Long weekend cancelled!

Well, I'we just had an extra long weekend as I had Friday off as well as today. The plan was to go camping in Cheshire. The site was booked and everything but on Thursday morning we had some (fairly torrential) rain and the forecast wasn't good for the rest of the weekend. Chris got chickened out and decided that he didn't want to go, so that meant I couldn't either. The big tent is impossible to put up single-handedly.

The worst of it is, ever since Thursday afternoon the weather has been glorious. It has been a bit breezy but lovely, warm and sunny. perfect camping weather. Mrs Jarman, from the campsite, rang up on Saturday to find out why we hadn't turned up and I had to apologise on Chris' behalf. He claimed he couldn't ring and cancel the booking because he couldn't find the "big book" but when I looked, it was in the wooden box where it is supposed to be. Needless to say that someone was in the doghouse!

Anyway, the weekend didn't turn out to be too bad. We managed to get quite a few jobs out of the way and yesterday we went to Stapley and got a 3 more baby kois for the fish tank. They were named Tango, Bluey and Custard. Can anybody guess the colours??!

Fantastic news; it passed!

Yes, I did get the full traffic lights of forms but in the end; it was the green one that conts. The red one was only for the leaking CV boot, which I knew about from the summer health check. I had already bought a replacement which they fitted for me.

The amber form was for an oli leak from the filter. The mechanic said that it might only be what Chris didn't wipe off when he changed the oil and filter last weekend. We checked the oil and it hasn't gone down any and there is no evidence of any leaks neither on the drive nor at my parking space at work.

I feel a lot better about my trusty ol'Jap after all.

more Car problems!

Yesterday morning, just after seven, I got a text from Chris asking me to put his car on charge, using the camping lead. That sounded ominous as my car was parked behind it on the drive. I rushed up to have a look from the window. No his car wasn't on the drive but half-way up the street.

It appeared that he couldn't get it to start so he pushed it in order to jump start it but still no avail. Must have just dumped it there and taken the bike instead.

Muggins got the job of first searching through all the camping stuff to find the lead only to find it wasn't long enough. I started to push the car back towards the house with immense difficulty but one of our neighbours drove past and stopped to help me.

Eventually we got it close enough for the lead to reach the battery charger. By now the car was partly across the road as the back wheel had touched the kerb and refused to line up any better.

As you can imagine, by now I was fuming with the blooming thing. I had to go work so I left the keys with another neighbour who said he would push it into the drive later. That was very good of him. I am definitely ready to get shut of that thing now. No wonder I have always hated old bangers and this one doesn't behave any better.

Can't wait to see how mine will behave on Saturday; fingers crossed!

Cars

On Saturday we took both the cars in for a "Free summer health check". A year has passed by since my disastrous MOT last year, so I thought it might be a good idea to take advantage of this offer. We had to buy the local newspaper to collect tokens to get it and booked them in.

Whilst the cars were at the garage we walked around the surrounding are and came across a lovely Chinese supermarket which we didn't know existed. They sold all sorts of oriental food and a lot of stuff we had never seen before but it all looked very interesting. We bought a few bits and pieces but will definitely going back to buy more soon.

Went to collect the cars an hour later and got the verdicts. Mine has a CV boot leaking and needed an engine flush and oil + filter change.

Chris' car had all sorts of things wrong with it and at the bottom of the sheet of paper the mechanic had written "I think the driver of this vehicle should consider having it towed away". He had to sign a disclaimer form to be allowed to bring it home.

We proceeded to go to a different garage to book mine in for the MOT for next Saturday and ask them to fit the CV boot. Chris did the engine flush and changed the oil and filter himself despite of the horrible weather. I am now hoping that the car should be OK and I will get my green form.

Sunday afternoon we went to look at vans as one would be more useful and Chris' car is not worth spending any more money on. His nephew, who is a a mechanic, thinks that he ought to sell it whilst there is still some MOT left on it and use the money towards the deposit on a van.

There aren't that many places locally that sells vans but we came across some Vauxhall Combo diesels which we think would be just about perfect but Chris wasn't ready to commit himself yet.

Not too bad, overall

Well weekend has been and gone. Saturday stayed dry until about 7pm, but still managed to catch some of my washing, which was still out. Sunday was ok, but there were some showers throughout the day and in the end I had to tumble dry the last of my washing. Overall, it was much better than it has been but nowhere near the "fine weather" we were promised. When is summer coming?

Looking less hopeful

It is 16.30 on Friday afternoon and the sun is out this moment in time but it's still not looking very hopeful for us to get this fine weather, which was promised earlier in the week.

Throughout the day we have had showers and the sky is still looking bleak. :-(

Shocking News!

Tonight's weather forecast started with the sentence: "Prepare yourselves for some shocking news". That turned out to be the fact that there is 70% chance of fine weather for the weekend. Wow, can we even remember what that means anymore? With half of England suffering from flooding in various areas due to all the rain we have been having the last 4 weeks; it was truly "shocking news".

We are quite lucky ourselves as we live on top of a bank so flooding has not really been a problem here but some parts of the country has had devastating floods. It is hard to imagine what it must be like to lose absolutely everything you have and have your house soaked in mud, raw sewage and slime. Eyuk!

One woman in Sheffield lived in a bungalow, like us and she told the media how she saved all precious belongings and memories of her husband who died two years ago, only to be totally ruined by the floods that submerged her bungalow. When the national news broadcasted that; I cried and I daresay, so did many others too.

Anyway, at least I can look forward to the weekend, which does remain to see whether it indeed is fine. I'll let you know.

Hoar Cross Hall

Last weekend I spent at the luxuorious spa hotel, Hoar Cross Hall for Sioned and Anna's hen party. If you are interested here's the link to find out more http://www.hoarcross.co.uk/.

Here are some of my photos from the unforgettable event.

These photos are from my room called "Princess Florentina" with a king-size bed for myself.

This is us having a dinner in the Ball Room.

And here is the happy couple themselves.

Anna and Sioned

How lucky were we?

Anybody who watched any footage from Glastonbury 2007 will know that the conditions were horrendous. 42 people were injured due to slipping in the mud and one person died. The rain was relentless throughout the event. Even Shirley Bassey had to do an emergency landing.

I have just returned from a smashing camping holiday in Cheshire. The weather for us was also a total wash-out but, who cares? It didn't make any difference to the conditions on our site.

The holiday started with us going to Northwich to visit the Anderton Boat lift. We took a trip on a glass roofed river boat through the lift and along the river and back again. It was a faboulus trip despite the rain.

The next day we went to Joddrel Bank Communications Centre. It is somewhere we always wanted to go, but never got around to it. We booked in and Adam from the American Clubhouse shouted "Fancy seeing you here". It was amusing but somehow I managed to miss the the Brighter Futures minibus on the car park. They had taken some of the members for an outing.


The following day was spent at an Engine Rally. That was a great day browsing around 1000s of stalls and all kinds of steam engines.

At the rally we saw the biggest motorhome that could possibly run on British Roads. Obviously American, but still quite spectacular. Just check out the size in comparison to the car an caravan in front of it,

After that, we went to the famous market and car boot sale at Chelford. It was enormous. All kinds of stuff for sale, yet we didn't have the room in the car to buy much :-( .


Our last day, which we spent in Macclesfield, was very, very wet. Some of the day was spent in a fantastic, authentic Mexican restaurant that we came accross. It was quite pricey but we had a lunch-time special which was somewhat affordable. oooh, it was scrumptious though!!! Here is a sample of the menu, you'll see what I mean when I said pricey.



In between the showers, we also visited Knutsford and found this facinating cushion in the window of a shop. Can you believe it that it is all made of sheer thights, felt and wool and it cost £190.00. I'll get two of them, shall I?




On the day of leaving, we couldn't believe our luck. Glorious sunshine, warm, gentle wind and a totally dry tent and gazebo. What more could one ask for? Ou Carbon footprints for this holiday must have been quite close to zero as the car runs on cooking oil and everything else was recycled (ie bought second-hand). It is nice to know that apart from a pleasant holiday, we have done our little bit to save the world as well.

Re-take of Exam

Yesterday, was the time to re-take the exam that I failed last spring. It soon came around, didn't it? Almost half of the class failed one or the other of the two exams and sadly, some failed both. Majority of those couldn't face to re-take the exam, so there were only a handful of us who braved the task.

I suffered really badly with the nerves this time; didn't sleep all night. My colleague Carol was one of those unfortunate souls who failed both, so in order to support her, I went with her to the college and waited in the cafe whilst she did the first one.

When she returned, she and the others with her, unamously thought that the questions this time were much worse than the ones in March, which certainly didn't help me feel any better. They only had a half an hour break and then it was time to do the second one which I failed.

Something amuzing happened; I had taken my little black, nodding cat, Betty, with me to gives us luck, so I sat her on my desk, so that she could sit there nodding at me. One of the teachers got up an came along to my desk and picked up Betty and studied her as if she thought I had stuffed bits of cheating paper on her or sumat. Does a middle-aged woman really come across as a cheating sort of person?

I'm hoping that Betty brought us some luck as, in my opinion, the questions didn't seem as bad as they were before. I think I could understand what they were asking for, so that is a great help. Doesn't mean that I passed though. I now have to wait for the results, which I'm predicting to come around middle of August.

Creatures in the night

As you already know, Chris has gone to the Isle of Man TT races, so I have been on my own with the cats. Everything has been going fine without any problems....until last night.

I was up late as usual, had a couple of cans, half-watched a film on ITV4 and chatted on the net. At half past midnight, I thought it was time to go to bed, so I goes in the bathroom and started to clean my teeth. Suddenlly I turned around towards the sink, when I saw it....

A horrific, fat, hairy and very black, 8 legged creature sitting there right on top of the sink. I screamed so loud it made teazer run out of the room, with me in tow. I run outside with nothing on my feet and didn't stop until I was faced with gate. In the rush I hadn't even picked up the car keys so I had no idea what I was going to do, but I knew no way was I going back into the house.

Eventually, I noticed that Dorothy's light was on so I braved doing her special ring and got her to open the door. Luckily she only had one look at me standing there crying, so she knew what it was immediately. She grabbed a cloth and told me to stay in her house whilst she went in and got it. Apparently, the thing was so fat that it bled. Doesn't bear to think about, does it? Dorothy is a true gem throughout. X

No luck, again

Last week I had an email from Seetickets.com to say that there was a few more Glastonbury tickets for sale. I did get the impression that it were a very few as it said that they were card cancellations.

When Sunday morning came, I was really excited because, I finally got through to the website within 40 minutes. The site said that all the entrance tickets had gone but it was showing some (maybe only one) coach tickets available.

I decided that, although, we didn't really want to go by coach, I'd get them anyway because at least we will get in to the festival. I put in all our details and got to the stage where I was going to pay for them when the message "All festival tickets are now sold out" came through.

You can't believe how gutted I was, to get so close and still not end up with tickets. Chris is still at the Isle of Man, so I rang and told him and we were both almost in tears. He seemed to take it slightly better as he is convinced that we are going to win tickets instead, with a slogan competition in conjunction with Millets, that his brother John has done for us.

I ended up going to the annual canal festival with mum. She had never been before, so it was something different for her. The weather was absolutely gorgeous (as it has been all week now) so we had a fabulous time and afterwards we had tea at mum's; a lovely smoked salmon and herring salad. Scrumptious!

Girlie weekend

Last bank holiday weekend I went camping with a girl from work and her partner. It was supposed to be 5 of us, but due to the weather, two of them cried off. Anyway, the 3 of us had a faboulus time.

The rain wasn't too bad at all; it only drizzled but the wind was quite strong. I had put up the gazebo to give us more room but on Sunday morning I did have to take it down otherwise it would have blown down and got damaged.

Because of the lack of space in the main part of the tent we decided to spend the afternoon in the local pub. We played pool (which I haven't played for 12 years) so I got thrashed. :-(

In the evening we decided to go for a curry since we couldn't cook outside because of the rain and we didn't have enough room to cook in the tent. The place we chose was nice and the food was excellent.

Prior to that we had planned to go back to the pub to take part in a quiz. It was £1 per head and this included oatcakes with cheese and chips. we had forgotten all about the food and stuffed ourselves in the restaurant.

We didn't win the quiz but we did very well with it. It was a great evening and overall a good weekend. I would love to do it again, in summer. We'll have to see.

Exam Results!

On Friday I had my exam results returned. I was over the moon ecause Chris told me over the phone that there was a certificate with it, so I assumed that I had passed. Consequently, I went around telling eveyone that I had passed only to get home and find out that I hadn't.

What happened was that I passed one part of the exam, which is why they sent me the certificate, but the other part I failed and have to re-sit. I was gutted, and it was so embarrasing having to tell everyone that I got it wrong. At least I wasn't on my own as quite a few people failed both parts so I'm lucky that I only failed one.

Next date for the exam is on 13th June.

Rain, rain and more rain

The British weather has been really living up to it's reputation. It has been raining non-stop for 8 days. Luckily it's still fairly warm (around 15 to 19 degrees) but it is soooooo miserable and this morning the weather forecaster said it was going to get worse before it gets better.

Chris is going camping at the Isle of Man next Wednesday for nearly three weeks, so we are of course hoping that it will be better by then.

I'm going camping in Leek with a girl from work and her friends. There is going to be five of us all-together so it should be good whatever the weather. Really looking forward to it.

How boyish or girlish are you?

You Are 60% Boyish and 40% Girlish

You are pretty evenly split down the middle - a total eunuch. Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes. You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don't actively fight them. You're just you. You don't try to be what people expect you to be.

How Boyish or Girlish Are You?

What gender is your brain?

Your Brain is 27% Female, 73% Male

You have a total boy brain Logical and detailed, you tend to look at the facts And while your emotions do sway you sometimes... You never like to get feelings too involved

What Gender Is Your Brain?

Hospital for tests

I went back for my appointment to the doctor and she put me through as an emergency to the hospital for checks; not because she thought there was anything to worry about, but quite the contrary. She wanted to prove to me that there was no need to worry but as soon as possible. The hospital appointment has been booked for Friday the 11th which apparently is going to take a good while, but at the end of it all I will know for sure what it is.

It's still there!

No change to the lump yet after 3 and a half days on the antibiotics.

Lump Scare

Last night I found a small lump in my right breast. Consequently, I couldn't sleep all night and felt dreadful this morning. I am lucky that my doctors operate an open surgery, where you can just call in and wait for your turn and eventually you will get seen to.

It took 3 hours of waiting, but it was worth it. The female doctor seemed fairly confident that it is just a blocked milk gland. She gave me some antibiotics and told me to make an appointment for next Monday. She is expecting it to disappear before that but told me to come back if it hasn't.

Fingers crossed that it does disappear.