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1. Train trip to Amsterdam that we had planned before we knew we were moving was relaxing and fun. Lots of walking around and sitting in cafes.
2. A friend’s wedding last weekend at Robin Hood’s Bay – lovely ceremony, wood fire in a cozy lounge, good company and lots of dancing
3. A lot of English trees turn yellow rather than orange or red in autumn. Although this is less spectacular at a glance, I have come to appreciate the golden glow it creates on a sunny afternoon in the woods.
4. Hearing my niece talk to herself and giggle every time I speak to my sister now. She is one happy little baby.
5. The house is littered with boxes that are half filled (or in the case of the bicycle boxes, are moved from one place to another in a fruitless search to find a place they do not block access to something useful like the washing machine or front door). Strnagely I feel fairly organised.
6. Everything booked for the journey home (via Asia) in less than three weeks!
7. We actually remembered the clocks were going back in time to have an extra hour's sleep in the morning. Bliss!
8. Cute little zombie trick or treaters at the door!


More lists up as usual at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast!

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1. Autumn colours starting to appear on trees
2. But I also loved the lovely random 25 degree day in the middle of the week. After a meeting in London I sat in the sunshine outside St Pancras enjoying my flat white coffee (the UK has only recently acquired this drink from Australia).
3. Our friends moved back from Bristol with their giant baby (OK, he’s a normal size baby, but 11 months is huge compared to 5 months) and we caught up after work on Friday as the baby systematically tried to eat everything in the room.
4. Hula hooping class (for a hen party) yesterday was great fun. This is apparently the hot new thing in exercising, and it really was hard work, as my entire waist and lower back will testify today. I think the fun yesterday outweighs the pain today, though.
5. And a fun rest of the day/evening in London. Love being around so many people sometimes.
6. Kale and barley soup and kale pizza are on the menu tonight – can you guess the veggie I haven’t used from this week’s box? But I have had the pizza before and YUM.

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It's been ages since I've done a list, as I've been very busy at work and home. But there have been lots of nice things in between the work.

1. The most exciting thing I’ve done since the last list was going to the Globe in London to see the Merry Wives of Windsor. It was fantastic sitting in the theatre watching a play that was popular hundreds of years ago (even with the odd anachronistic plance going overhead). And the play itself was great fun!
2. Brambling season! Blackberries for yummy crumble obtained and eaten.
3. While we cycled we heard in the middle of nowhere, bagpiping. A colleague later told me she’d seen a man in shorts and a t-shirt playing bagpipes in a nearby quiet layby that afternoon. And to add to the randomness, one farm’s field appeared to be filled by tents and a juggling school.
4. Wow, it has been a while since I’ve been on. On the long weekend, we visited Whipsnade zoo, which is a large openish zoo that seems to take London Zoo’s animals that need more space. We were there before the little rhino was born, but had a great time walking around the nicely laid out grounds that had free range wallabies and mara hopping around the place.
5. After struggling (as usual) to find shoes that fit, had the brain wave that sling back heels would probably fit as they are able to be tightened, ordered a paif off the internet and they fit fine.
6. Spontaneous picnic today to take advantage of the sunny weather. So relaxing to be the only people on the grounds of an old manor house, and watch the clouds skip across the sky. Also, more blackberries.
7. A noisy webcam conversation with sisters, partners and my niece (who continues to be disapproving of my giant head on the computer screen) this morning. Nice way to start the day!

More lists and great art as usual at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast!

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I forgot to post this Sunday!


1. a catch up with my manager who is on maternity leave – lovely cuddles with her baby, and a delicious chocolate guinness cake with birthday candles for me

2. lamingtons (an Aussie treat, though apparently also in Papua New Guinea) made for me by the New Guinean wife of a friend

3. and gooseberry tart and strawberry jam muffins – such nice colleagues and friends!

4. A work bbq where we again were forced to shelter under large trees due to rain – still a great night, and it’s wonderful knowing so many people now compared to this bbq two years ago

5. I bought a new dress yesterday for some upcoming weddings – a quick decision but I think one that will work

6. Listening to my niece chuckle on the phone

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1. Two little weasels scampered across the path I was cycling on to work during the week. When I turned and looked backwards I saw them chase each other back across the path again – very cute.

2. I spoke to my sister and niece on skype this morning, and for the first time the baby seemed to notice the giant head floating around on the computer screen, and looked very perplexed.

3. New pretty and cheap plants for the pots in the yard

4. Made simple sugar cookies with lemon glaze during the week (using my new butterfly cookie cutters), and despite the very basic recipe had many compliments (nothing like explaining to someone who loves a glaze that it is made of icing sugar and lemon juice)

5. For someone who likes cooking, I’d strangely never made my own pesto until I got a bunch of basil in my veg box. Very yummy, despite the ratio of pine nuts to basil being slightly off. Next vegetable box challenge: use the kohl rabi.

6. Today’s challenge was cleaning out the bedroom and cupboard, and it didn’t take too long to get it tidy. However, this has meant that the full scale of the number of books hidden in the bedroom has became apparent. I am not sure where to put them seeing as it’s not worth getting another bookshelf at this point. Suspect I will have to start my pre-Australia-move weeding early.

7. I also got lots of washing done and dried this weekend due to the warm and windy weather, including a rug that needs a good half day outside to be dried. A domestic benefit to the lovely weather!

More lists up as usual at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast!

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We’ve just arrived home after a fortnight away that has flown by. There’s no way I’ll catch up with everyone’s blogs so let me know if anything strange or wonderful has happened to you in the last couple of weeks.


1. Our holiday went great! Every train connection was made successfully which is amazing given the number of countries we crossed. Highlights included a food festival in the gardens of Prague Castle, having dinner with the family of a Hungarian friend in Budapest (and managing to drink the palinkca without choking), having spectacular world heritage sites in Romania to ourselves, seeing nesting storks on power poles and chimneys everywhere, walking through woods that actually have bears, wolves and lynx in them (even if we didn't see them) and wandering a Vienna approximately 33 degrees warmer than when I was there last time, and stumbling across a museum of globes.

2. We had some lovely summer (ie actually being able to leave the hotel in short sleeves and without a cardigan) weather!

3. Even the problems on the holiday were resolvable, and included great stories such as how we were locked into a fortified church in Viscri (Transylvania) for over two hours by the forgetful keeper – we managed to attract the attention of some Hungarian tourists who wandered past the bottom of the tower we decided to set up base in, but the old lady declined to finish her siesta early. I can now say those fortified churches were very well fortified. We entertained ourselves by sending text messages to people across the world saying “we are trapped in a tower by a mad old Romanian woman!” (the strangeness of having mobile phone coverage in a 16th tower in a tiny town without paved roads was not lost on me).

4. I planned my paperback collection well enough that I actually returned with unread books!

5. Not only did it apparently rain enough to keep all our potplants alive, the rogue snapdragons in the gravel are doing great and the first geraniums are out!

6. First load of washing is rumbling away, which makes me feel very accomplished

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I was hoping to get a book post up before I put up last week's list of good things, but alas it has not happened and I head off a fortnight holiday tomorrow. An adventure! Train through Prague and Budapest to Romania, and then back through Vienna. I will catch up with you all when I return!


1. I am in a sad enough state now to start by saying the warm weather of last week put a smile on my face. I am definitely more relaxed in warm weather.
2. Picnic at Houghton House on Saturday – nice food overlooking a valley and a field of buttercups.
3. Last weekend we visited Bempton Cliffs where we had two lovely walks along th e clifs looking at kittiwakes, gannets and cute little puffins. The sound and sight of so many birds was incredible. Highly recommended to anyone living in the UK.
4. Then we went and visited Whitby, including the very atmospheric abbey.
5. First poppies out!

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1. My new niece is settling in well! She is even cuter now (hurrah for skype letting me see her!), with a definite propensity to pull her eyebrows down in a frown when looking around this strange world.

2. Last weekend we went camping in the Lake District. Our campsite was in a beautiful quiet valley and our tent looked at a field full of sheep with ridiculously cute black and white lambs.

3. Highlights included a walk around the hills around Grasmere, visiting a couple Wordsworth’s birthplace (which was unfortunately flooded late last year, so the heritage garden was still quite scrappy), an old farm house and listening to a Tawny Owl hoot outside our tent.

4. We came home via Hadrian’s wall, which admittedly was an almost two hour detour but it was definitely worth it – wonderful to see the wall and the beautiful scenery in that part of the world.

5. British asparagus is everywhere in the shops! And in our house!

6. I not only remembered to turn stale bread into breadcrumbs and store them in the freezer, I made a bread and butter pudding thing with rhubarb compote for dessert last night. Very yummy!

7. I have reasonably high hopes for the brioche hamburger rolls that are finishing rising in the kitchen right now

And here are lost items from a fortnight ago that I forgot to post...

1. First cuckoo of the year!
2. So many flowers out at the moment – this week I saw my first blubells, wisteria and buttercups for the year.
3. Card from philia_fan - unexpected real mail is the nicest thing
4. Drinks after work in a sunny beer garden with friends
5. A cycle ride to a café next to the river. It’s a nice length ride, mostly offroad, yet we don’t do it often enough.
6. I got to wear a t-shirt while cycling! My arms saw sunlight!

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Still no news on my yet-to-be-born niece who is now 10 days late! But in the absence of her arrival, I still have had a good week:

1. Despite the ash cloud covering the country the weather has been lovely.
2. I cycled up to work with my pilates mat strapped to my front basket and didn’t knock anyone over on the way. And I think the bright purple colour attracted some cute goldfinches who accompanied me part of the way.
3. I was nervous about teaching a 3 hour class in Oxford yesterday (generally I actually enjoy giving presentations and lecturing, but three hours?!) but it all went well.
4. And afterwards I had finger sandwiches, an excellent scone with clotted cream and ham and half a piece of lemon cake!
5. We also visited the Ashmolean museum (I love writing and saying that name), which was very well laid out and included interested exhibits such as how the staff conserve items and the history of money.
6. There is a new Indian restaurant in town, and although its décor is very bling (lots of sparkly tiles and little lights beaming around the room) the food was reasonable and yummy – lots of great vegetable dishes in particular.
7. Fuse #8’s top 100 children’s books list inspired me to read The Westing game (excellent!) and to give in to my temptation to buy the pretty box set of the Wrinkle in time books (justification: my copy of A wrinkle in time in Aus is a UK copy where the first line has famously been changed – who knows if anything else was? Safest to buy a US copy).

More lists up as usual at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast!

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I'm not dead! I just haven't been home much recently. I will try to catch up with you all now I'm around more! The upside is I've fit an awful lot of reading in :)


1. It is sad I have reached this point, but I am overjoyed at the fact that the weather has crept into the late-teens (celcius) and I can shed my outer coat!

2. I travelled to Geneva for work, and what I was expecting to be a very scary meeting went well.

3. But even better than that, I got to catch up with my Swiss friend who took me out for fondue on the lake. It was a very basic place that only served fondue and wine, but it the best fondue I’ve ever had!

4. We went to Jersey over Easter, and it was lovely. Great cliff walks, pretty beaches and best of all, yummy seafood in nice cafes overlooking those beaches.

5. And we went to Gerald Durrell’s conservation zoo, which I had been wanting to do since I read his books about setting it up years ago.

6. We celebrated the warmer weather by getting out the bicycles and riding to a local spring fair (or fayre as they like to call it), where we bought small geranium plants and hand made cheeses.

7. The newest addition to our vegetable boxes is wild garlic – green leaves that taste like garlic! A yummy addition to stir fries.

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It feels a bit strange reading over my blog, as I don't talk much about sad things. So it seems like a constant stream of cheerfulness (and books, the original purpose of the whole thing!). But seeing as I'm fairly private I can't see that changing anytime soon, and in any case it's nice to have these updates for family and friends so think I will continue. Here is this week's post and one from a couple of weeks ago I never got around to posting!


1. Yellow iris are blooming in the garden – they are small and very cheerful.

2. Surprise crocus are popping up in one pot. I thought I planted them from a bunch of bulbs with a note I wrote last year saying snake-head fritillaries, but I was either mistaken about the pot, wrong last year when I dug them up or they have mysteriously transmuted into crocus!

3. Yesterday we took part in an archaeology day at a local reserve! We helped dig and sift through some test pits (didn’t find anything which helped disprove a theory about a potential railway on the site) and then unearthed foundations from a world war two set of huts that were far more extensive than expected – the archaeologists suspect it was a prisoner of war camp which was somewhere in our area. Great fun!

4. I managed to speak to all of my parents and sisters today on the phone, which quite rare. It’s difficult to fit in everyone on a weekend (easier then with time difference) but lovely when it happens.

5. An excellent veggie box this week has had us eating our way steadily – though admittedly slightly desperately as we ordered a larger size than usual - through some delicious meals.

6. I’ve been able to join the current pilates class after work on Thursdays

7. It has been sunny this weekend!

And from 21st Feb:

1. I finally dropped off bags of stuff that had been laying around the house to a local charity store

2. I arranged to have the zip replaced on an old faithful black skirt

3. Inspired by my recent reading of Connie Willis’ Blackout, we went and visited St Paul’s in London yesterday. And because it was a clear day we go to climb all the way to the top of the dome – great views!

4. Then we wandered over to the Borough Market, where we were sadly too late for some of the stalls. The upside was that some other stalls were selling off food before the end of the day, so we got a ridiculously cheap and large free range chicken (which will be roasted for dinner, yum) and two-for-one artisan bread and other goodies.

5. A close colleague has left to go on maternity leave, and although we’ll miss her we made her last day fun, with piles of cakes, lots of nice presents like books and people dropping by all day. I made an apple ricotta cake that was very successful (if I say so myself).

6. My sister’s pregnant belly is getting much bigger! She is sending me photos regularly, and looks beautiful and healthy. Only 7 weeks (officially) to go!

7. The crocuses in town are out in bloom

More lists and illustrations as usual at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast!

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Well, I haven't had time to sneak away and finish my books of 2009 list but I have been doing other nice things (including lots of reading which is easier to fit into time at the start and end of the day).


1. Last weekend we took our guests to cute Suffolk villages like Lavenham. Great fun, especially as it was sunny for the first time in ages. We found an antiques store that sold lots of random old stuff, not just proper antiques, and had fun poking around the messy rooms. I bought a teacup, saucer and plate.
2. Then yesterday we went to the Cotswolds and looked around cute towns with names like Stow-on-the-Wold and Chipping Campden. The buildings were lovely but a highlight was definitely the many second hand bookstores – I returned home with a pile of inexpensive yet wonderful paperbacks.
3. I received an unexpected and thoughtful gift.
4. After having lost a few important pieces of paper, we girded our loins and waded into the plastic bags that consitute our filing cabinets. We didn’t find everuthing we were looking for but feel a lot more organised now!
5. We used the raclette machine my Swiss friend gave me when she moved back home, and had a yummy meal last weekend
6. I know it’s still ages till Spring, but the evenings are noticeably lighter now, the birds are singing more in the mornings (possibly happy there’s no snow and they can see food again) and tips of bulbs are popping up everywhere.
7. And even more cheery, today we went to Anglesey Abbey to see if any snowdrops had defied the cold and bloomed, and many had! Our guests were desperate to see some before heading home to Australia this week, so we felt very accomplished that we’d managed to find some.

More lists up as usual at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast!

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1. When we went to drop off our order form for a freerange Christmas goose (OK that is a cool event in itself…I have never eaten goose but have read so many British books with a Christmas goose) we discovered the farm was having an open day. Highlight was half a dozen Gloucester Old Spot piglets having a good time laying on top of each other’s heads.

2. And talking about British food, I tried treacle tart for the first time the other day. It was a bit sweet for me but I still enjoyed getting to try it.

3. I also picked up some bargain veggies from a stall at the farm

4. I have a beautiful bunch of flowers on the table.

5. We popped into Bletchley Park (the place the codebreakers were based during WWII) yesterday, too late in the day to have a good look around but the ticket lasts for a year so we can return. Very interesting to read about codebreaking even if I know that I completely lack talent in that arena.

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1. I am going to be an aunt! My sister (the one who got married earlier this year) is expecting a baby next year! I am very excited.

2. We had a lovely sunny Sunday walking around Cambridge with lady_schrapnell and steepholm today.

3. We had a fun dinner with friends during the week (goodbye dinner, unfortunately, but they are moving to Bristol which isn’t too great a distance to visit).

4. I am still so happy to have my visa/passport. And it's very nice not checking the post obsessively every day.

5. And when I madly rushed off on holidays when it arrived everyone was so delighted for me at work that I remembered again how lucky I am to have such a nice workplace.

6. Now I have my passport back I have booked accommodation for our Ireland holiday with mum (who arrives Tuesday!), and I got a few places on special at great prices.

7. My no-knead-keep-dough-in-fridge bread making is going very well. I accidentally bought a 52 inch rather than 52cm pizza peel to assist in the baking process, but besides that small mistake I am regularly making yummy crusty bread!

More lists as usual at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast!

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1. Last weekend we took advantage of nice summer weather and went camping in Norfolk. The site was on a farm, which meant we could wake to the sound of cows mooing, but was also close enough to a small town that we could walk to the cute local pub for dinner

2. My favourite bit was sitting out under a clear sky with bats whizzing around overhead and the most stars I’ve seen since I moved here (generally it’s too cloudy or too much light pollution).

3. We went on a lovely walk that was ostensibly to see the local river but also featured much gawking at the harvesting of wheat

4. One of my friends is moving back to Switzerland (sniff) but we had a good night with pot luck dinner and cocktails one night

5. I remembered I had a jar of dulche de leche in the cupboard and made alfajores for a friend’s birthday at work. I wasn't super impressed but they were still yummy and looked pretty too

6. A belated birthday present (pretty amber coloured flat discs strung on a necklace) was a lovely surprise yesterday

7. The house is neat and tidy ready for Australian visitors tomorrow night!

More lists up at usual at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast!

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1. A while back I collected points from Jordans museli and oats bxes and ordered a free bee friendly plant. I had forgotten about it so it was a lovely surprise when a cute Lavender Kew Red turned up this week! I had been running late so it was a fortunate I was home or else it would have been sitting in the local depot for a day.
2. I forgot to say, when we went camping a few weeks back we saw a cute hedgehog ambling around one evening! Lovely to see one clearly in daylight.
3. A colleague from Norfolk gave me a whole bunch of samphire, a local salt marsh plant, to try. It was interesting – quite salty so I imagine it would go well with fish!
4. Bloomsbury changing the cover of Justine Larbalestier’s Liar
5. There are lots of ladybirds around at the moment (a nice amount here, not a huge horde as in Norfolk, though even that is pretty exciting), which is great to see as they are native 7 spots rather than the invasive Harlequin Beetle. Plus they’re eating all the aphids, yay.
6. Yesterday was sunny and warm (thank goodness!) so we went for a picnic on the Dunstable Downs – great views, nice grass fields (I guess the rain is worthwhile after all) and a stroll along the hill’s edge after yummy food.
7. We popped in with our thermos of coffee to the nearby Whipsnade Tree Cathedral afterwards. Very relaxing.

As usual, more lists and great art up at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast!

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1. I harvested my first ever potatoes this week! They are Edzell blues and tasted very yummy roasted for tea. The skin loses its colour when baked. The rest are still growing in the potato barrel (an unwanted gift for a colleague now put to good use!).

2.I am also enjoying experimenting with the bread in Artisan bread in five minutes a day (a birthday gift). It’s no knead and the dough can be stored in the fridge for two weeks. The bread has an excellent crust and today’s batch featured a very nice crumb as well. Yum! I meant to get a better photo than this of a later loaf but we ate them too quickly.



3. The first blackberries are ripe!

4. We went for a nice afternoon walk around the river this afternoon

5. We found a café that we like in Cambridge that is not only not a boring chain but serves yummy food at reasonable prices (for the centre of Cambridge, anyway)

ETA 6. I finally made it to our local farmer's market. It was small but had some good stalls so we came home with veggies, weird shaped chillies, chilli sauce, rabbit pie and freerange duck legs.

More lists up as usual at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.

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Much as I hate two of these lists being posted in a row reminding me I haven't written a proper post for a week, I have been busy...


1. During the week I took the afternoon off and went to Oxford to meet checkers65477 for the first time in real life! I also got to catch up with other sounis friends from the UK. It was a great afternoon, though flew by far too fast!
2. It was fun seeing Oxford again, especially as hebe got us into Keble College where we were lucky enough to have the librarian show us their old manuscripts. Lovely!
3. I found out just in time that there was a coach to Oxford that took less time than the train and was less than half the price! Not just good news for me but also for future visitors who can now catch a bus into the middle of Oxford, which should cut down on worry about getting lost etc.
4. It my birthday during the week! I got breakfast in bed, lots of parcels from family and friends and went out for drinks after work with some mates. When we moved here almost 2 years ago I wouldn't have thought I'd know so many people in the area.
5. I made a carrot cake to take into work. Very yummy as I got the cream cheese frosting just right.
6. I got a tent and assorted camping equipment for my birthday, so yesterday we headed up to the Derbyshire Dales for the night. We stayed on a lovely farm where we could sit outside the tent and watch the swallows dart around the pastures.
7. It rained today (lovely to hear rain on the tent roof but less fun when packing) but we headed off to Lyme Park (Pemberly in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice) and the rain stopped in time for us to enjoy wandering the fantastic gardens, and interesting house. They have just started displaying the 15th century Missal, and accompanied it with this great computer program that lets you virtually leaf through it and magnify bits, listen to any music that's written out and translate bits of text (like handwritten anotations). I could have stayed there all day.

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1. My little hanging basket strawberry plant has been growing strawberries! Lopsided strange looking ones but very rich tasting and sweet.

2. Lots of social events recently including a dinner where we had fun explaining what different types of food were to French students who made the mistake of sitting near the non-French speakers of the group. It is quite difficult to describe asparagus (green plant? Like a stick with a bushy top?).

3. It stopped raining about an hour before a friend’s BBQ last weekend and only started up again a decent amount of time after the food was cooked.

4. I finally visited a small hippie type of shop I’d heard good things about and picked up a lovely soft cotton dress that had just been marked down by 50%!

5. A gorgeous electrical storm last week.

6. I am eating Britsh cherries. Very fat and yummy.

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1. One of my friends has happily announced she is pregnant. Very exciting! And convenient, so now I don't have to wonder if she's strangely gaining weight in just one spot any more.
2. We had friends over for cocktails last night. Great conversation & yummy food and cocktails
3. Leftovers today include homemade quiche (friend), chocolate & cheesecake brownies (me) and fruit salad (British famers).
4. I reorganised the bookshelves and despite realising I have been completely in denial over the need for more shelf space (I kept thinking that of course there would be enough space once the DVDs were shifted out of the way) I am loving having a better idea of where my books are on the shelf now. And playing with books for an evening is always fun.
5. I went to Brussels by train for work this week, and got to meet colleagues from all over Europe, which was cool.
6. I forgot to say, I got to see a nightjar up close recently. It was great to have a chance to see this normally well-hidden bird.
7. I made an effort to ride to work more often this week and really enjoyed myself.

More lists up at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast!

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1. On the Monday of the long weekend last week I went the garden centre and bought a variety (read: slightly more than originally intended) of plants such as a strawberry plant for a hanging basket, and baby nasturtiums and stripy marigolds. So now the back yard is looking great for summer.

2. A family member who had been facing paying off rent and mortgage with one half of the two-person family unexpectedly unemployed saw the property rented out and some casual work picked up - phew

3. We went away for a few days for work and being locked away with no Internet in a meeting room was productive. Our meeting room was on a reserve (=free), which was fun because then we got to watch visitors enjoy themselves and read children’s reports on their visit that were stuck on the wall (highlights were generally the children who said things like “When year four entered the reserve they sighed with relief as they were finally able to sit in a warm room”)

4. We went for a walk after work in an ancient woodland. It was beautiful, and fringed on one side by sunny buttercup meadows and a small stream.

5. I got to stare at a kingfisher for ages while he obligingly sat still on a stick. My earlier glimpse had been of the blue flash variety. They are gorgeous birds!

6. Pub lunch in Hampstead with a friend yesterday. I hadn’t been to that part of London before, so enjoyed walking and driving about.

7. The sunny weather! I don't want to be obsessive about the weather, but I'm really enjoying being warm.

More lists up at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast!

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1. Good health news within the family

2. I finally got around to ordering new glasses. I’ve been having to wear them instead of contacts more often so my old scratched and bent ones have been annoying. My new ones are completely different, which is scary!

3. I gave a talk for work that went well. It was a good audience that responded and lots of people kindly said they enjoyed it afterwards.

4. Yesterday we walked and drove around various bits of Suffolk, including Flatford (where the painter Constable was from) and Lavenham, a lovely town that still retains many medieval buildings thanks to a fortuitous economic boom (good buildings put up) and bust (no one could afford to renovate).

5. The recycling is so good now that we have made the larger bin the kitchen the recycling bin and the small one the rubbish bin

6. I pottered around in the hot (!) sun today, lifting my bulbs, planting a tomato plant I bought from a neighbour’s stall down the street and making space for some new plants I want to buy tomorrow.

7. We went for a bike ride and bought an ice cream. Ice cream seems like more fun when sunny weather can’t be taken for granted.

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I have been too busy revising for the life in the UK test today (holiday was too fun to bother with much studying) but I promise I will be back to regale you with interesting facts that all British people apparently need to know.



1. We’re home from a great trip to Scotland. Highlights included an early morning start at Loch Garten RSPB reserve that was rewarded by sightings of capercaillie, ospreys and red squirrels
2. Orkney was as full of interesting historical sights as I had hoped. As well as the famous sites like Skara Brae, Ring of Brogdar and Maes Howe (Viking graffiti inscriptions!) I managed to undermine my self-assessment of myself as a rational person by getting the heebie jeebies while standing alone in a 5000 year old small stone tomb with a flickering torch. It wasn’t possible to run out (very small tunnel entrance that required crawling) but my exit was not leisurely!
3. When our car door was ripped from my hand by the howling wind on Orkney (seriously, I thought I would get blown away at one stage!) and smacked into the car next to me, the car owner laughed and said worse things had happened to the car, and not to worry about it!
4. Culinary highlights included yummy single malt whisky tasting and fresh seafood
5. My potato plants have grown so much while I was away! I was wrong to give up on them.
6. And while on the subject of not giving up on plants, the fuchsia I thought was killed by the cold winter has come back to life and has tiny flower buds all over it.
7. I have an abundance of books at the moment, which always makes me feel happy!

If I don't get the Scotland photos up by the end of the month please feel free to make pointed comments! In the meantime you can enjoy Mother's Day pictures and posts at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.

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1. All of a sudden the bluebells are properly out, and the woods at work smell and look beautiful
2. I saw two big common snakes! (Snake identification is easy here in the UK as there are only three types, one of which is rare).
3. After belatedly realising that May starts very soon I’ve finished organising our holiday to Scotland next week – the UK is an expensive place to travel around but I have managed to get some bargains
4. Although my potatoes have shown no signs of growing my sweet pea seedlings have settled in and are putting out little tendrils all over the place.
5. I had a small but satisfying victory at work
6. I’m enjoying the BBC’s North and South tv series, and impressed with the amount of brooding Mr Thornton manages to inject into one glance.
7. Random morris dancers in town yesterday, which is surprising as we aren’t a cute little town with thatch roofed cottages and a village green, where one might expect such things

More lists up at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast!

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1. Last weekend we went to north Wales where we stayed in a tiny village that had no television or phone reception.

2. It was the sort of place that kindly supplies guests with maps of the local area as well as foolproof instructions for walks, so we enjoyed a beautiful hill walk in the unforeseen sunshine. The highlight was rescuing a lamb that had become separated from its mother. I never thought I'd be writing that in one of these lists.

3. I heard my first cuckoo of spring this week.

4. British asparagus has appeared in the shops again.

5. Another spring vegetable that has cheered my week is chard, which arrived in my veggie box instead of the ever-present cabbage (hallelujah). I used most of it in a delicious chard, blue cheese and pine nut lasagna.

6. Despite the recession, and a corresponding decline in the value of legacies left to the charity where I work, it seems that forgoing a pay rise means we will manage without any redundancies, which is pretty amazing.

7. Today has been a pottering around the house day, with small chores like potting plants and cleaning the bathroom balanced by naps in the sun.

More lists up as usual at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast!

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