The Way of the Wombat

This is the cake from yesterday's post, now it has been cut into;



It was clearly a hit - she passed on an e-mail that said "Full marks to your mum – epic cake!"

You know you are getting old when your daughter is adult enough to be asked by her best friend's father to ratify his new passport photo.

Also - you know you are getting old when an e-mail to said daughter receives an automated reply telling you that, if your e-mail is urgent, you can contact her secretary.

On the other hand she is still young enough to want to come around tomorrow for pancakes...

D-d is enjoying herself in Guernsey. A slight mix-up with the taxi sent to collect her at the airport found her at the wrong hotel briefly, but it was easily sorted, and she is now settling in. The office staff are all very welcoming, and she is already making new friends.

Dishwashers? Well our 10 year old Zanussi was getting past it - various bits had broken, or dropped off, and we decided it was time to replace it. I went to a local showroom carrying something very important for this task - one of our dinner plates! When we got new crockery for our 25th wedding anniversary we made sure the dinner plates were no bigger in diameter than the old ones - mainly so they would fit into the cupboard. But the angle of rim to base was different - and they couldn't stand properly in the old dishwasher without the rotating arm hitting them. We've had to basically lie them down, and it meant no more than three dinner plates in any wash.

Anyway, the lady in the showroom was surprised by me bringing out a plate - until we tried it in the first dishwasher and... ping, the same thing happened! But the plates fit into the rather cheap and basic Baumatic perfectly. So it is now in situ and working well.

But this led to a discussion at work about dishwashers - and I was surprised to find others saying their dishwashers scratch their glasses - and these are newer dishwashers than our late Zanussi. Neither that one, or the new one, in any way scratch the glasses.

We use Fairy all in one tablets, no salt, no rinse-aid or anything else - and I genuinely didn't realise that anyone still got scratched glassware from putting it into a dishwasher.

So - does your dishwasher scratch your glassware? I am genuinely curious.

I'm still in London - last day today - home tomorrow.

So - Monday's trip to Kensington Palace was very interesting - I will post some pictures once I get back to the laptop as my tablet doesn't have a slot to upload from the camera card. There was an exhibition of dresses belonging to the Queen, Princess Margaret, and Dead Di - I am hoping there are some nice pictures on the card!

We had afternoon tea, and walked to the Royal Albert Hall, where we had seats right up in the gods, for a classic prom, and then, also, for the Six Music prom which featured the London Sinfonietta and The Stranglers, amongst others!

Tuesday saw us up bright and early again - tube into town and then a visit to the Churchill War Rooms, followed by a pause in St James Park, and then a visit to the Banqueting House where actors were 'rehearsing for a great masque' - which was fun.

Thence to the Covent Garden area, a meal, and to Mathilda. Which was excellent and worth every penny of the very high ticket price!

Yesterday we went to the Wallace Collection - a wonderful collection of works of art, porcelain, furniture and an armoury. This included a break for lunch in their rather excellent café - and then back to the hotel for D-d to collect her case and head for London City airport, as she was flying home last night and due back to work this morning.

I pottered off to Waitrose to get a couple of bits to eat in my room and laze around.

Then began a series of messages - the airport at home was suffering fog problems some planes were being turned around, her flight might be delayed... Eventually she ended up in the Gatwick Hilton, and is hopefully in the air now on her way home! She seems to have an affinity for the Gatwick Hilton - I think this is the third time BA have put her up there.

I'm heading out now to see what the queues are like at both the Natural History Museum and the V&A and take it from there...

Train back up to Lancaster tomorrow, and boat home.

I said I would see if there were any official Labyrinth pictures. I did find one of some of the cast but it wasn't terribly good, however I now have some of D-d's own photos of the whole Castle Rushen Unlocked experience which Labyrinth was part of.

So, there are quite a few pictures ( Under this cut... )

The group that came together to perform enjoyed it so much that they are now trying to work out what else they can do at this, or one of the other, National Heritage sites.

Yesterday evening D-d and I attended a play. It was a rather excellent event - an outdoor stage and an invitation for the audience to bring their own chairs and their picnic.

The play itself told the story of a figure from Manx history, William Christian also known as Illiam Dhone ('Brown (W)Illiam), starting at the moment of his execution, and looking at how it had come to this point.

He was left in charge of the island by Lord Stanley during the English Civil War and handed it over to the Parliamentarians after the execution of the Earl, to prevent bloodshed. There is some debate as to whether he was, then, a hero or a traitor.

The play was rather good - and the surroundings gorgeous, especially as the temperature through the evening was a warm 20-22C.

I have put some pictures under the cut - with a couple especially for pellegrina...

( Read more... )

Much love to all the other Mums on my friends' list - I know the Moms get their day later in the year, but we celebrate Mothering Sunday today, the mid-point of Lent.

I have had a very special day - I will share a few pictures under the cut.

First was church - a special service as Mothering Sunday is part of the church calendar, not just a secular celebration. Traditionally the children and their leaders take this service at our church - so I was leading, and it all went well. Some churches make little posies for the mothers in the congregation, but we have a big basket of chocolate to give to the mothers - it was nice to have D-d there to take some for me!

After church came my special treat. A steam-train trip and lunch, especially for Mothering Sunday.

( I'll cut here for pics of the train... )


And now I have chocolate and honey cake to nibble on through the evening - all in all a very nice day.

Burns' Night was, officially, 25th January - i.e.the anniversary of the birth of the poet Robert Burns. But we usually celebrate it on the nearest Saturday evening, so it was our Burns' Night Supper last night.

When I say 'ours', it is our church that organises what our toastmaster (who is also the Speaker of the House of Keys) calls 'not only the Island's Premier Burns' Night event - but the Premier Social Event of the year'. Perhaps he exaggerates a little - but it is a big event and a chance for us to put on our glad-rags and eat in one of the best hotels on the island.

This year there were about 90 guests, many of the men in kilts, most of the others in Evening Dress, all of the ladies in evening wear, although not all in full-length. And it was absolutely pouring with rain, the wind was a steady 35mph with gusts up to 60 - and the hotel in question is on the seafront.

I dropped S2C, D-d, her partner (useful male from work who is not, she points out, currently a boyfriend) at the door and had to park a little way away - only about 20 - 30 yards as it happens - but I was still soaking wet from the bottom of my coat to the bottom of my dress...

We had to do our utmost to make sure D-d didn't get wet as she was one of the speakers! There are a series of traditional toasts and replies at a Burns' Night Supper and one of these, at a Burns' Night outside Scotland, is 'To Our Adopted Homeland'. This was being proposed by HRH The Lieutenant Governor (the representative of The Queen, Lord of Mann - like the Governor General of Australia or Canada, but on a smaller scale!) - and D-d made the reply on behalf of the Manx - a five minute speech.

She did really well but, sadly, I was so busy listening I forgot to take her picture! However she looked very pretty in a full length red dress with her hair falling in its natural curls.

There is however, as always, a picture of the pudding ( Under the Cut... )

Unrelated - how wonderful is it that one of the experts on Time Team is called Dr Helen Geake?

And did you know that the reason we serve lemon with fish has nothing to do with flavour, but that in the Middle Ages it was thought lemon juice was the best thing to dissolve fish-bones - so the wedge of lemon was to suck if you got a bone caught in your throat? I learnt that factlet from The Unbelievable Truth on Radio 4 - even their comedy programmes are educational - they just can't help it! They were also taking the micky out of fifty shades of Grey... how wonderful is Radio 4?

This is a post purely to share some of my daughter's pictures of Florence, taken a couple of years ago, after I mentioned them yesterday.

I visited Florence when I was much younger - and would like to go again sometime. I rather fancy travelling, as Brutti-ma-Buonni did to Austria recently, by train... one of these days.

So - to help maintain that feeling of warmth and serenity from yesterday - here is Florence

( Under the cut... )

I've been a bit missing in action this week... I've been watching the Olympics almost every minute that I've not been at work!

Before the pics (one of which is Olympics related), a quick Olympic story of silliness.

On Wednesday there was a major power-cut in Douglas - I didn't notice, I was visiting patients up north. But D-d's office was hit. No work could be done - no computers and no phones apart from their mobiles - but even if you did ring anyone, you wouldn't be able to see anything relevant as everything is on the computers...

No TV in the staff room either. But there are a couple of keen cyclists on the staff (we tend to breed cyclists) - and one realises he can watch the online live coverage of Bradley Wiggins' race on his mobile phone. So half a dozen law staff squeeze into one small office to watch the race on a mobile phone. Someone decides to make flags to wave - and then someone else decides to make them all post-it note sideburns to wear whilst cheering him on. I leave you to giggle at that mental image for a moment!

We have just had another session of 'Where I Live' and I posted pictures there.

Those, plus a few extras, are ( under here )