the weekend

Did you have a good weekend? I worked all of Saturday and a little of Sunday, so it wasn't amazing, but at least the good weather is back after what has felt like weeks of sodden greyness. The husband worked like a trooper, cleaning, moving stuff, starting on our skirting boards, mowing the neglected lawn and generally trying to make the house feel more like a home. We have seven guests and a baby landing on our doorstep from Thursday onwards, so it will be a hectic weekend. They are friends from when the husband and I were students at Cambridge and I love them all to bits - we are very excited to be hosting our first weekend party at our new house. We are hoping that they won't mind slumming it a bit here although if the weather continues fine, I think we will spend a lot of time outdoors. In other news, we put up a bookcase and unpacked some of our boxes. It felt like a really big step forward. OK, there's no other furniture yet, but we're working on that.

more about me

I have added a new page to the blog today - you'll find it in the side bar - it's just some more stuff about me, in case you want to know! It even includes a proper picture of me, the horror...

malfunctioning

The husband is away for the week (and will be absent weekly until Christmas while he does a work placement in London) and I have resorted to the kind of terrible behaviour that only a single girl can do, namely eating too many biscuits in one sitting and otherwise undernourishing myself. I have overindulged in lentils this week.

the weekend...

was lovely. Seeing my university friends in Devon, eating lots of food and messing around in the countryside. The drive to and fro wasn't too much fun but it was well worth the trip. I miss them already. (That's the husband with the red jumper around his waist. I am, as usual, hiding behind the camera lens).

I'll be busy again this week and then we will be going up north to find a house to live in. I'll keep trying to stop by and write something here. Hope you had a good weekend too.

Changes

The husband and I are teetering on the edge of big changes. For two years we have lived here and worked on our respective careers, enjoying being married and owning our own home. But things are about to go a bit mad around here - the husband finished working as a researcher in engineering at Cambridge Uni last Friday and has been at home with me for the last few days, trying out the wonderful feeling of being blissfully and temporarily unemployed. He will start work at the BBC in Manchester in September, so we are in each other's company until then. This means a few things:

1) I am likely not to make an appearance here when the weather is good and I have a day off.
2) I will eat much nicer lunches now that I have him to share them with.
3) We will be moving house soon - end of July, we hope.
4) We will be renting a house somewhere temporarily, which may depress me, because:
5) I STILL cannot sell my London flat. Until it is sold we can't buy another house. Buyers are very cautious right now. Grrrr.
6) We will be undertaking our first real and proper house move, with removal men and lots of boxes and a piano - I am already worrying about it.
7) I am distracted and can't seem to come up with anything interesting to say or draw.

Sorry.

Ten years

I know, I know, it makes me sound SO OLD, but I thought I'd tell you a little story. Ten years ago, some time late on Midsummer's night on the Bowling Green in Pembroke College, Cambridge, I was standing just around where that red X is on the photo above, striking a deal with my future husband. We were just nineteen years old and had been inseparable friends since bonding on a geology field trip with the university. It was time to make things official after nearly two months of dancing around each other and NOT saying how we felt (or in my case not KNOWING how I felt). It was time to get my hooks into the boy.

It has been a wonderful ten years, my darling. We are both better dressed, better behaved, and have better hair than we did in those days. Thank you.

Image from here.

Wales

Here are just a few shots from some of our walking in Wales. I can't wait until I can do this every weekend!



Hope you all had a good weekend. What did I do? I filled in lots of forms for house-selling, roasted a chicken and raided some charity shops (EIGHT new Le Parfait and Kilner jars for 50p each?! A no brainer, I think). On Sunday we rounded up all the awful unwanted gifts and junk that have been cluttering up our loft space and carted it off to sell at a car boot sale. The husband and I looked like proper market sellers in his flat cap, my wax jacket and home-sewn florals, and especially with his Yorkshire accent. We even made money from some godawful things that we thought would never sell. OK, the leopard-print dessert plates that were a wedding gift were uniformly ignored, but we managed to get rid of some other horrors despite their ugliness. What fun!

Happy Friday! and happy birthday

... to my darling, splendidly strange husband. You have spent the weeks since my birthday teasing me about being two months older than you because you think I am bothered by it. At least our numbers kind of match now.