29th July 2010

It's definitely rather geeky but one of my favourite places for lunchtime browsing is the map shop just round the corner from my office. It's especially good when you actually have a holiday coming up and want to find a good map or travel guide to take with you.  Today was one of those days and I came home with this road map of California for our upcoming American adventure.

28th July 2010

This evening we went to a swim training session at our local triathlon club and I was very glad that I'd had the foresight to put our breadmaker on before we went out so that there was freshly cooked bread waiting for us when we got back.  It wasn't the best loaf having been done on the 'rapid bake' setting but we were so hungry after swimming nearly 2 kilometres that we didn't care!

27th July 2010

These are my new shoes. I bought them today to take on our California holiday so that I have some sensible footwear for walking in Yosemite without having to lug my heavy walking boots all the way there. Only trouble is my Mum already has her eyes on them and wants me to take them when we go down at the weekend so she can try them on!

26th July 2010

When the train timetable changed last December they added a new train which was formed of 4 carriages waiting at the station and 4 from an incoming train. However it seems they forgot to give the station staff the manual on connecting them and so for the first couple of weeks it was a disaster as they struggled to join the carriages. Trains were frequently late boarding and on a couple of occasions forced to run as a 4 coach train, happily though they seem to have got the hang of it now and we can get home promptly.

25th July 2010

We took a trip to Bluewater to do some shopping today but as you can see from the bags our spoils were fairly meagre.  Our credit cards can breathe a sigh of relief!

24th July 2010

Today's picture was going to be Stephen doing the Hyde Park triathlon but then I spotted that Iwan Thomas was doing it too and I got a bit starstruck! He was in the same start wave as Mr W and so there were lots of opportunities for celeb photos as well as hubby shots.

23rd July 2010

We get quite a lot of cats round our neighbourhood and this evening when I got home from work I found this rather cute one sitting on our drive.

22nd July 2010

My office is just up the road from Scotland Yard and so we quite often see TV crews set up on the road outside if the MET have done something newsworthy. My 'evil twin' always wants to run behind the news presenter and pull a funny face, but fortunately the sensible one is always there to remind me that as it's during the working day, there's not likely to be anyone at home watching to see my crazy antics! Not to mention the fact that I might get arrested due to the high police presence.

21st July 2010

My crazy courgette plant has finally produced something we can eat! These are the first three courgettes that I've picked and I can see a few more in the early stages of growth. I now need to find some exciting recipes to use them up...

20th July 2010

Saw this special double-decker bus whilst out getting my lunch today and was reminded of a friends' wedding a few years ago where we were taken from the church to the reception in a similar bus.  A lovely touch for a London wedding and if I remember rightly our friends travelled in a shiny white cab.

19th July 2010

We had a very frustrating time this evening looking for a couple of new local geocaches.  They popped up on my phone whilst I was on my way home from work, so I dashed home to pick up the car, returned to the station to collect Mr W straight from his train and then off we went.  But no joy - lots of feeling around metal objects at the first location looking for a magnetic container and lots of scrabbling around the bottom of trees at the second site, yet we still went home without the buzz of a 'first-to-find'.  I guess it serves me right for being so easily distracted from my original plan of going out on my bike!

18th July 2010

Two tired children, two parents to carry them and two helpful friends to carry all the paraphanalia that goes with children back to the car after a lovely walk to Saltram for lunch.  We didn't even need to use the umbrella that Stephen carried all the way there and back again!

17th July 2010

We're staying with friends in Plymouth this weekend and Stephen this morning introduced their 9-month old baby to his iPhone - not sure she's quite got the idea yet...

16th July 2010

The A303 is one of the most tedious roads around and unfortunately in order to reach our friends in Plymouth we have to traverse its entire length.  The highlight of today's journey was these piggies that we spotted at "Pig City" whilst crawling along one of the traffic jam inducing stretches of single carriageway just after Stonehenge.

15th July 2010

9am on St Swithin's Day and my umbrella was already wet.  Not a good omen for the rest of the summer if the old proverb is to be believed:

St Swithun's day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
St Swithun's day if thou be fair
For forty days 'twill rain no more

14th July 2010

When I came home from work the other day I got a letter saying I'd won on the Premium Bonds.  Not enough to pay for our holiday but a nice surprise anyhow.  I finally got round to paying my winnings into the bank today and unusually rather than a cheque you get sent a warrant which you have to sign before banking.  If I was astute I'd probably re-invest it, however it's far more fun to go shopping!

13th July 2010

My heart doesn't function quite as well as it should and I have a rather cautious cardiologist, hence this morning I was fitted with a 24h heart monitoring device. Not quite sure exactly why, other than it's been a few years since I was last hooked up to one, but I am very tempted to put it through its paces and go for a run. It's only the fact that I can't take a shower for fear of electrocuting myself that's deterring me from giving my cardiologist something to really get excited about!

12th July 2010

Girl Guiding is 100 years old this year, which is great as there are loads of fun activities for our Brownies to take part in. We've been to a kick-off party in Crystal Palace, where we got lost in the newly renovated maze, spent a term looking at different decades from the last 100 years and some of the girls have just been away for centenary camp weekend. The only depressing thing is that I must be getting old as when I was a Brownie I remember getting a badge for the 75th anniversary - how time flies!

11th July 2010

My brother-in-law is back in the UK for a few weeks after a couple of years working out in Thailand and so we went round to Mr W's parents for a BBQ lunch today to catch-up with him.  Lovely weather, lovely food and lovely company!

10th July 2010

We've been talking about doing a fly-drive holiday to California for ages. Today we finally went and booked it.  I'm so excited!

9th July 2010

This evening I went to see the Grace Kelly Style Icon at the V&A with a friend and this was one of her pretty dresses that was on display. In fact it was one of the more fancy of her outfits as the majority of her clothes just seemed to ooze classy simplicity.  Her top tip for selecting clothes was to have a designer send over a few drawings for her to choose from - I can imagine that would sure beat having to battle through the Saturday crowds on Oxford Street.

8th July 2010

I am a creature of habit and this is where I get my lunch nearly every day. Occasionally I walk round at lunchtime hoping to be inspired by another sandwich shop, but in the end I usually end up in Snax. I do try to vary what I eat but even then there are a few set choices that I usuaally plump for - I am after all a creature of habit!

7th July 2010

This is the hotel construction site next to our office that has been slowly driving us all mad for the last couple of months with the noise from their drilling work. They are supposed to have quiet periods between 10 and 12 in the morning and 2 and 4 in the afternoon, but they seem to pass very quickly and we spend the rest of our working day being serenaded by the dulcet tones of a heavy duty drill. The good news is that it looks like there's not much left to drill, the bad news is I'm not sure that quiet and construction site go together so I am sure they will find some new way of making noise.

6th July 2010

The Scout motto is 'Be Prepared'.  But I think having a bag of gritting salt on the station platform this morning was taking it a bit far. I know SouthEastern took a lot of flack for not being ready for the cold weather last winter, but personally I reckon the only ice we'll be seeing in the next couple of months will be in our drinks.

5th July 2010

There are few more pleasurable ways to work off the stresses of a day in the office than to go for a run across the fields on a warm summer's evening.

4th July 2010

This is my bike all set up ready for me to leap on this morning after the swim leg of the Canterbury Sprint Tri.  The swim went really well and I knocked about a minute off my PB for a 400m swim, however I was less pleased with my cycle and run efforts.  I was going okay on the bike until I spotted a junction too late so was going too fast and tumbled into the hedge at the side of the road, and then on the run I just felt slow and a bit stiff after my fall on the bike.  My final time was 1h 28min, which was within my target of 1h 30min so all in all it wasn't a bad morning, especially as we got donuts at the end!

3rd July 2010

I had some clotted cream left over from our Wimbledon strawberries and cream, so I thought I'd make some scones to use it up. Unfortunately we didn't have any strawberry jam and as a cream tea with any other flavour jam just isn't the same, I decided to replace the jam with fresh strawberries - yum!

2nd July 2010

In line with the 1980s slogan for cream cakes, my lunch today could be described as "naughty but nice".  Although on biting into my pasty, I made a rather shocking discovery - it contained peas!  Call me a pedant but a Cornish pasty should never contain anything green, beef - yes, potato - yes, onion - yes, swede/turnip - yes, I'll even accept carrot as a substitute for swede, but peas are just wrong.  It rather spoilt my eating experience and it seems I may need to find a new pasty supplier...

1st July 2010

I'm getting rather concerned about my courgette plant... Having started as a rather spindly specimen when I planted it in my veg box it has now become the bully-boy of the box spreading out over the other plants.  The poor squash plant is literally being squashed under a mass of courgette plant leaves and the carrots and rocket are rapidly disappearing as the courgettes leaves get bigger and bigger.  Yet for all this growth there are a rather disappointing number of flowers appearing to grow into something worthwhile.  I hope things change soon as I haven't come across many recipes for fried courgette leaves...

30th June 2010

There's nothing like an upcoming sporting event that you maybe haven't done enough training for, to inspire you to get out and do some exercise.  This Sunday I am doing the Canterbury Sprint Tri and so in an effort to quell the rising panic about my lack of training, this evening I dusted off my bike and went for a ride when I got home from work.  My legs felt like lead when I started but I managed around 8 miles and then in an attempt to mimic race conditions I went straight out for a short run when I got back.  All good fun, but I'm still a little concerned as I was exhausted afterwards and on Sunday I'm going to have to swim as well!