I had a lovely bank holiday weekend with Caroline and her family in her hometown of Amiens. I spent much time at a big family gathering, meeting over 88 family members in one weekend (that's a lot of kissing and hand shaking) - which was great. Lots of food, lots of wine - my kind of gathering.
The rest of the time, I had a chance to look around Amiens, which is a really nice French town with a huge cathedral. There is a nice town centre with some lovely restaurants along the river. Oh, and the river has a statue of a man in it that students reguarly dress up in different clothes.
There is a rather special clock in the town centre, nick-named the Marie sans chemise. Paid for by Mayor Lewis Dewailly as a monument for art and industry, it was originally unveiled in 1896, dismantled after World War II and then reconstructed, and unveiled once more on New Years Eve 1999. It's fantastic.
Carolines parents' traditional French town house was beautiful. I've always liked houses with high ceilings. The staircase has a lovely warm wooden handly that curves smoothly and steeply up to the two floors above, and there was the lovely pattern in the front inner door...
Oh, and may I introduce you to Guillaume, who pretty much has this expression on his face all the time and just asks you "Quoi ça" every 30 seconds. He's lovely.
Shoreham Airport isn't the first place you think of travelling from when you're flying to France. But it should be. I can honestly say it was my best ever experience of flying. The lovely 1930's airport terminal is a lot nicer than airports such as Gatwick, both inside and out. They are civilised enough to do a full English breakfast at 9am on a Sunday morning, the staff are nice and friendly, and the check in time takes a smooth 2 minutes, if that (though the nice lady at the counter will come and get you from the terminal should you still be chomping on that breakfast).
Sky South have been doing flights from Shoreham to France for a while now, and I can highly recommend them. The whole experience is brilliant. Flying from Shoreham to Le Touquet, the tiny little plane flies right along the coast until Eastbourne, where it heads over the channel. The cosiness of the plane is lovely, peering over my shoulder I could easily read the altitude and even the GPS screen - though I spent most of the journey enjoying the view with my complimentary Orange Juice and Shortbread biscuits.
At the other end, Le Touquet has an equally small and charming little airport and the town certainly looks nice from the air, with a huge sandy beach stretching for miles (we didn't hang aroung so I don't know much more about the town).
So yes. Flying from Shoreham airport is fantastic.
Actually a seeing our position on the GPS navigator was neat :)
Seeing the runway as we came in to land was brilliant...
Meet Spike. He's the latest member of my home, a very pretty 6 year old black male cat from the lovely man over at www.citycatshelter.com.
He arrived very scared and wide eyed on Thursday, spent most of the day under the sofa before he came out a bit in the evening. He spent the whole of Thursday night hiding in a cupboard and then the whole of Friday (home alone), sitting on the kitchen draining board. I set up a web cam in the kitchen so I could watch him from work - he pretty much stayed there all day.
Then, last night he spent the night running around the house in the dark, over excited and giving me a bad nights sleep. It's worth it though. He's a very friendly cat with a nice purr.
Today he had a little photo shoot and I thought I'd share it with the world...
If you've met Mabel, you'll know how mental she is. Especially at around 6 o'clock in the evening when her energy levels hit peak. Her eyes are eagerly focused on a toy out of shot, being swung round on the air on a piece of string.
Mabel is my Mums dog and spending the weekend in Cornwall has let me find out how Mabel is doing, who is now 1 year old. Wire Haired Fox Terrier (aka Terror), if you didn't know.
She's great.
Monday was Bank holiday, and a beautiful sunny down down on the South Coast of England. Morris Dancing is an English tradition and on Bank Holidays it's quite normal to bump in to Morris Dancers (normally around beer). So where better to find Morris Dancers this Bank Holiday Monday than at The Red Lion Inn, Shoreham-by-Sea where there was a Beer festival taking place.
Great beer and great dancing! Plus a crazy man galloping around on a home made horse.
Three spiders. Spinning their webs on my balcony. Nice of them to space themselves evenly for the photo.
I like spiders.
Here in England people like to go crazy every so often, like on Red Nose Day day, part of Comic Relief. It's a charity day once every 2 years where people pop a red nose on their, er, nose and generally behave in daft ways to raise money for Charity.
So, today I've painted myself entirely Red. Top to Toe. And it's worked - I've already raised over £430 for Comic Relief. Amazing what a lick of paint will do...
Awesome photos taken by and copyright of Aegir Hallmundur, check out his rather tasty photo blog, www.paperpixel.co.uk for more great pics.
I’ve done the ‘math’ (I only say that to make a point about my hatred of that Americanism) and my new flat is 357 meters (391 yards) to work. That’s 37 meters closer than my old flat. Brilliant!
My time spent commuting to work has now been slashed to around 4 minutes.
Ok, I’m ending my bragging now.
I was in the pub last night, I think it was approaching third pint time and 8 o clock. Food time. So I go to the bar, and my eyes scroll across to the 'Burger Menu'. I'm looking at the options. First up there is a 6oz Beef Burger, £6.00. "Hmmm - not bad I think", but maybe I'll treat myself, get something extra. An option called 'The Magic' presents itself at £6.50, 'A whole portobello mushroom, with caramelised onions' - wow, that sounds good. So I order, and get my food about 20 mins later. When it arrives, I think to myself it's a little bit on the small side, open it up and low and behold. It's a Mushroom, in a burger bun. And it's 50p more than a regular 6oz Beef Burger! It's daylight robbery!
OK, so the actual description does not mention a burger in the bun, with the said mushroom. But it's on the burger menu! And a mushroom is definitely not a burger. What is a burger?
Burg-er n. [Short for hamburger.]
1. A sandwich consisting of a bun, a cooked beef patty, and often other ingredients such as cheese, onion slices, lettuce, or condiments. Often used in combination: a cheeseburger.
2. A similar sandwich with a non beef filling. Often used in combination: a crab burger; a tofu burger.
You wouldn't put a crab in a bun and call it a burger. You'd have to make a crab patty first, one that had the appearance of a beef patty. The same, surely must apply for mushrooms. I would've accepted a mushroom-patty in a burger. Then at least it would be clear that they're trying to make it look like a burger. But slapping a mushroom in a burger bun and placing it on the 'burger' menu is clearly flouting the rules, especially when the price suggests it would be a beef-burger with a mushroom.
This is horrible. It reminds me of the time I had an argument in a chip shop the menu that stated 'Pineapple fritters - £1.50' and when I ordered I only got one! The menu stated fritters, plural! You wouldn't order chips and expect to get one, would you!?
Well, it’s been about 8 months now since that picture of a cat went up on the site. And other sites… And about time too. After the server died last summer, I lost a number of websites. Some have survived to live another day, some have fallen in to a deep hole, only ever to return should time be available. But TomKiss.net is finally back up, and would you believe it - I’m using WordPress. The last two sites have run on a custom built content system. But the freebie apps available these days are simply too good. So I downloaded WordPress, spent a few hours designing a Theme (which is already annoying me for its lack of colour) and away we go. Here it is. I’ll try to add more decent content as time goes by but essentially, I’ve got my place to rant about things again.
w00t.