Spooky

While making mamilein's birthday collage I was struck by how similar we both looked as bebes.

The more I looked at the photo, I realised that I look more like mamilein's bebe photo now than I did as a bebe.

Spooky isn't it?  Mamilein and I couldn't stop talking about it, on Skype, when papa came and said "of course you look the same, you're bloody related".

It's My Birthday!

"Happy 35th Birthday!"  G.O whispered at 12.01am this morning, I smiled sleepily and then went back to sleep.  Only to sit bolt upright and say "What do you mean? 35!" 

"Yes, that's what app on my phone says,!"  He replied, "I'm 38!" He looked sheepish and a little confused.  He is 34 and I am 3 years (4 years now, until November) older than he is, what is confusing about that? "Ah he said, stupid app!"

G.O made up for it though in the morning (the real morning, not stupid o'clock) by presenting me with my gift (a Kindle HD, I have wanted one for a while now, I have too many books, and yes you  can have too many books!) and a beautiful heartfelt card. 

 

Last year I didn't receive a card, I was told it was at work" and that he would get it to me when he returned to work.  I never got the card that said "Happy Birthday to my wife" on my first birthday as someone's wife.  This is still a sore spot as you can tell.

 

We lounged around the house, I replied to Facebook and text messages and Skyped my parents in Germany.  The we decided to go out for a spot of lunch.  I have always wanted to go to the Crazy Bear restaurant in Stadhampton.  It is a wonderful kooky place with a bear hidden in the ceiling and reception housed in a double decker red bus.  When we arrived I looked everywhere for someone to talk to but the place was deserted, just as I was about to give up a man emerges from the floor, I should have looked down!  "We have no places available all weekend, you should have booked!"  "We were just passing anyway!" I lied. 

 

Just when I thought my fate was to go to the all you can eat Chinese buffet and partake in a spot of ten pin bowling, like a spotty teenager (I love bowling, I'm just being dramatic) I remembered a pub that we had visited years ago.  It have a lovely garden with lots of nooks and crannies, you can sit around the table behind a hedge and never be seen by another sole again.  G.O couldn't remember a thing, even as we pulled into the car park he wasn't convinced he had ever been there before.  As we walked through the garden and he saw the  building he said "I do remember this place we sat over there!" 

The place hadn't changed much, it has a very chilled, calm vibe and as we arrived we were greeted by the landlady who showed us to a table tucked away in a nook by the, thankfully unlit, fire.  The menu was simple,  I can't cope when there is a lot of choice, and they had a set menu to choose from.  I went for the dressed crab and Sea bass, with crushed potatoes and G.O  had the risotto and belly pork.  (Simple menu but it still took the pair of us ten minutes to remember what had to eat).  We sat and chatted, putting the world to rights as only we can, we made some exciting decisions (I won't share just yet)  one of which was that we would make the Mole Inn our new local, everyone needs a place that they always go to, Pizzeria Venezia anybody?

 

 

Last Week of summer

When I proposed leaving the little village school one of the benefits of being a supply teacher was that we could go on holiday when everyone was back at school. 

We had intended to go away for the last week of summer, but then I agreed to take a long term (three month) supply post in a RC school in Oxford. 

As we couldn't go away when the prices were low, we decided to just relax at home together and go on the occasional day trip.

We started with a visit to Halifax.  G.O studied the finer art of cookery at Halifax New College where he; in his own words, "Cooked splendid and magnificent meals.  Proper food Northern style!"

We also made the most of our National Trust and Blenheim Palace passes.

ALS ice bucket challenge

I finally took my turn with the MND I've bucket challenge and it was freezing.

I did a whole preamble with a bottle of wine, pretending to just have a drink and then I dumped the bucket of water over myself. It was absolutely freezing.

An age old invite - first meeting

 

 

Hey Dirk/Girls,

 

It was good to catch up the other weekend, albeit brief!  Please find attached an invite to my Oxford pub crawl leaving do on Sat 27th October.  Kick off is at 3pm, though you can come for as long or short as you like.  You're welcome to crash the night in our living room, though it might be a little tight if you're all coming.  The best way to get to Oxford is via coach (Oxford Tube from London - http://www.oxfordtube.com/) or rail from London Paddington.  Give me a call on my mobile if you need anymore info or email me bharvey83@gmail.com.

 

Very much hope you can make it!!!

 

Thanks,

Ben

I was sorting out my Hotmail email when I came across this.  It's the invite to the leaving party in Oxford where I met G.O, not many people have the invite to meet the love of their life.

 

 

Going to the hotel and gonna get married

Well today was G.Os brothers wedding and what a lovely and long day it was.  As I type this I am sat on the bed in the hotel having decided to hand in the towel as it were. 

I am officially notyoung  anymore.  The young ones are bouncing around to lots of retro songs in an ironic way, although I remember it the first time round. I had a bit of a boogie, but all I really wanted to do was curl up on the sofa with a nice film and a cup of tea.  Match of the Day was close enough.

The day it self was very, very emotional.  Everyone shed a tear and no one made it through their speech without blubbing. Everybody couldn't believe that after eleven years of courtship the Posh and Becks of Tod had tied the knot.  Thank goodness we don't have to follow that wedding.  It was amazing and planned in less than three months.

The bride looked amazing, I have seen some lovely brides but Saus out does them all.

Her dress was very much in the vintage Hollywood glamour style, off white tulle with bits of bling all over it.

It looked very heavy and fair play to her for the sky high Jimmy Choos she chose to wear.

The wedding was held in a hotel in a village just outside Clitheroe. From the outside it was a nice stone building. Inside it was modern day hunting chic, lots of silver stags and purple tartan.  The ceremony room had recently been renovated and was very light and airy.  

My outfit for the day was a birthday gift from my parents and I have been told I looked wonderful, I felt fabulous.

It was the loveliest wedding I have been to in a very long time.  It will take something special to top this one.  I would like to take the opportunity to wish the new Mr and Mrs Murray many years of happiness.  

A smashing time

I had decided to go to Bicester Avenue to do some window shopping.  When I got a phone call from Blenheim Palace, as you do! It was the pottery place were we had made the gift for G.O's brother wedding on Friday. I had been concerned that I hadn't heard from them.

"Unfortunately as your plate was in the oven, the stilt above fell and your plate has smashed into three pieces.  The date on the plate is the 22nd, is that when you needed it by?" 

What?  What are we supposed to do now?  I had been concerned that perhaps it wasn't finished, but this, was such an inconvenience.  What were we going to do?

"If it's okay, we can make you another one, but it won't be ready until early next week!"  What could I say? I agreed and then called G.O who took the news of the broken plate badly, to say he was cross was a bit of an understatement.

I couldn't understand why he was cross, it wasn't intentional and couldn't be helped.  Then he reminded me that last year we didn't have a birthday gift for his brother because it had smashed on the ride up.

I explained that they would still get a plate just a little bit later than expected.  We also had a coupe of little things to give them.  Roll on Friday, I can't wait to get my glad rags on, G.O always looks super smart in a suit.

Update

We printed off the photos of us making the plate and the photo of the broken plate itself and then framed the collage to give to Mr & Mrs Murray(4)

Lovely Lovely People

This has been the summer of visitations and felicitations, after all of the stresses and strains of working in the little village school I made a conscious effort to go and see the people that I love and who make me feel good about myself.
Some of them are near by and I see on a regular basis, but some special people live a little bit further away, so seeing them requires lots of planning and forethought.  Whoever I am spending time with I always enjoy myself and wish I could stay longer.

This Old Dutch

"I know  a place where we can go for lunch!"  Famous last words.  

G.O didn't want to have his photo taken on the tube in front of everyone.  He did smile eventually, but I don't want to use that photo, cruel I know.

One day G.O will learn not to listen to me.  However while getting there may always, and I mean always be a chore, the end result is most definitely worth it.  This time I wanted to take him to a Dutch pancake shop I had been to with a couple of friends last year.  Now I knew that it was in Kensington but I couldn't quite remember how to get there.  This is never a problem as far as I am concerned as long as I know a general direction, soon enough either I will recognise the place or I will whip out my GPS.  This time I did a bit off both.

We start our journey as always (these days) by car driving to Hillingdon and parking in the all day car park there.  Then we board either the Metropolitan line (most of the time this is the train we take) or the Piccalilly line (if we are heading for the West End).  Both trains are in my opinion a 'trek and a half' but I have lived along both routes and so they are quite nostalgic for me.

I have fond memories of living in Rayners Lane - photo from 2011

Now I usually have a general idea of where we were heading and can plan a route in my head, glancing at the line station stops (whatever those things are called) on the train. Occasionally, I get  a little flustered, the old grey cells aren't what they use to be (as you can tell) and I need to consult and peruse, for quite some time, a map. 

It was while doing this, after I had reassured G.O I knew exactly where we were going (I Did kind of) that I realised that we need to get to Kensington High Street and not, as I had been heading towards, Kensington South.  In hindsight, this is not an issue, but we were trapped on trains that were packed with lots of pushy people and I just couldn't take it any more (sadly I am no longer a City Girl).

I proposed a plan to walk from Knightsbridge to Kensington, it would only be about ten minutes, (nearly forty five by the time we got there) this, on any other day, would have been fine.

I decided not to take the scenic route (the household cavalry barracks, is one depressing building), we would get glimpses of the scenic route through the building occasionally, but then it started to rain, just a drizzled at first but then it became a torrential  downpour and to make maters worse G.O's orange umbrella broke.  We needed to get there fast.

Like an oasis in the desert we rounded a corner and there in front of us in all its majestic glory was the Royal Albert Hall.  G.O stopped and took some happy snaps and this buoyed us on for the rest of the journey.

A little graphic of our journey, in green, with caricatures

Finally we reached 'My Old Dutch' a gorgeous little pancake shop, it was like a little piece of pancake heaven. I couldn't quite remember what I had had the last time but I knew that it was good.

I convinced G.O to share a couple of starters with me do we had Kaasballen and Frites, there is nothing nicer than Dutch frites and mayo.  Then I decided to have a chilli con carne pancake, G.O chose a modest ham and spinach pancake.

We they arrived they were enormous, I knew straight away I had made a serious error when I ordered the starter.  I struggled to finish the pancake. As delicious as it was, oh my word it was yummy, each mouthful was starting to cause me pain.  I started to slow down, the waitress told me that they didn't close until 10pm so I could take my time (it was half past four).  After half an hour it became really uncomfortable, I had new jeans on and they were tight. 

It was definitely a case of having eyes bigger than my belly, and with my Buddha Belly that is saying something.  I didn't eat anything for the rest of the day, but I know one thing for sure, I will be going back, those pancakes are delicious.

Pottering around Blenheim

My little Train spotter x

G.O and I are making the most of our Blenheim Palace, we decided that as he didn't start work until 4pm today and the weather was grotty we would go and have a look around the house.  We arrived and I managed to park Astrid (the car) as close to the house as we were allowed, by squeezing it next to a tree. No two mile trek to get back to the car when we are ready to go home.  We headed up to the big house chatting away, happy with my craftiness and forethought (one step ahead).   

We love train rides, just not ones without a return journey.

We passed the train tracks, G.O loves trains (real ones, not toy ones, but a train is a train) so I said, if it was still in the station as we approached we should take a ride.  In my mind I though it would be lovely to take a ride around the palace and gardens before we went in to the house. 

 

So we hopped on board and paid the grand ole fee of 50p,and headed off around Blenheim.  I was very excited and videoed the entire journey, as we passed the car we gave it a wave, then we went through a tunnel and every one gave a 'wooo'.

Model of Woodstock Village

 

I was just getting comfortable when the train began to slow down as it pulled into a station outside the children's garden.  It took a while before I realised that this wasn't a trip around the palace and gardens, or even a round trip, we realised that our destination was the children's garden and it would be nearly an hour before the train would go back up to the big house. 

It was amazing

We reasoned that there was probably a way to get to the house from the gardens, so we would go in anyway.  As we walked though the gate I saw a sign for a butterfly house, then I saw a sign for an adventure playground, then a mini village then I saw the sign for the maze.  I was beside myself with excitement.  I had only every been in one maze and that was so easy I found my way through in about ten minutes. 

I got lost, but some how managed to win!

This maze however wasn't going to be worked out in ten minutes.  There were so many routes that led to the exit, some involved longer distances but you still managed to get to the exit quicker as the shorter routes had unavoidable detours.  I tried my best to follow G.O, but I would blink and he would disappear. I was slightly concerned that he had to be at work and I was lost in a maze, but he didn't seem at all bothered. At one point I was calling him and from the other side of a hedge I heard him giggling and shuffling away, sod!  Eventually I reached the statue at the end of the maze, which was when I realised that for all his bravado and giggling, I had beaten him.

Not a big butterfly lover, and these were BIG butterflies

I was thrilled and made sure he knew it, must to his annoyance.  To calm him down, not really,  I suggested we visit the butterfly house, to which G.O looked at me with concern.  I don't really like real butterflies, in theory they are beautiful, graceful creatures, in reality they flap around you and for some reason they always land on me.  I managed to make it through the butterfly house with only one butterfly landing on me.  I didn't freak out when I saw about half a dozen butterflies the size of my hand and a couple that from a distance looked like leaves.

They look so lovely in pictures, it's just they are so fast in  real life.

We left the butterfly house and as we started to go into the vestibule I saw a photo that I recognised.  It was of the Duke of Marlborough and three of the children from the little village school. As part of a class project they had designed a poster and won a prize.  Part of the prize was to go to the Palace and have tea with the Duke before they collected their prize.  There for all to see was the photo, part of me felt proud that I was connected to the school.

Earlier as I had waited for G.O I had spotted a building called Pottering about, I wandered in a saw that it was a crafty workshop.  I had wanted to take a closer look but I had seen G.O heading off to the model village, so no pottering for me, I thought.

As we left the vestibule it brought us, quite fortuitously into the workshop.  We spotted a plate similar to the plate the children of the little village school had made for us when we got married.

It was the that I had a brilliant, even if I saw so myself, idea.  We would choose and decorate a plate for G.O brother's wedding, we would ask one of the ladies to write their names and wedding date onto the plate and that would make up part of our gift to them.  So we got to work, I am no Emma Bridgewater but I think that the plate looked rather lovely.  We kept the design simple, different colour and sized spots, and were both able to take part in the process.  We even edge the plate to give it a more professional finish.  We handed it in and now have to wait 7-10 days for it to be glazed and then we can collect it. That will be visit number three to Blenheim and we will be half way to getting out free visits.

We had an hour or so before G.O had to be at work so we stopped off at the garden café, normally its just a case of tea and scones for me, but I was famished and they had pizza. So we order to small pizzas, not expecting much from a shed kitchen I was pleasantly surprised when they delivered to the table, two of the yummiest pizzas I have had in a long while. 

Plate decorated, pizza scoffed, maze defeated (next time I think we should do a time trial) we set off for the car.  It was then that the realisation dawned on me.  My earlier attempt at nifty parking and forward planning,  had in fact meant that we were now as far away from Astrid as it was possible to get, only parking in the drive of the palace would have been further away.  Oh well it wasn't that far to walk....