Tourists R Us

On Wednesday evening we scooted off from work and up to the airport in order to jump on a flight to Edinburgh. OMG - security was a nightmare! Employ more people, people! We stood in line for ages (beside closed lanes) waiting to have our bags checked and our shoes randomly x-rayed. Part of the problem was that the bloke who was randomly choosing folks to have their shoes x-rayed picked a woman wearing very on-trend Gladiator sandals... with around 40 buckles per shoe. What a nightmare! It took her flipping hours to get just one of them off!! There are several problems here in the UK... 

1) we don't hop on flights as often as people in the US so we don't know what is expected of us 

2) they have random checks (ie the shoes) so we don't know what is expected of us

3) because we don't know what is expected of us we wear totally ridiculous footwear!

At least in the US you know that you have to pretty much strip in 30 seconds so you wear slip on shoes and breakaway clothes so you can perform your Chipppendales routine easily.

We arrived on time and jumped in a cab to Eve & Chad's apartment where we dumped the bags, grabbed the brollies and Chad and went out for pizza. We went to the v. trendy Gusto and had delicious pizza and rather nice wine. The boys had more traditional toppings and I went for Peking Duck pizza. Y.u.u.m.m.e.e.e.e.

We were up at the crack of 8:45 on Thursday (it was a blissful lie in!) and after a little brekkie and some working we headed off for the 10 minute walk to Princes St. You know how it is when you're from somewhere and you don't do half the stuff available to you because its too touristy? Well that was me and we rectified that on Thursday!!

We took an open top bus tour round the city and hopped off at the Grassmarket, the Castle and Royal Mile, then visited St Giles Cathedral and walked back down to Princes St via Fleshmarket Close. It was very cool. Lots of photos were taken!! 

My shoe addiction

You will not believe what Stephen did on Saturday! We had gone for a coffee in Worcester as part of our shopping (and photo processing) trip. I had placed my order with Stephen for a skinny latte and a raspberry and white chocolate muffin (one cancels the other doesn't it?), taken the bags and gone to find a table amongst the hoards of folks wanting coffee and shelter from the rain.

Stephen came by and dropped off the two coffees, then went back for the rest....a coke and a toastie for him. Wait a minute...something was missing! He'd only gone and forgotten to get my muffin, the swine!! The line was huge so there wasn't even any point in sending him back to get me one.

I was FORCED to go shoe shopping to get over my disappointment. I got some really cute shoes....one pair of leopard print ballet pumps, one pair of bronze pumps and one pair of gorgeous high-heeled brogues with a very 20's vibe which I thought would go just marvellouslywith my collection of golfing jumpers. 

Oh, they are SO cute!! My newest additions to the collection...

He did go above and beyond the call of duty later on. The weather had been very changeable - sunny one minute, pouring with rain the next - and we had decided during a sunny moment to get the grill on. Of course, by the time we actually came to fire it up it was absolutely pouring with rain. The little superstar actually manfully grabbed an umbrella and went outside to grill dinner anyway. The brave little soldier.... he was getting rather wet, but he didn't complain...much! Only at the lack of beer being ferried out to him.... but there was no way I was getting soaked too!!

It's raining, it's pouring...but Stephen is still out there flipping burgers!

Gorgeous photos of the happy couple

I have finally, finally finished the wedding album! Yay!! Here's a few of the beautifully retouched photos. Stephen is available for Weddings, Parties, Christenings....all at very reasonable rates!

Do ya like good music? Yeah, yeah!

One thing I am LOVING about being back is the easy access to contemporary music. I was sitting e-mailing in the kitchen with the radio on and making notes of all the songs I need to download to my ipod. Its quite a list! Most of the radio stations have a really up to date playlist based around the top 40 with a few older songs thrown in for happy reminiscing purposes. The radio stations that we listened to in the US tended to be based around the top 40 of 30 years ago with a few contemporary songs thrown in to stop us turning over.

Of course, the top 40 at the moment is slightly skewed by the addition of 20 Michael Jackson songs. We were listening to the chart countdown whilst driving back from Ludlow and had to keep turning the radio over as amongst the great MJ songs were a few of the less great - namely Ben and Dirty Diana. Argh! Not a highpoint!!

I want to keep my green fields and lovely views...

Our little village is in uproar. There has been a planning application submitted to build a private trailer park to accommodate gypsy families on a field just at the outskirts of the village - right across the road from my house. Whilst understanding of the need for this type of site, in this case I am very definitely a NIMBY! Actually, I'd be opposed to any building over there no matter what the purpose...given the choice between looking out over buildings or tree-lined fields filled with sheep, give me the fields anytime!

There was a Parish Council meeting on Tuesday which was absolutely packed out. Opposition to the development is pretty strong and people were putting forward their objections about maintaining the gap between Malvern and our village to maintain our rural identity, the unsuitability of the roads for access to this site, etc etc. All was going calmly until someone stood up and accused everyone there of racism as people kept mentioning gypsies. Erm, hello...the official planning application was entitled "Mobile home site for Gypsy Families"... what were folks supposed to be discussing? One chap took the accusation particularly badly (which was the aim of the accuser) and I did think there might be a punch up at one point, but everyone else handled it well. The official title of the application was pointed out to him, along with the fact that ANY development of this area would be met with the same objections (in fact an equestrian centre was opposed for the same reasons a few months ago). What a to do!

A new toy

We got a new toy yesterday. An iMac! Yay! I managed to get about 30 minutes on it before Stephen threw me off and hogged it for the rest of the evening. I think I may have to get up around 5am if I actually want to use it....

We bought it so that we could do photo-editing properly as it was a bit of a struggle on the laptop with the weeny screen and the slightly inadequate memory. This has Terrawotsits of disk space and RAM and absolutely flies. Which is just as well as we still have the 3500 photos we took on our South Western vacation to sort through. I still think there are some I haven't properly looked at.... This could be our lifetimes work!!

Mmmmm...Reeces

I got a lovely surprise when I got into work on Monday. There was a box on my desk which had come airmail from the USA and it was full of Reeces Peanut Butter cups and Reeces Pieces (or Peeces?). What a treat! It was the only American candy worth eating and its rather like Marmite in peoples reaction to it - you either love it or hate it! It was a gift from Gracy, my American counterpart - now thankfully on the mend from her argument with the hood of the taxi cab!

We spoke today and were laughing at the fact it was 'lets all moan at Kerry' week. The Reeces really helped! There is nothing like a big mouthful of peanut butter and chocolate to soothe the urge to go Postal.... Gracy - you have saved a lot of folks as well as my mind! Thank you!