The best birthday present ever?

If you had a sporting fantasy, what would it be?  For many of my friends, it'd be to score the winning goal for England in the final of the World Cup.  For  a few others, it'd be to score a century in an Ashes test match and then take five wickets.  For me, it'd be horse related:  riding at Hickstead or show jumping at the Horse of the Year Show or doing a National Velvet and riding the winner of the Grand National. 

When I was trying to figure out what to buy DH for his 40th birthday last year, I wondered what his would be and whether I could give him a gift that would fulfil it.  I don't know what his was, but I can make a good guess what it is now.

On Sunday, DH "spent" his 40th Birthday Present:  a Formula Silverstone single-seater "driving experience":  20 minutes driving a racing car around one of the circuits at Silverstone, the home of the British Grand Prix.  He had a ball!  I lost count of the number of laps he did, but he loved every minute of it.   You can't see the smile on his face in the photo above, but I assure you it was there.

There were 18 drivers in DH's group.  His session started with a short (20 minute) briefing about how to drive the track:  when to brake, when to change gear, what is the best line to take through the bends.  That was followed by a short "how to operate the car" briefing session in the pit lanes and then he was helped into his vehicle by a member of staff, who also went over the vehicle's controls.  The cars were led out in groups of 6; each group had its own safety car.  The safety car led them round the track at ever increasing speeds, before setting them free to race each other around the track for 10 minutes.

I'm really glad he loved it.  I chose it for two reasons:  it had the longest driving time of all the Red Letter Day driving experiences on offer, and it's something that appeals to me, which I thought would appeal to him too. Score 2:0 to me.

- Pam

Random. Just Random.

In the things I wish I could remember department:

I wish I could remember how to reset the clock on the stove.  (Or, alternatively, what we did with the manual.)  I'm sure I used to know but it isn't intuitive and it's been 7 years since there was power to the clock and ovens.  (We used the gas hob.)  The electrician has wired it up temporarily for us and I've used both ovens, but I'd really, really like to set the clock to the correct time.  I've emailed the manufacturer - fingers crossed they can help me.

-----------------------

Football

Have you been watching the World Cup?  Yesterday was a rather nail-biting day for me.  I'm cursed with having two national teams to follow:  Australia and England.  England needed to win to progress to the knock-out stages.  If Australia were to progress, they needed both a big win (with a goal difference of 3 or more) AND either Germany or Ghana to win the other match in their group. 

The canteen at work has been showing all the daytime matches on their big TV.  The England match was at 3pm so a group of us went down to watch.  (By the end of the match, there was 200 people in there.)  It was nerve-wracking!  I think I swore more in those 90+ minutes than I have ever sworn in the office.  Fortunately, England played like a team, defended well and won by a goal to nil. It was the best they've played in this competition - their match against the USA was OK but they looked nervous, while their game against Nigeria was dire.

Australia's game was at 7.30pm and not broadcast on terrestrial TV, so I watched the German game.  It was so frustrating!  I have only managed to watch one out of the three Australian matches and I was hoping to watch this one.  No dice.  We won, with two good goals, but it wasn't enough to go through.

Congratulations to the American team for getting through to the last 16.

--------------------------

In Other News...

Can't remember if I've told you but DH is working a temporary job and has been since the second week of May. It's for a contractor for London Transport, which means that every day is in a different location. It's shift work. The hours are awful.   And he has to get there by public transport so an 8 hour shift is really a minimum of an 11 hour day.  It's not in his field.  But any job is better than no job and he's happy to be earning some money.

- Pam

Sit-Rep 2010 - April/May

Hi everyone!  I'm still here.  Life's been interfering a bit in my plans and I haven't been on-line as much as usual, hence the lack of blogging.  Something similar happened last month, which is why I didn't post a Sit-Rep for April.  However, I decided I couldn't let two months go past without comment, even though it's now the middle of June.  (Hell, if BostonGal can do her monthly updates late, then so can I.)  So here goes....

STASH  Maintained 100% cold sheep, however I feel like I'm cheating since I rarely buy yarn on-line and haven't been near either a yarn shop or a show, so I haven't been tempted.  Knitted a reasonable amount, however, completing the left front of the Brown Cabled Cardigan (Rav link) as well as 2.5 pairs of socks AND ripping out and reknitting the back of the Mohair Cardigan (Rav link) from Verena Knitting.  The socks didn't use up complete skeins - even on the pair for DH I have 20g or so left over - so I estimate that I've used two skeins of sock yarn plus one skein of the Heathland Hebridean (in the cardi) and 1/3 of a skein of the mohair in the last two months. Also DH extracted the stash basket from storage so I've been able to give P's mum the two balls of Artesano Alpaca DK.    That's 5.3 skeins of yarn, for a total of 10.5 skeins.

GARDEN  The garden is a bit of a war zone, with me on one side and the weeds + black-fly on the other.  Since the last update, I've sown/planted out courgettes, jalapeno chillis, tomatoes, yellow bell peppers, runner beans, butternut squash and rocket. Most of them are in containers or grow bags beside the back door.   I'm currently raising five pak choi seedlings, which I hope to plant out in a week or so.  Harvested the first broad-beans on Sunday.  I'll freeze the rest, when they're large enough.  I watched Alys Fowler's Edible Garden on the BBC and was impressed enough to buy the book.  It's well written, detailed and answers the sort of questions that aren't covered in other gardening books, things novice gardeners (like me) need to know but can't find the answer to.

FITNESS  Very little to report.  I'm attending yoga and pilates classes when I'm in the office.   Haven't been near Weight Watchers and don't know if I've lost any more weight.  Oh, and I still haven't run a step.

OVERDRAFT  The debt pay down is going well:  £153.54 in April and £228.24 in May, for a total repaid of  £737.16 since the start of the year.

SOCKS  Completed DH's Weird Science socks.  I don't have photos yet, but when I do I promise to include one showing the pattern on the back of the leg - it's different to the front of the leg and was not shown in the pattern.  (I don't think he's worn them yet, although he says he likes them.)  The Zig-Zag socks were a big hit with Eldest Sis and I completed a pair of self-striping socks for myself.  Don't think I'll be able to produce a pair of socks in June - it's half way through the month and I haven't started any yet.   I'll do a separate FO show-and-tell post this weekend.

- Pam

Frugal Friday - Cheap Make-up Review: Tesco's All About Face range

Tuesday morning, I was a mile from Site when I brushed some dried mascara from my eye and realised that I'd forgotten to pack my make-up.  I had a lipstick but nothing else so, after work, I headed into the nearest major town and went to the supermarket.

It's ages since I've bought make-up base, so ago long that I'm not even sure what is on offer now.  Several years ago, I struck gold on the clearance shelf at Boots The Chemist - 6 bottles of their "17" brand make-up base, in my shade, at 50p a bottle.  I thought they'd last, maybe, a total of two years.  Instead, each bottle lasts about 10 months (and I've still got one left!).  Also in my stockpile at home are a couple of containers of Max Factor Pan Cake (perfect for hot, humid weather when regular make-up vanishes in your sweat), and a tube of Pan Stick*.

On Tuesday, my goal was to find the cheapest suitable products in colours that suit me.  I wandered up and down the make-up aisle in Tesco and checked out the special offers.   As a minimum, I needed make-up base, powder, blusher and mascara.  Oh, and a make-up sponge, possibly brushes too. 

After a couple of minutes, I noticed a small range of make-up that wasn't in the glossy display cases: Tesco's All About Face range.  At £1.49 a product or £3 for three products, it was the cheapest too.  They only had a couple of shades to choose from and no testers.  However, I figured the worst thing that could happen was that I'd waste £3 and be back there the next night buying products from a "known" range.  So I purchased a base in Ivory, a powder blusher in Rose, and translucent compressed powder (no shade specified).

They had a black mascara, too, but it isn't waterproof so I opted to buy my regular Maybelline mascara (£4.99) instead.  And I bought some own-brand make-up sponges (£1.50) and a Tesco make-up brush set (£4.79).

So how good it is?  Well, the make-up base is light and a good match for my skin.  I didn't use a massive amount, just dotted it on my cheeks, nose, forehead, and blended with a sponge. The powder covers well and is the same shade as the base.  The blusher goes on lightly with a brush, spreads out well and blends in.  The make-up holds up well to daily wear and tear.  And doesn't look cheap and nasty.  I asked a friend for her opinion and she thought  the colours were great on me and that it still looked fresh at 3 in the afternoon.  She was surprised when I told her how little they'd cost.

So, if you don't have much money and are looking for some decent make-up, do consider Tesco's All About Face range.  It's very good value for money and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

- Pam  (the brushes are very nice, too)


(Edited later to add: Skip the makeup base. It beads on the skin and isn't easily absorbed. When it does dry, it dries blotchy. The product that does all the work to get a good finish is the powder, so just buy that.)





* To use Pan Stick and not feel like you've applied a heavy layer of lard to your face or have it come off, apply as follows:

• Draw a cross on your forehead.
• With the angle pointing towards your nose, draw a ">" on one cheek and a "<" on the other.
• Put a one inch line across your chin.
• Dot once on each side of the tip of your nose.

Using a make-up sponge, spread the Pan Stick over your face.  Dust with loose translucent powder to "fix".

Telekenesis anyone?

One of the stranger side-effects of all our building work is being without a stash.  Virtually all my yarn is in a storage unit, with the majority of our belongings.  The stash is corralled into at least two boxes, two baskets and a pine blanket box, in the furthest corner of the unit, behind everything else.

When we were packing up, I set aside the wool for the Brown Cabled Cardigan, as well as two pair's worth of sock yarn.  I've finished three pairs of socks since then (I had one pair on the needles).  Since I'm going "cold sheep", this lack of yarn has made me think about what I'll do with the little bits I have.  At home, I'm knitting on the cardigan, so that's a no-brainer.  I have a long neglected travel knitting project, the Bolero Cardigan from the Summer 2008 edition of Verena, which gets centre stage now that I'm out of socks.  I'll get very close to finishing it this week, while I'm at site.

Right now, I have three partial skeins of sock yarn left and they aren't compatible so can't be combined into a pair of socks.  (One is DK; the others, 4ply.  The colours wouldn't mix either.)  I could really do with a session rummaging through that dark brown basket, which is full of single skeins and sock yarn.   I don't want to do a big raid - I'd just like to extract a skein of Lisa Souza's Sock!  in Ecru, so that I can knit contrasting feet onto the remnants of the 4-ply.  (Sorry, I know I haven't posted photos yet.  I will get around to them when I post my Sit.Rep at the end of the month.)

More importantly, there are a couple of skeins of pink Alpaca buried in there that I'd like to give to a friend's mum.  She's a knitter and she's not very well and I'd like to give her something special to play with.  I reckon it will be another six weeks before we clear out the storage unit and I don't know if I can wait that long.  I'm wondering if I can persuade DH to dig it out for me.  Knowing my luck, it won't be in the brown basket (probability it's in there = 70%).

In my heart of hearts, I know can't really ask him to do it.  There are dozens of boxes in the way as well as a couple of pieces of furniture.  I wish I could TK the damn basket to the front of the unit and save all the effort needed to move boxes around/out of the way.

- Pam

Cooking in the danger zone (and more house photos)

This evening, as I was cooking dinner, I kept banging into things.  It occurred to me, while my sandal caught on the shoe rack residing in front of the draining board, that I'm cooking in a danger zone.  Everything is temporarily in a different place to where it was before the building work started, and more and more things have found their way into the kitchen because there was nowhere else for them to go.

This is my kitchen at the moment - stove view:

That picture was taken before all the dust and a lot of the stuff migrated in. And as it is now...

Absolutely everything covered in dust and everything is in the way, including Spikey (the yucca plant), the uplighter that is our main source of light downstairs at the moment and the shoe rack that earlier tried to mate with my sandal.

Frankly, I'm just glad I can cook in this kitchen, even if it does mean moving everything out of the way and washing the dust off everything before I start cooking.  Tonight, I found myself in the crazy position of holding onto the microwave to prevent it banging against the hot cooking pot when the washing machine went into spin cycle.

Looking the other way:

Yes, everything ends up on the kitchen table, because there is nowhere else to put it.  We can't put it on the floor because the roof now has a tendency to leak in new and exciting places every time it rains.

One of the things that found it's way "into" the kitchen is a new doorway.  You may remember the original doorway was rather low. (Turned out to be at least 6 inches lower than a regular doorway.)  It was also, annoyingly off-centre when compared to the picture window on the other side of the kitchen.   When the builders stripped off the plaster, they found this:

The doorway was inserted into a much larger space, which looked like it had once been a glass door flanked by two smaller windows.  The lintel was miles up and very long.  If you look more closely, you can see an arch built above the existing doorway.

I asked the builder if he could move the doorway about a foot over to the right.  Two Mondays ago, I came home to find this:

and

The doorway had vanished.  Sorry, they're a little blurry.  (In case you're wondering, Spikey isn't sick.  He's been decapitated because he was much too top heavy and we're waiting for him to recover from the shock.   We chopped his "head" into two parts and both Baby Spike and Posh Spike are doing well, according to their recipients.)

I took those photos just before I rushed out the door to go to Site last Tuesday.  When I got back on Friday, the new doorway had been built.

And from inside the kitchen.

By this time next week, it should even have French doors on it!


- Pam

It's over

Gordon Brown resigned yesterday as Prime Minister and the Queen appointed David Cameron PM.  The new government will be a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. I failed as a sear.  My predictions for the cabinet were rubbish.  The only things I got correct were Cameron as PM and Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister.  However, according to the  BBC, I did get the right the names of some of the main players: 

Mr Cameron has already begun the work of appointing his first cabinet, with the Tories' George Osborne as Chancellor, William Hague as Foreign Secretary, Liam Fox as Defence Secretary and Andrew Lansley as Health Secretary.

- Pam ("normal" blog service will resume shortly)

8:0

I don't think I've written about Football before, but today was a rather momentous day - my team, Chelsea, won the Premiership!  And  I went to the match.

 This morning, we had a one point lead over Manchester United.  And one game to go - a home match against Wigan Athletic.  We had to win the match in order to win the title.  A draw wouldn't do.  When the players walked out onto the pitch, you could have cut the tension in Stamford Bridge with a knife.

Everyone was jumpy.  And the ball wasn't going where we wanted.

Six minutes into the game, Anelka scored!  The stadium erupted. We had the goal we needed to win the match and, as long as we could keep our lead over them, we'd win the Premiership.

But Wigan refused to lie down.  They came back at us again and again.  At about 30 minutes in, a Wigan player cut down a Chelsea player in the Wigan goal mouth.  Penalty!  Frank Lampard faced the Wigan keeper.  And scored!

The third goal was Salomon Kalou's.

The fourth and fifth took Didier Drogba to the top of the table of goal scorers and won him the Golden Boot.

On the fifth goal, Chelsea achieved the milestone of 100 goals in a season.   The first team ever to do so.  By the eighth goal, we'd set another record - our biggest win EVER.  Plus, our Keeper, Peter Cech won the Golden Gloves for the most clean sheets of the season.

Congratulations Chelsea FC.

- Pam (Stick that in your pipe ManU and smoke it!)

Well that makes things interesting

Yesterday was the British General Election.  As predicted by me a month ago, it was the Conservatives for the losing.  The Labour Party have been resoundly defeated in government, losing 91 seats whilst the Tories have gained 97, and the Lib Dems have surprisingly lost 5 seats.   As I type, the Conservatives have 305 seats, Labour has 258 and the Liberal Democrats have 57, with 2 seats left to declare.

However, with those numbers, it is impossible for the Conservatives to win a majority and govern in their own right.  They needed 326 seats to gain the majority and to be an effective government they'd really need another 20-30 on top of that (to allow for dissent, disaffection and deaths among their MPs).   So now the horse-trading has to commence and that will make things interesting for a while.

So far, David Cameron has made a public offer to the Lib Dems inviting them "to work together", whatever that means.  It could be as simple as a pact buying the Lib Dems off so that they don't vote down the Budget and the Queen's Speech (without which the government fails), or it could be a full coalition with Lib Dems occupying key ministerial posts.

I think it would be in the country's best interest for the Conservatives to invite the Lib Dems to form a coalition government, otherwise after six or twelve months of paralysis we'll be facing another election.   And we can't afford 12 months of paralysis - Britain's deficit and national debt are huge, many people are still facing job losses and unemployment, personal debt burdens are immense, and large sections of the population never benefited from the boom in the first place.  Also, a coalition government will temper the more "lunatic fringe" ideas on both sides, since no politician wants to risk losing his government job if he can help it.   Politics here is frequently more about applying the latest political theory or dogma and less about taking a pragmatic approach to problems; a coalition would help prevent that.

Here are my ministerial predictions for the future Conservative-Liberal Coalition:-

Prime Minister - David Cameron  (C)
Chancellor of the Exchequer - Vince Cable (L) (the only politician who can say "I told you so" over the banking crisis/credit crunch)
Foreign Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister - Nick Clegg (L)
Home Secretary - William Hague  (C)     
Industry Secretary - George Osborne (C) (actually, I might swap him over with William Hague)
Health Secretary  - Dr Liam Fox (C) (it'd be a pleasant change to actually have a medical doctor in charge of the NHS)

As for the rest of the posts, I'm not sure.  For now, I'm just glad it's over.

- Pam

PS:  I think this was the largest voter turnout for decades.  Certainly many polling stations were ill-equipped to deal with the number of voters and there were many queues.  Several polling stations closed their doors in voters faces at 10pm (when the law says they have to close), denying the voters their right to vote.  One polling station in Lewisham did the sensible thing - they corralled the queue inside, so they could vote, and then shut the doors.  It's probable there will be a few legal challenges arising from the disarray and possibly a couple of by-elections.

And the answer is...

£64.  That's the net amount in my pocket of my pay rise each month.  Better than I thought, although not as good as it would have been if personal allowances weren't frozen this tax year (i.e. frozen at last year's level).

No, it's not going on yarn.  It's going to the joint account where it'll probably get spent on bills or builders.

- Pam (may spend a little bit on an Audible subscription, though)

Update on BIL

I haven't told you what happened to my BIL after he was marooned in Germany due to the volcano.  The short answer is that he didn't make it to London.  He'd bought a ticket on Eurostar to travel last Wednesday, but German airspace reopened so he flew home instead.

Am I disappointed?  Yes.  I'd have loved to see him.  But I'm glad he got home safe.

- Pam

Impatient!

It's two days to the end of the month and I'm impatient to get paid. This month's paypacket is the first after I was told I'd received a small raise and I want to see how much that translates to after tax and NI. I know it won't be much - somewhere around £60 extra a month in my pocket. But it'd be nice to know for sure - the perfectionist in me wants precision and my old rule of thumb, that each £500 translates to £25 net a month, has been complicated by changes to the NI rates and deductions for pension contributions, the employee share scheme and me buying an extra week's holiday (won't need to do that next year - at the rate I'm not using my vacation time, I'll have 2-3 weeks' leave to roll over in September). .


If the truth be told, I'm always impatient at this time of the month. It used to be a feast-famine reaction: Payday = Money to spend. (Yay!!! Just think of the possibilities! Oops, it's all gone!) Two days before Payday = No money left = Almost broke. (Booo! Must. Have. Cash. Now!) However, over the last few months, since I got serious about micro-managing my money, I've become impatient for Payday so that I can do my accounts and work out how much further my overdraft should decrease next month. I want the virtuous reward of watching that balance go down.

In theory, I could work out my tax position and take-home-pay position for the next year, but I'm too lazy. Instead, I'm impatiently checking our electronic payslip system every morning to see if the data's been posted yet. (Also, once it's there on the screen and in my bank account, I'll know the b*stards have followed through with their promise.) Only two days to go.

- Pam

It pays to listen.

Sometimes Fate comes along and whispers in your ear.   If you don't listen, she goes away and, occasionally, comes back and belts you round the head with a rubber hammer until you pay attention.  That's what she's done to us today.  In our case, it was to do with the back door.

Our "back door" is a full height sliding window.  To my eyes, it's inside out - the sliding window runs along the outside moving from left to right, whilst the fixed window on the right is on the inside.  In Oz, the sliding window would run on the inside; on the outside, you'd have a sliding fly-wire screen door.  (I have to confess, I have fantasised about replacing what we have with a Australian-style one, complete with screen door.  Oh, how I'd love a fly-wire screen door to keep the bugs out.)

It has two locks.  For the last year (ish), I've struggled closing the top lock.  It was stiff, so I sprayed it with WD40.  Strangely, the lock moved fine when it was away from the door jamb.  After a couple of months, I think (the timeline is a bit hazy now), I worked out that the door needed to be slammed hard shut for that lock to work.  At least once, earlier this week, I gave up fighting with the top lock and just locked the lower one.

Yesterday, we had a mid afternoon appointment so the builders had to lock up.   Strangely, they left the top-lock's key in the lock, whereas the other one was hung up on its hook.  This morning, I discovered why.  They couldn't actually get the key disengaged from the lock.  It was dark when we got back yesterday, so at 7am this morning I decided to water the vegetable garden.  Only, I couldn't unlock the back door.  Nor could I get the keys out. An hour or so later, DH succeeded.  When we went out later, he locked up with a little bit of a struggle.

Obviously, at that stage, we weren't paying sufficient attention to Fate so she decided to step it up a gear.  I noticed that the top of the door wasn't as closed as the bottom.  Thus was born my first theory - that the door is hung inside out and the sliding door track is deteriorating in the weather.  We covered the track in WD40 and hoped it'd be enough to keep the door working until we could get the builders to take a look at it.  Wrong.

When the neighbour's BBQ smoke started drifting in this evening, we tried to close the door.  And failed.  Multiple times.  Sometimes, it was as if a stop had been placed in the door maybe half an inch before the jamb.  At other times, the door closed to within a millimetre or so of it's correct position - it looked closed  but the lower lock wouldn't engage (we didn't bother to try the top lock).  Overall, it was getting worse each time we tried shutting the door.  We began to get a little panicky.  We'd slam the door and it'd hit this invisible brake each time.

I watched DH as he absent mindedly bent down and tucked the outside rubber seal back against the glass.  And that's when it hit me.  The problem was caused by the inside rubber seal(!) at the point where the two windows are always crossed.  I took a good look at it and it wasn't just sticking out of it's housing, it was dangling.  D'oh!  The seal was getting caught between the two windows and preventing the door moving further forward.   (At this point, Fate put down her hammer.)

The challenge was to get the seal back between the window frame and the glass.  15 minutes of poking it with a ruler later, DH decided the only thing to do was to remove it.  Problem.  The seal was sticking out the other side of the door but, if he opened the door, it'd slip back behind the glass and be unreachable again.  He climbed over the 6ft tall garden gate to get to it.  It took another 10 minutes of poking and prodding before the seal was out and the door moving freely.

Right now,  I'm sure Fate is polishing her hammer.  The door is locked but the top lock still can't engage properly.  We aren't sure what she's still trying to tell us.  Do we need to rebuild the sill?  Does the window need to be re-sealed professionally, rehung and rebalanced?  Please don't tell us we need to replace the whole damn unit!

We'll throw ourselves on the mercy of the builders on Monday and hope they can work out what's wrong and how to fix it.  I'm all out of inspiration.

- Pam

Dear Blogger or the reason I've switched the comments to moderation

Dear Blogger

I am at my wits end.  My blog keeps getting spammed via the comments.  I have the word verification set up but that is not effective against manual spammers.  I've repeatedly reported these spammers to you but they're like a hydra, cut off one and another takes its place.  And there is no way to send you examples of what they're posting.

The format of the spam comments is always the same.  A user ID in Chinese characters, followed by a nonsensical comment of, maybe, 20 words, followed by a hyperlink.  Click on the hyperlink and you get a porn site.  Here is the latest example:

王妍妮 has left a new comment on your post "Damn volcano":

Knowledge is power...................................

I've cut off the links, so don't bother clicking on them (no point giving them any more publicity).  If you get comments like these, click on the user ID and the Blogger blog that they list there and then click on Report Abuse and follow the instructions.  It doesn't allow you to report what is actually posted on your blog, but it is all you can do.

Anyway, this is why I've changed my comments set up to "moderate comments".

- Pam

Damn volcano

My favourite headline from the last couple of days is one from yesterday's Daily Express:  "Britain is Shut to the World".  To me, it ranks up there with a classic from The Times "Fog in Channel.  Europe Isolated" (apparently published on 22nd October 1957 according to a quick search).  Neither are true, of course.

The eruption of the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano has thrown a huge spanner in many people's plans for the weekend:  three people from Site have had their holidays cancelled.  My Dutch colleagues can't get home.  My client's French staff can't go home.  And my brother-in-law is marooned in Dusseldorf. 

When it all kicked off on Thursday morning, it didn't occur to me that BIL would be affected.  Surely the ash cloud would dissipate by mid-afternoon, or get washed out of the sky (this is Britain after all.  It rains almost daily).  But no.  By the time I got back to my hotel on Thursday evening, having sat in an office full of Dutchmen and Frenchmen all day, I knew that all the ferries were booked out and Eurostar was probably fully booked, too.  (One of my colleagues even contemplated driving the 750km home to Rotterdam, but couldn't secure a ticket on le Shuttle. )  I could only hope that BIL had managed to secure the Eurostar tickets we'd talked about on the phone on Thursday afternoon.

Sadly, he hadn't.  And flights haven't resumed.  Slowly, my plans for this weekend went up the Swannee.  Since we're currently living in our bedroom and the kitchen, BIL couldn't stay with us, but we'd planned to spend all day today with him.  The plan was to go to Portsmouth and tour the Royal Dockyard, hopefully getting there in time to secure a boat trip in the harbour this afternoon.

It's a bloody great shame.  I was really looking forward to catching up with BIL.  He's a lovely guy and we don't see him that often.  We probably won't see him at all now - they've booked him a backup flight direct from Germany to Australia, for when flying resumes in Germany.  He's holding out hope that if the flight to London goes first, he'll come here instead, but he's risking getting stuck here instead of having a guaranteed flight home.

Yah-boo-sucks you damn volcano!

- Pam (shaking an impotent fist at a clear-looking sky)