Monday, February 08, 2010

Moving to a New Decade...

It's been a while since I blogged on this site, so a quick run through of what I've been up to since the summer...

Not much, if I'm honest!

I still have no job, and I will keep looking. The last interview I had was back in August, but I really wouldn't have taken the role at Helen Exley books even if I had been offered it; it was a truly awful interview, by two people who really didn't know what they were doing. In the past I may have stepped in and tried to lead, but that has got me into trouble previously, so I went along with them and suffered as a consequence.

I've watched plenty of cricket on TV; the England in South Africa series was good, just a shame that our boys couldn't hang on to the series lead. Much as with the Ashes series previously, England were generally out-played, but someone always came to the party and hung in there.

Rachel and I have had a few days out here and there:

We had a day out in Hastings in October on a lovely sunny day (left), just before the winter weather started in earnest. Rachel used up one of her flexi-days which was good. We caught the train down and wandered around the town as we both know it quite well. We didn't get up to much down there, and didn't go up the cliffs at all, but we just wandered around along the sea-front, taking in the midweek atmosphere. It was great to just sit on the pebbled beach, watching the waves and the odd dog splashing around in the gentle surf - one particular dog had great fun chasing stones that his owner was throwing into the sea!

It snowed here in October, which is the earliest it has for many a year. When it snows that early in the year, and during any of the winter, it doesn't normally settle, but it did this year, and it was a fore-runner of times to come...which I'll get to.

We also drove down to Dover and had a very windy walk (left) along the white cliffs to St Margarets which was fun in November. It was so blowy that the wind actually took me off my feet at one point; luckily, the wind was blowing straight along the coast (west to east), so I didn't end up anywhere near the cliff edge! We had lunch in a nice pub in St Margarets, and then walked back to Dover again, this time into the wind which was much harder with the 60-70mph gusts! The only bad thing about the day was that I dropped part of the lens cap for Rachel's camera - silly me - and even though I knew where it had fallen, we couldn't find it on the way back.
We also had one of our usual days out at Oare Marsh back in September, and had a nice walk around the pathway checking out birds and the River Thames. One old Thames sailing barge took ages to get up the river while we were there, struggling aginst the wind and tide, but it did make it in the end. This Blue Heron (left) flew over as we got back near the car.

Our local cat - his name is Zack, but we call him Spot, due to the white spot of fur on his face - still continues to dominate our lives. He knocks on our door every morning (when I say knock, I do mean knock, he stands on his hind legs and paws at the letter box!) so we let him in, then he will go to sleep on the settee or bed (if we let him upstairs) until he is ready for lunch, then we have to let him out, then he will come back for an afternoon kip, then ask to go again so he can get some supper around 6pm, then he's back once more for another mollycoddling evening on our laps until we kick him out at bedtime. The bad thing this autumn was that he got fleas, and we had to first get him clean, then get rid of the fleas in the house. he had infected our bedroom and living room, but we had to douse the whole house to be sure of killing them. I got plenty of bites on my ankles and wrists, but that eventually stopped, and touching lots of wood, we won't let that happen again. He has been banned from going upstairs mostly since.
In December, the snow really hit England, and we had very icy roads and paths for weeks. Our Xmas plan of having Rachel's parents to stay for a few days was cancelled when she fell over and broke her elbow, the silly thing! I was at football when it happened of course, so couldn't be too sympathetic I'm afraid. I was able to get a lift to the hospital just in time to hear the doctor confirm the break. She was operated on the next day to have it pinned, and then let out on the Monday. We switched Xmas from home to her parents in Somerset so they could take care of both of us, and it worked out well. On Boxing Day, we drove across the Somerset levels to a place where starlings come in to roost for the evening; I've never seen them swirl and spin like that before and it was great fun to watch for half an hour as the sun went down.

The snow and ice took ages to melt, and we have had more bad weather in January too, and now in the middle of February we are due more snow this week. Consequently, with Rachel only just going back to work after six weeks off sick, we haven't driven the car once since the day she fell over.

Recently, we both spent some time with each of our parents, and then met up for a day out in Salisbury. We went to the cathedral, and the new font (left) is amazing, and a great piece of sculpture. The copy of the Magna Carta is also worth seeing, and though a copy, it is over 800 years old!

I'm chugging along with my book, and have now written the difficult chapter about South Africa. Hopefully the last three chapters will come a little easier to me and I'll get the whole thing finished soon. Once that is complete, I'll have to decide what to do with it all, although one or two people have expressed an interest in reading it, so we'll see.
It has been nice to catch up with a couple of blasts from the past - Julie Snow via Facebook and Geoff Parker via email. I'll try to keep in touch with them a little better than I have done over recent years.
That's about all I can think of, and I need to make Rachel's tea now, so until someting else happens in my life, have fun and don't slip on the ice, wherever you are!

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