A weekend at home

In spite of there being very few daylight hours about at present London winter has not been too bad so far. It's 'warm' and at least I'm up in time for sunrise. This photo was taken late last week out of our window.




Saturday night it was time for my annual 21st celebrations. A few of the usual suspects joined Paul and I at our local curry house followed by a few pints at the local.

Sunday we made the most of the few sunshine hours and went to one of the nearby parks and stumbled upon a cafe for brunch. It's a place that I'll head back to I think. Coffee was rated about a 4/10 but the breakfast menu was full of interesting things, rather than just the full english breakfast.

At home in the dark I played with some new painting toys I got for my birthday...







The photo was taken in the Pyrenees on Brenda's birthday (probably while she was taking a million photos of poppies). I think I need to work on my perspective as my hills look really steep compared to the photo.

Finally, and this is an old one... I got a card from a dear friend from law school ages ago and I thought it would make a good bright painting (and now lives at L's house)

November photos

With the All Blacks on tour much of November was dedicated to rugby. We found that in spite of there being a million tv channels Murdoch & Co still had not caught on that some people over here may want to watch the ABs play France - but thankfully BBC Wales had the games on. Although the commentary was in welsh.

Long before Paul and I managed to get our Twickenham tickets through work Paul booked himself on a Beige Brigade bus tour to the Wales game. I decided that I really wasn't up to that so hung out with the girls for the day instead.



Amy doing Amber's nails


Girls on the world's shortest bubbly boat cruise


Paul, Andrew & Graham in Cardiff

Although it has been unseasonably warm (it is December 3 and I have yet to pull out the long wool coat) to walk about it certainly has the winter look to the place. This park is where I walk through most days and is a great way to see the seasons change. We had fields on daffodils in spring, lounging pink locals in summer, and now the bare(ish) trees.


The path through Highbury Fields

One of the things that I never thought I would get to see in London was a lot of wildlife. There is actually a lot about, you just need to know where to look. I am always fascinated by the little black mice and rats that live in the tube tracks (the mice are cute but the giant rats are plain gross). There are squirrels all over the show, especially in late summer autumn when they can hide their acorns (they really do!). The most unexpected in the city however does have to be the foxes. We have at least two local ones, one in the housing estate next door (who will ferret in our rubbish) and the other in the Fields - I was lucky enough to get a picture the other night as I happened to have my camera as I was walking through the Fields.


One of the local foxes