Llys Tryfan RIP

Ok, I have a huge mug of tea next to me, I suggest you do the same, we could be here for a while!

22 years ago today I was 2 days into my first year at university. It was still "Fresher's week" - we started later in those days - and I was aimlessly hanging out of the kitchen window of my Hall of Residence when my attention was drawn to the soft Irish lilt of someone below saying hello and asking what I was up to. As I was (and still am) totally besotted with Bono, the sound of an Irish accent did it for me. "Oh nothing much" I replied, as he disappeared through the door two floors below and into the building. A few minutes later the kitchen door opened and there he was. And 22 years later we are still together.


A couple of weeks ago we went back over to Bangor and it happened to be the day that all this year's students were arriving. We went to the Halls but sadly our Hall (Llys Tryfan) had been knocked down and replaced with a new building of the same size and shape in the same place. This is the old building - my room was on the end, top left, Colin was on the ground floor, 4th window from the right down the side.

and this is it now, it doesn't even have the same name anymore. We talked to one of the wardens and told them we had been there 22 years ago and he agreed to show us inside. It was all very shiny and new, all the bedrooms are now ensuite whereas we had 3 loos to 17 people on each floor! Ah we had some laughs there.

Ok, here are some touristy pictures from London, all the usual stuff.........

Marble Arch


The London Eye


The Victoria & Albert Museum


The ceiling of the cafe in the V&A


and of course Big Ben!

Two days wasn't really enough time, I felt like I missed a lot.

We then went up to The Lake District where we had a lovely little flat right in the middle of Ambleside. On Sunday Colin went and climbed a few of the Wainwrights so I pottered around the village, read and knitted. On Monday we went on the boat along Lake Windermere to Bowness. The weather was a bit grey and drizzly so no photos I'm afraid. Tuesday we drove around looking at the scenery and Wednesday we headed home. I think of the two, I preferred London as there was lots of stuff to do and as I'm not a walker looking at one hill is much like looking at another!

In between the two trips Becca had a Jamie at Home party. She invited all people from knit group so we all knew each other and her mum was the consultant so it was a lovely relaxed evening. I bought some lovely mugs, a matching milk jug, and a new apron!

My ex-work colleague and friend Iain and his wife Helen had their second baby last week. A little girl, a sister to their two year old boy, so congratulations to them. Here's a sneaky peek at something I am making for them.


On our last holiday day we went to see The Invention of Lying starring Ricky Gervais. It was okay I guess, a couple of funny moments and a great cameo from Steven Merchant and "Barry from Eastenders".

Well I think I'll stop there. I do have knitting stuff to show but I'll put that in a separate post.

Going a bit posh

Thanks for the comments about Ellie, it was a quick fun knit - 2 days - and I may make another at some point, possibly a smaller one. Ellie is about 5 inches tall and is knit from this pattern, using two strands of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock yarn held together, and 3.75mm DPNs. The DPNs were the purple ones which were free with an issue of Let's Knit magazine and I was pleasantly surprised at how good they were for a freebie.

Still OTN - Joma, Clapotis and Nutkin.

My Sock Wars assassin sent me some more gifts this week. The leftover Tofutsies from my socks, some jams, and some Socks That Rock sock yarn!!!!!!!!!!! It's fab, and a great colour. And the colourway is called Backstabber, hahahaha!!!


I got through quite a few episodes of another podcast last week. Sticks & String is from "an Australian bloke who knits". It's only half an hour long and easy to listen to, and gives a male perspective of knitting. I also found Stash & Burn a couple of days ago. A bit similar to Lime & Violet but not quite so manic!!

Yesterday we were wondering what to do with ourselves so we went into town to see what was going on. There was a home & garden show on at the racecourse but we didn't fancy that so we walked along the river for a bit and up through Grosvenor Park. Had lunch in The Gallery cafe and after Colin had bought some new sandals, headed back towards the car. There just happened to be some Polo going on at the Racecourse too so we wandered in and ended up finding some chairs right beside the pitch. The match turned out to be the final of the Coutts International Polo Tournament. There were quite a few posh people there whereas we were in shorts and t-shirts!! We watched 2 "chukkas" and took part in the treading in, where the crowd goes onto the pitch and treads in all the divots that have been thrown up by the hooves. I think traditionally it is supposed to be the ladies who do this while carrying a drink in a posh glass but there were men and kids and dogs doing it yesterday. The weather was fabulous dahling!! I came home with a bit of sun. When we looked it up later we should have paid £10 each for the priviledge but there was nowhere that we could see that said we had to pay. We just wandered in off the street!

This morning we went for a walk along the river but this time at The Meadows. Very pleasant. And this afternoon I finally finished reading Grave Doubts. It has taken me quite a while to get through this, it is about 600 pages long and I kept having long gaps between readings, but when i did get down to it I read a chunk at a time and the pages turned very quickly. It was pretty good for an English murder story, I've never been able to get into Ruth Rendell etc, but there were rather a lot of very annoying typos throughout the book. (she says, quickly checking this post for errors!!). I have now decided to have a go at A Metropolitan Murder by Lee Jackson. It is a much thinner book so I should get through it quicker.

On Tuesday night we went to see Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I thought Harrison Ford was really good in it and completely forgot the age issue. It was a good old romp but the ending was a bit daft, reminding me of the X-flies movie. Talking of which......the new one is out soon. Woohoo.

Hat, zoo, and eels.

Mike's hat is finished. This was a different yarn to the one I made mine in and shrank more vertically than horizontally, but a bit of blocking has done the trick. It is just about dry and will be handed over to Mike tomorrow. Hope he likes it.

In other knitting, I have finished one Miss Potter. I have decided to just make one pair though, in case I get fed up of the pattern.

We have a friend called Paul who we know from our student days. He is originally from South Wales but now lives in Fife with his wife Audrey and their 2 year old son Elliot. Every now and again we get a phone call from Paul, saying he is about half an hour away and can they pop in. Somehow we are usually in and not busy. It has become a bit of a standing joke. When I got home on Friday there was an answerphone message asking us to call him on his mobile. He was in the area but wondered if we were doing anything on Saturday. They were down for a family party in Lymm but were going to come over to the zoo, so we arranged to meet them. And here they are................The fourth person is Paul's niece Katie. We had a lovely day wandering around the zoo. It was very chilly though, and I should have taken my Tundra hat, but Paul came to the resue with a hat for me. Here I am wearing it, and discovering that one of the chimps has been named after me, hah hah.
Here are some leaf cutter ants doing their thing and carrying chunks of orange peel up to the top of the tree trunk. (Click the picture to see it better)
They also have prairie dogs where you can go through a tunnel and pop up inside a dome in the enclosure..........
Well Kate Garraway got voted off Strictly Come Dancing last night. At last!! It was getting a bit silly keeping her in as she was dreadful. I'm still not sure who the winner is going to be, but I think Kelly, Alisha and Matt have a good chance. Also been watching Long Way Down with Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman on Sunday evenings. They are travelling from John O'Groats to Cape Town on motorbikes through Africa.

Have you seen the film Team America - World Police? It is all done with string puppets but is definitely NOT for kids. When I first started watching it I though it was rubbish but I stuck with it and it turned out to be really funny. A p**s take of Tom Cruise films like Top Gun. Check it out if you haven't already.

I'll leave you with a little song..........
"Eels, eels, eels, eels..............Eels up inside ya! Finding an entrance where they can........."

A poorly titled post!

Blimey, a whole ten days without blogging. You'll all be abandoning me!

Well my new computer is now up and running. Lovely and fast although it does sound as if it is doing something in the background all the time. Maybe it is, who am i to say how the magic works? I got a new keyboard and mouse too which i am getting used to. I keep hitting 2 keys at once.

We have had a week off from the office so hopefully it will still be in one piece when we get back on Tuesday. We haven't been away, just "pottering". On Monday afternoon we popped up to the zoo, and were very priviledged to see one of the Red Pandas

(not my photo) on the ground for a change. They are usually asleep at the top of a very tall tree. And I don't know how they managed it because we thought the 2 panda's were sisters, but one of them has produced some babies which can just about be seen as blurs on a video monitor near the enclosure. These are maybe my second favourites after the orangutans.

On Tuesday we went to the cinema in the afternoon. Quite odd really, I kept thinking I'd forgotten to have my dinner! Anyway, we saw The Bourne Ultimatum. A great action film, non-stop. I will have to try a Robert Ludlum book at some point. I reckon Matt Damon might be able to play the part of Shane "Scarecrow" Schofield if they ever get round to making the film of Ice Station. Oooo I've just looked, and Hugh Jackman has been suggested on the Matthew Reilly website. Good choice.

I am currently reading Sandstorm by James Rollins. A good old adventure story concerning strange artifacts and goings on in the Oman desert. Pretty good. Similar to Matthew Reilly but not quite so break-neck. I am also still reading Various Haunts of Men but it got a bit dull so I left it to one side for a bit.

You will never guess what came in the post last week................

Oh yes, the infamous Galm Rock Ski Suit Socks have returned home at last. They've only been away for 6 months!!! They did return with a free pattern book though, which was a nice gesture on the part of Simply Knitting. Unfortunately it was all baby patterns, so no good for me but I may be able to use some of the stitch patterns in something else.

This morning we went to the Wirral Food & Drink Festival. It was very similar to the Chester one but was held on a farm in a big field. I got to have my second Hog Roast bap of the year which was delicious. We bought a few odds and sods including some big halibut steaks which we polished off for dinner this evening.

I had my second lot of bookmarks from the swap-bot swap.

These were from Violette. Just one more to come now, and a book from the CTnY bookswap. I was wondering whether to do a disposable camera swap. You get a camera, take photos of various things and then send it to your partner to get processed. So you don't know what pictures you are going to get until you process the film. Hmmm, I'll think about it a bit more, the closing date isn't until Saturday.

Anyway, back to the last week. On Wednesday Colin's brother Niall came over from Ireland for a quick visit, and also to sort out the office phone system which hasn't been quite right since it was put in. He was in the office for the best part of a day but it is now working fine and i know how to transfer and get back calls without losing people!! Always a bonus! He headed back to Ireland on Friday. We did go out on Thursday night to the fish restaurant The Foxcote Inn. Delicious!

Saturday was our usual trip into town and then today was the food festival. So that about brings us up to date. Now to think of a good title for this post. That's the bit I'm poor at. Oh, okay, I know.......

Films, TV, books etc

I have now had 3 sessions at the physio where she has done ultrasound on my little finger. Results? No change. I have one more session before I go for my assessment at the ortho's. But the physio seems to think I will have to have the op on both my thumb and finger. They don't do both at the same time though. I'm hoping they don't do it the last week in August cos I'm doing my Reiki Master level on 1st September and it wouldn't really do to turn up with one hand swathed in bandages.

Charley is OUT!!!! Hurrah!!! Trouble is the house has gone a bit quiet now. Maybe she should have stayed in. Ah we are so fickle. New housemates not really floating my boat either.

Something very rare happened in our house on Saturday. I did some tidying!!! Major tidying of the bedroom. All the dusty shoes came out from under the bed, all the old bags came out from where they had been stuffed in the wardrobe. All the cr*p on top of the drawers is gone (apart from the 50 or so books that constitute my "to be read" pile.) So after that we decided to get a new bed. Our current one is an IKEA bigger than kingsize and is rather big. We are going for a normal double so we will have a bit more room around the bed rather than in it. We are getting it from the same place we got our other bedroom furniture so it will match. They make them up from scratch and stain them too. Just have to find a good mattress now.

My alliums came out finally, and the bees absolutely love them. They are very tall though and all the rain has mostly flattened them to the ground, which is a shame.





Harry Potter now seems like a distant memory. I've just got the the middle of Salem's Lot and it is getting a bit scary. The vampires in it are the nasty type, not the suave, sophisticated types from the Anne Rice books. The book was written in 1975, and it is good not to have the presence of computers and mobile phones. However, it seems every single character smokes!

Talking of spooky things, I have become a recent convert to Supernatural.



I started watching part way through Series 2 but didn't really know the backstory, so I bought the full set of series 1 DVDs which I am trying to plough through. I like it because it is a bit X-file-y which was my favourite programme for the whole of its 9 series. I think Dean Winchester may replace Fox Mulder in my affections. (Wink to Colin who is convinced I only watch TV programmes where I fancy one of the characters - and he's probably right, but that doesn't explain why I watch Corrie!!) There are some great in-jokes like the episode which stars Linda Blair. At the end, Dean says to Sam, "Did she look familiar? I really fancy some pea soup right now."

Last week there was a lot of hype about Heroes so we watched it. Can't say it really grabbed me, it was a bit of a cross between X-men and 4400, both of which I like. I'm not sure if it is going to draw me in but I'll give it another episode or two. Watched The DaVinci Code on Saturday night and it was okay but the book was better.

I sound like a complete TV addict - probably true, but look at the weather!!!

Daemons

A friend just pointed me towards the website for The Golden Compass film based on the His Dark Materials books by Phillip Pullman. I can't wait for this film. On the site you can find out what your daemon is like. I can't seem to get it to embed in this blog, but mine is an osprey. Have a go!

HP, art, thumb, floods

Last Wednesday we took advantage of Orange Wednesdays and went off to see Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix. Hopefully I am not spoiling anything as I am assuming that most poeople have now read this book (although that is a huge assumption to make!). The film was good, and the 2 hours 10 minutes flew past, but I'm afraid there were some omissions which just brought back "Winkiegate" all over again. By "Winkiegate" I am referring to the fact that although the house-elf Winkie was an integral part of the book HP & the Goblet of Fire, she was completely omitted from the corresponding film! So, some of the omissions from this film included:

Tonks' hair was not pink and didn't change colour; Although only Luna and Harry could see the Thestrals, no one mentioned this fact when they all jumped on them to fly to the Ministry of magic; There was no portrait of Mrs Black in the hallway of Grimauld Place screaming abuse; and although Kreacher was there, his part in the book wasn't covered in the film. There were others which I can't remember now, because I've read the new HP since.

So, go and see the film, but be prepared to come out saying "Where was the bit where.....?"

(I currently have Radio 2 on in work, and they have been trailing a programme about the songs of Noel Coward. I think a much funnier and popular programme would be "the Songs of Noel Fielding" - "crouton, crouton, crunchy friends in a liquid broth", "I am electro boy, I am electro girl"!! Genius!)

Well we had an interesting time on Friday. We had arranged to go and visit a friend near Reading for the weekend. As he was going to be working all day Friday we thought we would take our time going down and take A-roads instead of just hurtling down the motorways. So off we went in the rain. After stopping for some lunch we headed on down towards Redditch and Stratford. Well, you know what the weather was like. The puddles got larger, the roads got wetter, the traffic got slower, and we ended up in a VERY slow moving queue, while watching the water outside the car getting higher. And we were heading downhill. Not good, when there are floods you really want to be going uphill. In the end we turned round, and abandoned the trip. I had visions of the car floating away and us wading through waist deep water with our bags over our heads. All I could think about was that there were no floods north of us so that was the direction to go in. So after a seven and a half hours round trip we ended up back where we started, at home. And what a good job we did, because all the places flooded on the news were exactly the places we were heading towards. I am very sorry for all the people who have been flooded but am also very relieved that we didn't get caught in it. It was a shame we didn't get to see Dave though.

Of course it did mean that we were home on Saturday morning so Colin went off to do the weekly shop as usual at 7am. He went to Tesco where you had to spend £50 to get Harry Potter for a fiver. So he got one. Then on his way back, he popped into Morrisons just to see how much they were selling it for, and it was £4.99 with no minimum spend so he got another copy so we wouldn't have to fight over it. We spent the weekend racing each other until we both finished it yesterday, with me winning by a couple of hours.

There was some time off of HP though. Sunday morning we decided to go out for breakfast because we would have if we'd been away. We went down to the Blue Moon cafe by the river in town, and had two cooked breakfasts. Phew, I didn't half enjoy it, I could have eaten another one straight after. Then we went to B&Q for some boards for the loft, and after went to a garden centre on the Wirral where the National Exhibition of Wildlife Art was on display. We bought these two.

They are very nicely framed too. We can't have them for a couple of weeks as they are still on display, but then they are ours. Ah, I wish I was that good at drawing.

Well yesterday I went off to physio. The physio I saw was very nice and easy to talk to. She didn't yank my thumb back but gently stretched it to its limit. She thinks that the little finger may respond to an injection but the thumb will probably need surgery. I have now been referred on , (although I do have to go back to see her a couple more times in the meantime,) to be assessed for the next stages. So another appointment to wait for.

Well I think that's everything caught up.