Quiet on the homefront

... well, kinda. Actually, the new year is off to a flying start: Ants started a new job, with St John Ambulance, and is hard at it learning first aid, driving the ambulance, and 'manual handling' of patients (aka 'carrying little old ladies - or fat old blokes - down the steep and narrow stairs that seem to be part and parcel of every English home'!). Work is off to a mad start for me also - the less said the better, there will be tricky times in the next month or so.

And we moved house. Our new abode is 75 paces from the old house, two doors from the pub, and right next door to a Chinese supermarket. It's old and slightly wonky, with slopey floorboards and three foot thick walls - but beautifully done up, with new and very user friendly kitchen and bathroom, double glazing and a modern, superefficient boiler... toasty!

When we get some furniture, we'll get you some pix.

Snow!

They're calling it the coldest winter on record (records go back to 17-hundred-and-something). I wouldn't know. But I do know that it snowed this week. Twice!


Yes, sadsack that I am, I took my camera to work, so I could snap these pix of our backyard , our street, and the walk to the bus stop...


I now know what it really means when the grass crunches beneath your feet and the ground is frozen solid. I've found out when I've gone out to defrost the drinking water for our chickens every morning - and every night because it even refreezes during the day!

We feel very smug when we settle down to our open fire at night... we'll miss that when we move.

Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve and, after knocking off work (it was somewhat quiet - damn 'skeleton staff requirement'...), we headed to Bristol for a night of knees-up with the Company of Chivalry lasses and lads. It was good wholesome stuff: homemade pizza, cider, potato cakes from the local chippie (potato cakes! I haven't seen potato cakes since Melbourne!)... and Transformers Risk. The usual.

Actually, I hadn't played Risk in about 4 years, so I was well pleased. Even more so when I teamed up with the lovely Martin (the blurry pair of hands on the left in the photo above), we became Decepticons and cleaned up the board.

Race was on to finish the game before the midnight countdown - and then wake Anthony, who had fallen asleep on a 2 person camping chair... before it was too late...After popping the cork on a bottle of fizz, trading the traditional hugs and happy wishes then racing outside in socks and no coats (in -5C!) to see the fireworks that every man and his dog had saved up from Bonfire night and was letting off in the street, well, it all turned a bit silly.

Here is our host Liz, seeking an opinion on whether her chicken fillets, or plastic pasta bowls, do more for her cleavage...
Needless to say, a late night was had by all and there was much in the way of bacon sandwich munching the next afternoon... My husband did both the shop run and the cooking for 7 of us, and is a god among men.

Happy new year folks, and may all your 2009 hopes and dreams come to pass. xoxox