Finally!

The ticker is showing 11 days to go and I just managed to get my plane tickets sorted for my upcoming trip back to Australia. I will be able to graduate on 14th December and then take a nice little holiday afterwards... well at the moment I am due to come back on the 20th January as it is the only available seat, but I am waitlisted for the 4th and 8th Jan which I am sure will come through in the end. I had to top up my frequent flyer miles by buying the extra ones and paying the taxes. I braced myself for the total and was pleasantly surprised to only have to fork out £227, which for a return trip to Sydney at Christmas is pretty jammy I'd say :-) My backup plan to fly with Malaysian airlines for the same dates would have been £1600!

Phew! One less thing to worry about now, but the list of things to do is long and getting longer by the day! Ugg! Im going to need another holiday to recover from organising this one. A few days on the beach should sort me out though.

Also notable is that if I keep this current itinerary I will be flying Singapore to Sydney on the new A380 super jumbo plane... that would be an extra bonus!

Another Norway Jolly

Yes indeed Tim and Grandma descended on the Norwegian contingent of
the clan for another long weekend of fun, frolics, rain, snow and
wine. As you can see Maud was her usual chirpy self for the first
couple of days until another dreaded lurgy made her a bit of a sad
(but still adorable) little snot factory.

Unwrapping presents from Grandma

Heading out on the street to see The Fat Wagon. Unfortunately no time or good weather to go for a spin but we have booked a slot on the racetrack for our next summer visit.

More Norway

Playing bricks with Grandma is always lots of fun... In fact Maud
was obviously so excited that Uncle Tim couldnt get one shot without
something being blurred... or is that just my lack of photography
skills?

Maud wasnt feeling so well on Sunday so was pulling a few of her best sad faces. She still looks cute when she is all wrapped up warm for braving the outside world.

Not even a kick around in the park with Papa could cheer her up. She was most upset when we tried to suggest actually playing with the ball and Maud insisted on not letting us get it dirty by squeezing it against her face until we backed off.

Lovely to see Matt and Silje and Maud again. Thanks for a lovely weekend and can't wait to book the next Norway adventure soon. Anyone for skiing in February?

Catch up...

Hello again faithful readers. It's a wonder you have bothered to
check back here at all as I am getting worse not better at keeping
this blog up to date. I will kick off with a garden update. My
enthusiasm for the gardening has not dwindled yet but the weather has
not been great and I have also been away at the weekends. The
picture below was to show the carefully tended 2 square metre patch
of earth that I sweated over for 4 hours on a Saturday morning.
After a more careful inspection of the patch I realised that there
was actually concrete underneath half of it. The rest has been dug
out, weeds and huge roots removed (which was the backbreaking bit)
and planted with lots of bulbs for the spring.

The same weekend was the first dinner I had done for friends after moving to my new lodgings. Only a small affair of 6 people but it was the most I had ever cooked for at once, also catering for a range of fussy eaters. Did a chicken roast and managed to get crispy roast potatoes and not soggy veg so no major disasters. Pictured left to right are Shaun, Pete (the guy whose house I live in), Gabor, teacher Peter and Cobby.

Mmm, chicken, c'rots, roasties, broccolo, stuffing and cauliflower with gluten free white sauce! Oh and bisto of course (which is blatantly not gluten free). Marvelous!

All green fingers and thumbs

OK well here I go. Trying to be more on the ball with my blogging... here are this weekends photos of my new ventures into gardening.

OK well this is my house at the moment. Not too impressive from the outside but hopefully the before and after will be amazing... incidentally the wheelie bins aren't normally strewn everywhere but at this point I had already started a bit of work and thought I'd better document this project in true Conibear style.

Not even an hour in and I have found my first major project that will require power tools and a lot of planning. This huge tree root is at the front of the drive and has cracked all the concrete pavers. The offending tree was removed (after complaints from the neighbours) a few years ago but it's legacy lives on.

I have watched enough of all these home maker shows to know that this entryway leaves a lot to be desired... I have lived here for nearly 6 months and I can't believe I didn't do anything about this sooner!

Hmmm... yes... mess.. what can I say?

See... there are plants (I think) in amongst all of this carnage and weeds.

It's a bulb isn't it? Not sure what ... but I'll put them back and see what grows in the spring.

Garden Day 2

I think I like gardening so much because it panders to my obsessive compulsive tendencies. The act of picking out all the weeds from the cracks in the pavement is amazingly satisfying... although this may be a great way to cure me of my OCD when the weeds grow back!

It's a good way to meet all the neighbours who all came over to have a nosey. Apparently there were roses in the bed on the left and I found all of the old root systems still there....

...so I had to dig it out.... that only took 2 hours... but it was better than going to the gym.

Looking better already?

I think so...

Only 6 bags of basically weeds and overgrown ivy. I imagine there will be many more before I have finished. The other good thing about gardening is that it is a great excuse to spend money in B&Q, one of my favourite shops! Plenty of bulbs to plant so maybe I'll blog that next week!

Weekend with William

Hello folks. Well apologies for break in transmission from Stuff and Nonsense, the little brother site to the hugely successful Incompetence and Irresponsibility! This week I have rival baby pictures to appeal to the regular I&I listeners as I have been to visit Heidi and Darren with their new arrival William! Four months old and already a little trooper. Very smiley and giggly and quite happy to spend lots of time with his Uncle Tim.

I will be ramping up the posting rate again so that I can be at full speed when I set off for Sydney on December 10th (see new Ticker above). I have discovered that I can now post directly from my mobile phone, and all included in my monthly charge! Plus this will also work in Sydney for no extra charge too! The amazing world of mobile internet has been unleashed.

Better stop this now as I think the people on the train think this is the longest text message ever written! Little do they know that I am broadcasting around the globe from the relative comfort of the 16:10 to Southampton!

Heidi and Darren's house... they let the Changing Rooms people get a bit carried away! No - not really... this is the Planetarium at the big "@Bristol" museum. Kinda cool don't you think?

Minka and Mum

Happy in the back? Driving down to White Rock from Vancouver, Minka took a turn for the worse with Sarah's driving. This picture is pre-hurl (Minka, not mum :) ! Hehe, can laugh now but at the time was major crisis!