Personal
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My garden has been thriving of late, with the tomato plants growing so big their bamboo stakes were useless and I resorted to propping them up with chairs. Flowers have been appearing on the sweet peas and the two gigantic tomato bushes (calling them plants is doing them an injustice). Aphids were plenty but so were the wee ants which seemed to be keeping damage to a manageable level and I was day dreaming about the salads I could make with my home grown lettuce and toms.
But disaster has now struck. This week has been a pretty punishing one, with several late nights and early starts thanks to work so the plants had been forgotten. This morning I opened the door to the outside world and found the neglect had taken its toll.
The once flourishing deep green lettuce has wilted to brown limp shreds, the coriander is yellow and my one producing tomato plant was unhealthy and limp. There was frantic splashing as water was hurriedly applied and I hope some of the damage may yet be undone.
Maybe it is too soon for a puppy......
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Ok this blog has been sadly neglected for many months, but I'll feeling more like correcting that than I have in a while so here goes....
For the last few months life has seemed either too busy or too slow to write about. Too much to do rather than write and then nothing to write about. But of course that isn't true.
Since August I've been to Ireland, France, Germany and even back to NZ, I've joined a footy team again (yay) and broken my hand (boo), sat three exams, been to a wedding, taken many baths and spent entire weekends doing nothing but Warcraft. Sounds like a lot when you put it like that.
The latest adventure on the list was the trip to NZ for Jen's wedding. My sister is at last happily married and it was a lovely day (pics here). A super 2 weeks in NZ and off work seems to have kick started my brain from its winter slumber and I'm waking up again.
So no promises to keep this very updated but it is a start. Even if its a fair bet that most of my blogs will involve footy, WOW and my very new and very small garden. (Huzzah for tomatos which actually have some taste!)
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James has rediscovered the joys of World of Warcraft and after only a few weeks hard grafting with his new Mage character is now a level 45. This has taken quite a few evenings and one might think I've been using my time wisely writing and blogging. But Sean Bean has been on the box. UKTV History have been doing re-runs of the 1990's series of 'Sharpe' and frankly what else is a girl to do?
Still its coming to an end just in time for the second series of 'Rome', the joint effort between HBO and the BBC. It is quite fantastic, American money thrown behind a british script and actors make for ripping viewing. Well worth watching. The first series leads up the the assassination of Julius Caeser and this next covers the power struggle following.
It is just as well the viewing has been good as the weather certainly hasn't been. One month into summer and we are struggling to get over 20 degrees. The UK has had the wettest June on record with thousands forced from their homes up north. London has missed most of it but at the moment the Wimbledon Tennis Open is on so the weather has truly packed up. On Tuesday this week a freak thunderstorm flooded main roads and the hail was banked up ankle deep. I've been rained on every day this week - Ah a British summer. (James' photo of the hail from our flat).
Still finish on a laugh as they say and I've just come across this in the Harpers Wine and Spirit magazine. A new series of Manga comics devoted to the subject of fine wine is proving popular in Japan. Kami no Shizuku ('The Drops of God') had this tasting note:
"The aroma is like a rock concert, with notes of butterflies dancing over a pond and an aftertaste of Jesus Christ and his disciples."
Damn I'd love to try that wine.
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Its been something I've been meaning to do for donkeys years, every one has 'learn a language' on their 'to do at some point' list. My language to learn is French. I've had a notion it would be a handy language to get a grip on ever since I started working in wineries.
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Well thanks to the free trial on offer after their 'Burning Crusades' release, I've wasted most of my weekend playing World of Warcraft (WOW) again. Impressively my character was still on their system. They say they keep them for at least six months, but as it has been a year since my subscription lapsed I was expecting to have to start all over again.
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Today I was a happy cyclist. My rides to work and back felt the safest and fastest yet. This is because I rode in the middle of the road and made drivers think about me. The fact I was there and made myself an issue on the road meant they had to allow for me as they drove.
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Yes another birthday to add on to an ever increasing number. James and I have been celebrating by eating copious amounts of chocolate. Apparently the Montezuma shop close to James work had a sale on Friday and I am certainly not complaining. Beautiful, if normally expensive, dark chocolate.
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With James needing to take some holiday before the end of March, we each took a week off work to see what mischief we could get up to. The plan for a tour of the battlefields of northern France was out, partly because we'd need to hire a car but mostly because neither of us could work up the energy to look into and book it.
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I'd very carefully put my photos up on Flickr set to a privacy level viewable only by 'friends and family' as listed on Flickr when I realised most of my friends and family weren't listed. So while it may look as though I haven't put any up since the middle of last year I did.... you just couldn't see them.
But you can now so go have a nose at some snow, some markets and dinosaurs.
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And fears that London will grind to a halt. Certainly when less than an inch fell two weeks ago the tube was a nightmare with passengars stuck for hours on trains due to frozen points. Being the pessimistic old bird that I am I checked the web at 7.30 expecting the worst. But none of the train services pages would load. The local BBC radio station travel report was so packed reporting on the chaos that the forgot to mention South West trains which serves Vauxhall station.