Mulled Wine (by sarah)

Right - tis that time of year again!!!!

We are not having a specific week this year - mainly as we are stranded in Gloucestershire due to lack of money - ie we cant visit any of you - so we hope you will all come and visit us over this festive time!

In other words get your bums over here and enjoy our hospitallity and recieve your cards and gifts cos we have no money for posting (all presants and some cards are hand crafted!). We do however have left over wine from the christening - red wine, that is, and lots of oranges and apples and the like - throw in some spice (I could make some really bad Scifi puns here as we've just watched Dune but I wont I promise!) = Mulled wine.

We also have mince pies in the freezer, chocs and plenty of filter coffee and the like!

If you dont turn up we will have to hunt you down in the new year and make you stay with us - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!!

Please come and visit - we have a bed setee and a real fire place with real fire in - perfect for those roasted chestnuts - come stay for as long as you like - all we ask is that you tell us at least 1 hr before you arrive so that we can make sure the mulled wine is a heating!

Feel free to bring partners, friends etc...

I will endevour to email everyone - but this is me so - Ella, Becca and Charllee let the regulars know and I will endevour to be more organised than normal (HAHAHAHA).

Whoever controls the spice, controls the Empire.

Tea = Dinner, Dinner = Lunch but Lunch does not = Tea and the ensuing confusion (by sarah)

We have made a social fopar but it appears to be a language problem more than anything else. I dont know if its a regional thing or a generation thing but to us Tea is the evening meal and dinner is something that either happens in a resturant or at lunch times ie at school you have dinner time, at christmas you have christmas dinner at lunch time etc...

However, there is the concept of Afternoon Tea which I had only ever seen in films before moving here. Sure there is tea the drink but you tend to ask do you want a tea, or a cuppa or a cup of tea. That a is very important and if not used say in just shouting TEA to someone - hand jesters must be used for clarity.

Now after accidently missing an evening meal and then being asked if we wanted to have a re-run of sorts this Sunday we said yes. Al was told we where all invited for tea, my perants and all. Al assumed this to mean the evening meal ie to replace the one we missed. So therefore it would be at the time the previoous one was seduled - 7.

We rearranged the structure of the day in order to be able to make this meal including making sure JEany bow had had enough sleep so as not to be grumpy chumps. Al made sure his business meeting was finished well in time though he was still in the middle of the debrief with our client when the language mistake cuased an explosion.

Poor Barbara had been waiting for us from five to come over for Afternoon Tea whilst we were waiting for 7 to have Tea. But it turns out that Barbara considers Dinner to be the meal Tea and was obviously really annoyed, especially as she hadnt come across the concept of Tea being the word used for the evening meal.

It was a right ol' mess!

Ok so Afternoon Tea is probably what we would call coffee break or snack time depending and is the equivalent of that extra meal the French have. Also the deviation could well have occured as children have their last meal of the day when they come home from school which would be about Afternoon Tea time, and so would be called tea but then as they get older the evening meal gets later but they are less lickly to start calling it something else.

Ok so me and Al would say that meals are called: Breakfast Brunch (obviously you have this when you get up too late for brekki and too early for lunch) Lunch/dinner Coffee break/snack time (Doesnt really count as a meal and only really applys in an office type environ) Lunner (this is mine and Als special personalised meal for when we realise we've forgotten to eat lunch and its a bit too close to dinner time but not close enough for it to be dinner) Tea (occassionally called dinner if going to a resturant) Super (very occassionally used when you realise its midnight and you've forgotten to eat dinner so you have ceral or cheese and busciuts in bed to tide you over to the morning - Al may also have minni trifle or some such for this particular psuedo meal)

We would typically only have two or three of these meals a day.

From what we've gathered though this is what we are supposed to do: Breakfast Lunch Afternoon Tea Dinner/super

Shrug - must be a regional thing though our friend who grew up here said that she calls the evening meal Tea and the midday one dinner - oh well. Clarify definitions in future! That way you will not have to suddenly produce a meal for five people with no warning cos you thought you where going else where for that evening meal :/

Business Ettiquette (by sarah)

Things that Sarah and Al hate:

1)People phoning for business reasons on the HOME phone when they have not even tried the BUSINESS one nor Als mobile.

2)People being mean to secrataries who tell them the boss cant come to the phone (especially when it is not the secratary and you are phoning on the HOME phone).

3)People making mistakes and then taking it out on you becuase you cant fix it/talk to them right at that point in time.

Grrrrr!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry guys I am just very defensive of our work life seperation. Plus if we say we dont have time to talk we really dont - we go through hoops to talk to peopl - hands free kits whilst washing up ect.....

Ok rant over.

the Legacy of the Curse (by sarah)

Monday, tired after the horrible weekend and a teething Jean, we become concerned about the vans gears after it got stuck and wouldnt change into 1st - it has been crunching alot and this concerns us to say the least!

So there I was in the van trying to read the Haynes manual whilst we drove along - we thought it might be the transmission fluid as there was a burnt oil smell sometimes too. To top this up should be a relatively minor thing to do - unfortunatly you need to raise the van up levelly to do so and own a syringe - ok so this is us and the syringe wasnt hard to find, neither was the car stands and jack (we like having a backup when heavey vechiles are concerned!). Unfortunatly we had no flate ground to do this on so had to resign ourselves to having someone else charge us stupid amounts of money for doing a simple job, badly.

I was supposed to do a lot of writting on Monday - I had lots and lots to do, unfortunatly my hand hurt to much from the pulled muscle so the day felt very wasted. We have our writting classes on Mondays too so I couldnt even do half the excersises. Then we ended up being late back home due to more stupidness where we still had to do the rubbish and stuff 🙁

Not least becuase I had a bad tummy:( Which hadnt been helped by Cheltenhams probably drugs trade! Someone had been hiding big black leather purses in the loo sistons resulting in them not flushing properlly and then getting blocked etc... I was in a little illys cafe when one was pulled out sopping wet - it was sereal!

After 4 hrs sleep we got up early as we needed to be in Stroud for 7:30. As always we where running late so Al had to leave me getting all the stuff out of the van whilst he run off to get his train ticket etc... (him having a meeting in London at 11 and me having one in Stroud at 12). Now getting the pushchair in and out of the van is pushing things for me a bit still but I managed it and remembered to restock the nappy changing bag. I finished dressing poor Jeany bow. Al had warned me she was in one our cloth nappies as we had miysterously run out of disposables?! in the house. Now these are prone to leakage and I didnt have any clean spare clothes for her on me 🙁

I got everything ready and headed off thinking I'd be able to catch up on some of the reading I was supposed to have already done. The fun event of the day was that Als train was still on the plateform so we got to wave Daddy goodbye though if it hadnt been for the Bar maids at the Royal William (of kittens mum fam) he wouldnt have seen us! Still I think he enjoyed sitting with the two young woman for the whole journey 😉

I headed to Tescos, I was a bit shakey having been sick and not having had enough sleep. I got to the bottom of the hill only to be told by a nice lady that Jeans shoe was at the top still. So I turned around and walked all the way back up - retrieved the shoe from the road! And headed back down - where upon Jean decided to throw her blanket and bottle over the side of the pushchair where I promtply run over it and got it all tangled round the pushchiars wheels. It was wet and covered in mud - sigh - her bottle was also very muddy - fortunatly I had a spare of both!

Finally at Tescos I went straight to change Jean lest she leak! It was then I discovered I had no nappy changing bag!!! Where the hell was it? I'd restocked it - oh lordy had I left it out in the car park? Would it get stolen or worse - would I be responsible for a bomb scare and get it blown up? I decided to put Jean in one of the free disposibles that where in the baby change though I had to take my book out of its bag to put the cloth one in and then hope that the urine soaked thing wouldnt leach onto my laptop and note book!

I was shaking so decided to have breakfast before attempting the hill again.

Fortunately no one had noticed so no bomb scare - though if I had been a terrorist this would have been a bad thing!

I had my meeting which was lots of fun though I got confussed over time and turned up two hours early and tried to order food before the place was serving etc... :/

The rest of the day was fine except for a slight incident with a strange guy in Costa but baby needing changing stopped it getting to dodgy! Unfortunatly this is not the end of Tuesday - oh no!

Al's meeting went on and on - then he had a debrief or what ever and then due to having stupid amounts of non-sleep he fell asleep on the circle line and therefore missed a late but bearable train. I mean while was stranded the last bus goes at 5 something and I wasnt worried untill it was 6:30. I found myself sitting in the Subway sandwitch place drinking coffee as it was open and wasnt a McDonalds - however this ment I was in there feeding Jean when some teenage girls decided to raid it for crips! Still the staff where nice and let me lurk until the 'hoodlems' where gone. I then rapidly made my way to the van where I locked me and Jean being a paranoid mother!

Al got in at 12:03 - not good. Really not good 🙁

Sorry just winging again really - the thing with the teenage girls doesnt sound like much but was actually quiet scary.

Disastor Central (by sarah)

Man I dont think the curse is ever going to go away 🙁

We've had yet another frought weekend from hell - sigh.

Ok first of the kittens must have cuaght a dodgy mouse or something as they both went a loo inside - H went in the bath like a good girl though - over the plug whole and everything and shes supposed to be the thick one! He on the other hand decided to poo on the carpet and wee in our wooden cube cabinet - that isnt varnished 🙁

Of course urine soaked into the wood and worse than that when we moved it to clean the carpet we found that where they had been going a wee on the carpet before - it had due to capillary action (I suppose) seeped under said unvarnished wooden cabinate - so guess who was boiling kettles of water (the water heater having died) and pouring what was left of the disinfectants into the bath - to soak the wood. The cabinate I would think will warp - but it was this or fire wood and a bit of warping we can cope with!

The cabinate after server soaking and some elbow grease is now in the workshop drying out - the bit that was soaking had swollen out side ways by at least 1/3 of an inch either side!

Then - Al was going on the night hike with the cubs - when he got there he discovered that somehow the back door of the van had been left ajar - but not enough to worry about - or so he thought!

Then on his way back he found all the Scout files in the drive - in the puddles :/

So I found my self laying out lots of things to dry including all the certificates we are supposed to give them on Wednesday! We checked and we had everything improtant - so breathed a sigh of relief that it hadnt been worse - this was probably our mistake!

Al had lost his special Cubs 90th birthday woggle on the hike so was sad about that.

I mean while had been attempting to do the washing up(the dishwasher still being broken) with Jean still awake as she was refusing to sleep - no afternoon nap, no nothing! It was getting quiet late and she was hyper with tiredness but refusing to sleep 🙁 We only ever leave her with controlled crying for a max of 10 mins - on the umpteenth attempt I'd given up and bought her down stair. however, somehow the ceramic mixing bowl had been placed with the plastic ones I have on the lower shelves for Jean saftey. The very reason it is not placed on the lower shelves is that Jean pulls everything off of those shelves - and vala - one broken bowl - fortunatly no broken bobble!

Anyway, Al came back and we finailly got bobble to sleep at about 11:30, we put the table back after its temporary rearrangement for carpet shampooing - ie aftermath of cats! We sit down to eat dinner - towards the end of the meal a smell arises and a guilty looking kitten emerges 🙁 We where not impressed I can tell you. Al cleaned it up and readed the carpet cleaner - again - this time with the speicial pet shampoo in it. He set it to ultra clean ie with conc. detergant and everything. Unfortunatly the thing had somehow been switched into upholstery mode. The result?

The certificates we had drying get sprayed, the clean jars for jam making get sprayed and the coats all get sprayed including my grandmothers fun fur.

Poor Al was distrote!

I delt with the certificates saving all but one, the jars have yet to be washed but I also had to wash down every coat - using the shower! Once more the house was full of soggy things drying - sigh. Al was finishing off his work work whilst I was cleaning the coats - we went to bed exhusted 🙁

Sunday we had what we thought was a productive day in Gloucester but when we got home the place smelt of urine - we did lots of carpet sniffing. It turned out to be my nans old fun fur coat, it smelt dreadful-it was hanging up in the bath drying from the little bit of water we'd sprayed on it to make it clean of carpet cleaning detergant. So with Al back to work I begain washing the coat - I used shampoo as in my hair shampoo - knowing that I was probably ruining the coat. I was horrified at the colour of water that coat produced!

We left the foul and feted thing, soaking in conditioner - I thought we'll its fur texture so I'll treat it like hair - besides I noticed that the cuddly toys that got covered in the leaked conditionar from the move, came up really nicely when washed and where really soft etc...

Off we went five minutes late (or so we thought) to Babaras for the wild life programme we've been watching with her every Sunday - to our horror she started shouting at us and asking where we had been etc... appearently she had cooked us a three course meal 🙁 I knew nothing of this and Al thought he had said wecouldnt make it. Understandably she was really upset - having expected us at 7 and it now being 9. This made Al feel even worse and like he'd mucked everything up 🙁 Still we did get a nice pudding which was welcome as we hadnt actually had dinner.

Back at the house at about midnight I was trying to put the soggy fun fur up to dry not realising how much it would way - in the process I pulled a muscle in my hand and in my belly and then when me and Al got it to hang up - it bent the metal thing we hung it on 🙁 We where not happy - nope not one little bit 🙁