This pretty much sums up the Brit attitude and APTITUDE for dealing with the snow! The snowmans face says it all!!
Photo of The Day
Cool days, music, hair cuts and what’s on telly.
The weather has finally settled itself down after a week of humid, sticky, but dark and damp weather. Today is sunny and cool, perfect!
I have finally been listening to more music. Most of it has been quite retro, as it always usually is for me. I can’t help being stuck in the 70’s/80’s/90’s. I hardly listen to any “new” music. The “newest” music on my rotation of play is Franz Ferdinand. So far it’s been revolving around Bjork and Eurythmics, with a bit of kd lang splashed in.
This is the Bjork song I can’t get enough of at the moment. There’s a line in it I just love…”Since we broke up, I’m using lipstick again. I suck my tongue, in remembrance of you.” How sexy is that?!
The Eurythmics stuff I’ve been listening to is Touch, and Touch Dance (an album of remixes of songs from the Touch album) and Revenge. Here’s my favourite song off the album (I love The Miracle of Love as well).
[youtube=http://youtu.be/KKFIAYQccKw]
I am fully in love with kd lang’s voice. The Cambridge Folk Festival was on over the weekend, and she played there. I SO would’ve loved to have gone, but the tickets were long sold-out and damn expensive anyway! The stuff on her most recent album sound as lovely as ever. She just does beautiful songs and has the voice of an angel. Her voice would make me do naughty things 🙂
Last artist on my rotation id Nick Lowe. Not a person I’d expect to have on my list of music at the moment. BBC Four showed a concert of his the other night and I watched it and really got into his music. I got his latest CD and have it in my playlist.
I’m going to cut and dye Em’s hair today. All the greys are coming out again! I should have my OWN hair cut now. I’d booked an appointment last week to get mine done, then I got man flu, thrush, then my period, so ended up cancelling the appointment. I’ll go this week though. I got myself some dye too. I’ll take a pic once my hair is cut and killed (dyed).
Just got through watching the 2nd series of Blackadder on DVD. There is something scarily sexy about Rowan Atkinson as Blackadder in the 2nd series. I SO love Tim McInnerny as Percy. He’s such a nonce! But you can’t help but feel sorry for him. Still got Brigadoon and Jekyll to watch.
The Tudors was back on Friday night. Yay! I hate to break it to the actress playing Anne Boleyn, but she doesn’t have much time left! Still, she’s got to have Elizabeth yet so I’m sure she’s in a few episodes to come.
The only other show that I’m into at the moment is Bonekickers. They’re making archaeology exciting! I’m sure it is for those directly involved in it. And of course, with it being fictional, there’s a bit of artist licence, so they are making discoveries that probably would not actually happen in real life.
I have to show up Em. For about the last 12 months or so, there has been an ad campaign for this “pure, filtered” milk called Cravendale. They have the most SURREAL ad campaign involving a Tour de France cyclist, a pirate and a cow?! Yes, I know! Anyway, the ads are stop-motion animation and they are growing on me. I couldn’t see why Em would get so much pleasure when these ads came on air, but over the last few months I’ve begun to see the appeal.
The premise of the ad (in case it escapes you) is that the cyclist, the pirate, and the cow wake up and want to have their morning glass of milk. The cow goes to the fridge to pour out 3 glasses of milk, but guess what? There’s only enough for one! NNNNNNOOOOOOO! So, they decide to have a game of musical statutes to determine who gets the glass of milk. The cyclist cheats by putting a paper cut-out of himself there, so in the meantime he can drink the glass of milk. Naughty cyclist! I love the pirates reaction when he realises he’s been robbed!
Here’s the other, which makes a little more sense once you’ve seen the first one.
The thing I love most is the cow. Why would a COW be craving milk THIS MUCH?! This second clip is much like how our trip to Hitchin was the other day! Except we didn’t end up in a milk truck, just a ditch!
I’m Hot, Casanova.
The weather died down yesterday, only for it to be hot again today! And it’ll be even HOTTER tomorrow. I’m glad the weather is sunny, but it SERIOUSLY does not need to be this hot with it. It was sunny yesterday, but there was a lovely north wind blowing keeping the temp. down.
I watched Casanova yesterday. You think (for me anyway, only vaguely knowing the reputation of Giacomo Casanova) that there isn’t going to be anything at all redeeming about him. That by the end you’ll just think of him as a half-wit ladies man. But not so at all. I never knew of the story of Henriette. I’m sure given “artistic licence” given more relevance by writer of the script Russell T Davies. Casanova was not just a mere “ladies man”. He seems to have truly loved women. Peter O’ Toole plays an older Casanova and even at the age he’s at in this point in his life (around 73 years old), he still manages to seduce a young woman (he doesn’t go on to “have his way” with her, and there is no actual intercourse) and you are totally “spun-in” with her. You find yourself, watching, thinking “Yes, you are old, but you can have me too!!!” If he was anything like he was portrayed in the series, I can see why he is held as such a Lothario. But with such overwhelming love for women, with no malice ever meant, no harm ever wanting to be done. Even though he lived over 200 years ago, I fell in love with him too. The experience was made all the lovelier for watching David Tennant as the younger Casanova, as well as Mr O’ Toole being the older Casanova. When I was in Australia last year, they showed Goodbye, Mr Chips on the TV on a Saturday afternoon. I watched it and just fell in love with it. It was a musical version with Petula Clark and Peter O’ Toole as Chips. Oh, it was so lovely, and O’ Toole played such a lovely, gentle version of Chips. Despite the man being in his 70’s, I fell in love with him as Chips. Still, he was 37 at the time of making Chips, so that’s OK! Can you tell I loved Casanova? 🙂 And of course, with the repeats being on BBC3, I watched ANOTHER Doctor Who last night. Probably my equal favourite of the series with the one being aired tonight (Turn Left). I was just mesmerised by Mr T’s performance in this and this was pre-hots-for! It was after this went to air, I had my dream of him… Well, I’ll let you know what’s in stall for DVD watching when the new batch arrives. I’m looking forward to a new series of The Tudors starting up too this Friday. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, more absolute male hotness to be had. I’m sure Henry VIII was never THAT sexy!!!
Man Flu, Black Books and Casanova.
I’m already starting to get over my “man flu”, thank goodness! I know it’s hard to believe, but the weather has actually been hot of late and having man flu in the middle of a heat-wave is NOT fun! If you don’t believe me, I snapped this from the TV last night. This is today’s forecast!
Lovely and interactive, must’ve been great fun for the kids there, believing The Doctor was talking to them all, too cute!! All of series four is being repeated on BBC3 at the moment. Silence In The Library was on last night…that’s SSOO scary the way that ends with “Donna Noble has left the library. Donna Noble has been saved” repeated ad nauseam while a clan of Vashta Nerada (the dust in sunbeams – hidden in shadows) that have invaded a human body manoeuvre it chasing The Doctor and a group of archaeologists down the narrow halls of the library. [youtube=http://youtu.be/9eg6PdFdAFg]
These episodes to come are my faves, the second part of this (Forest Of The Dead), Midnight and Turn Left, all brilliant.
No DT’s over DT.
I think I’ve already come out of the worst of it. The DT’s for DT have subsided. I still think the man is WELL hot, but just the total irrationally obsessive behaviour has subsided a lot.
Still totally hooked into the theories of how this series of Doctor Who is going to end though. There are so many theories going around. Like (regarding the regeneration) the Doctor will split in two (two Tennant Doctors), a second Doctor played by either Christopher Eccelston (back to 9th Doc) or David Morrissey will happen. Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) is a Time Lord…I could go on and on. It’s a LONG wait til Saturday. Some people are convinced that David Tennant continues to play the Doctor as they’ve seen filming in Cardiff in which he’s involved in. But Em made a very valid point that if you (the BBC production crew) didn’t want leaks, you’d still have DT on set, even if he was no longer involved in the process? Anyway. there are more pressing things to get on with…like actually becoming bankrupt. Today is the day, says Em. The procrastinating is over. It’s bankruptcy time! We’ve got an online grocery shop arriving soon. And yesterday we actually went out – I mean outside – in the sun! We went into town to pay some bills, get some things, etc. I had to pay our broadband and TV license. I nearly had a heart attack! I had £25 to pay on the broadband and £11.80 to pay on the TV license. I paid the broadband first then handed the assistant the TV license card and said “And can I pay £11.80 on this please”, she said “80 or 18” I said “80” (I thought she was confirming the final figure). Anyway, she swipes the card, puts in the figure then says “That’ll be £118” (which isn’t even 80 and 25 quid together anyway, WTF?). I just stood there dumbfounded. Then she said to be “What did you want to pay on it again, 80 or 18?” I said “£11.80” and she was like “Oh!” and I was thinking “Yeah, give me a friggin heart attack, woman!” Worst of all was when she finally got the figure right and it was time to pay, she had to use a calculator to add 25 and 11.80 together!!!! Lord have mercy! You have NEVER seen queues as long as we get at the town’s post office. You lose the will to live just LOOKING at it sometimes! Poor Em had to line up so we could put money on our pre-paid credit card and get proof of posting on some DVD’s. It took her 20 minutes to get served. We bought a pair of shoes each. We have matching shoes! How autistic are we going to look going out together in matching shoes? There were some cheap T’s too, so Em got two of them. We went wild spending a whole £14 on ourselves! Our mall is SO damn overcrowded. I get agoraphobia just walking around it, it’s so bloody full of people. And there’s never really a time of day when it ISN’T swarming with people. But, it was nice to get out and actually mingle for a while. Today is going to be WELL hot. TWENTY SEVEN degrees man!! Woah, has summer returned? And it’s Wimbledom time as well. Unprecedented! Anyway, I’m off.
Thunderstorm!
After diligently doing some video archiving until about 2am this morning (to see the video, check out http://www.dailymotion.com/larelleread – the name of the sight cracks me up, it sounds more like a forum for people wanting to talk about bowel movements! Em uses a third-party Twitter client called Spaz! Where DO they get the names of these sites/apps from?!)
Anyway, I digress. We’d been in bed about an hour (even though it was 2am when we went to bed, I still played with my Nintendo DS for a while) and I saw this flash of light come through the windows. I thought to myself “Gee, that was a strong set of headlights!”, then seconds later there was a rumble which made me think “That plane was a bit noisy.” It’s not unheard of for us to get planes taking off and landing at the airport on the wee hours, actually it’s quite regular. Then a few minutes later there was another flash and I finally realised…that’s no car headlights! YIKES! It’s a thunderstorm, followed quickly by conformation in the form of a particularly loud rumbling clap of thunder!
[dailymotion id=x5m9nz]
It’s hardly been “tropical” in the UK over the last few days, particularly in the south of England where we have been lumped with the worse weather over the bank holiday weekend. So to have a thunderstorm in such banal conditions felt REALLY odd. It hasn’t even been warm!! It was just freaky!
Leighton Buzzard by Bus.
We decided to go to Leighton Buzzard by bus yesterday. I love my Morrisons supermarkets and so really, despite there being slightly closer locals for Morrisons SM’s, going to Leighton Buzzard was the most direct route via public transport. We can get the bus from just down the road and it takes us almost directly to the supermarket.
Em was umm-ing and ahh-ing about whether we should go. We tried to check what the fare would be, but the bus company’s web site is SO vague. Em was worried it was going to cost us £7.00 return, each! But I was hoping that the bus company was not going to be quite THAT money-grabbing. I tried to ring them, got the old “Press 1 for this, and 2 for that” business. There was a section for fares, but of course, that option rang once then had a message that said “Unfortunately all our operators (right, one person manning the phone – if there were any AT ALL manning this part of the line) are currently taking calls, please call back later, or check the web site.” Erm, that’s why I was RINGING ‘cos the information I wanted wasn’t on your crappy web site!! Geez!!!
Anyway, we decided to take the bull by the horns and just go down to the stop and see how much it would be. When the bus arrived I fell over the step (good start!). After my adept recovery (not adept enough to give the driver a wry smile!) I asked the driver how much a return ticket to Leighton Buzzard would be. He said “£4.50”, well although it was still fairly expensive, it wasn’t £7 a piece, so we got on. It’s probably a competitively priced fare considering LB is about 15 miles away, and our nearest market town Hitchin is only about 6-7 and it costs £3.15 return to get there!
It’s a fairly long journey. The trip takes about an hour, but it’s a pleasant enough trip and it does go through the countryside – which is nice, especially in the type of weather we had yesterday (IE: lovely and sunny). The rape seed fields are at their most colourful at the moment (I wish it was called canola, like it is in Oz, it just doesn’t sound right enjoying looking at “fields of rape”).
By chance, it was market day at LB. We got a little bargain there. One kilogram of nyger seed for £1.60. The goldfinch food is well stocked. And there was a shop there selling “larger” ladies clothes. I got myself a nice top for £9.00! We went on to Morrisons, had a bite to eat in the cafe` and then went around the aisles getting bits and bobs.
I took a little video on my mobile on the bus back, trying to capture the countryside, but it was a bit lame. I’ll add it to the post anyway. Mind the sound.
My neck and shoulders got sunburnt (we had a while to wait for the return bus and I got burnt waiting) and they’ve been itchy since then, and a bit tender, ouch.
When ARE we going to get our spring weather?
After the snow over Easter, we literally had one day’s respite before getting loads of rainy weather. We’ve got rainy conditions until Sunday and possibly beyond. I’d planned to go to the laundrette this week. I’ve got towels, underwear and bed linen to wash. I really DO hate British weather sometimes. One upside. . .at least it’ll be warmer. Ciao
The Anniversary Easter.
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| From Antipodean – The Right Side Up |
We’ve had a busy week leading up to Easter. Em had an appointment for a check-up at the hospital in Leicester on Wednesday (19th), and as you’ll know from previous posts, we decided to go away for a few days. It was our anniversary (the big 10th anniversary) on Good Friday, so instead of going away right over Easter, we decided to do it just before.
I think we had very good timing because this is what it looked like this Easter Sunday morning.
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| From Antipodean – The Right Side Up |
Happy Easter, welcome to spring!!
Anyway, to the adventures of the break. We headed off late Monday morning. We shelved going to the wildlife park at Shepreth for going somewhere else closer to Leicester. We just made our way up to Stamford, stopped there at the local Morrison’s supermarket, then made our way to the Travelodge. We were both pretty tired from having a late night and early morning, so that’s basically what we did for Monday.
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| From Antipodean – The Right Side Up |
Tuesday we headed over to Leicester and we went to Tropical Birdland, which is in this little village outside Leicester. We were following the signpostings for the place. I swear we went around the whole village before we got to the place! It was a freezing cold morning, around 6-8 degrees, with a slight fog hanging in the air.
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| From Antipodean – The Right Side Up |
The signs for the place were NOT good. We went in. No one was manning the pay window. I wish we’d sneaked into the place because it was TWELVE POUNDS (for both of us – IE: not each) to get in. There were emus and and owls at the front entrance, here are some pics.
We were only there an hour. We saw everything we could see by that time. I’m sure the place would be nicer in warmer weather and more of a crowd there. There were loads of macaws flying free. Apart from the emus, there were different types of cockatoos as well as a red-cheeked bulbul and a lovely kookaburra. It was SSSOOO cold though. I could see some of the birds shivering! The poor things. Not exactly the kind of weather conditions for these birds. They were lovely birds though. They had a few different types of toucans there with different coloured beaks.
Time passed quickly though and so we left tropical birdland and took the park and ride into Leicester. We went into Primark and had a look around. Cheap jeans man!! Jeans for £6 and £8. Em bought a pair of jeans and a cardigan from there. Then we went across the mall to New Look and got some bargain tops as well. We killed a few hours there. Had a big costa coffee. Em had her decaf cappuccino and I had a huge decaf mocha. Em’s cup was so huge it had handles on the side like a toddlers sipping cup!
We left Leicester and stocked up on supplies at a Morrison’s nearby. Then we ended up on our first traffic jam, going to Morrison’s! We ate there and then had another early night. We had to be at the hospital early the next day and negate the ring road around Leicester.
Next day, we did start to get lost around the ring road. We took a wrong turn and went off track for a bit, but recovered, so we still got to the hospital on time. All was wrapped up by midday.
Then it was off to Birmingham to watch U2:3D. We thought we’d overspent the day before so we didn’t have 2 brass razoos to rub together. I thought I had £10 left though, so I knew we had enough left to have something to eat at a motorway services. We stopped at a services on the M6. I got myself a KFC twister meal, got the money out to pay and then realised my £10 was only £5!!! Em had yet to buy anything!! So we bought some milk so she could eat bran flakes that we bought from home!!! Poor love, I felt so guilty!
We got to Birmingham HOURS early. We tried to negate the city centre (frig me, Birmingham is the world’s scariest city! – to navigate around that is) and stop at The Bull Ring shopping mall, but every time we went by, we’d miss the car parks, so we gave up in the end. We went and parked near the Thinktank place that has the Imax cinema. We had to kill around 2 hours, cos we only had enough money to park in the Thinktank car park for an hour, so we decided to wait until 5.30pm when parking would be £1. The movie started at 6pm, so we had time to get in and park and get into the cinema. It was cold in the car, but the sun was out, so it kept us warm for an hour or so, until the sun started to go down.
The movie was really good. Some really good 3D effects and the sound quality was fab!! It wasn’t like being at a concert as such, and in a lot of respects it was better than a concert experience. I enjoyed it. A good playlist of songs and really well edited together. It was good.
Then afterwards as we exited the cinema, we had to go down 4 flights of escalators! They were SSSOOO fast, I missed my footing and ended up on my bum. I hate escalators. And if they are high and exposed (IE: I can see down either side of the escalator), it’s 10 times worse. These particular escalators ticked all the boxes. And they were fast speed. I didn’t want to get on it when I approached it, but couldn’t see any lift available, so I had no choice. The steps were going around so bloody quickly. I kept trying to step on, but it just was going around so bloody fast. Anyway, I went and still didn’t hit the step right, tried to recover, but just kept losing my footing, then ended up on my bum. Thank God that’s what happened and I didn’t end up falling!! I screamed out to Em, who was already half-way down. Like she could do anything. I felt so embarrassed and upset. I was shaking! I SSSOOO didn’t want to get on the next one. But I had no choice. I was shaking like a leaf. Anyway, I somehow managed to get down the rest of them without any further mishap.
We got to the car and were leaving Birmingham, going round a roundabout. Em almost clipped the side of the car to the left of us, wanting to get in the left lane. My leg started to sting. I’d grazed my leg on the escalator edge! We left Birmingham. Em was tired as hell, so we stopped at a services for a rest. Then later stopped again. She was almost falling asleep behind the wheel! She had a sleep at the next services. We finally got home around 10.45pm. Freezing cold and extremely tired!!
For Easter I had my treat of a tub of Ben & Jerry’s Caramel Chew Chew ice cream (which was divine!) with 3 creme eggs, which I dropped into the ice cream every now and then. It was GORGEOUS!!! Our anniversary was quiet, but lovely.
All that scrimping on the last day and we’d been paid early because of Easter and were totally fine!! Damn it.
The weather is now meant to be…
pretty pooey for the rest of the week.
I just hope it gets better next week. Em and I are off for a few days next week as an early anniversary present to ourselves. It’s our 10th one! A milestone in modern times. We’re going to Lincolnshire for 2 days. Around Stamford, Oakham and Rutland Water. All our old haunts. We love these places. Not much else to report at the mo. Ciao