The time of the year I hate seems to have arrived - early! Its spider migration time...when they migrate from the cold wet outside into the warm dry inside. Normally its October before the peace is shattered by the patter of many hundreds of legs as they scamper in, but in the past few days there have been loads saying hello. Eugh!
Stephen mumbled something last night which I totally didn't catch. It sounded to me like "blah blah blah blah blah blah ...der". It was the "der" part that make me take notice and press his rewind button. "Oh my God, look at that enormous spider." It took me a second to locate the beastie because it was hiding round a fold in the curtain. This was not a teeny weeny spider. This was a shaved tarantula!!! It was the biggest spider I have seen in the house - ever! Stephen was dispatched to get a glass in order to capture it and release it back into the wild. He came back with a kilner jar as he didn't think a glass would fit over it. He was probably correct!!
The poor thing was probably just taking shelter from the persistent rain and low temperatures. Summer has gone and I'm not sure we can expect it back anytime soon. It has been so cold over the past couple of days we've had to put the heating on. Heating...in August!!!!
Thursday 26 August 2010
Sunday 22 August 2010
Recreational Vehicle
Audrey and John dropped by yesterday afternoon with their new motor home. Getting it parked outside our house was quite a palaver! They called and said they were across on the main road. I looked out and there was a bus parked up...the bus turned out to be them!
My goodness this thing is HUGE! It is definitely the way to do it! It was very luxurious with a proper bedroom, bathroom and sitting area. It has lots of gadgets including a retractable satellite dish which self-seeks the satellite. I could see Stephen begin to drool at that point!
My goodness this thing is HUGE! It is definitely the way to do it! It was very luxurious with a proper bedroom, bathroom and sitting area. It has lots of gadgets including a retractable satellite dish which self-seeks the satellite. I could see Stephen begin to drool at that point!
I wasn't meant to do housework!
I have to admit something deeply shaming. I have owned my fabulous, wonderful, couldn't live without it, Dyson vacuum for about 6 years. The wand stuck today and I was searching the Internet to see if I could find any hints and tips for unsticking it. I found the manual. I read the manual. I discovered that my vacuum cleaner has a removable, washable filter...that should be cleaned every 6 months. Six months!!! I actually had to go check the vacuum to make sure I'd downloaded the correct manual and see if I could find the magic filter release button.
The button was cunningly disguised as a handle so no wonder I didn't spot it...for 6 years! Once I had found it I felt obliged to open it and wash the blue filter the manual described. Well it wasn't blue, but I took it out and washed it and watched it magically transform from grey to a bright blue colour. Imagine not realising that it had a washable filter. Imagine not washing the filter at the recommended intervals. Imagine leaving it SIX years before washing it!!!! I could have been living in blissful ignorance until the thing packed up altogether. No wonder it wasn't picking up as well as it once did!
I've been a bit of a Domestic Goddess today. It has mercifully been dry today so I was able to get my washing backlog dealt with. It has been raining a lot this weekend, so its been a nightmare to get things dry. A tumble dryer is being purchased ASAP! I've been washing and pegging out all morning. I've even been brave enough to tackle the ironing mountain which had built up in the dining room. It was getting seriously embarrassing. I was expecting Sherpa Tensing to appear from behind a pile, leading an expedition to the summit!
The button was cunningly disguised as a handle so no wonder I didn't spot it...for 6 years! Once I had found it I felt obliged to open it and wash the blue filter the manual described. Well it wasn't blue, but I took it out and washed it and watched it magically transform from grey to a bright blue colour. Imagine not realising that it had a washable filter. Imagine not washing the filter at the recommended intervals. Imagine leaving it SIX years before washing it!!!! I could have been living in blissful ignorance until the thing packed up altogether. No wonder it wasn't picking up as well as it once did!
I've been a bit of a Domestic Goddess today. It has mercifully been dry today so I was able to get my washing backlog dealt with. It has been raining a lot this weekend, so its been a nightmare to get things dry. A tumble dryer is being purchased ASAP! I've been washing and pegging out all morning. I've even been brave enough to tackle the ironing mountain which had built up in the dining room. It was getting seriously embarrassing. I was expecting Sherpa Tensing to appear from behind a pile, leading an expedition to the summit!
Tuesday 10 August 2010
Family...
Oh dear. Our brilliant idea of getting the family together for dinner on Saturday night didn't go according to plan. Remind me not to leave it to the brothers Spark to organise anything again! It is just as well that none of them work for a brewery....
Wedding photos
The parents of the happy couple
Him and me
Paul and Kristen
On the swings!
Family: Rab, Andy, Fiona, June and Linda
Jim with his sons - Paul and Jim
Paul and Gordon
June, Jim and Linda
Some CRM details and a harp!
The Bride and Groom
Paul and Kristen and their parents
Kristen and the kilties
Held aloft by her handsome husband and a few willing helpers!
What a Wonderful Wedding
Why is it, that despite allowing nights of preparation time, I was still packing at the last minute on Wednesday night and didn't find time to dye my hair? My wedding preparations were hampered, and I'm not sure why! I was joking with a friend that I'd be applying fake tan in the car driving to Glasgow as I simply didn't see how I'd manage to fit it in. As it was, Glasgow was as chilly as expected so the fake tan was not an issue. I had to go and buy tights on Friday morning as if I'd gone bare-legged I'd have been a lovely mottled blue colour after 5 minutes outside!
It monsooned with rain when I was getting ready. To say it was torrential was a bit of an understatement! At one point it looked like someone was throwing buckets of water at the windows! Thankfully, by the time we arrived at the venue at about 3:15 it was dry and the sun was even trying to force its way through the clouds and make an appearance.
I have to talk about the venue now. It was the House for an Art Lover in Bellahouston Park and it was stunning. This was Charles Rennie Macintosh to the max! He and his wife had designed a house for a German magazine competition in 1901. It was disqualified for the minor detail that they were late with their submission (bloody Royal Mail...!), but it did win a special merit prize. During the late 80's Glasgow decided to build it. The architectural and design details are simply beautiful, so I'm exceedingly glad they did!
It was a lovely wedding. As Paul and Kristen are actually married already (they got hitched in Alexandria just before we left) the ceremony was conducted by one of their friends, and they read vows they each had written. I tell you, there was not a dry eye in the house! There was laughter too. They are renowned for being very laid back and doing everything at the last minute which Kristen played on, joking that she had written the vows that morning....actually, it may not have been a joke....but we laughed! It was so lovely to meet Paul and Kristen's friends as well as some members of the family whom I'd never met before, all of whom were funny and charming. We had a hoot!
Stephen wasn't on official photographer duty, but he did have his camera...and his tripod...and set himself up as the "formal shot" photographer. The girl doing the official photos was doing some quite funky stuff, so we figured that someone should take some of the family in their finery...posing for the camera and not with a glass to their lips or mid sentence (as usually happens to me when I'm taken unawares!). This led to a little "camera war" as whatever Stephen did, the girl would appear beside him to take it in a more funky way! Oh, how competitive these photographers can be!!
People's finery was definitely worthy of being captured on camera. The bride and groom looked wonderful, as did the parents (I LOVED Moira's dress) and the rest of us scrubbed up okay too. It was lovely too see so many men in kilts, and I wasn't the only woman with a fascinator perched on her noggin (for once!). I was having something of an outfit crisis though. The little cardigan that I'd bought to wear over the dress just wouldn't sit right, so at the last second I decided to wear the black jacket I'd worn to work the day before. Thank goodness I had a multiple choice of fascinators as the pink one may have looked odd - and someone else was wearing the exact same one!
It monsooned with rain when I was getting ready. To say it was torrential was a bit of an understatement! At one point it looked like someone was throwing buckets of water at the windows! Thankfully, by the time we arrived at the venue at about 3:15 it was dry and the sun was even trying to force its way through the clouds and make an appearance.
I have to talk about the venue now. It was the House for an Art Lover in Bellahouston Park and it was stunning. This was Charles Rennie Macintosh to the max! He and his wife had designed a house for a German magazine competition in 1901. It was disqualified for the minor detail that they were late with their submission (bloody Royal Mail...!), but it did win a special merit prize. During the late 80's Glasgow decided to build it. The architectural and design details are simply beautiful, so I'm exceedingly glad they did!
It was a lovely wedding. As Paul and Kristen are actually married already (they got hitched in Alexandria just before we left) the ceremony was conducted by one of their friends, and they read vows they each had written. I tell you, there was not a dry eye in the house! There was laughter too. They are renowned for being very laid back and doing everything at the last minute which Kristen played on, joking that she had written the vows that morning....actually, it may not have been a joke....but we laughed! It was so lovely to meet Paul and Kristen's friends as well as some members of the family whom I'd never met before, all of whom were funny and charming. We had a hoot!
Stephen wasn't on official photographer duty, but he did have his camera...and his tripod...and set himself up as the "formal shot" photographer. The girl doing the official photos was doing some quite funky stuff, so we figured that someone should take some of the family in their finery...posing for the camera and not with a glass to their lips or mid sentence (as usually happens to me when I'm taken unawares!). This led to a little "camera war" as whatever Stephen did, the girl would appear beside him to take it in a more funky way! Oh, how competitive these photographers can be!!
People's finery was definitely worthy of being captured on camera. The bride and groom looked wonderful, as did the parents (I LOVED Moira's dress) and the rest of us scrubbed up okay too. It was lovely too see so many men in kilts, and I wasn't the only woman with a fascinator perched on her noggin (for once!). I was having something of an outfit crisis though. The little cardigan that I'd bought to wear over the dress just wouldn't sit right, so at the last second I decided to wear the black jacket I'd worn to work the day before. Thank goodness I had a multiple choice of fascinators as the pink one may have looked odd - and someone else was wearing the exact same one!
Sunday 1 August 2010
The Stones
We saw The Stones last night. Not "The" Stones of course...Malvern doesn't have a stadium venue so couldn't guarantee the lucrative multi-million pound earnings they usually generate. On the plus side, we do have a large number of nursing homes so they could have had a very comfortable stay!!
The Stones were actually rather good. "Mick" certainly had the look of Jagger and all the posing and pouting down to a tee. Squint your eyes and ignore the look of the others and you could have been watching the real thing 30 years ago. They played a really long set and didn't hold back despite there being only 80 people in the auditorium - most of them about the age of the real Stones and not many of them able to get up and boogie! In fact, the audience size was such that at the end of the show "Mick" jumped off the stage and legged it to the foyer to thank everyone personally for coming!
The Stones were actually rather good. "Mick" certainly had the look of Jagger and all the posing and pouting down to a tee. Squint your eyes and ignore the look of the others and you could have been watching the real thing 30 years ago. They played a really long set and didn't hold back despite there being only 80 people in the auditorium - most of them about the age of the real Stones and not many of them able to get up and boogie! In fact, the audience size was such that at the end of the show "Mick" jumped off the stage and legged it to the foyer to thank everyone personally for coming!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)