Life is good

So it's been a while. It's not that I haven't had the time to post anything, although it's obviously been very limited to brief moments in between baby demands. It's just I haven't had a lot to actually blog about. Every time I think of a suitably pithy topic, and make a mental note to remember to write about it, Gemma will roll over, or start gurgling, or require a nappy change and the thought goes out of my head never to return. Occasionally I have moments of slight guilt that I ought to be updating this blog at least as regularly as I do my baby's. But having said that, life is really too short to be worrying about stuff like that. And now she's 6 months old I am reminded every day how fast the days, weeks, months go by and to make the most of them at the time.

And oh we do! So life is good, really good. I have a beautiful, happy daughter who seems to love nothing more than making an unholy mess with any vegetable or fruit purees we put near her mouth, and who as I type is laughing and jigging up and down in a wonderfully contented sounding way in her door bouncer; we've just been on a fantastic family holiday - our first as a family - to Canada, where we were so lucky to have great friends who put us up and put up with us and made everything so easy and comfortable for us. We have our health, we have enough money (just...) to enjoy our lives and we have lovely families and friends to support us and laugh with us. I'm sure if I were back at work I wouldn't be quite so ready to blog about how great things are, but shhhh no talk about work until January and we still have the rest of the summer, autumn and winter to get through before then!

In other news, the garden is not too bad this year despite virtually no attention beyond an occasional mow of the lawn, and courtesy of the Childrens' Food Festival held near us a few weeks ago, we have a variety of veg on the go - chillies, tomatoes, dwarf french beans, aubergine and courgette. Caterpillars have had one of the bean plants already but the others seem to have escaped and I am especially interested to see if we can manage to get an aubergine from the plant we have. Almost all the hollyhocks flopped and broke after some hefty winds and rain recently but everything else is looking good and it will just teach me to stake them properly next year. In the house, we're getting our sash windows renovated next week and then the top room re-plastered the week after, which will bring us just about to the end of the refurbishments we've been doing since we moved in 5 years ago. We're spending the next few weekends catching up with old friends, grandparents are visiting next week and early August and Gemma gets underwater photos taken at swimming tomorrow. All in all, not a bad lot of things on the go!

33 weeks 1 day

Oh Chewie my darling. Thou giveth with one hand and taketh away with the other. The last 2 nights miraculously I've been able to sleep right through til 6am, not a loo trip in sight and waking up relatively refreshed. Thing is, I think the reason, blissful though this is, is because your knees seem to be wedged right up behind my ribs, and you're a bit higher up than you were, possibly meaning you're not squishing my bladder as much.

But my god does that hurt sometimes. In the mornings I'm mostly relatively comfortable but by about 2pm I can't sit properly without feeling totally constricted around my right ribs; and my upper back just under my right shoulder blade is absolute agony. This goes on for most of the rest of the day, until I can get to have a lie down - and that's not exactly possible at work. So I can imagine the next 2 weeks will be a bit hard to take until I go on leave, when my nesting instinct will apparently kick in (ha!) and I start scrubbing floors and cleaning the oven.

Anyway enough griping. The wriggling Chewie's doing (especially after the spicy pumpkin risotto earlier in the week, funnily enough) always makes me smile and Ali and I are getting more and more excited to meet him or her in 7 weeks or so. Last weekend we went up to Manchester to spend a few days with Stuart, Alison and Archie and also Alison and Liam, and Ali was over the moon to see both nephews at the same time. It was lovely to spend time with the family and see how much both boys have grown - Archie is a wee smiley treasure at about 7 and a half months, and Liam is looking amazingly grown up at 8 years old, especially when he spikes his hair with gel or holds his little cousin gently in his arms.

We loaded up the Golf for the journey home with pram, crib, baby bath, baby gym, and mountains of bags of clothes Archie's too big for. I don't think you can actually see the floor of what will be Chewie's room now. That's going to be a job for the next few weeks, sorting it all and putting it away - though if we ever have more than one child we'll have to bloody move house. Now the only thing I really have left to get sorted is the nappy situation - need to make my choice so the poor nipper has at least something to cover its bum when it comes home from the hospital!

29 weeks 6 days

Time for a new bump picture – quite some growth, or at least it feels like it to me, despite the fact that Chewie hasn’t generated any real weight gain in the last 2 or 3 weeks – that seems to have plateaued. Last Friday Ali and I went for a meal at the Crazy Bear in Stadhampton to celebrate my birthday (I have now gone up a whole age bracket whenever I fill in any forms – feeling distinctly middle aged…) and while waiting for our coats at the end of the night the manageress was chatting to us. When I told her my due date she expressed shock that I wasn’t due much earlier given my enormous size, which peeved me a little as most other folk say how neat the bump is. I suppose I was wearing a cardigan/shawl thing tied at the front of my bump so it could have given the impression of more size than was strictly true, plus of course I had just dined on a 3 course meal... Oh well. The food was gorgeous, and they even pandered to my pregnant lady demands to make a broad bean and pea risotto in a starter portion as I couldn’t choose any of the foie gras/soft cheese/pate options that littered the starter menu. We’ll definitely be going back there.

Looking at the picture below I realise I need a haircut too – better do that while I can still waddle into the hairdressers unaided...


Last week was our week off work and spending frenzy. It started off on great form with a weekend at my Mum and Dad’s in Leicester which was rounded off in fine style with a day spa visit to Ragdale Hall for me and Mum (her birthday present from us earlier in the year). This was soooooo relaxing – and actually streets ahead of how good I thought it might be, having remarkably never even had a facial before never mind a whole spa day. Slopping round in a fluffy robe all day having massages and facial treatments and a lovely lunch and a session in the pool was nothing short of heavenly. After I got home on the Tuesday Ali and I spent the rest of the week researching and purchasing all manner of stuff for the baby, mostly furniture for the room but a few other bits and bobs too. We also got the far end of the garden cleared and paved (well we paid a man to do it for us) in preparation for the new shed which was ordered yesterday – so in a few weeks we can remove all the garden tools, bikes etc that are cluttering up the nursery and top room and covered with a tarp outside, and get them all tidied away – thank god. When the nursery has a bit more stuff in it and actually looks like it’s ready for the baby I’ll post some pictures. Also last week the Golf came back with rear bumper fixed so I’m back driving a normal sized car, which feels a lot better.

So now I’m back at work, there are less than 6 weeks to go before my last day in the office, and I’m feeling very detached from it all. It was so nice to focus on ourselves and Chewie and preparing for his or her arrival in January that it’s taking quite some time for me to get back into the work mindset. Of course it isn’t helping when people keep telling me stories of such and such they know who gave birth 4, 5, 6 or more weeks before their due date. I do NOT want to go into labour while still at the office!

26 weeks

I gave my official maternity leave notification in at work today. Now it's all getting very real, as real as the list of projects I need to complete before I leave which unfortunately isn't getting any smaller. It's an odd feeling, speaking to project managers about activity and discussing media plans which somebody else will have to make sure are signed off after I've left. However, I still have enough weeks left (9 and a bit weeks before my last day, 8 and a bit working weeks [Ali and I have a week off in October] and counting, ohmygod) for it not to be too daunting. Yet.

Physically, as the bump gets bigger and heavier, so I become more unwieldy and uncomfortable. Can't get through the night without getting up for a wee any more (reminiscent of those early weeks) and can't sit in one place for more than about 40 minutes without the base of my spine screaming and my back aching. Restless legs in the evening have been ongoing for a while, apparently tonic water and / or bananas are meant to be good for this but so far it's been manageable. The maternity pillow is great now I've got used to it. Getting more tired again (early morning alarms, as it's now pitch dark at 5.55am, are becoming very hard to take).

Current battle is to try and retain some semblance of chillout time at weekends for the rest of the year. We've had a run of busy ones and until the end of October that looks like it'll continue, but November gets a bit easier and by December, my beached whale month, it's only antenatal classes to look forward to and then the waiting game starts.

We had our friends Matt and Nickiy over at the weekend for a trip to Cardiff to the Great British Cheese Festival. The day was good, though on a bit of a smaller scale from last year. As I wasn't allowed to consume either cider or soft / blue / unpasteurised cheeses it was a bit more abstemious for me than for the others but I did buy some very self indulgent Burnt Sugar fudge which is pure caramel sugar and cream and bloody scrumptious. In the evening I cooked a thai veggie curry and the talk turned to baby names. I won't bore you with all the ridiculous ones that the, erm, more drunken of the crew came out with but the upshot is that Ali is now calling the bump 'Chewie' short for Chewbacca. I'm in 2 minds on this, part of me thinks it's quite funny, the other part is a little concerned that it refers to an enormous hairy space monkey who also happens to be a boy. What if I have a little lady inside me? Sadly though I think this nickname will stick for the next 14 weeks.

Finally, we ordered some of these a while ago. The jungle ones arrived last week and I can't wait til we've furnished the baby's room so we can put them up!

Friends, family, garden and good intentions

Following on from the last post, what have we been up to with our nearest and dearest then.
Well, the weekend before our holiday we had Stuart, Alison and Archie to stay. We got some real smiles out of Archie and Stuart entertained us by demonstrating how his love of music has been inherited - Archie's current favourite band is Black Sabbath. Whenever Ozzy's dulcet tones and thumping guitars come on the stereo he kicks his little legs and pumps his arms and smiles and gurgles, and apparently no other band has quite this effect on him... We had a great day out in Oxford, after a delicious meal at Carluccios the girls went shopping while the boys enjoyed a few beers, though quite how Archie managed to lift the pint glass is beyond me, ho ho. All in all a chilled out few days enjoying good company and good food before our holiday kicked off, very pleasant indeed.

In the garden, our little plot has come on surprisingly well given that we were away for the best part of two weeks. We installed a timed soaker hose thing along the borders with some dripper attachments for the pots and the tomatoes (highly technical, but Ali did most of the hard work, I just squealed faintly whenever the hose threatened to squash one of my dahlia seedlings or a tender pansy) and this worked well - at least nothing had died when we got home. Actually we may not have needed to bother with the hose as there was quite a bit of rain which had battered the plants down so some emergency staking was in order. Somehow we've got some striking bright yellow coreopsis going great guns next to a hebe and a briar rose (didn't purchase it and it looks remarkably robust to have germinated from some random seed, so I can only assume it was in the garden when we moved in and has been dormant for 4 years, unlikely scenario though this is) and this had flopped all over the place so it's nicely propped up now. The dahlias are OK, the morning glory is starting to flower, the sunflowers are growing inches every day and the hollyhocks are of monstrous proportions. We've even got some blackcurrants that look almost ready enough to pick! The basil, however, which was in the kitchen, while not dead from dehydration did mostly get eaten by caterpillars and is possibly beyind saving. All in all though it's looking good out there.

My good intentions recently have mostly been to do with updating the blog more often, so not entirely successful there. Exercise-wise, we were on a walking holiday so this counteracted the scrummy Italian food and wine, but nothing else to report, though I did swim a bit in the hotel spa pool, albeit not very energetically. My next good intention is to get going on my knitting again and also to organise a renovation of our sash windows which will be costly but really does need doing. I love living in an old house but there is always something that needs fixing, renovating or generally tidying. The worst thing is we still have a pile of ashes and rubbish in the grate from our last fire of winter (probably from February or early March). What slatterns we are.

Long time no post

It does feel ages since I last posted and in fact this does appear to be my first post in May. Being as it's now 26th of the month that's not very good going.

I haven't even got the excuse that we've been too busy - the only thing that's graced our calendars this month really has been our trip to New York last week and weekend. I was out there with work for 4 days of meetings and conferences, and Ali came over and joined me on the Thursday. We hadn't been in the Big Apple together since our first romantic holiday together over 6 years ago, so it was lovely to be back. The weather wasn't that kind to us - tramping round Soho and Little Italy in the pouring rain isn't really having that great a time - but we had a sunny day on the Saturday and took a blowy Staten Island ferry trip as well as discovering a great little Italian restaurant near the Brooklyn Bridge. The obligatory credit card splurge took place but other than that not much to report.

Apart from this we've really been quite quiet. At the end of April we went up to Manchester to see Alison, Stuart, and Archie. Cue loads of photos of adoring auntie and uncle... My knitting projects went down really well and I've now finished a couple more things for him - a little orange tank top (apparently he's put on quite a growth spurt in the last few weeks so I'm praying it will still fit) and a toy sheep. This one didn't take me too long in the end but it was really fiddly and I had to read the pattern through about 4 times before I could get to grips with it - also my first attempt at intarsia was, well, interesting to say the least. Luckily none of the mistakes show on the outside. The pictures aren't very good but I didn't want to disturb Ali while he's ironing to get him to take more professional looking ones ;o)

So now it's the May Bank Holiday and it's been chucking it down all weekend. Not being able to get out in the garden has been really frustrating, though we have had to make some emergency fix-it dashes to tie back drooping roses, sort out the plastic around the tomato plants etc. I have dahlias that are bursting out of the cold frame and really could do with planting out - so here's to a sunny few days next weekend.

two nice things to be doing

I've recently been getting stuck into two things I really enjoy; gardening and knitting. The gardening has been curtailed somewhat by the lack of nice weather at weekends but I have at least managed to get some seedlings on the go. Trouble is, with all the recent overnight frosts, they've been stuck in the nice centrally heated kitchen getting all leggy, whereas in reality they should have had a few weeks hardening off in a cold frame by now. I am eternally hopeful that Saturday will see maybe half an hour's worth of dry, so I can at the very least get the sunflowers and dahlias planted out and the morning glory and nicotiana potted onto bigger pots in preparation for their final positions. The raspberries, blackcurrants and redcurrants seem to be doing OK though so that's one blessing.

Knitting-wise I have been furiously clacking like a madwoman recently. Of course this is due to new nephew Archie being born at the end of March :o) so I have 2 capes completed, plus a teddy made out of Alpaca wool (one leg is longer than the other but that's just character, obviously...) and a hat 3/4 of the way there. The hat is going to be really a bit big for him until he's about a year old I reckon so some other lucky older baby might get that one. And now I have yarn spilling out of bags everywhere, to make a hat for Ali (the same as the baby hat even down to the colours, though trying to scale up the pattern by 38 years is going to be interesting), some little astrakhan sheep and a baby tank top in burnt orange. Our friends Cameron and Elaine had a new baby yesterday; my friend Lynsey from work had her baby this morning; and there are at least 2 more in the pipeline (wrong phrase? probably) for other friends this year, so I can't see my fingers getting a rest any time soon. I'm really enjoying this burst of creativity - although I'm not quite productive enough to start selling any of it yet. We have a new shop in Abingdon called Local Roots which only sells things produced within a 30-mile radius of the town, and while in there on Saturday with my bulging carrier from Masons full of wool and needles, the owner pounced on me with a League of Gentleman-like 'are you LOCAL' and 'ooh do you knit'. I managed to avoid any further mention of my basic knitting exploits by pointing Ali in the direction of some local purple sprouting broccoli and hard goats cheese and scoffing some gorgeous white chocolate with berries in it - so for now at least all my knitting projects will be with particular babies in mind - much the best way.

Well, well, well…

…Three holes in the ground. (as my dad used to say)

It’s been exactly a year since my first post. Who’d have thought it? Given that any previous attempts at diarising my life and random thoughts had been limited to a half-filled in notebook at the age of 13, invariably detailing the angst and tribulations of crushes on random schoolboys from the boys’ school up the road from ours, and abandoned after a few weeks, I think I’ve done jolly well to keep it up for a year.

I’ve come to enjoy posting up odd thoughts here and there, and it’s certainly good to flick back over the months and remind myself of what we’ve been up to. It’s also made me more appreciative of other friends’ blogs. On the Saturday before Easter I met up with some ex-Virgin friends for a long boozy lunch in Covent Garden, most of whom I’ve not actually seen in the flesh (so to speak) since I left Virgin last May/June. But, for Dan and Mark in particular, it was as though no formal ‘catching up’ was necessary, as I knew what they’ve been doing with their lives through their blogs.

My good intentions remain, though others have fallen by the wayside over the past year. I still promise to post more pictures, especially as I have seedlings germinating in the kitchen as we speak and with any luck and everything crossed, the garden will be a veritable riot of colour this summer. If the bloody weather starts playing ball, that is. And I will go back to Body Balance, eventually, I'm sure...

Getting On With Things

It’s amazing how perky you feel once you’re better after a poorly spell. I’m still coughing (mostly when having conversations with people, which makes me sound a lot worse than I actually am) and my sinuses are into overdrive a bit, but I feel about 3000% better than I did this time last week. It feels like it’s my first proper week back in the office since Christmas so I should be taking advantage of the renewed vigour for work, rather than blogging, but hey…

Had quite a quiet weekend, being as I was still in recovery mode; although I was pleased to make a start on a few jobs that had been bugging me. We got stuck into the piles of clutter in the top room, many of which had been sitting in dusty boxes since before we did the extension – that’s OVER 2 YEARS! – and most of which ended up in black bin bags for recycling or dumping. The room looks a lot clearer now and we even started to have a discussion on what we’ll end up doing with it – en-suite, bespoke shelving for an office, the possibilities are there but all expensive. We’re both agreed that the hideous lemon yellow artex that’s on every ceiling surface and the eaves will have to come off though. We got a guy in to give us a quote for re-fencing one side of our garden before the dilapidated boards that are there now collapse entirely. And we went to the pictures to see The Golden Compass, which was enjoyable enough but couldn’t match the fantastic quality of the book, and seemed to end very abruptly too.

What I didn’t do, mainly because I was paranoid about getting my carving knife cut infected (it’s getting better and I don’t have to wear rubber gloves in the shower any more which can only be a good thing) was re-pot some house plants that are in dire need of it. The peachy coloured anthurium in the bathroom hasn’t stopped flowering for about a year now and needs room to spread out a bit; and about 3 or 4 weeks ago one of the cacti on the kitchen windowsill put on an amazing growth spurt and started flowering! The flowers didn’t last long and are looking a bit wizened now but Ali managed to capture them when they were in their glory. So that’s my job for next Sunday.

I also just ordered the cutest looking knitting kit for a new born baby cape, which I’m going to aim to have completed before Stuart and Alison’s baby is due at the end of March. It doesn’t look too hard and Alison’s a big cape fan so hopefully it’ll go down well. So my good intentions are back firing on all cylinders now I’m better again – it’s Body Balance tomorrow too!

Poorly sick

Feeling very sorry for myself at the moment. I've always been quite proud of the fact that my immune system seems to fight off colds and flu, or even if I succumb, it's just a week or so of runny nose and a bit of a head cold. The last few days have put paid to that notion, with a hacking cough leading to chest pains and permanent headache, a head cold which has bunged me up good and proper, and until today I've been alternating between sweating like a pig and shivery cold. Fortunately that unpleasant aspect seems to have gone away but the coughing and blocked up nose remain. We were up in Scotland at the weekend, and Ali's 7yr old nephew Liam had a cough and a temperature on Sunday when we left - the kisses and hugs goodbye may in retrospect not have been such a good idea. Ali seems to have escaped any germs though.

[those of a squeamish disposition may wish to skip the next paragraph]

To add to my misery, last Wednesday night, before we were travelling up to Hawick the next day, I was preparing a squash curry before going out to my Wednesday night bookgroup. Take one huge Japanese Global carving knife, a squash fresh out of the fridge and thus covered in slippery condensation, and you have a recipe for disaster. The knife slipped, and sliced most of the soft tissue from the end of my left hand ring finger. Ali wasn't back from work at the time, so I had to try and staunch the massive bleeding as best I could before going out. I didn't think to save the bit of flesh (I threw it straight in the bin with a shudder), which with hindsight may have been a good idea, as then the finger may have been able to bond together and heal a bit quicker. Instead I have a very open wound, which seems to be at least drying out, but will probably look appalling when I can finally expose it to the air. So as I can't put any pressure on that hand at all, I haven't been able to go to Body Balance this week, an activity which I was really getting back into this year. The new routine has us doing the splits - fancy. Of course I am nowhere near the ground, but I was getting millimetres lower each time I did it - let's just hope the finger heals enough over the next week or two for me to go back.

All in all it's a very woebegone Kathryn at the moment. Of course the two days I've been off work sick have coincided with all manner of things kicking off that need sorting out too - but it's hard to summon up much enthusiasm for it when you're on your smartphone on the sofa, covered in a blanket and feeling like death. Next time, dear reader, a more upbeat post. Promise.

All over for another year, then

Well, the Christmas tree has come down and been chopped up ready for going on the fire. All the decorations are packed away, cards taken down from all the bookshelves, floors swept and mopped and the kitchen looks very empty and white. Good job we ordered a reclaimed pine dresser on Saturday from the lovely Foxwood to fill some space, and more importantly hold the increasing amounts of glassware we seem to be acquiring recently.

I’ve been planning a post for the last week or so – but somehow things have got in the way, such as Christmas, planning and hosting a New Year’s Eve party, clearing up after the same, and going back to work. Having read what seems like squillions of newspaper articles and blog posts all about people’s New Year’s resolutions, lists of the year for 2007, and festive goings on, and given the title of my blog, you’d think I would be more up to speed with my own. Good intentions for 2008 will probably come in a later post when I’ve thought of some (they won’t be much different from the intentions that I posted during 2007); so for now I’ll just round up the end of the year.

Ali and I had a really lovely quiet Christmas at home by ourselves, the obligatory roast beef for dinner and rather too much of different sorts of wine. It was really good just to have a whole day with nothing to do but open presents, cook the meal, eat it and watch TV (though Christmas telly was particularly crap this year. Even the festive edition of SCD was a bit of a let down – clearly none of the celebrities and their partners could give a toss about the result, given that it was only the studio audience voting, and Darren Gough was a shoe-in to win as he’s on the SCD tour so they had to keep him sweet and remind the public to go and book their tickets). Boxing Day we travelled to Hitchin to visit our friends Cameron and Elaine, taking the remnants of the chocolate pie I’d made for Christmas – and believe me there was more than 80% of it left. In Jamie’s recipe it looked lovely and light and fluffy – but with an ingredients list of chocolate, sugar, butter, crème fraiche, more butter, cocoa, more chocolate and butter pastry, it was never going to be the healthy option. Cameron and Elaine nobly said they’d keep the remains and finish them off but I’m willing to bet a lot ended up in the bin…

A few pub jaunts later and we were in the throes of planning for NYE. By 31^st we’d got 3 polypins of real ale from 2 different local breweries (Butt’s and West Berkshire); dozens of bottles of wine and mixers galore; I’d made our biggest stock pot full of beef stew plus 2 smaller pots of veggie chilli, 24 fairy cakes (sprinkling the hundreds and thousands on the chocolate icing was so satisfying!) and a pear and almond tart, we’d cleared Waitrose of all the dips and chips you could think of, and we were ready to go. So ready, in fact (I’d done a lot of the cooking on Sunday) that I’d cleared up, showered, and dressed up by 2pm and felt a bit at a loose end – after all it would have been suicidal to start drinking then...

It was the first time we’d mixed up 2 different groups of friends – the Oxford crowd who I’ve known most of since 1992; and our ‘local’ friends who we mostly know from where Ali previously worked. Add in one 4 month old baby (Freddie); one toddler (Evie) and 3 kids between 6 and 10 (Bailey, Courtney and Bethany) and there was a fantastic mix of people in the house. With around 30 people our ground floor was full to bursting and I don’t think we could really host anything bigger, unless it’s summer and people could go outside, but it’s good to know our limits! With a 4am finish and the kids up at 7.30 (Evie liked the sound her feet made running up and down on the wooden floors of the bedroom above ours) it meant a very sluggish start to the new year but with some strong coffee inside us and a bacon sarnie we were ready to go to Robin and Anne’s for a New Year’s Day dinner. Being presented with a glass of bubbly at 2pm after 3 hours sleep was just the tonic (!) and while we were seriously flagging by 7.30pm it was a great start to the new year. Back to work on Wednesday. Hmph.

Some 2008 good intentions to follow, hopefully before the end of January. Nerys and I were at Body Balance on Sunday though so despite not having a booze-free day since some time in mid-December, I think I’m on the right lines.

[From top to bottom - fairy cakes and a clear-ish work surface before the party; Dr Brown's real ale bar; Andy at 11.10pm (before too much fizz was consumed); Ali & a stubborn cork]

Hurtling towards year end

Despite the very heavy weekend that formed the subject of the previous post, lessons were resolutely not learned last week. Out on Thursday with mate Phil to see Maximo Park at the newly re-opened Oxford Carling Academy <spits contemptuously in memory of The Zodiac> I was planning to get home early before the gig, line my stomach and not drink much. But an hour of crawling home in dense traffic from Didcot put paid to the first two ideas, and so I reverted to my post-university days of drinking cider and eating crisps to fill me up. Hmmm. Actually maybe it was a good job that there was a jam, as it prevented me from going above 50mph on my spare tyre. Who checks their tyres before they set off on a journey? Not me, especially in the pitch dark and freezing temperatures of Didcot Parkway station on Wednesday night. So it was only after going 100 yards or so and realising something was very wrong indeed that I got out and realised I'd been driving on a flat and hence buggering the inside of the tyre, meaning it needed to be replaced even if all that had happened was that some little sh!te had let it down during the day. You certainly couldn't see a puncture anywhere. So now, I owe Ali some serious ironing time on his shirts, after an emergency damsel in distress call. I don't know how I would have got those wheel nuts off by myself but I'm bloody glad I didn't have to attempt it.

So anyway, Maximo Park. After our ill-fated attempt at seeing them earlier in the year, I was really looking forward to seeing if they'd be better, edgier than Dan's lukewarm review made out. And... they were about what I'd expected actually, not one of those transcendent gigs, just really enjoyable - very bouncy bouncy, all the right tunes in the right order, stonking versions of Limassol and Our Velocity, and a venue small enough to see them properly. Most folk there seemed real MP fans as well, and dead excited to be seeing them in Oxford. The one slightly jarring note was Paul Smith's comment "You might know that we're playing a big arena in Newcastle in 2 days time; well, we want you to know THIS IS NOT A WARM UP GIG - we don't do 'warm ups'". Okayyyy then, right you are mate... We were right at the back (the front seemed to be full of members of the local basketball team, or, as I overheard one girl say, 'they breed them big round here') and I could still see. We did admit that the Carling folk hadn't done a bad job at all with the Zodiac - the downstairs space is now the main venue for bands - a lot bigger than before and screens everywhere. Being new I guess it also hasn't got the residue of years of nicotine, tar, sweat, stale booze and general wear and tear - so it felt very clean. The best thing about it though, is that the promoters are obviously getting bigger bands to play there with no trouble - we're already planning Hot Chip and Elbow outings next year - thus avoiding travelling into the big smoke on a school night. Hurrah!

I had a day off on Friday, but not so's you'd notice. Spent it getting the tyre fixed; running errands; doing chores; and packing for the weekend, at the same time checking work email on my smartphone. Humbug. Still, it was the pre-cursor to a fantastic weekend with Stuart and Alison in Manchester, during which I did my traditional clothes overspend with Alison on Saturday in town, much booze was consumed at lunch and a great meal out on Saturday night was had by all. Hangover on Sunday was a mini version of last week's. Hoh well.

We did buy the Christmas tree when we got home though, which I duly decorated with glee, though becoming mildly crestfallen when one set of fairy lights went on the blink due to a missing bulb which OF COURSE we didn't have a replacement for. The now-routine SCD marathon ensued, all very wonderful as always except for the frankly inexplicable perfect 40 for Matt and Flavia's waltz and the fact that the judges had several screws loose and voted to kick Gorgeous Gethin out. Sob. Matt will go to pieces next week, Alesha will rightly win, but the show won't be the same without a re-run of the salsa of week 9.

And so back to work today, with a load of stuff to do and no pre-Christmas feeling at all, just a slight sense of panic. But! Ali has just texted me with the news that the plumber has magically fixed our underfloor heating, which it seems has never worked properly since it was installed 18 months ago. We may even have a warm kitchen for Christmas! And I've just found a replacement bulb for the fairy lights! Ho ho ho!

Auld Reekie

I started writing this post in bed last night, as Ali was out on the lash in rain-swept Wantage and there was only so much ironing I could take. I wasn't watching the football, of course (but I did take the opportunity to have an early 90s self indulgent wallow on the Squeezebox. It's been ages since I listened to the Gene album Olympian - some of the tracks have not aged particularly well, but others such Sleep Well Tonight and the title track are still quite thrilling). I did feel slightly Carrie Bradshaw-ish as I lay propped up on pillows, laptop balanced on the duvet; but I'm sure the effect was ruined by the big cardie I was wearing over my pyjamas. More Miss Marple than Sex and the City...

It's been a funny old few weeks really. We had a great time up in Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago for my Dad's 60th. Mum and I had arranged the whole weekend to be a surprise for him, so though he knew Mum and he were booked in for the weekend, he didn't know that Ali and I would turn up (to meet them at the bus stop on Waverley Bridge at 8.30am on Saturday morning, brrrrr...); that my brother and his girlfriend would also be there; that we were treating him and Mum to a slap up meal at the Witchery in the evening; and that on the Sunday 2 sets of their closest friends were also arriving in town to take him and Mum out in the evening. I think all the surprises and emotion of the weekend got to him a bit in the end (or maybe that was the champagne and copious amounts of ale Ali was determined to get him to 'experience' in various Edinburgh pubs). It was a fantastic weekend though - I love Edinburgh and would quite happily move up there for good if there were any jobs available that we could do and that paid us well enough to afford more than a grimy bedsit. Despite the good old BBC online weather forecast predicting heavy rain all weekend, it was actually glorious - biting cold, but bright and crisp with a vivid blue sky and great views from up at the Castle down onto the city.

Since then we've done our Christmas shopping (braving the twin horrors of Oxford city centre on a pre-yule Saturday & John Lewis Home and Leisure store in High Wycombe on the same day. Yikes), put up some pictures (finally) and generally gone about our day to day business much as usual. Up to Hawick this weekend to see the family. It feels a bit like pre-Christmas limbo before the frantic hurdy-gurdy of December. Quite pleasant, really, though a sort of uneasy anticipation about the whole thing. At least we can get the Christmas tree soon and put up the fairy lights! Yay!

(Dictionary.com word of the day today is "deipnosophist": one skilled in table talk. Nice!)

Life post-cheese

No, not literally. By god, that would be unthinkable. A life without cheese is a life half lived, to misquote Strictly Ballroom...

Anyway, my holding post of a few days ago was really just to get back into the blogging habit again, as it's been a while since I posted anything of note; but my recent discovery that I was listed on the Mostly Books blog and the subsequent nice comments from friends has got me enthused for posting again, as I had let work and other stuff get in the way a fair bit. I know that even when I'm really busy, I will always make time to run through my Bloglines feeds and whenever a new post from a friend's blog appears it cheers me up no end - much more exciting than all those industry techie feeds I read and even (dare I say it) more interesting than the newsy feeds on books, music, eco stuff and the like that I subscribe to. So, good intentions poised and at the ready, I resolve To Do Better. (Capitals are great, aren't they? I feel amost Edward Gorey-ish using them, She Said Archly).

So, what's been going on in our world since the fromagery of late September?

A couple of quite alarming and intense work weeks, where I was planning a big project for January. I'm 99.8% sure none of our direct competitors read this, but even so I won't expand further. Anyway, it's something way outside my comfort zone and I was mightily relieved when the proposal I submitted on 12th October to the US got well received. Phew.

In between this, was a drink-sodden weekend where we went to London to meet up with Ali's folks and some friends they were visiting in Caterham. We met up in a pub just off St James' Square, and basically lurched around Soho all afternoon from hostelry to hostelry. This was the weekend of the England victory over the Aussies in the Rugby World Cup and I was the only English person in the party. Luckily despite all the Scots contingent being desperate to find an Aussie pub to watch it in, we ended up in the Glasshouse just off Piccadilly where I had a fine old time yelling encouragement and generally getting very overexcited. Wa hey!

By 12th I was more than ready for a break, my first day off since starting the job back in early June. After a few days of pre-holiday panic, that was it - done. On the first day of our week off, the Saturday, we were back in London to watch Maximo Park play at the Brixton Academy as part of an XFM night. Or not. I was FUMING at the time and could have written reams but step by step:

- Kathryn and Ali arrive at the venue after a day of mooching in town
- Go in, get patted down, buy 1 pint of cider and a bottle of water for SIX POUNDS BLEEDING TEN!!!!!!!
- Look at the set list and realise MP are not on til 10.30pm. Last train from Paddington is 11.30pm. Fuck.
- Have panicked discussion, look at Ali's Crackberry and realise that all trains are cancelled post 9pm anyway due to engineering works.
- Discuss merits of getting the bus home and then give up in disgust, leave the venue (much to the bemusement of security) and watch the second half of England v France (wa hey again!) in a pub in Brixton, then head off to Paddington to chance our luck.
- Wait at Paddington for an hour and half for a replacement bus service to Reading. Lots of swearing.
- Eventually get to Reading at 12.30am for the last train to Didcot.
- Grrrrrr.....

Sunday was a bit more chilled, culminating in a birthday celebration for our mate Chris in the Yummy Thai restaurant in Wantage. It certainly lived up to its name, yum yum.

Our week off was lovely. 3 days in north Dorset staying in the village of Buckhorn Weston at the phenomenal Stapleton Arms. Beautiful room, comfy bed, LCD TV, walk in shower which was the most powerful I've ever experienced in a hotel, organic breakfast grub, great menu, 2 real ciders on tap :-) and log fires every night. Wonderful, and really good value. We did Shaftesbury, Sherborne, Stonehenge, the Cerne Abbas giant with his big willy (and the faint outline of Homer Simpson remaining on the field next to him, hee hee), and a great walk on the coast and Chesil Beach. Then back on Thursday for some R&R at home, a nice meal at the Crooked Billet on Friday night and Rod, Wendy and their 3 kids over on Saturday for a fab get together. Sunday was spent nursing hangovers (Ali and Rod got stuck into the whisky in the wee small hours of Sunday morning...) and as mentioned before, by the time it got to mid afternoon, I was ready for hair of the dog and some pure SCD indulgence.

Back to work now and it's getting intense, preparing for January. It's bizarre not gearing up for the Christmas rush - reminds me of working in the travel industry in a way, but better, obviously.
So that's me up to date, we've got a rare free weekend coming up so I'll be repainting the front door. I'm actually looking forward to it, in a bizarre way.

Ooh the pressure

The lovely Mark and Nicki of Mostly Books have listed me as one of their 'Abingdon blogs' on the blogroll of their own, re-vamped blog. Though flattering to be in the company of domesticali et al, it is slightly worrying for 2 reasons: one, I know a lot of the book trade, various literati, the famous Scott Pack etc etc read the Mostly Books blog, and hence may, in a moment of whimsy, click through to this one. Part of me wonders what they may think and panics slightly; whereas the other part knows deep down that these are all busy important people and have better things to do with their day than read random blogs (or do they...?). Two, I don't really blog about Abingdon per se, though obviously I do live here and a lot of the things we do in our leisure time are done around and about the town. The Abingdon Blogger himself does take loads of photos though, and posts some occasional nuggets of interest that enlighten me about what The People Who Run Things are doing with our town, so I don't feel as much pressure here to blog about what it's like to live in Abingdon.

Also, I'm not sure how many people actually look at the webspace of blogs nowadays (if that's the right terminology) but instead subscribe to a feed. I mean, I've had over 100 visitors to this one since I stuck a site counter up a while ago, and that's lovely to see. I think I know who a few of them are, and to those of you who come along just for the hell of it and don't know me from Adam, I'm really pleased and I hope you don't think it was a waste of your time. However, all the blogs I read regularly are consumed via Bloglines feeds within that interface, and not by me visiting the site itself (and becoming a unique visitor). It means I can get all my reading over and done with blog by blog and also - crucially for an organisation freak - sort the feeds into friends, work-related, books, music etc. themilkman has recently posted about information overload and the difficulty of keeping up with blogs - I don't find this so much of a problem, except with those who regularly post huge long essays which I only have time to read at weekends (sorry dovegreyreader and Stephen Fry). Only 2 people (including me, ha) have subscribed to my blog on Bloglines though, so I'm guessing not many people are reading me as a feed. In which case to those 179 people who have come and visited so far, thank you very much indeed.

Give cheese a chance

Yesterday, we went off to the Great British Cheese Festival which was serendipitously being held at Millets Farm, a mere 2 villages away from Abingdon. 2 years ago we went when it was held at Blenheim Palace and though the day was cool and drizzly (conditions luckily not repeated yesterday, we even had a few glorious sunny spells) the almost overwhelming varieties of cheese, free water biscuits, real ale tent and general overconsumption meant for a cracking day all round.

This time there were slightly fewer of us going (we missed you Susan...) and the cheese sweats and cheddary limbs were conspicuous by their absence today. Learning from last time we didn't round the day off with the Dil Raj's finest curries, as this was the tipping point from which certain of our group did not fully recover for weeks, possibly even months. Instead we ambled along to Abingdon's finest - or indeed only - Lebanese restaurant for some cleansing salads and falafel, along with the finest of Lebanese red wine (actually quite nice).

At the cheese festival this year current Observer darling Alex James was there, presumably preening about his new found bucolic idyll and launching his Little Wallop cheese via a video podcast. We didn't see this, thank goodness, though Ali did pap him using his unfeasibly large lens. I'll post a photo up soon so you can see his drippy hairstyle and 'farmer's' tweeds in all their glory. We did try the Little Wallop - it was OK - but tellingly the guy that gave us a taste said he had only ever met Alex twice, and didn't even know if he had a dairy herd on his farm... There were so many other, better cheeses than this as well: Lincolnshire Poacher (vintage and non-vintage); endless varieties of soft and hard goats cheese; plus gourmet breads from de Gustibus were consumed with gusto, and the wide variety of real ciders and perries was smashing - amazingly far greater than the single real ale on offer. Ha! In fact the only real disappointment was the lack of free water biscuits, Carr's were obviously cutting back this year.

Bring on the brie!

A quiet time

For once I am home before Ali; it is the last day of 'summer hours' in the office today before it's officially autumn (boo) and so as I haven't been able to take advantage of it any Friday before now I thought today ought to be the day. If First Great Western hadn't been their usual incompetent selves and cancelled the train I should have taken, I'd have been home even earlier. Still, there would have been no way I'd have made it home before 4.30pm on a Friday when I was at Virgin, so I'm thankful for this small quiet time on my own. This week has been somewhat manic, at least by my standards. God knows how folk in big cities manage to go out every night and socialise and still manage to get their work done and house organised and time to read the paper.

Tuesday evening saw an impromptu dinner with our agency - very nice Italian restaurant with a whole menu dedicated to ravioli. Yum. As were the bottles of Amarone my boss ordered. Wednesday was a night out with some international colleagues (ooh get me) who were over in the UK, in the Bel and The Dragon pub in posh village Cookham near work. Apparently Ulrika-ka-ka-ka-ka lives somewhere near and it's all very lovely and expensive everywhere. Last night the same crowd went to the Hinds Head at Bray, which is Heston Blumenthal's pub-that-isn't-the-Fat-Duck - somewhere I would have liked to have gone as well if I'd been free. But instead I met up with good friend Jenn in Notting Hill for a chat and a catch up, which was far more enjoyable.

All of this carousing has meant some interesting but probably very obvious developments:
1. It's normally Ali who is out and about during the week so this swap in our fortunes is actually quite nice - not just me eating meals for one at home for a change!
2. Our food budget this week has been quite meagre, as we've not had to buy anything to eat. Hurrah.
3. My diet has crashed and burned - 3 days into my week and already my allowance of treats has been fully used up (mostly by red wine) so it doesn't bode well for stepping on the scales next week, especially as we're off to Lincolnshire tomorrow for a bbq session with friends...
4. I'm far more knackered than I would normally be on a Friday, but in a much more content way.

Right, time to read the paper I do believe.

Musical memories

Ali and I watched a few of the highlights of the Reading Festival during the bank holiday weekend, in between a lengthy gardening session of highly satisfying pruning of next door's buddleias; a great sunny barbeque with some friends we'd not seen for a while (though I did over-cater on the meat and salads front somewhat) and a cycle ride-cum-pub crawl through some of the south Oxfordshire villages near us. This latter was meant to get us out and about in the fresh air - tick - spend some time together - tick - and get some exercise - no tick, could do better. We meandered round some B roads and a few cycle paths, got to the North Star at Steventon, Ali swooned with pleasure at the nectar that was a pint from the White Horse brewery (the name escapes me) and then went to the Cherry Tree for some lunch. Cycling through Sutton Courtenay on the way back, we weren't meant to stop at all, until Ali saw the 'Bank Holiday Guest Ale specials' sandwich board outside the George and Dragon and swerved over to take advantage. It would have been rude not to, as they say.

Anyway, back to Reading. I went 3 times in my yoof (christ how old does that make me sound) - 1995, 1996 and 1998. The first time was with a group of 5 friendly chaps from Cambridgeshire who I used to spend much of my vacation time going to gigs with when I was at university. That first year was amazing - the festival experience became well and truly ingrained into my soul. Highlights were the Foo Fighters' first ever UK festival gig, at which I almost got crushed and nearly passed out from the heat in the NME tent; and seeing Ash, who at at the time were all about 16 and whose official band t-shirt, complete with legend 'three boy hardcore action' on the back, I thought was the height of cool when I bought it. I was even fearless enough to go down the front to the moshpit and go kerrraaaazzzy, something I would rarely dream of doing now in my old and personal safety conscious state. I also (unlike my compadres who were all into US hardcore punk bands like NOFX and Bad Religion) attended Gene's headline slot on the Saturday night in the NME tent and completely fell in love with Martin Rossiter, little realising what a pretentious wanker he was in real life.

Subsequent years were also fantastic experiences and I went to Glastonbury in 2000 which was a whole other level of festival going. I did love Glasto but I do have a special place in my heart reserved for Reading, being somewhat of an indie kid deep down. So watching it on the telly, cider in hand (bad for the diet but that's another story) in the comfort of my own sofa, made me feel quite nostalgic for my mid twenties and the music that was around then.

Having said that, the bands that we saw were a real mixed bag of the good, the bad and the downright pointless. I mean, Razorlight headlining on the Friday night for god's sake. My personal favourites were Maximo Park, mostly because of the tunes, also because I love the fact that you can hear every word of the lyrics really clearly - must be something to do with the Geordie accent - but also (a teeny bit) because the lead singer, Paul Smith, is very fit (ooh what a 90s word). He used to have an atrocious hairdo but has seen the error of his ways and now sports a curly mop topped off with a bowler hat. He's also obviously been in the gym a lot recently...
CSS, Interpol and Kings of Leon were also great, and Trent Reznor doing 'Hurt' was pretty amazing too. Much as I find Zane Lowe a pain in the arse, I did agree with him when he commented that it was good to see NIN 'reclaim' the song as their own from the recent idolatry of the Johnny Cash version, which admittedly does also give the spine a tingle. We did settle down to watch the Smashing Pumpkin (Billy Corgan having roped in a load of jobbing musicians to take over his previous bandmates' roles) trawl through 3 greatest hits before being infomed that the BBC weren't allowed to show any more. Doing it for the fans eh Billy.

Oh, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were shit, as has been the case all too often recently. I love the quote Mandrew has on his facebook profile from Nick Cave: "I'm forever near a stereo saying, 'What the fuck is this GARBAGE?' And the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers."

Time for a bit of a retrospective

Good intentions. Having named my blog thus, I suddenly feel the need to review my intentions over the course of the last 6 (my god is it really 6) months of writing and see whether I'm a wretched failure or actually doing quite well. So...

1. Writing my blog - tick. This is going OK, I feel, in that after the first month of not telling anyone the URL, and keeping it all secret, I'm now quite happy for friends, family, colleagues, all and sundry really, to be reading it. I think this is mainly because I know I haven't let slip any great indiscretions on here, plus also I'm not trying to be the next big literary sensation. A few people have said that it's nice to know what Ali and I are up to. A few have agreed with some of my ramblings. Anyway, no nasty comments as yet, and that's because you are all such lovely people.
2. Body Balance - overall, another tick. I do feel better for doing this class every week, but I have let a few weeks slip here and there. Overall I've managed to get to the class more often than not. It's fair to say I will never develop Madonna-style upper arm tonage though. And the music is still shit.
3. Cataloguing the garden and photo-blogging through the seasons. I read quite a few gardening blogs and would love to have been able to snap away through the growing and fading of the plants in our front and back gardens. If I'd been that dedicated I probably could have achieved it, however a) it has been chucking it down for most of the summer and b) my summer hasn't exactly been filled with free weekends for me to live out my bucolic dream. We've either been away or had folk to visit on most weekends since Easter, and those times where we've been at home (e.g. this weekend just gone) have been wet. We did go to Millets (our local garden centre) yesterday and I persuaded Ali that the joint account really did need to accommodate the purchase of 2 chocolate cosmos plants, 2 pink Japanese anemones, 3 little perennial plants (a foxglove, a hellebore and an aquilegia) and a weigela shrub with lovely burgundy leaves. I can't wait to plant them all out but the rain has pissed all over that idea this weekend. We also have a squash or pumpkin (we don't know which) growing in a tub which held tulips earlier in the year, the result of our compost bin failing to break down a random seed somewhere and it suddenly germinating about a month or so ago. It's going nuts and spreading all over the lawn at the moment and I really hope we get some good fruits off it. We also have a few leeks donated by our green-fingered friends Cameron and Elaine; and a globe artichoke that's flowering after 2 years of dormancy. The next sunny weekend I will make the effort, take some photos, and post them up.
4. Related to the last post - keeping 50% of our weekends free for some 'just us' time. This is a tricky one as the reason we haven't managed this is because we've seen friends and family so much this summer, and done a lot of cool things. So that's good. On the other hand, our 2 weeks in Italy were so wonderful, when we spent a whole fortnight just having a good time in each other's company, that it's clear we should try and do more of it. Unfortunately holiday allowances and lack of cash mean we can't take a fortnight in Tuscany every 2 months. Oh well.
5. Books I should be reading/re-reading. I've got far too many interesting new books to read to bother about re-reading the bloody Iliad. What was I thinking?
6. Diet. A new one, this. It's partially come about because of my new job, but looking back over my weight since I graduated, slowly, inexorably (there's those cliches again) I have put on about 1 or 2 lbs a year since. So, like howsoonisnow, I am cutting out bread, cheese and mid-week drinking, and I'm using the online diet plan of my new employers. And it's working, admittedly slowly, but it is actually working. Amazing.

So that's my good intentions in a nutshell. Overall I think that it's a good mid-year review, though there is certainly room for improvement in some areas.

Biergartens and mountains

I've blogged before about how lucky I am to work for a company that sends me to nice places. Maybe I did something wonderful in a previous life or something; or more likely my karma will change soon (that's very pessimistic - I don't really believe that). We shall see.

Anyway, on Wednesday morning a few weeks ago the alarm went off at the unearthly hour of 3.15am; Ali had nobly decided to sleep in the spare room so I didn't wake him as I went through my morning ablutions. Luckily the floods had subsided though sandbags were still spilling their guts over the pavement, so the car was able to pick me up at 4am to get to the airport for the flight to Munich.

The main reason for the trip was to plan intensively for 2008, and of course we did that in spades. However round the edges we managed to fit in a trip to a typical Bavarian beer garden, though sadly the suckling pig was no longer on the menu when I came to place my order. More surprising was the discovery that in the summer, Radler is a very popular drink in Bavaria. In essence, this is a lager shandy to you and me, though the quantity of lemonade is not huge. A few of the the team elected not to go for this pooffy drink and have proper Weissbier instead; being a cider drinker I was quite happy with the Radler. On the second night in Munich we visited a restaurant with a cool underground bar and at one point the vodka shots came out. Oddly (well oddly to me) they were served with lime wedges and icing sugar. Ah well. I wimped out anyway and stuck to the champagne.

The best bit of our trip by far was a team bonding session arranged by our boss, Gerd, to the Austrian Alps. On Friday we drove, stopping at the Neuschwanstein Castle (the Cindarella castle in Disneyland) on the way, to a little car park at the foot of a big mountain, just over the border in Austria in the charmingly named town of Nesselwangle. Of course we had stopped earlier to stock up on essential supplies of sausage, more sausage, bread, strudel, and yet more sausage, as well as some bottled water to sustain us on our hike up to the Gimpelhaus - our home for the next 2 nights.

Ali and I thought that some of our walking in Tuscany was quite hard going, and I remember cursing as we laboriously climbed up a mule path to Giglio Castello on our penultimate day's walking. However this was nothing compared to the virtually vertical hike up to the cabin. There was a cable car - we followed the cables up the mountain - but this is strictly for provisions only, and the only way of getting to the Gimpelhaus is to climb for a good 90 minutes. We carried enough clothes, towels, toiletries and sausage for the next 2 days and by the time we all arrived we were exhausted. Cue a round of cold Radlers in huge steins. Wonderful.

The next day we got up at a civilised 9am and set off on our day's hike by 10am. The other occupants of the cabin were mostly climbers and had left at about 7 or 8am to hang off the side of the mountain like lunatics. We were content with hiking up to the top of the Rote Fluh, quite a high peak and only a few hairy moments of clinging onto the rock face. As we had been warned in Munich, this part of the trip was not company endorsed...

It was an amazing moment to get to the top though, and we all felt so proud. On the way back down the 8 of us split into 5 madmen who gravel skated all the way down to the meadow below; and 3 sensible ones who hiked down the mountain path. (Guess which group I fell into...). Another night in the Gimpelhaus (timed 4 minute showers were hard to take) and we made our way back to Munich to fly home the next day, thighs and calves aching to buggery but really really happy we had been. The Alpine flowers, mountain goats, glacial lakes, rugged peaks and astounding scenery are captured completely inadequately here, though I don't have any pictures of the endless card games and Jenga tournaments in the evenings:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=40834&l=b5d0c&id=768970610

When we were back at work on the Monday we all shared photos and began the task of putting together our annual operating plan for 2008. But with much better grace and good humour than we might have done otherwise. I feel a return trip to the Alps in the offing next year sometime!