veil bridesmaids you get the idea. It would not be our family if it were not organised with military precision and involving having large numbers of people at our house for drinks or food. At various meals around the wedding we managed 25 people, 14 people, 12, 22 (I think) and probably some other large numbers. So we were able to celebrate the wedding for several days, including after they had gone on their honeymoon. It was awesome fun and a good substitute for being in work.
Christmas happened too? Apparently. Merry Christmas!
Showing posts with label home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home. Show all posts
Saturday, 27 December 2008
Sunday, 17 August 2008
Events in Rural Home-place
Went to church this evening, to find that there were two clergy and only three congregation. Well, once we turned up there were eight, but it was still a pitifully small service. It's so small that the organist doesn't turn up any more so we just read through the book of common prayer, take communion and leave. This is possibly the most interesting style of service ever devised. Actually, I am being mean. There was a sermon in which the vicar tried to go along the tightrope of whether to expect prayers to be answered or not. That was certainly worth seeing for the care with which he chose his words, even if not for his originality.
On the way out of church, we found a gathering of people chatting in an animated fashion. A large calf ran past. One man tried to stop it and the calf just ran past him too. The man looked slightly flummoxed by that. A second man came and waved a stick manacingly and the calf stopped. A minute later, it decided to go past the man with the stick. The man with the stick looked slightly flummoxed too. It headed along the road (speed limit 30mph, average speed 45mph) to the crossroads and went straight across and into a garden. Apparently the owner of the garden is very proud of his lawn thank you very much and could we please disturb it as little as possible. The chase went on regardless, into the next field. By this stage I had left the chase and taken up a spot near its home, hoping to guide it in when it returned (instead of it going straight past again). Ten minutes and a discussion of how best to cook beef later, my uncle appeared at the end of the road. He was waving the aforementioned stick and prodding the exhausted animal back to its field. It seemed to have enjoyed its run but decided it had had enough. It finally went back into its field, wagging its tail and looking pleased with itself with very little effort on my part. Then we left the farmer to check that he now had all his cows in the field.
We went home for a nice meal of roast beef, which had been delayed considerably by this. It was yummy.
On the way out of church, we found a gathering of people chatting in an animated fashion. A large calf ran past. One man tried to stop it and the calf just ran past him too. The man looked slightly flummoxed by that. A second man came and waved a stick manacingly and the calf stopped. A minute later, it decided to go past the man with the stick. The man with the stick looked slightly flummoxed too. It headed along the road (speed limit 30mph, average speed 45mph) to the crossroads and went straight across and into a garden. Apparently the owner of the garden is very proud of his lawn thank you very much and could we please disturb it as little as possible. The chase went on regardless, into the next field. By this stage I had left the chase and taken up a spot near its home, hoping to guide it in when it returned (instead of it going straight past again). Ten minutes and a discussion of how best to cook beef later, my uncle appeared at the end of the road. He was waving the aforementioned stick and prodding the exhausted animal back to its field. It seemed to have enjoyed its run but decided it had had enough. It finally went back into its field, wagging its tail and looking pleased with itself with very little effort on my part. Then we left the farmer to check that he now had all his cows in the field.
We went home for a nice meal of roast beef, which had been delayed considerably by this. It was yummy.
Sunday, 10 August 2008
A silly sign
I won't turn this site into a novelty picture site, because there are enough of those already. But just today I'll treat you to a novelty sign (there are plenty of those on the internet too) because it's in my village.
I could make you guess what it means and why it's there, but it's probably better if I just tell you. It is there to encourage people to park half on the pavement and half on the road. The pavement is very wide at that point because people are supposed to park there, but people found that cars made it difficult to walk past. So they put up the sign in the hope that drivers would leave more space for pedestrians. It's well-intentioned, but if I was parking there I wouldn't have a clue what the sign meant. And I'd probably park as much on the pavement as possible to avoid parking on the main street through the village
I could make you guess what it means and why it's there, but it's probably better if I just tell you. It is there to encourage people to park half on the pavement and half on the road. The pavement is very wide at that point because people are supposed to park there, but people found that cars made it difficult to walk past. So they put up the sign in the hope that drivers would leave more space for pedestrians. It's well-intentioned, but if I was parking there I wouldn't have a clue what the sign meant. And I'd probably park as much on the pavement as possible to avoid parking on the main street through the village
Sunday, 20 July 2008
You can always say that summer had its charm...
[title from The Cardigans - Sick and Tired]
I returned to 4th-year house in Universityland for the final time last week. I had to clear out the house so that we could give it back to the letting agent. The house had to be empty of our possessions and clean, and both emptying and cleaning took a lot of time and a lot of tea to get done. I can report that despite the huge numbers of cookies produced in our kitchen throughout the year, only one of them got dropped irretrievably behind the cooker. I can also report that fridges have little pots on the back of them. Any liquid mank collecting inside the fridge somehow makes its way into a mank-pot. Jo and I were left wondering whether emptying the mank-pot is a normal household task to be carried out periodically, or whether the mank-pot was expected to sit there gathering mank for the entire useful life of a fridge. Please send your suggestions on a postcard, with a stamped addressed envelope enclosed for a reply.
I was completely phased by the amount of stuff that turned up on my bedroom floor after my trip to 4th-year house. It turns out that I have a lot more stuff than fits in a room. So Uncle Val came to help tidy up, even if only to stop me going berserk in panic. I found it really helpful having someone else there. My instinct on finding something that doesn't have a 'home' yet is to leave it where it is and move on. But with someone else there, it's suddenly obvious that leaving most things just sitting on the floor doesn't really solve the problem I'm trying to solve. The actual solution (just to clear up any confusion) is to find a home for all your possessions or make a home for them if one doesn't already exist. In the end, I cleared out most of my drawers and cupboards, dispatched my kitchen things to the attic and my coin collection to the garage, and now everything fits. Hurrah!
Comfortingly, the laws of room-sorting were adhered to:
1) Some things were found that had been lost for years
2) Some things were lost that had been treasured for years
3) When dividing possessions into sensible categories to go into drawers, the amount of possessions in a single category is always slightly bigger than the drawer available
4) Some things that should be thrown out are retained for the next good clear-out in five years' time, even though they could probably go now. And you know exactly which ones they are and STILL won't throw them out
5) One item just crops up again and again. For me, it was photos. I had photos from different holidays over the last decade and it seems I had spread them evenly through all the drawer and cupboard space available. Now they have their own drawer. I am proud of my Organisation Skills
6) Some things appear that have never been in your room before. Where that pair of sunglasses appeared from I shall never know
7) You have more juggling balls, silly hats and T-shirts than you thought
8) There is something there that recalls ambitious plans that never came to fruition. This happened so often in the sorting procedure that it's not worth boring you with all the sordid details
9) It looks worse before it looks better
10) Having decided which drawers are for which objects, something extra-large turns up and spoils everything. And I don't mean Chris Moyles. I'm thinking of that logic puzzle that wants to be a Rubik's cube but just isn't good (or cubic) enough to manage it. It didn't fit in the drawer that was intended for 'games, puzzles and novelties' and destroyed the whole system
11) You give up at the end and have a 'random stuff' drawer just to clear the mess
I returned to 4th-year house in Universityland for the final time last week. I had to clear out the house so that we could give it back to the letting agent. The house had to be empty of our possessions and clean, and both emptying and cleaning took a lot of time and a lot of tea to get done. I can report that despite the huge numbers of cookies produced in our kitchen throughout the year, only one of them got dropped irretrievably behind the cooker. I can also report that fridges have little pots on the back of them. Any liquid mank collecting inside the fridge somehow makes its way into a mank-pot. Jo and I were left wondering whether emptying the mank-pot is a normal household task to be carried out periodically, or whether the mank-pot was expected to sit there gathering mank for the entire useful life of a fridge. Please send your suggestions on a postcard, with a stamped addressed envelope enclosed for a reply.
I was completely phased by the amount of stuff that turned up on my bedroom floor after my trip to 4th-year house. It turns out that I have a lot more stuff than fits in a room. So Uncle Val came to help tidy up, even if only to stop me going berserk in panic. I found it really helpful having someone else there. My instinct on finding something that doesn't have a 'home' yet is to leave it where it is and move on. But with someone else there, it's suddenly obvious that leaving most things just sitting on the floor doesn't really solve the problem I'm trying to solve. The actual solution (just to clear up any confusion) is to find a home for all your possessions or make a home for them if one doesn't already exist. In the end, I cleared out most of my drawers and cupboards, dispatched my kitchen things to the attic and my coin collection to the garage, and now everything fits. Hurrah!
Comfortingly, the laws of room-sorting were adhered to:
1) Some things were found that had been lost for years
2) Some things were lost that had been treasured for years
3) When dividing possessions into sensible categories to go into drawers, the amount of possessions in a single category is always slightly bigger than the drawer available
4) Some things that should be thrown out are retained for the next good clear-out in five years' time, even though they could probably go now. And you know exactly which ones they are and STILL won't throw them out
5) One item just crops up again and again. For me, it was photos. I had photos from different holidays over the last decade and it seems I had spread them evenly through all the drawer and cupboard space available. Now they have their own drawer. I am proud of my Organisation Skills
6) Some things appear that have never been in your room before. Where that pair of sunglasses appeared from I shall never know
7) You have more juggling balls, silly hats and T-shirts than you thought
8) There is something there that recalls ambitious plans that never came to fruition. This happened so often in the sorting procedure that it's not worth boring you with all the sordid details
9) It looks worse before it looks better
10) Having decided which drawers are for which objects, something extra-large turns up and spoils everything. And I don't mean Chris Moyles. I'm thinking of that logic puzzle that wants to be a Rubik's cube but just isn't good (or cubic) enough to manage it. It didn't fit in the drawer that was intended for 'games, puzzles and novelties' and destroyed the whole system
11) You give up at the end and have a 'random stuff' drawer just to clear the mess
Thursday, 6 September 2007
Ornithology
I am coming to the conclusion that either University is very bad for birds, or home is very good. In five days at home revising for exams last June I saw all of these birds:
Blackbird ... Wren ... Blue tit ... Sparrow ... Carrion crow ... Greenfinch ... Chaffinch ... Great tit ... Robin ... Pigeon ... Pied wagtail ... Barn Owl ... Starling ... Swallow ... Kestrel ... Goldfinch ... Thrush
At university I have not seen that many types of bird in three years. The only ones I am likely to see on 5 randomly picked days are pigeons, ducks and blackbirds, with a possiblity of crows, starlings, moorhens and swans. So admittedly, it does win on water birds.
But today university won some respectability. A green woodpecker was hopping along the ground, looking into the air for danger, or maybe looking for insects to catch. I followed it across the grass in the brick-walled court, keeping my distance as I did so. I had a duck on each side of me, pecking at the grass, doing the ineffectual scooping motion that they do with their beaks (made for water, I tell you). Then down a tree came a squirrel, which bounded joyfully across the grass. It came so close to the woodpecker that the woodpecker had to jump out of the way, giving a couple of flaps of its wings, just to make sure. It seemed unreal to see animals packed in such a small area in the concrete jungle of university. But for just a moment, university beat home for wildlife
Blackbird ... Wren ... Blue tit ... Sparrow ... Carrion crow ... Greenfinch ... Chaffinch ... Great tit ... Robin ... Pigeon ... Pied wagtail ... Barn Owl ... Starling ... Swallow ... Kestrel ... Goldfinch ... Thrush
At university I have not seen that many types of bird in three years. The only ones I am likely to see on 5 randomly picked days are pigeons, ducks and blackbirds, with a possiblity of crows, starlings, moorhens and swans. So admittedly, it does win on water birds.
But today university won some respectability. A green woodpecker was hopping along the ground, looking into the air for danger, or maybe looking for insects to catch. I followed it across the grass in the brick-walled court, keeping my distance as I did so. I had a duck on each side of me, pecking at the grass, doing the ineffectual scooping motion that they do with their beaks (made for water, I tell you). Then down a tree came a squirrel, which bounded joyfully across the grass. It came so close to the woodpecker that the woodpecker had to jump out of the way, giving a couple of flaps of its wings, just to make sure. It seemed unreal to see animals packed in such a small area in the concrete jungle of university. But for just a moment, university beat home for wildlife
Monday, 9 April 2007
The environment, Part I
I am at home from university for a couple of weeks, which means coming out into the countryside. I go out walking the dog, which means I can enjoy the fresh air and think at the same time...
I want to save the environment, and a lot of people think like me. I look at the countryside, and I think it's a shame that even in the countryside, every square inch is managed farmland or there for some economic purpose.
I do my best not to leave things on that use up power - all those things on stand-by get turned off if I am away for any length of time. I get very frustrated that you can only get rid of stand-by on some things by turning them off at the wall. For instance, my stereo is plugged in behind a chest of drawers, so it's very difficult to turn off completely. And there are lots of things we can do, like using public transport instead of a car, and recycling.
I think the best thing we can do for the environment is to put money into researching "green technology". I'd love all our power to be wind power, solar power, or even nuclear fusion in future. And if we can do that, we can produce hydrogen with no costs to the environment, for all these hydrogen cars and things.
There is no doubt in my mind that environmental problems are real. Global warming is real, over-fertilistion leading to eutrophication is real, pollution is real, the hole in the ozone layer is a real problem, extinctions and loss of habitats are real problems. And the list goes on.
I would like to see some section of the world that is unaffected by humans so we know what it would be like, and because I find that beautiful. Just seeing the birds, rabbits and foxes in the hedgerows and fields is a great experience, and I am pleased to be able to experience it. It is something worth protecting.
I want to save the environment, and a lot of people think like me. I look at the countryside, and I think it's a shame that even in the countryside, every square inch is managed farmland or there for some economic purpose.
I do my best not to leave things on that use up power - all those things on stand-by get turned off if I am away for any length of time. I get very frustrated that you can only get rid of stand-by on some things by turning them off at the wall. For instance, my stereo is plugged in behind a chest of drawers, so it's very difficult to turn off completely. And there are lots of things we can do, like using public transport instead of a car, and recycling.
I think the best thing we can do for the environment is to put money into researching "green technology". I'd love all our power to be wind power, solar power, or even nuclear fusion in future. And if we can do that, we can produce hydrogen with no costs to the environment, for all these hydrogen cars and things.
There is no doubt in my mind that environmental problems are real. Global warming is real, over-fertilistion leading to eutrophication is real, pollution is real, the hole in the ozone layer is a real problem, extinctions and loss of habitats are real problems. And the list goes on.
I would like to see some section of the world that is unaffected by humans so we know what it would be like, and because I find that beautiful. Just seeing the birds, rabbits and foxes in the hedgerows and fields is a great experience, and I am pleased to be able to experience it. It is something worth protecting.
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