In all the years we’ve lived here, we’ve only ever had the carpets cleaned once. Not surprising then, that over time, they’ve all become a bit grubby – especially the beige ones. Step forward, Nigel, the Cleaning Doctor who we met-up with a few weeks ago after seeing an advert in a local magazine. He …
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Shower sorted!!!
Ralph has sorted out our leaking shower tray – nice one Ralph!!! Facilities have now been restored at Pemberley Grange!!!
Camera Lens
Excellent! – My new 45-200 zoom lens turned up today courtesy of Amazon. 45-200 in digital terms makes it a 90-400 in ‘normal’ camera lingo – that’s l-o-n-g!For its zoom capability, it’s incredibly small, and I’m going to use the next few days whilst I’m at home to test it out.
Ralph’s here…
Ralph got to ours around 10 minutes before me (I’d been in Canterbury for most of the day). We’re having a ‘techno-chat’ tonight and then tomorrow, he’s going to sort out the leak in the shower-room.
Sunday: Johnny and Mel/Lee for Lunch/David and Val popped round
Everyone was up a little earlier than planned mainly due to me getting Lee’s ‘mayday’ call just before 7am and then heading for her place. By the time I got back, Ann was already preparing the ‘breakfast feast’ – a Full English! We sat down around 9.30 and tucked-in. By the time we finished the …
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Early Riser (Nothing New!)
6:58. Lee rang – she’d had one of ‘ear attacks’ rendering her completely immobile and feeling rotten. Luckily I was already up. I drove down there and spent an hour or so with her. We called NeneDoc who advised that she starts to REtake the tablets she’s been trying to ‘get-off’ (because it gave her …
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Saturday: Johnny and Mel
A lazzzzzy day! 👍💤 The weather was indifferent, so we had a leisurely breakfast and then read the papers and chatted. That took us up to lunchtime. The sun came out (sort of!) and so we took advantage of the situation and had a light salad lunch in the garden. 2.45pm: Then, it was off …
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Mel and Johnny – Here for the Weekend
Mel and Johnny joined us today for the weekend. We haven’t seen them since we were down in Portsmouth in July last year. Before that, it was April 2007 when they stayed with us last. Johnny had had a ‘store visit’ so they didn’t get to us until around 7.15pm (the original plan was for …
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Wilf!
We popped down to Jo and Janet’s primarily to wish Jan a happy birthday. That’s when we ran into their two gorgeous kittens – ‘Wilf’ and ‘Oscar’. What a couple of sweeties (in spite of them both using my leg as a climbing frame! – ouch!!!) Wilf
Family Lunch
Well almost! We drove down to Roger, Jane and Oliver’s for the gathering of the clan. When I say clan – it was more of a clan-lite!, No, scrub that – clan-super-lite! The original plan had been to get everyone together, simply because we don’t do it that often. We’d not expected my Mum to …
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Cat Service and Stoops to Conquer
Image by Steve Palmer (UK) via Flickr The day started with us taking the cats over the Patsy’s for their six-weekly bath and grooming session. It’s always a challenge – they just seem to know when it’s that date, making the ‘capture process’ shall we say, a little more challenging! I’m still not sure which …
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Posh Houses and Foxton Locks
I took the train down to London today – Gloucester Road area to be more precise – to help out Val H with her computer. Wow! it’s posh round there! I counted THREE Bentleys and TWO Maseratis parked in the street between the Tube station and my five minute walk to Val’s flat – hmmmm …
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The Final Touch
We popped down to Lee’s to put up the picture she’s been waiting for. It had been on order, but out of stock at Laura Ashley‘s. But luckily, Ann spotted it in the local Laura Ashley last week and snapped it up. Good job she she did, because it’s now discontinued!!
Busy Saturday
We’re planning to go to Kelmarsh Hall later today to see English Heritage’s ‘2010 Festival of History’. Ann’s friend Nicki joined and we just had time to whizz down to Lee’s to assemble her new bed and then returning home for a quick lunch. By 12.30 lunch was almost ready, however, the weather still looked …
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Useful Software: ‘SugarSync’
I’m putting ‘SugarSync‘ through its paces over the weekend. It’s a piece of software that keeps multiple PCS in synch with each other – in short, you change a file on one PC and the changes are copied across in real-time to other PCs on your network such as your laptop. Great for when you’re …
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5ive go mad in London
Well, maybe not quite! I set off for London around 2ish and got into town around 3.30. After a quick walk to the Circle Line, I was soon at the Embankment, heading across Jubilee Bridge, heading for the South Bank. It was hot muggy day and perhaps as expected, the place was very busy with …
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LNG Meeting in London
I took the train down to London for one of our regular Learning Network Group self-development meetings. I cut the timing a bit tight for the 11am start, but on arrival, I noticed so did half the others! Six members attended in total where Philip P ran a very interesting session on Gender Dynamics. I …
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Long Weekend Away – Day 3: Final day, shopping
For our final day in Chester, we took a drive to Cheshire Oaks, a massive out-of-town designer shopping outlet about 15 minutes from the hotel. It’s massive – certainly the biggest we’ve ever visited. Ann thinks it’s the largest in Europe. Literally hundreds of shops and even some more outlets at the Coliseum just down …
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Long Weekend Away – Day 2: Four go shopping in Chester
We slept-in (ish!). I was up at 7 and Ann followed shortly afterwards. Time for a shower. The bathroom had been stocked with high quality toiletries, so it was a an opportunity to indulge ourselves fill our suitcases indulge ourselves! We got down the breakfast around 9 – and the place was already busy. A …
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Long Weekend Away – Day 1: Green Bough Hotel, Chester
We left home around 10am and had a pretty good journey to Chester. By 12.35 we were parking in the Green Bough hotel and Ralph and Karen arrived not long after. We’re here until Sunday and aim to take in the sights, sounds and of course, the shops! First impressions were superb. We were given …
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Lumix G2 – First photos
This is hardly scientific – I just wanted to ‘bang-off’ a few shots without too much consideration for settings, lighting, subject etc. The interesting part for me was that all the interior shots didn’t require the flash to be used. I’m very satisfied with these, but I’ll get a chance to try some more considered …
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Smile please..!
Way back on July 20 2005, I made a big decision to trade-in my existing camera for the then new and exciting DSLR, Canon 20D. At that time, this Canon model was pretty much the top-of-the-tree as far as semi-pro DSLRs were concerned. How times (and technology) move on! Here we are almost five years …
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Little things
After yesterday’s technological fiasco, things are more-or-less back to normal with the PCs – Phew! The rest of the day turned out to be much more enjoyable – full of ‘little things’ getting sorted:
“I luv Compooters…I hates compooters”
Well, I was looking forward to my new router turning up today.It was destined to replace the ageing one that’s become increasingly unreliable over the past few months – dropping connection to the ‘net without warning. Having done my research, I settled for the Netgear dgn3500 Router Modem. A shiny beast with lots of flashing …
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Financial Future
Ann and I met with Chris, our financial advisor today as part of our annual review. We can both see the end of our working lives more clearly now and I’ll be the first to retire (well, that’s the plan!) in or around 2013, when I’ll close the business down. Failing that, it’ll be 2015, …
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Bed Build
Ahh, you know me with DIY assembly tasks – absolutely hopeless! – maybe it’s because I’m just no good at reading instructions that have been translated into English from Chinese!! So, with a screwdriver, a hammer and a phrase-book in hand, Ann and I attempted to assemble a new bed for the single-bedroom. Actually, it …
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Two go Shopping
Ann and Lee have gone to London shopping, leaving me to fend for myself. Is that the smell of melting plastic??? If they’re not back by Wednesday, I’m going to call the Bank! :))
Annual Reunion
I drove down to the School today. An extra busy event as, I’m chairing the sub-committee for the Old Croydonians’ 2011 celebrations AND attending the reunion as well. It was a good ‘do’. It was a swelteringly hot day and the decision to change to a different room (that has air-conditioning) was a wise-one especially …
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Shake
I took Lee up to Woodland Hospital, for her appointment with the specialist. After a thorough set of tests, he can’t yet determine whether Lee’s shaking is caused by the early stages of Parkinson’s or it’s just, as he called it, ‘a tremor’. We’re assuming the latter, and Lee starts on a course of medication …
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Susan’s web-site updated
Caught up with Susan today and updated her web-site www.susansheridan.com