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As none of you are here for Christmas this year, I thought I’d document our day so you can share it with us. For half of you your day is over anyway, so may as well enjoy ours too. I’ll try to update this as we go…

It’s a pretty quiet Christmas planned for us this year. No plans except to eat and drink. Oh, and we’ve decided that we need to go for a walk outside each day too. So don’t expect much in the way of excitement!

Christmas for me starts on Christmas eve. Unfortunately we both had to work Christmas eve, but fortunately we both were working at home. Yay us!  So at 3pm we downed any tools that we might or might not have been using and started Christmas proper.  First up, a good old Kiwi classic. Can you tell what it is then?!

Not long after the table was cleared of that, out came the first stage of the Christmas entertainment: a puzzle!

Oddly enough, this is the  first puzzle I’ve known that the blue bits got done first!Brief pit stop for some pies (an no, not Christmas mince pies, some real ones), then back to the puzzling until we couldn’t see straight any more, so bed called.

And then it was Christmas proper!

After a bit of a slow start, mostly because the puzzle kept distracting us (“just one more piece, honest…”), we finally got breakfast together. Eggs Benidictish (one plateful with ham, one smoked salmon) with champers.

Once that had at least started to digest, it was pressie time!  Here’s the gifts we gave each other (clicky):

In case you’re not quite sure what you’re seeing: it is indeed a Christmas pudding; some nail clippers; 3 sauce jugs (one with matching plate); a milk pan; an egg timer, and an indoor/outdoor light up gnome!  I’ll leave you to guess who gave who what. Maybe we’ll make that into a quiz a bit later on!

We had slightly more luck from our gifts from others. Although to be honest, most of them we purchased ourselves after coming to an agreement with friends that this year we’d all just buy ourselves stuff that we wanted, and it would actually come from them… Worked for us! So here’s what you got us! (clicky)

Right, course 1 of “dinner” complete now. Slightly later than planned, but then we weren’t getting too hungry after breakfast anyway. Starter was Indian inspired fishcakes with mint and coriander sauce. yum.

Oh, and I can report puzzle was completed at 15:05. Now what?! Oh yeah, better start on course 2!…

Second course/meal of the day: Spicy sea bass and new potato salad.

Burp! There might be a small delay now while deal with what we’ve already eaten!

Ok. So we decided that we’d skip a course today so we could have it tomorrow. Straight to the cheese course it is then! Yum!

Now, can you follow up cheese with fruit pud and custard, or should that wait for another day too?.. .

It’s getting to be that time of year when the weatherpeople start teasing me.  Come Wednesday I bet this turns to rain or something.

Did I mention that I like snow?

And here it is.

I must admit to being slightly surprised that I own a red teapot. It’s not the “red” bit of that statement that is surprising me, it’s the the “teapot” bit.

To be honest, it’s not the first teapot I’ve owned.  I did once have a conical stainless steel one (for all I know I still do have it packed in a box somewhere), but it has been over 10 years since I’ve used one.

Why have I got one? Well oddly enough it’s all to do with coffee really. In this flat we have an espresso/latte coffee maker built into the kitchen. Why? I have no idea. I guess the building company thought it would be a great USP (unique selling point) or something when showing the latte set around the showflat and might get them an extra sale or two. It’s actually more of a pain in the butt more than a good idea. We would much rather have had the space that it takes up as cupboard space to store more goodies, but as it’s there I have been making quite a bit of use of it.

It makes a pretty good espresso type coffee, which is about all I’ve ever used it for. But sometimes it seems like I’m at it’s beck and call, rather than the other way around. It should be so simple. Hit the button that says (helpfully) ‘cafe’ and get a cup of coffee. But no. More often than not it says ‘add beans’, ‘add water’, ’empty trays’, or the dreaded ‘calc’ (which means it needs a deep clean that demands more than half an hour attention and needs some relatively expensive tablets stuffed down it). And sometimes, even when I’ve just emptied all the trays it still says ’empty trays’ until I smack it a bit, then it seems to think about it and grudgingly decides that yes, I can have a coffee after all and belatedly changes its display to ‘cafe’.

Even with all of that grief, and because it does make a reasonable cup of coffee, in the early evening or when working at home I find I tend to wander up to it quite often whenever I’m thirsty (or have some difficult or boring work to do) and hit the ‘cafe’ button, and more often than not drink the coffee (I do, however, often not drink the coffee, as I’ll go back the ‘puter’ and get engrossed fixing the problem that I originally walked away from to get the coffee, and by the time I remember I’ve made a coffee, it’s stone cold…)

Drinking all that strong coffee seems to lead to the usual effects of too much caffeine which in not that relaxing or enjoyable, but is only evidenced a reasonable time after the last cup.

Right, so back to my teapot (as this was about my little red teapot after all)… In order to find an alternative to drinking too much coffee, for some random reason that I could not explain to myself even if you asked me to I seem to have taken up interspersing the coffees with a few cups of Chinese jasmine tea.
Close family will understand my slight concern that I might be turning into my grandfather!

Anyway, originally I was making said tea in a pyrex measuring jug and tipping it through a huge sieve (like you drain your pasta in), which possibly really wasn’t the best approach to tea making ever invented. Then I managed to buy myself a small sieve which was a huge improvement on proceedings, but still apparently left far too much of a mess on the bench for Bec, so she insisted we got a teapot.

So. Here we are. I now have a little red teapot!

(but no lemon balm handy so far, so don’t tell Pop!)

I think it might be stretching things just a little bit too far to call this a “news round-up”, but as we’ve been a bit quiet lately I thought I may as well chuck up a few little bits and pieces of stuff, just so you don’t think we’ve fallen off the planet.

First up. Some rude people came and parked their boats in our back yard the other week.

We didn’t complain too much, however. The big guns on the front and the attack helicopters on the back made us think complaining might not be a good idea!  They only show up for a week every 2 years, so we can probably put up with that. Putting up with all the other fences that go up around the place for no apparent reason, and all the self important people in flouro jackets was a bit harder, but we managed again.

Next up, a BBQ in honour of some friends long departed these shores who came back for a flying visit.  They had a wedding over this side of the world, and managed to fit in a couple of days in London to catch up with everyone. Sounds like our normal itinerary when we trip back to NZ (except for having to fit in the nap times for the sprog)! It was made even better by the fantastic weather that we’ve been having lately. Very much an extended summer. Calm days, sunny skies, warm without being to hot… perfect!

It also gave me the chance to try out a coleslaw recipe I’d been wanting to give a go (that’s it at the front in the slightly purple bowl). Now in my experience a big bowl of coleslaw at a BBQ tends to stay a big bowl of coleslaw at the end of the event, but this one seemed to go down pretty well.  From memory it was celariac, savoy cabbage, walnuts and a secret sauce (only secret because I can’t remember it right now).

Friends, food, great weather, the wine cellar… All in all a fantastic day. (Only slightly marred by the nightmare that is weekend tube travel. But we’re almost used to that by now.)

Which leads me on nicely to item number three. Another day out with stunning weather the week before. A local premiership rugby game at the new Wembley stadium. If you have a particularly good memory you might recall that the last time we went to a local rugby game we just about caught frostbite on all extremities. A huge contrast this time! Wearing just a T-shirt to a rugby game just doesn’t seem right!

And the game itself was a much more interesting game, even for a non partisan viewer. And a great chance for us to visit the new Wembley stadium. Though the stadium management really need to start to understand that a rugby crowd just really doesn’t need a steward sitting on a small stool every 1.5 metres around the entire ground. All that does is piss people off. When was the last time there was ever any trouble at a rugby game?! Annoying and stupid of them.

So that almost brings you up to date with any goings on. As the weather has continued to be so fantastic we spent another few hours on the bikes and wandering around. We took the camera with us wherever we  went too. We just didn’t take any pictures.  That’s not unusual, but we figure that the camera likes going for walks. So you can have this last image.

That’s us spending some time on Sunday restocking the freezer with some freshly made Asian chicken stock, and a red pepper, chilli and tomato sauce made with our own balcony grown red peppers and chillies.

Oh, and one last titbit of news. Much to Bec’s relief I finally got a haircut.

Today we went for a walk in what was  a nice sunny day at the time, we are trying to make the most of the end of summer (we’ve really notice how much shorter the days are getting already)!

So we toddled over to the local ecological park, which is about a 30 minute walk from here and on the way home we stopped off at the local basin which is apparently a bird sanctuary.  The park would be even more peaceful if it wasn’t right beside the train line.  But its nice enough.

Today’s theme for pictures was apparently berries…  so we walked and stopped and took a pic of some berry tree/shrub/bush, oh look then another type and then some more… and so on. It kept Mike entertained, got us both out of the house, gave us some exercise and we got to enjoy the sunny weather.

[Hi, it’s Mike here.  Just a note to say that the reason today’s theme was berries is that within a very short time on the walk I noticed that there were soooo many berries around. It reminded me that one of the women at work that lives in the Countryside (she does seem to manage to say it like it’s got a capital C) and goes horse riding was saying that all the blackberries and apples around the place have got ripe so much earlier than usual this year.

There were also a lot more types of berries that I took photos of, but I got pretty bored cutting them out and sticking them together… Sorry!]

We always like to cook ourselves something yummy on holiday weekends we spend at home (to make up for not tasting exotic cuisines from a foreign city while on a weekend break). That meant a trip to the posh supermarket on Saturday morning to stock up on completely unnecessary but yummy things to get us though the long weekend.

On the way back down to the tube on the escalator Bec was standing on the higher step behind me. Suddenly I hear this voice full of absolute glee say…

 “Do you know, I think you’re getting a bit of a doughnut to go with your receeder! [ni-eghhhe-heeehe!…]”

That’s right, kick a man when he’s down!

The thing that’s really hard to get across in the written word is just how much glee was in her voice at the time. If I said “lots”, it would still be a massive understatement!

And she wonders why I refuse to get a haircut… Sigh.

It’s the last long weekend until the end the year here this weekend, so we’ve been trying to make some use of it and the nice-ish weather to couple some chores with some fresh air and exercise.

So yesterday we jumped on the bikes and went to have a look at the Thames Barrier. “That’s hardly far from your place”, I hear those of you that have been here say. But if you look really carefully at the above picture you might spot that it has been taken from the other side of the river!

Luckily we didn’t have to swim across towing our bikes.  Just a bit further east is a dinky little roll-on-roll-off ferry that shuttles backwards and forwards across the river.  Of course we got the timing completely wrong both ways, getting to it just a little late, and had to wait for a whole crossing to complete before we could jump on, but that gave us time to make friends in the queue with a guy playing some primo reggae Floyd on his car stereo.

The “chore” part of the whole exercise was to go and get some bamboo steamers from an Asian cash and carry in North Greenwich, but as it was our first time exploring down there a tour we took the long way. Which started getting a bit long for one of us (someone was a little cranky now and then), but we got there in the end and got our steamers. And somehow a collection of little bowls fell into the trolley too.  Hmmmmmm.

We took the shorter way home (but still had to wait for the ferry…)!

We seem to be catching up on or posting quite a bit on news this weekend!

Last weekend we had another surprise package of a weekend.  A trip up northwards (just a little bit) to attend the first concert that we’ve been to in ages. It wasn’t quite the sort of crowd or concert that we’ve been used to in the past. I can honestly say that this is the first concert where I’ve seen cut-crystal champagne glasses and silver cutlery arranged on a linen tablecloth, along with a 7 candle candelabra!

What concert? It was Jools Holland and guests playing in the grounds of Belvoir Castle  (pronounced, apparently, “beaver castle” – go figure!). And very good they were too. Bravo (how very English of me)! But… the music for us was almost overshadowed by the fun of people watching. A hugely mixed crowd there, from family groups with young kids to family groups with older kids to groups of 20 somethings to groups of 40, 50 and 60 somethings. And everything in between. Including a hen’s night of about 20 women right next door to us.

The most entertaining bits of the night were pretty much at the beginning and the end.  The beginning because we arrived to find a queue about 400m long of people all carrying tables, chairs, chilly bins etc. While us boys waited with all the gear, the girls duly trotted to the back to queue and mark a place for us. This was the strategy that most people arriving followed. So very English to have that many people queuing so nicely without any sort of stewards etc. around to tell people what to do (which would probably just have made things a complete disaster).

I did say “most people” didn’t I?  One family arrived and the mother took one look at the queue and said something like “that’s a ridiculous queue. I’m not joining that.” in a fairly posh English accent, and marched herself and her family up to the front and just barged in. Then she somehow managed to find some way to completely ignore anyone who tried to politely point out that she might have, you know, jumped the queue just a little?… I still can’t quite believe they got away with it, and I’ve no idea what that taught her kids about how to behave.

Luckily the queue moved pretty quickly anyway and we managed to get in and settled well before anything demanding our attention was happening.

The end was equally entertaing as  finding the car in the car park in the dark at the end of the concert was a bit of a mission, but once enough cars had cleared out of the way we managed to track it down. I assume the trip back was smooth. I was asleep for most of it!

And another highlight was Bec’s attempt at opening some Cava…  She reckons she’s never opened a bottle of bubbly where the cork goes flying out.  And we had no idea what direction it went flying in either.  I just hope nobody ended up in A&E due to a cork in the eye!

It helped with the overall enjoyment that the weather was perfect for it too, although we seemed to have forgotten how much cooler the nights get in the countryside. We were very grateful for the rug to cover our knees…

On the way towards the train station on Sunday we called in on another local event. A raft race in “the Deepings”  . Apparently this used to be a regular event, but after a couple of years off they seemed to have forgotten what was meant to happen for a while. Which meant that seemed to be running very late, so we saw very few rafts, and even less racing before we had to leave to catch the train back to London. But it didn’t matter.

The village was lovely to walk through, the air fresh, and the fish and chip lunch was probably one of the nicest we’ve had for ages.

There was even nice little fair type thing on the main st.  I managed to actually hit some of the sweets with the cork air pistol thingee and knock them off so I could take them home.  Twice!

Thanks, Liz & Dave, for a great weekend!

We’ve had a couple of kitchen fatalities in the last couple of weeks.  Our can opener decided it doesn’t really want to open cans any more (pretty much the only reason for keeping a can opener in the utensil drawer), and we seem to have melted a couple of fish slice things over the last few weeks.

So, we finally got around to replacing them on Sunday.

One is complex piece of machinery, with lots of interlocking bits  and looks really quite complicated to go together, while the other one is pretty basic and looks like it could be made out of a reasonably straight stick and something a bit flatter.

One cost £3, and one cost £6. Go on, guess which is the more expensive!…

I am confused. Again!

The whole idea of unions has become a bit of a puzzler for me in the last few days.

On one hand we have had to endure another 2 day tube strike last week, the reasons for which I’m still not quite sure of. Was it for pay as it seemed to be to start with? Or to reinstate some apparent idiot drivers who lost their jobs for doing things like opening the doors of a train on the wrong side? (Maybe not so much of a big deal if they were in a tunnel, but I suspect it could be quite serious late on a Friday night at an outdoor station!)

Every time  we have to deal with another tube strike I always visit the great song that some guys put together ages ago. It’s still as relevant today as it ever was (except I think the tube drivers get paid even more than is in the song these days…)

I have to warn you if you’re going to visit this link that it contains some language that some might find offensive. No, I mean it, the language here is what some people might deem REALLY offensive! You have been warned! (But when you feel like you’re part of ransom demands on tube strike it can almost feel like there has to be a higher level of abuse to heap on them…)  If you’re still willing to subject yourself to it, here’s the link… http://www.backingblair.co.uk/london_underground/

On the other hand we’ve got the BA pilots union today asking their members to agree to take a pay cut so they still have jobs in a year or so.  Now that seems like an intelligent idea!

One day I’ll work it out, honest.