Dec
31
2010
2

Happy New Year

This is just a quick post to wish everyone a very Happy New Year indeed. We are spending this evening with Tom and Anne, and a curry or two and several bottles of wine. No going out. No dressing up. Sounds perfect! Will post more when we finally return home.

A big thank you to all who read this blog and who support me and put up with me during the good times, and the more difficult times. Your comments and support are very much appreciated.

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: , ,
Dec
31
2010
0

December books

I only read Tickling the English by Dara O’Briain because The Mister had got it out of the library. It is quite a funny book, although it didn’t make me laugh out loud as much as I hoped! It is kind of Dara’s reflections on his tour around Britain and his thoughts on the characteristics of different British towns. Some of the stories he recounts of banters with his audience are pretty funny and he also gives mini-history lessons on different towns as you go through the book. It’s a clever book which looks at stereotypes and assumptions and there were definitely a few laugh out loud moments – especially when he was talking about Jersey!

————————————————————————

Back on Blossom Street by Debbie Macomber is quite a gentle read which I really enjoyed. I think it is the second or third book in a series so some of the characters have been in other books, and I might have to go back and see how they got to this book. There are lots of sub-stories, so there’s not much point going over each one. Suffice to say, this book is about the lives of the women who run and work in shops on Blossom Street and about their relationships. A nice book to read on a snowy commute.

————————————————————————

Wife in the The North by Judith O’Reilly is about a woman who agreed to move from London to Northumberland. She blogged about this experience and this book is the result. When she moved she had two young children and was pregnant and when they moved her husband kept zipping back to Londin for a couple of weeks at a time for his work. I enjoyed this book and there were some genuinely funny moments, but there were also a few things I found particularly annoying. The thing that annoyed me most was the fact that she kept running out of petrol, and she kept saying that it was because her husband should have put petrol in the car. Was she not capable of doing it herself? Ridiculous!!

————————————————————————

The Cold Moon by Jeffrey Deaver is an exciting read. Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are presented with a series of murders, all characterised by antique clocks which are left at the scene. Rhyme and Sachs are working hard to find out who the killer is, tracking through the evidence to work out who is committing such murders. Filled with twists and turns this book is a cracking read. I do think Jeffrey Deaver is an absolute master of this genre and this is a good example.

————————————————————————

The Scarpetta Factor by Patricia Cornwall is a bloody confusing book. Having read it, I still can’t tell you what it is actually about! I never really got to grips with what the plot was about and it seemed to meander without any purpose. I thought that it was just me and that I was a bit distracted, but having read the Amazon reviews it would seem that it just isn’t me who didn’t get it. What a relief!

————————————————————————

The Life You Want by Emily Barr is a story about a woman called Tansy Harris who seems to have a bit of a mid-life crisis and ends up leaving her two children and her husband for a few weeks and going back to relive her youth in India. She goes and stays with an old friend on an ashram to help out in the children’s home there and ends up getting embroiled in a child trafficking saga. Not a bad book but so generally unrealistic. Passed the time but wouldn’t read it again.

————————————————————————

Heart of the Sea by Nora Roberts is the final book in the Gallagher series and is about the sister Darcy. She wants a rich man and conveniently a wealthy American arrives to build a theatre in their little town, and she falls in lobe with him.

It is a fairly predictable storyline, as were the last two and is a tale of love and magic. It was a sweet book and a nice read but I found it even more predictable than the last two and it dragged a little because of this.

————————————————————————

Down to Earth by Melanie Rose is a really stupid book (and I have read some that already come quite high up my list!) Michaela agrees to do a charity sky dive and on her way down she gets caught up in a gust of wind and ends up miles of course. When she gathers herself and her parachute together and makes her way home she discovers that she has been “missing” for 6 1/2 years and life has moved on without her. I am still not sure whether she was abducted by some pervy old man or whether there was allegedly some weird time and space switch. I don’t really care either!

————————————————————————

The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder is becoming my traditional Christmas read throughout Advent. It is a glorious tale of a little boy who buys a magical Advent calender that takes him through the story of the Nativity. It is lovely and gentle and tells the story through the experiences of the different people who feature in the well-known Christmas story.

————————————————————————

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: ,
Dec
29
2010
4

Happy Christmas

Sorry for the delay in posting a little Christmas message. Just time to pop on here before we fly back to the mainland today.Things have been really busy as ever but we have had a great time. After seeing the wonderful Tim Minchin we stayed with The Mister’s parents for a few days before flying to Guernsey to stay with my parents. As usual there have been multiple family gatherings, far too much food and wine, not enough walking across the beach, but plenty of good times. It has also been quite hard for me, seeing my younger sister pregnant definitely does not get any easier, if anything, if gets more painful.

Anyway, here is our Christmas in pictures. I might have a few more to come later.

22-12-10_1421P1050728.JPGP1050748.JPGP1050755.JPG

P1050707.JPGP1050732.JPG

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: ,
Dec
22
2010
9

Oh :(

Well this month I thought we had done everything right, which is why when my period started I was in floods of tears. Whilst I know it takes a normal couple about a year to conceive I thought we might be OK this month. Even though I know it isn’t, I still feel like this is a failure. It’s so hard. Maybe it is because I turn 35 tomorrow. I know that this age marks the journey for deteriorating fertility. That’s a hard one to get my head around. Maybe I have left it too late and I have missed my chance. Who knows. However, thank God for my wonderful Mister. He is just bloody fantastic!

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: , , ,
Dec
19
2010
3

Tim Minchin

The Mister and I went to see the most amazing gig on Friday night in Manchester. Tim Minchin was playing with a 57 piece orchestra and it was just an awesome show. I did wonder how well his show would translate into an arena but it was brilliant – outrageous and flamboyant but also strangely moving.

He did lots of my favourite songs, including the the Pope song, the Prejudice song about ginger people. One of my new favourites though is a song called Context – very very clever, he claimed to have the lyrics written out across two different pages, and the first time he sang it through there were gaps in the text, which you didn’t necessarily notice but it made the song sound outrageously homophobic, racist and sexist. The next time he sang it with the second part of each line and it gave it context and made sense. It was soooo clever. I suspect it is quite a new song though as I can’t find it on YouTube.

After two standing ovations he returned to finish the show with this song, “White WIne in the Song”. It truly brought tears to my eyes and thought it was wonderful. We left the arena to find about 3 inches of snow had fallen in the time since the show started. We slid our way back to the station, laughing at the people who were drunk from work dos and slipping and sliding everywhere, and we watched the shadows of the snowflakes falling in the streetlight. I brilliant and gorgeous evening with my lovely Mister.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCNvZqpa-7Q[/youtube]

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags:
Dec
14
2010
2

Simon’s Cat in ‘Santa Claws’

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn2h3_aH3vo[/youtube]

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: , ,
Dec
05
2010
2

How to wrap a cat for Christmas

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm3dm5J5r0A[/youtube]

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: ,
Dec
04
2010
0

Harewood House

The Mister and I have had a brilliant day out at the Harewood House Christmas Festival. It was beautiful and snowy and because of the bad weather there it wasn’t massively busy which was nice for us, but not so good for the stallholders.

The penguins seemed to be enjoying the snowy weather and were happily swimming around their pond. They also had some real life reindeers, rather randomly called Neville and max (who thinks Neville is a good name for a reindeer!!) As expected we had a couple of snowball fights, including a particularly enjoyable one with Tom standing at the bottom on a balcony and The Mister, Anne and I pelting him with snowballs. It was going well until I aimed one at Tom and he ducked and Andrew ended up with most of the snowball in his mouth. He cried, we laughed. He will probably need therapy forever! We also made a couple of fabulous snowpeople, Adam and Eve versions.

So, a brilliant day and we ended up at the Kestrel Pub near Harrogate. As always the food was excellent and they don’t seem to mind the kids entertaining everyone.

Here are a few pics as always… to see more click on one of them to go to Flickr…

P1050543.JPGP1050542.JPGP1050551.JPGP1050552.JPGP1050573.JPGP1050572.JPGP1050561.JPGP1050593.JPGP1050582.JPG

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: , , ,
Dec
01
2010
4

A cat in the snow

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: ,
Dec
01
2010
3

Brrrrrr

Well it has been a week of lots of snow and cold commutes into work. I have managed to get in every day so far, although I have been a little bit late and left a little bit early. Today I left quite a lot early as it was like a blizzard at about 11am. The decision was taken to shut the service, clients who needed to come and collect prescriptions were told to get a move on and appointments were rearranged. I rushed up to the bus station, just in time for them to announce they were suspending services. I then hot-footed it up to the train station to find they had cancelled half the services which meant that I had to play sardines on a very small train. Then I had a 45 minute walk home through fairly thick snow. I am guessing that we have had about 4-5 inches up around here. The main roads seemed to be doing ok but the side roads were treacherous, especially our clos, it’s up a hill and very slippy.

Anyway, like a good islander I am still LOVING snow! I suspect it is because I grew up on an island which rarely got snow, so now I am like a 7-year-old. It is inconvenient, but it is so beautiful! Here are a few pics from our garden.

P1050482.JPGP1050486.JPGP1050496.JPGP1050492.JPG

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: ,

Design: TheBuckmaker.com WordPress Themes