Not life-changing but...

I've gone part-time and am now working three days a week.

Well, after health scares last year and earlier this year, plus some niggling work issues, I sort of thought 'What's the point in going through all this if I'm still just plugging away working full-time'. So, after a fraught weekend considering a rival job offer, I accepted my current employer's offer of job-share - the current employer was offering 3 full days Monday to Wednesday, which makes things much tidier and means a nice long four day weekend. I like spending more days at home than I do at work :0). Not that I'm doing anything exciting on my days off - painting doors, pottering in the garden, doing the cleaning, looking at the weather forecast and working out which day will be the best to put the washing out, that sort of uber-feministy stuff ;0). But it does mean that we shouldn't have to spend all of our weekends doing the chores and we can get out of the house occasionally. Although I am beginning to wonder whether working three days a week is interfering a bit too much with my sofa time, we'll see...

Anyway, whilst I was pondering all this The Staves 'Teeth White' was being played incessantly on the radio and I was surprised that a group of children (when seen from the vantage point of nearly 50!) could capture the essence of mid-life crisis quite so well as they do. Now I'm not claiming that the record influenced my decision unduly, but it did strike a chord.

And, in my small way, I do now feel like I'm 'sticking it to the man' as our colonial cousins would say.



There's another version of it here on a really rather brilliant set with 'Black and White'. Or am I just biased/jealous 'cos it's in a pub and they're drinking pints of proper beer?

Yay, snow day!

We've wimped out of going into work today.

Actually, Jon is working from home and so is plugged into the main PC whilst I use the Eeepc on the sofa. The uni where my office is based is closed; it's at the top of a hill and when I talked to my colleague earlier, she said someone she'd spoken to at the uni told her that people weren't able to get up the hill in their cars.

It's only put about 2 inches down here so far, but we're quite sheltered and I think it's worse on more exposed local roads. It's been snowing steadily for most of the day so it may get deeper - let's hope, egh?

Still, it's given me a chance to take the Xmas decs down and do some tidying. The ironing is next.

I've also made a seed cake for the birds and put it out along with the remains of the tarte tatin I made for Christmas Day. The tarte seems to have gone down very well with Mr Blackbird, actually I appear to be responsible for creating a feathered monster who's smacked off his tits on sugar and is aggressively defending his slice of pie from all comers. He's already seen off a thrush and a jay and is back for his third piece that's the size of his head. Mrs Blackbird is round the front of the house delicately picking all the berries from our pyracantha.


I promised pictures of my chilli fairy lights and here they are with my favourite tree decoration, the drag queen poodle.

Oh, and whilst I'm trying to put off doing the ironing, here are photos of the new chair and sofa.

From Tunisia Sept 09

This year we're off to sunny...

Tunisia actually and as you can see it wasn't! But we still got out to lots of 'sites': Punic and Roman Carthage; Tunis and the Bardo museum; the Ribat at Sousse; the medina, a mausoleum and a mosque in Kairouan; and the amazing museum and Roman amphitheatre at El Djem.

The museum at El Djem had an excavated Roman villa in it and a partly excavated Roman town - really stunning. They have so many fantastic mosaics that all the museums we went to had them set in the floor for you to walk on, or have them in situ out in the open in the villa or town for you to stroll on - things that are so rare over here in the UK that they're treated like fragile fabrics; protected behind glass.

Tunisia was great, much less hassle than in Egypt and a lot cheaper too.

Anyway, now we're back we can enjoy our new sofa and chair. Lise will remember our old sofa 'cos when she moved into her first house they bought a grey and white striped sofa from Habitat. When we moved into our first house a about a year later (May 1990) we bought the peach and white striped sofa-bed version. I gave it a new seat pad and re-covered it in a Laura Ashley yellow and orange check when we moved to the new house in 2000, but it's now come to the end of its life and has been replaced by something rather Edwardian looking with large maroon chenille flowers on a dark grey background. We've also replaced the wooden framed chair that I 'bought' as one of a pair from the chap I used to work for in a newsagent's when I was a teenager: I say 'bought' 'cos all he wanted was a £10 donation to charity and I had to store them at Nanna's for several years before I had a house to put them in. The new chair is a sober cream with beige and brown stripes.

Last year Jon replaced the large heavy old armchair (which must have been about 50 years old) his Gran and Grandad had given us when they were replacing their suite 15 years ago with a very nice leather armchair from Laura Ashley. So the living room now looks rather elegant, although I'm not sure that the furniture quite matches the walls and curtains, but I don't think I can be bothered doing anything about it!

Now to start saving up to have the boiler replaced, but I don't think that will be quite so much fun as choosing furniture!

Oh, and, have you sponsored Claire yet? Click on the 'donate' link on the right to read about her up-coming trek. She's done so well at controlling her diabetes through diet that the doc has taken her off the insulin for a trial period - how good is that?! We're off on a training walk with her tomorrow, so fingers crossed that the weather will stay fine.