| Hello world |
[Dec. 30th, 2002|01:08 pm] |
| [ | Feeling |
| | okay | ] |
| [ | Reading |
| | Colditz: The German Story | ] |
Back at work now... ironic: I have more time to post here than when at home.
So what happened over the break?
Dec 23rd: Escaped work a bit early to do some late Christmas shopping. Well, to be honest, to do all my Christmas shopping that hadn't been already done over the internet. Went to Oxford Street / Tottenham Court Road / Charing Cross Road - horrible crowds. Couldn't face the train home so splashed out ?40 on a taxi. Call it my Xmas present to myself. One triumph: found a copy of a book I've been looking for for years, Colditz: The German Story by Reinhold Eggers, which Amazon has twice failed to send me. It was just sitting on a shelf in a shop while I was browsing. Score!
Dec 24th: Went to my parents' and grandmother's for most of the day, dropping off presents (much bafflement at the giftwrapped case of wine for Mum and Dad) and steadfastly refusing to open any as it was too early. Made it home a bit before midnight - got engrossed watching A Touch of Frost with them and almost stayed the night, but it would have wrecked the plans for the next day.
Dec 25th: Went round Lisa's father's for the day... present-opening and Xmas lunch and stuff. Coolest present: one of those thermometers made of a glass tube full of liquid with bulbs inside that float or sink according to what temperature it is (from Mum and Dad). Best present: a framed print of The Black Brook by John Singer Sargent, from Lisa. A good day.
Dec 26th: We spent the day on the allotment, expecting to find lots of people there escaping from the festivities. Instead we were the only people there. Cleared lots more ground - didn't quite see off the brambles but almost did. We have a plot at the edge of the allotments, with the 10ft wall separating them from Bushey Park at one end of it. So we finally got round to looking in the park to see what was on the other side of the wall, and the answer is: parkland. Not quite as obvious as it might be, as there are a few sports fields nearby. This means we can have fires with minimal chance of the smoke causing a nuisance and is therefore A Good Thing.
Dec 27th: Went into work but it was exceptionally quiet - knocked off mid-afternoon with a growing headache, possibly caused by my scavenging the remains of the office chocolate biscuits. Met up with Lisa to travel home, as she'd been working an early shift, and we swung by Chiswick to look at futons. Bought a gorgeous mosaic mirror and a very appealing, if somewhat overweight, bear. A migraine set in with a vengeance when I got home and wouldn't shift until I'd been comprehensively sick. Not a good day.
Dec 28th: Another day on the allotment. Finally we cleared away the ground vegetation, only to discover that the entire top end was covered (under the brambles and an inch of earth) with carpets. Very big carpets that are going to be a bugger to shift. They were laid to kill off the very stubborn grass - which they did - but they sort of got overtaken by events, leaf mould, plastic bags full of rubbish, windfall apples and finally enough dirt to support the brambles. They are a joy to behold... On the plus side we have now drawn up a very detailed plan of how the allotment's going to look when it's properly cleared and hosting about seventeen types of vegetable, a flower bed, soft fruit and roses. An awful lot of work lies ahead...
Dec 29th: Too much rain to return to the allotment - DIY instead. Lots of picture hooks and picture frames, leading to a hangfest with much hammering and a measure of revenge on the neighbours *eg*
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