NincompooperyUK

Hey All

Happy New Year - 2008

Well as the title suggests life is indeed a bitch. I have been so sick this Christmas I can't tell you and antibiotics did not very much. So in the terrible mode of feeling sorry for myself I am gonna plan several holidays away.

Hope you all had better luck than me.

Okay first up I am not one to whinge (oh yes I am anyhow) but I will confess that this teaching lark is hard core I don't think I have ever spent a week going to bed at 9:30 before - sure I have a cold but still that means once I get home I have exactly two and a half hours before bed.

Anywho lets be honest I am a hard, embittered old witch and not much gets me excited anymore, however Royal Visits do. This weekend we are having a royal visit from Scooter sans Ed (miss you). As some of you may know Scott is actually a (slightly older) more evil version of me - not so I hear you cry or not possible more like. He's coming over on the pretext of work but really he's just here for a quick visit and if some work gets done that's a bonus.

However what will keep me going in those dark winter nights before my obsession with Christmas takes over? Yep a second royal visit this time from Irish Jane who is coming for tea, lots of cake and maybe something arty.

I have just two words for you Lewis Black if you can find him at the Emmys on You Tube, check him out the man should be given a big fat medal or made president or something.

Hey Y'all

Well I start my new job tomorrow - so you can imagine I feel like the new kid about to start school - oh wait a minute I am the new kid starting school. Wish me luck!

Hey All

Well its a truth universally acknowledged that moving sucks and should be attempted as rarely as possible. However we are now in a beautiful new flat but not without some seriously trying moments. Humh where to start, lets have a list that always makes me feel more efficient:

1) Matt agreed to drive the van full of furniture up to the flat, he came over and picked the key up - did I check to make sure the van was not blocking my car in, did I hell - I had to go over to his work the following day and collect the key just to get my damn car out, consequently missing my physio appointment the whole reason I was in Surrey in the first place. I am afraid to say Matt laughed, spluttered and snorted although had better self-preservation than to say it was because I was a woman.

2) Collected the key to the new flat on the friday dropped the first few bits off and then went and did the sensible thing and bought milk and cleaning products (Ann would be so proud). Arrived back to the flat intending to unpack the bits and make the beds etc... before my mother arrived to nose round and then drag us out to dinner. Could we get the door open - could we hell. We ended up sitting outside for nearly two hours waiting for the lovely locksmith to come and break in for us.

However I will say this my mother is an amazing blagger - she bought a bottle of wine and tumblers as a housewarming gift - she managed to go and find someone to open the bottle for us and also get coffee, pastries and nuts (all at 7:00pm) so that we could while away the wait and get drunk on the door step.

3) Finally - I got a parking ticket - and neither my telephone or Sky would connect or work!

People say bad luck comes in threes but someone send me some good luck - a new job is going to require some better luck that I have displayed in the last 7 days.

This just goes to prove that friends are the best. I was having such a good time on the beach of Arran that I decided to demonstrate the scarf dance by Isadora Duncan - the rest of them thought I was nuts but Jane was a good volunteer even though she refused to skip around yelling to the wind. Am I nuts?Only occasionally.

Yep all the things people told me about rainy Ireland was only partially true. Our time on Arran was fab and the sun continued to shine on the righteous. As per tradition we had a timed photo (thank you Jane) and Sam took one - Three Musketeers Go!!

Okay when it rained on St Swithin's Day (15t July) I knew that the rain would be with us a forty days and forty nights more, possible bad news for anyone near a river.

I thought when I touch down in Ireland that the same St Swithin's Day rule must apply as on thursday and friday it bucketed down, saturday was not bad and then suddenly on Sunday the sun came out and reminded everyone that its July still.

Jane, Miranda, myself and Sam (honorary musketeer for the weekend) and I headed to the Arran Islands and landed on Inis Mor in blazing hot sun. We got bikes (I haven't been on a bike in about a decade) it soon became clear that me and the bike were not going to get on, my co-ordination or lack of it could not keep up with it. Anyway we headed for the hostel which was lovely and then off to the beach on the low road it was absolutely beautiful with a long sandy beach, hot weather with just enough of a breeze to keep you cool and a picnic.

At 5ish we headed for Dun Aonghasa which is a huge semi-circular fort begun in 1,000BC it developed over time and has three separate rings however it is surrounded on one side by the sea and being situated on very high cliffs the views are spectacular the sea stretches on forever. By the evening I was suddenly aware that my skin was very sore and today I am a lovely lobster pink and my skin in pulsing.

I left the crazy cyclists to head of somewhere else today and instead I became a hiker which is much more my style and headed out to look at the ruined church of Tempall Chiarain and the seals at Seal Point a couple of miles away and then we re-grouped to head back to the mainland.

The Arran Islands have been a delightful surprise the landscape being nothing you could easily describe and something I suspect photographs will not do justice to either. (I will publish photos later)

Well Tasha and I have just come back from a lovely few days in Bath, ostensibly to cover Peter Halls Pygmalion but actually to have a lot of cake and coffee and do touristy things. We walked around a lot and managed to stop each other from buying stuff, visited the Abbey and a variety of hostelries of which our favourite was The Raven.

As for Pygmalion it was a traditional but excellent production and very different from My Fair Lady. Instead you get a Victorian view of the suffragette movement, Eliza Doolittle (played fantastically by Michelle Dockery) is fighting to find a new path for herself highlighting the lack of options open to Victorian women who either needed to or wished to make their own way in the world. I have seen a few plays like that this year, especially at The Orange Tree Theatre with The Madras House and Diana of Dobsons; what it shows is that Victorian and Edwardian playwrights were aware of the arguments for women's suffrage in a way that we often forget.

Well it had to happen at some point usually it's only once a year, so on wednesday I saw my first one star production. It was an embarrassing hodge podge which was only rescued from the no star review by Mr Michael Ball who was all cheeky, easy charm and genuinely seemed to be enjoying the role. That's right Kismet at the Coliseum by ENO which was a train wreck.