Under the weather...

A long silence again - simply because there was not much to say or share. I have been feeling under the weather still, and have cancelled my dancing holiday in Pitlochry - more's the pity, but I do not have the energy at the moment... Equally, I have not been doing much of anything else other than work, websites and trying to sell some crafts stuff on Ebay (my seller addy is "phcrafts" if anybody wants to have a look - or click here which will take you straight to my listings page).

But -- everything else has been under the weather, too. We have had some massive rainfalls here and the Bourne and the Abbey River (a sidearm of the river Thames) in Chertsey both flooded and caused substantial trouble, as did some other small streams in the area although not the Thames itself. None of those will ever trouble us here in this part of town as we are well away from all the rivers, however, the problem here (and in some other areas, too) is drains not coping with the amount of water. There were puddles in the main road just outside our house in both ways of driving, so deep that several times I did not dare drive through them (which is the only official way to get anywhere from our house!) and at some point deep enough for this section of the road to be closed for a few hours. The picture shows the puddle at the bottom of the bridge, which was the smaller of the two but this one I could take from our house! It got worse later but it was too dark then and the photos didn't turn out. There is now a roadworks not 500 yards down the road where they are trying to clear (or repair?) the drains, so hopefully we will not have those problems again.

Flood sign at the other side of the bridge.

Our side of the bridge - photo taken from our front garden.

That was a couple of weeks back - in the meantime, the waters have receded and we had some really nice sunny and warm days, and Emily and I spent some time together at the allotment. I think I mentioned before that as of this year I'm sharing her allotment which is at the end of a little road just a few hundred yards from here. Last Thursday I visited the council offices to get my "coworker's key", so it's official now! We've been doing a lot of clearing and ordering work - the soil is quite heavy with all the rain and the digging was hard work but it was good to be out and about in the first almost spring-like days, and nice to see the few things growing that were planted last year. Time to plan and order seeds - that should be fun!

The allotment - our plot goes from the shed to
where you can see Emily standing.

Emily standing by our patch of purple sprouting broccoli.

Check out my new crafts website

The weather has been rather ugly of late - the snow was beautiful for a couple of days but then turned into slush and soon disappeared. We have since had another day of snow but rather sleety and didn't stay, and after that, the usual: lots of rain. There is a lot of flooding about in the whole area and also in Chertsey, and most worryingly, quite a lot in the road just outside our house on both sides of the roundabout. At some point it was so deep that the police closed the road for a few hours one morning.

As a consequence, I haven't been out and about much and instead have finally managed to complete and upload the scrapbook section of my crafts website. In all honesty, this has been a project I started and dumped several times over the last few years but finally found a way to make it work (well, Sean finally showed me a way...). So there you are: you can now look at all my scrapbooks online - every single page I've ever made! Here's the link, and I will also put it up in the links section on the right if you want to come back later: http://petra.hostit.us/scrapbook/

I think the website is easy to use: the home page is a list of the album links - just click on what you find interesting and it will take you to a thumbnail album where you can click on either the pictures or their captions to see them enlarged. The large versions, I think, are worth looking at as they are big enough so that often you can even read the journalling, and certainly see some detail. There are also some descriptions by the side or below, for those who don't want to read the whole journals, and for the crafters amongst you I've also listed the materials used as far as I could remember.

For the time being, this is complete, but will get updated from time to time whenever I get around to making some new pages (which does not happen often these days!). Apart from that, I want to extend the website to also show some of my needlecrafts projects of which I have taken photos; some cards I made in the past, and also some other crafts projects - that, however, may take a while again!

English favourite: the weather!!!

Oh yes, the weather! It is always the number one topic in England, but I have never heard it talked about as much as in the last two days. We had snow! Okay, for most of the world that is probably not news to bring the day to a standstill, but here it is! Seriously... Of course, you are talking about a country that normally does not get snow, more than a sprinkling anyway, here in the South. There are no snowplows and other gadgets to get rid of the stuff, and hardly anybody has such things as winter tyres or snow chains. Ergo -- thousands of schools were closed, public transport was disrupted, flights grounded, appointments cancelled. I should have been seeing my chiropractor and also I should have had minor surgery today, just a little cyst cut away, but both of those were cancelled... Nicole is marooned on the island because her flight was cancelled, too; Sean's colleague didn't turn up because he couldn't get the car out of their cul-de-sac, and one of my friends burned up the motor of her windscreen wipers trying to use them to clear the approximately 10" of snow off the windscreen instead of using a brush! People here seriously don't know how to handle snow - I thought it rather funny (although I admit I was quite pleased not having to go out myself...). It is definitely beautiful, though - I've never seen that much snow here, and it is amazing how quiet it can be here, with the snow muffling the sounds of the few cars on the A-road, and the motorway just outside town down to a more or less permanent crawl. I hope we'll have some more days like this!

Pavement in front of our house and view to the station -
last night when it was all pristine

The road coming down the railway bridge in front of our house -
if they miss that bend they go straight into our driveway
(hitting whatever is parked there - bit worrying!)

Our house front and the cars - my "Smartie" and Sean's "new" van
which we brought down from Nottingham in early January:
it's an ex-post-service van and it's huuuuuge!

Today in the garden...

View out our back door...

Wall planter - just to give an idea of the amount of snow...

A Memorable Saturday

Sometimes, life is like this - nothing much happens for ages and then you get several events on the same day. Last Saturday was a day like this!

It started with a late morning Punch Party at Rosemary's, our former Choir Leader at St Peter's Church. Rosemary retired last summer because she began "feeling her age", and for the choir that was a very sad occasion because our new "Musical Director" only does modern music and guitar strumming - she does not play the organ or even the piano, does not read music, and cannot deal with the multiple parts of a traditional choir. So ever since August, we have been without a choir leader. That aside, we had bought a small collection of presents for Rosemary, to be given at the official retiring party at church - only for one reason and another, that party never happened, and finally, we asked Rosemary to meet up with her as just the choir and she kindly invited us round her house for a yummy punch, tea or coffee and nibbles. It was a wonderful morning of chatting and catching up with each other's news, and Rosemary was absolutely chuffed with all the presents. She donned the African costume (the contribution from our Ghanaean member) straight away and kept it on for the rest of the party!

The choir (most of us anyway) at Rosemary's
who is in the middle in her African gown

The afternoon I spent in Englefield Green with Nicole, my German friend, who comes three times a year to work bank shifts at the local hospital to keep her British midwifery licence going. She used to work for some years at St Peter's Hospital which is just down the road from us, and came to our church which is how we met, and as we became very good friends, she now usually stays with us when she's doing her bank shifts. This time it was all nights and so we only got a few hours each day between her waking up and having to go back to work, and on Saturday we decided to join the Coffee Break at the church in Englefield Green because I wanted to buy their 150 years anniversary calendar (after all, I lived in Englefield Green for several years, and there are really nice photos of the village in that calendar). Anyway, at the church we ran into their current vicar (who is the curate of a neighbouring town's church and standing in for the vicar who is on a year with the forces in Iraq) and got chatting to him - turns out we have a common friend: Eve. Eve, however, has nothing at all to do with church or faith - she and James know each other from the London Goth Meet! So that was quite a coincidence...

Finally, in the evening it was time for this year's Burns' Night Supper at the Addlestone & District Scottish Society - which always is a seriously posh affair anyway, but as it is the Society's 75 years anniversary season, it was extra posh this year! There were all the usual ceremonies like the Piping in of the Haggis, the Toasts, the Address to the Haggis, the Immortal Address (a eulogy to Robert Burns) and the Toast to the Lads and the Lassies; plus of course a traditional Haggis Dinner, Scottish songs sung by the ADSS Choir and Scottish Country Dancing. It was lovely seeing everybody again - I had not been dancing for several weeks due to still not feeling very well...

The ceremonies - the Toasts after the Address of the Haggis

Our table - me in the corner between two of my favourite dancers;
the other lady is my friend Trisha with her husband

The ADSS Choir - I'm at the very left behind Trisha