Helen at Home

York

2010-05-03T10:39:00.026+01:00

We spent a brief, but fantastic weekend in York. Though we left only 24 hours after we arrived we managed to fit so much in. Our plan was to begin by visiting my favourite nature reserve Askham Bog, but upon our arrival in the car park it began to rain heavily. After sitting in the car for 10 minutes hoping that it would ease (it didn't) we decided to have a drive around town instead.

We visited all the houses that we used to live in during our university days.

Halifax Court - student halls where I lived in my first year:

Alcuin College E block - student halls where Ian lived in his first year:

Bishopthorpe Road - a house I shared with 4 friends in second year:

Siward Street - Ian lived here in his second year with some friends from Alcuin college:

Dove Street - I lived here with my friend Liz (see below) during the summer of 2000 and then with 3 of my flatmates from Bishopthorpe Road for the academic year 2000/2001:

Back then the house was the ugliest in the street - painted white and fading with a blue door. It now has a brick front like the other houses in the row and there is not only a new front door, but a new door on the cellar, suggesting that someone has converted it into rooms - I was always dismayed that the cellar contained three rooms that were not in use.

Carlton Avenue - where Ian lived in his third year:

Brunswick Street - this was a home and not just a house to me. I lived there during my Masters and my PhD and have many happy memories. It's also the only house in York that all my family and most of my friends have visited. The milkman 'milky Dave' lived next door and his milk truck is obscuring the view of the door:

Wentworth College A block - where Ian lived during our Masters course:

This is the computer science building at the University where Ian spent most of his undergraduate days:

and this is the biology department where I did my PhD:

My office was in the older grey building to the right.

By the time we had visited all these old haunts the rain had slowed to a drizzle so we returned to Askham Bog. As usual we had a walk around the boardwalk to the smaller of the two main ponds. Afterwards, rather than following my usual route of heading to Near Wood and the other pond we decided to explore Far Wood.

The bridge over the dyke and into Far Wood was in disrepair:

Far wood:

Far Wood is not THAT large, but still I have always managed to lose my sense of direction there. On the far side of the wood is Gilson's Bog that I had not previously managed to find (for some reason when trying to head west, one always veers north, but when returning and trying to head east one always veers south - and no my left leg is not longer than my right!). Luckily, Ian is a better navigator than I and he managed to get us to the Bog. Unfortunately the dyke between the two was more than "welly deep" so I had to admire the bog from the wood. I shall have to purchase some waders if I'm to reach it in the future.

Gilson's Bog:

The dyke to the North of far wood:

We saw a total of nine roe deer and a fox that we probably wouldn't have seen if we'd come earlier in the day as planned. Ian also saw a little mammal scurry and jump into a wood pile. We suspect that it was a weasel, but will never know.

We completed the evening with a walk around town and dinner at Oscars. Oscars was our favourite eatery during our time in York and again most of my friends and family have eaten with me there at one point. Unfortunately the lovely building and courtyard they used to occupy was only rented and they were unable to renew their lease. However, they moved to a building only just around the corner and the food was as fantastic as ever.

On Sunday, after checking out of our B&B we popped into town and had a stroll through museum gardens followed by a look in my favourite picture shop on Petergate. We then drove North to Easingwold and had a little wander before heading to St Johns the Evangelist Church for a christening.

Isaac William and his parents, my friends Andrew and Liz (Liz and I studied maths together at university and lived together at Dove Street) in the centre, with his godparents (I believe also Andrew and Lizzie) on the outside:

After the christening we went to Liz and Andrews house in Shipton by Beningborough for a lovely buffet and a brief catch up on news before we headed back home to Devon.

Random things I've learnt

2010-04-04T12:30:00.004+01:00

I decided a few weeks ago to make this blog a bit more general, thus the change of name. Until now I've not had a chance to post anything other than the usual blogs about the house and visits to family. I've decided to post a few things that I've learnt this week and to do so on a regular, though not necessarily weekly, basis. Nor will I restrict myself to a fixed number of things as it will depend entirely on what has caught my eye.

So here goes...

Before I could even write the title I had to look up the difference between learnt and learned - something I've not managed to remember in the past. Learnt is common British English, whereas learned is US English.
Aeshna, the genus of the hawker dragonflies is pronounced eesh-na. Source: a wonderful website (even if they did use the word 'Latin' instead of 'scientific' to describe the words) containing information on the pronunciation of dragonfly-related things.
Drinking chocolate was discovered by Hans Sloane while on a trip to Jamaica. Sloane was a physician and botanist who succeeded Sir Isaac Newton as president of the Royal Society. In addition to being a great collector of plants, he acquired a number of natural history collections and an extensive library on natural history. He bequeathed his collection to the British public and this went on to become the foundation for the British Museum. Source: wikipedia.
Adult newts may eat frogspawn. Source: the garden pond blog.
The name of the control centre for the Goldeneye in the James Bond film of the same name - Severnaya means northern in Russian.
In addition to fresh fruit and vegetables, fresh meat can also prevent scurvy. Source: Rayner Unwin - A winter away from home: William Barents and the North-east Passage.
Polar bears livers should not be eaten. They contain such a high concentration of vitamin A that this can cause terrible stomach pains, eyesight to dim and skin to blister and peel off. Source: Rayner Unwin - A winter away from home: William Barents and the North-east Passage.
If the top or sides of a loaf of bread cave in during baking then this is probably a result of there being too much liquid compared with dry ingredients. Source: our new breadmaker's manual.

In the greenhouse

2010-04-02T15:30:00.009+01:00

Last weekend we spent some time in the new greenhouse assembling some new shelving. Despite being rather awkward to assemble and the fact that the manufacturers didn't take into account the existence of the sliding doors in the centre of the greenhouse (which meant that Ian had to cut two of the shelves) we're both really pleased. It's doubled the amount of space we have to store our collection of little trees and they're now organised in alphabetical order along the length of the cooler half of the greenhouse.

Opposite the trees is a raised bed in which I intend to grow our herbs (except for mint which I'm only growing in pots because it likes to take over)

The warmer half of the greenhouse has four currant bushes, a grape vine and a blueberry in, which will be joined by more exotic fruit and vegetables such as marrows, aubergines and melons in the summer.

Quite a day!

2010-03-07T20:02:00.010Z

Today is my fiancee Ian's 30th birthday. Due to work commitments we've decided to celebrate fully with a holiday next month, but we still managed to take the day off work today and have a wonderful time.

One of Ian's presents was an adoption of the European otter Imogen at the Buckfast otters and owls center so we decided to go see her and the other otters this morning. Imogen is naturally nocturnal and was asleep in the 'otter cottage', but the other otters were all out and about.

This is their oldest otter: Ontario, a 22 year-old female:

These are Toronto and his sons Winni and Peg:

Winni, Peg and Rocky - one of Ontario's sons are due to be released in a wildlife refuge in Canada later this year.

We decided to stop at Trago Mills leisure park for lunch - a place we've passed a hundred times on the A38, but had never been to. It wasn't really what either of us expected. We thought that it would be a shopping center with leisure facilities such as a swimming pool and possibly a cinema. Instead it turned out to be one massive store - I can't describe how big it was. This discouraged us from actually buying anything because there were only a few exits with checkouts and very long queues. Nor could we find where everyone ate until we'd been the length and breadth of the store. All the food outlets turned out to be outside the main shop next to a small lake. Luckily we managed to find a table at one of the only two indoor eateries as it was a very cold day today. The 'leisure' facilities were also located outside and consisted of a small model railway and some rides for very young children. What did impress us was the scale of the place and the buildings themselves. The shopping area is one large structure that looks like a fairy-tale castle from the outside.

This year Ian and I are trying to alter our diets to be more healthy and so for once we skipped the birthday cake. It has been a tradition for Ian to have a caterpillar-shaped cake so instead we made a caterpillar shaped main course for dinner. We bought 4 different coloured peppers and stuffed them with rice, cheese and vegetables. Yummy!

Ian making the face:

This evening we went to the cinema to watch the film Invictus with Morgan Freeman playing Nelson Mandela. I had no idea that the film was partly about sport (rugby), but I would highly recommend it to even those like myself who normally avoid films containing a lot of sport.

All in all, a brilliant day!

A green greenhouse!

2010-02-14T19:14:00.010Z

Last week we said goodbye to our old greenhouse:

It has served us well, but has been missing several panes of glass since we moved in. Although we've had very warm springs and autumns in 2008 and 2009 the summers have been spectacularly dull and our attempts to grow vegetables out of the greenhouse have been disappointing. Admittedly the baby butternut squashes and baby sweetcorn looked cute, but in reality they were inedible :-(

We have therefore invested in a rather extravagent 20 by 6 foot greenhouse. This will also satisfy our growing needs while we take a pause in our search for some land when Ian moves to Australia to finish his PhD.

Blackpool

2010-02-08T19:02:00.018Z

Last weekend we took a day trip to Blackpool with Gary and Dewi. Before going for lunch we drove down the promenade, home to the famous Blackpool illuminations. Some of the displays were lovely:

After lunch Ian and I went to the zoo where we saw

capybaras:

giraffes:

lemurs:

penguins:

and of course otters (Barry & Jasmine):

The penguin pool was remarkably clean and I couldn't resist taking lots of videos:

I also filmed the world's messiest eater (a cotton top tamarin):

Incorporating ontogenetic dispersal, ecological processes and conservation zoning into reserve design

2009-12-21T10:37:00.009Z

Our article in Biological Conservation has become available online today. As promised I shall attempt to write a readable summary.

The aim of our paper is to extend existing methods for placing marine reserves to protect habitats by making the methods more realistic and thus hopefully more likely to protect species of importance and be acceptable to fishermen.

Marine reserves are basically areas of the ocean that are closed to extractive activities like fishing and the removal of stone or pharmaceutical products. Selecting locations for reserves is a tricky business as it's difficult to predict how species and habitats will respond to reserves and even more difficult to convince local stakeholders that going another few miles every day to a potentially less-stocked fishing area is a good thing. For example, closing areas to fishing groupers can benefit parrotfish - an ecologically-important family of fish because parrotfish are stupid enough to go and sit in the grouper fish traps (even though they're not targeted by the fishermen). However, closing areas to fishing groupers allows groupers to grow to a larger size before they die and since groupers eat parrotfish that means that they're able to eat the larger parrotfish (the ones more likely to reproduce).

Rather than choosing sites arbitrarily, computer algorithms (lists of instructions followed by the computer) exist to help select locations. These are required because once you start selecting locations from hundreds or thousands of sites it becomes impossible to do it by hand. Basically you divide the seascape up into lots and lots of potential reserve sites - ours were square and made by overlaying a 1km by 1km grid over an aerial map of Belize, and specify roughly what proportion of sites you want to be in your final network of marine reserves (say 20% of the total area of the seascape). The computer selects a random group of sites as your first reserve network and then repeatedly tries making changes to the reserve network by adding or removing a site and seeing if the resulting reserves are 'better'. Better is usually defined as being more likely to protect the species or habitats of interest with minimal cost to fishermen and reserve managers.

Ian and I wrote a new computer algorithm to make this process more realistic by

1) taking into account that some species migrate between habitats (that's the ontogenetic dispersal part),
2) evaluating how important each fish species is ecologically and economically and then using predicted numbers of each species in each habitat to determine how much of each habitat you aim to have in reserves (that's the ecological processes part) and
3) taking into account that areas outside reserves are also important - previous algorithms assessed if a reserve network was 'better' only by looking at what was in the reserve network. We also evaluate what is outside the reserves at the same time (that's the conservation zoning part).

So now you know!!

Bye bye builder

2009-12-18T15:41:00.005Z

We had quite a stressful day. The builder we've had in to knock down some walls and put in some new doors and windows seems to think that our house is his and that he has the right to make all the decisions. He decided that he and his electrician would be doing our electrics in the new kitchen (not something we asked for) and despite our protestations the electrician arrived today. The builder talked him through the job as he wants it done without consulting us. Needless to say when the quote arrives we shall not be saying yes.

The good news is that the builder is packing up as I write. We had to tell him that we were leaving for Christmas this weekend (which we're not) to get him to speed up and finish the doors and windows. The bad news is that he's convinced that he's coming back in January to finish various jobs. We shall allow him to put in a new window upstairs, but if we have our way he will not be setting foot in the kitchen ever again.

On the other hand, William had a blissfully relaxing day...

Batty bat!

2009-12-08T09:55:00.005Z

Last night we went for a meal at a friends. The friend has a beautiful ferret - incredibly lively and it didn't stay still for a minute (so I didn't take a photo). She has also recently inherited some Pipistrelle bats that were born too late to survive the winter uncared for. They live in a huge material labrador kennel suspended from the utility room roof which contains all sorts of things for them to dangle from.

After being passed around for a cuddle, this bat was weighed last night (in a sock!!!) and having put on quite a bit of weight became known as 'fat bat'!

and another!

2009-11-27T15:30:00.002Z

It's been a great couple of weeks for work. First our reserve design paper got accepted to the journal Biological Conservation and now a paper I coauthored with a phd student has been accepted to the Marine Ecology Progress Series. As soon as they are actually in print I shall endeavour to blog a (hopefully understandable) summary of each.

Allergy Testing

2009-11-26T22:30:00.002Z

Pretty much everyone I know is allergic to something. Both my mother and brother-in-law are allergic to nuts, my father and brother get migraines if they eat certain foods, my stepmother has problems eating scampi, my partner thinks he's allergic to gluten or wheat... I myself have suffered from hayfever since my mid-teens and am allergic to touching at least one species of plant.

A few weeks ago I had a rather uncomfortable itching reaction to something (possibly edible, possibly chemical) whilst staying at a friends and it made me wonder if it might be an idea to undergo allergy testing. We own several books on nutritional health and most come with some sort of suggestion for a diet plan for eliminating and reintroducing foods, but given the variety of things that can cause an allergic reaction I'm unsure that I would ever put my finger on it even if I tried that technique. The NHS make it quite clear on their website that most methods of allergy testing aren't 100% effective, but then there are also dozens of testimonials from people whose lives have been turned around after finding they were allergic to something they'd been eating regularly for years. An example of someone who found out they were allergic to cos lettuce (not any other kind) and sunflower seeds demonstrates just how difficult it would be to find that out using an elimination and reintroduction diet.

So I'm considering undergoing allergy testing. Probably a waste of money, but then it only takes an hour and I wouldn't need to do it more than once unless I developed other allergies later in life (which does happen). I'm not going to be conned by one of those sites on the internet asking you to send off a hair, so I've found a local clinic run by an NHS nurse, but thought I would consult my fellow bloggers before booking an appointment. As I said pretty much everyone I know thinks they know what they are allergic to, but has anyone actually undergone testing and if so would they recommend a particular method?

Hoggery

2009-11-16T22:56:00.005Z

Last weekend Ian and I travelled up North to see Gary, Dewi and Ian's grandad. The trip to Preston consists of 5 hours on the M5 and M6 and then a couple of minutes in Exeter and Preston. On the way up I was surprised to see the phrase "Don't hog the middle lane" in lights on signs above the road. Although I'm quite familiar with this meaning of the word hog (as opposed to pig) I was surprised to see it on the sign and can imagine that it would quite confuse any foreign drivers in the UK. Upon arriving home I've checked the Oxford English Dictionary and it is defined there as "take greedily; hoard selfishly". I particularly like the additional words hoggery and hoggishness.

Interestingly on the journey south the sign read "Keep left unless overtaking" instead.

Seaton Marshes

2009-11-07T17:35:00.010Z

Today we visited a nature reserve near Seaton for the first time. Seaton marshes is an area of marshland, much of which floods at high tide, located next to the river Axe. There's a lovely little hide looking out on to the river

The nature reserve is visited by many different species of birds and kingfishers are regular visitors

Unfortunately my camera isn't good enough to get much of a shot at that distance, but one of the other birdwatchers was kind enough to let us view it through his telescope.

We also saw some little egrets

many gulls, ducks and some waders that I couldn't identify at a distance. Two female pheasants were feeding under the bird feeders next to the hide

and a male came along the tramway for a stroll

Halloween

2009-10-31T21:48:00.004Z

This evening Ian and I each carved a pumpkin for halloween. Ian also decided to carve a watermelon and it definitely adds a spooky green colour to the mantlepiece.

This year I departed from carving the usual pumpkin face and went for something a bit more tricky. I copied this from a picture on the internet. It began by looking like a deer, progressed to a rabbit:

and hopefully now looks like a cat:

Happy 60th Birthday Dad!

2009-10-21T13:56:00.010+01:00

My father John, aka scriptor senex, for those of you who only know of him in blogland, is 60 years old today. We're having a family get together this weekend, but for now I shall post a few photos.

My Dad has a love of natural history

and is rarely to be seen without his camera and an animal or two

Happy Birthday from Ian, William and I!

Happy Birthday William!

2009-10-17T18:55:00.009+01:00

Today is the two year anniversary of our having rescued William the tabby cat from his cage in the cats protection league shelter. Not that the cage was particularly small and the people at the shelter are very loving, but William, having been "in care" twice before wasn't having a very enjoyable time.

When we first met William he was the least friendly of the over 13's that we were restricted to because of our proximity to a major road. He sat at the back of his cage (as far away from us as possible without going down a ramp to another level) and miaowed a silent miaow. We had several cuddles of the other more friendly cats, but it was William that stood out because he seemed so sad.

We nearly ended up with a different cat when the cats protection people fetched us a tabby called Tigger instead whilst we were signing some forms. Luckily the mistake was noticed and Tigger returned to his cage (most put out having been freshly flea-sprayed) and William was brought out.

After bringing him home we were slightly concerned that he was going to remain sad and unfriendly as he promptly hid behind the fridge and refused to come out for 48 hours. Luckily we discovered William's second passion (after IAMs cat biscuit) - heat. Only a couple of minutes after putting the dining room fire on he came out, sat in the middle of the floor and got fussed for 3 hours.

Since then he has settled in very well (see here) and apart from being a little on the nervous side he is a most welcoming and loving cat. Not knowing his actual date of birth we are celebrating his 15th birthday today. Happy Birthday Puss!

William, in a rather uncomfortable looking position.

A first

2009-10-11T12:18:00.008+01:00

Yesterday we went for a walk in Haldon Forest. One of the paths offers wonderful views of the Exe Valley

The forest contains a number of sculptures, most of which are of a musical nature. This crocodile was off the path and I would have missed it if Ian hadn't spotted it

The forest is very popular with cyclists and horseriders. Unfortunately this baby grass snake that Ian found in the middle of the path appeared to have been run over by a cyclist

It was upside down and I was convinced that it was just one of those little rubber toy snakes until Ian moved it off the path. This is the first snake I've ever seen in the wild and it's a shame that it was dead. Hopefully we shall find a live one someday.

abcGIS

2009-09-11T16:03:00.005+01:00

As Ian mentioned on his blog last Sunday we have now completed our first contract under our new company abcGIS. The deadline for the entire project was today, but as usual a certain person was out of the country for the last few weeks and so the written outputs of the project are going to be delayed until at least Monday. Thankfully we have finished our role - making a website to display the maps that were the outcomes of the study in addition to providing a quick summary of the aims and methods.

It's been a hectic few weeks and we've been programming in what are entirely new languages for me. Some big things worked surprisingly quickly and some little things took hours and hours.

As always there were a few things I wanted to do, but gave up on in the end. For example the banner of images on the left hand side will only fit the text when viewed on certain sized monitors. Otherwise either the text goes beyond the images or vice versa. I could of course repeat the images to fit the space (as with the banners at the top and bottom), but then that would result in only part of a photo at the bottom and in my opinion that would look even worse. Suggestions anyone on how to deal with this in the future?

Unfortunately the end of this project means that I have to spend some time revising one of my papers that I've submitted for publication. This will be the 4th time I've revised it since I first submitted it. Fingers crossed that it is 4th time lucky...

Kingfishers

2009-08-22T08:42:00.000+01:00

Having driven all the way to the Forest of Dean we decided to return via the wildfowl and wetlands center at Slimbridge. I've been to WWT Martin Mere more times than I can count, but had never visited any of their other sites before.

The day was very hot and I confess I didn't really pay enough attention to the birds - preferring to dash from one patch of shade to the next. Something that did stand out were these scultures of a family of kingfishers outside (and inside) the kingfisher hide...

Soudley Ponds

2009-08-22T08:15:00.000+01:00

Upon moving to Devon in 2005 (having lived in the North of England my entire life until then) I made a list of places I wanted to explore. Most of them we visited in the first couple of years - Dartmoor, Exmoor, Dorset and we've made it across the south of England to Hampshire and even Sussex a couple of times. What we hadn't managed until this week was to visit the Forest of Dean. The Forest of Dean is in Gloucestershire, about 2 hours drive from Exeter, and is somewhere I remember very well from holidays during my childhood.

Despite there being no signpost to the carpark we managed to park at the south end of Soudley Ponds - a series of 4? large interconnected ponds.

We were lucky enough to see several fish

both hawker and darter dragonflies (though as usual only the darters settled for a photograph)

and a little lizard.

Now all I have to do is to make it over to Cornwall sometime. Cornwall still seems so far away, even when you live in Devon!

The Lucombe Oak

2009-08-18T13:42:00.000+01:00

Yesterday we visited Bicton Park, just a few miles from Exeter. Bicton is famous for its beautiful gardens and in particular for its arboretum. At Bicton there are several semi-evergreen Lucombe oaks (Quercus x hispanica 'Lucombeana'). These were discovered by William Lucombe, who ran a nursery in Exeter, when he found that one of his evergreen cork oaks (Quercus suber) had crossed with a deciduous Turkey oak (Q. cerris) in 1762. The Lucombe oak is unusual in that it keeps its leaves over winter.

- ? -

2009-08-12T20:13:00.000+01:00

All in a row

2009-08-02T21:34:00.000+01:00

These asian otters at the New Forest Otter, Owl and Wildlife Park were very comical waiting to be fed

This little guy was particularly keen to see where the keeper was

Baby melons

2009-07-26T17:30:00.000+01:00

As you may have read last year Ian has a recently-discovered passion for growing melons.

He's currently growing this 'sweetheart' melon that he grew so successfully last year:

and for the first time a watermelon. It's about the size of a grape in this photograph:

A Mulberry Tree

2009-07-26T09:49:00.000+01:00

Yesterday we took a day trip to the New Forest to visit the New Forest Otter, Owl and Wildlife Park (owned by the same family as the Chestnut Centre). Ian was particularly keen to take his new camcorder and video the otters.

There were three highlights for me - watching an asian short clawed otter climbing a fence, the recent addition of a tropical butterfly house and a beautiful black mulberry (Morus nigra) tree outside the first otter enclosure. I've walked past the tree a number of times in the Spring without paying it any attention, but being summer it was fruiting profusely.

The ground was stained with fallen fruits and there were still thousands on the tree itself. I didn't feel cheeky enough to pick some and taste them (and I couldn't remember if you could eat them raw), but we did collect lots of the fallen fruit with the hope of planting one of our own.

I have to say that it was one of the most beautiful and unusual trees I've ever seen. I have to have one!

Many people know only of the mulberry from the fact that the leaves provide the only source of food for the silkworm and from the nursery rhyme "here we go round the mulberry bush". No species of mulberry actually forms a bush and it may be that it was adapted from an earlier version "here we go round the bramble bush".

Finished!

2009-07-18T16:15:00.000+01:00

Finally I've finished making the path next to the large pond. I started it back in April, but to finish it I required some triangular brick pieces to go round the corner (thanks so much to Ian and his new angle grinder for cutting them) and some wet weather to make the clay easier to dig.

The straight section that I completed a couple of months ago is rather overgrown now, but I like it that way.

Lemon syrup cake

2009-07-06T20:07:00.000+01:00

Mum gave me a wonderful book "a year of desserts" a couple of years ago and I've started making some of them. The coconut ice cream was a bit too sweet for me, but Ian loved it (and of course I'll post the recipe if anyone's interested). We both really love this lemon cake - it's very moist and lemony and best served warm.

The worst part is chopping the candied peel - not easy as it's so sticky. Hopefully there's a shop out there that sells it already chopped, but we haven't found it yet.

A fixer-upper opportunity

2009-06-20T20:09:00.001+01:00

We visited another plot of land for sale this week. It was located next to a lovely coniferous woodland, but had a number of big disadvantages, the main one being access. The land was accessed by a half mile long lane, only suitable for four-wheeled drive vehicles, with 5 gates between the main road and the land. The land contains a "cottage" and another small building. The estate agent's details state that the cottage hasn't been lived in since the second world war and that there is no planning permission to live on site.

I'd be highly surprised if anyone was interested in restoring this.

The cottage:

Ian in the cottage (note the lack of roof)

The fireplace:

Inside the other building:

Only the best

2009-06-15T21:15:00.000+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I had my first ever Ben and Jerry's ice cream. I've always considered it a bit expensive to try and now having done so will probably not be buying any again.

Last night Ian finished it off and left the lid on the bed. William proceeded to lick it and then (not being able to resist the photo opportunity) Ian gave him the pot to lick. It seems that William was more fond of it than I was.

Introducing Panambi

2009-06-15T08:30:00.000+01:00

We were a little concerned that Panambi might be shy, having only been at the Chestnut Centre for 3 weeks. She was actually very friendly and came right up to see us. Manoki and Panambi are getting on really well and we were lucky enough to watch them play together (mostly in the water) for over 30 minutes before dinner time.

This is Panambi:

You can tell any two giant otters apart from the markings on their neck. Manoki has more white on his:

It was extremely difficult to get a photograph of the two together as they were constantly on the move

Manoki & Panambi

2009-06-12T15:51:00.000+01:00

Ian and I received this lovely (if a little blurred) photograph from the Chestnut Centre yesterday.

Manoki the giant otter has now been joined by a female called Panambi. They seem to be getting on really well together. We've decided on the spur of the moment to go North and visit them this weekend. Thanks to Gary and Dewi for letting us stay with them.

A seat by the pond

2009-06-04T11:13:00.000+01:00

GB was kind enough to get me some Otter Nurseries vouchers for my birthday. We decided to spend them on a bench for the bottom of the garden. It's not quite in place yet and will move back behind the new path when we've prepared the ground.

The photos also show the new fence panels that Ian put in last weekend.

Thank you GB. We look forward to lots of time spent sitting by the pond.

Just one more

2009-05-30T20:17:00.000+01:00

I once bought some echinacea plants from Future Primitive Plants. They have a wonderful selection of unusual plants, but they are rather expensive. That is they cost roughly the same amount as plants in the garden centres, but since I tend to buy my plants as plugs from ebay I usually pay much less. Each month Future Primitive email me a newsletter. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who can't say no to 'just one more'...

So, June has arrived...pretty much.

At this time of the year, most of you will have filled those spaces in the garden with new plants....to replace the ones you managed to kill last winter...am I right?
You're not alone - you'll be pleased to hear.

My fatalities this year are...

We will experience a lull in June - it always happens...we all take a much needed rest and scan the borders in the garden to see what we've achieved so far with our planting skills.

There will always be a little room for 'just one more'...the magazines inspire you whilst you lay in bed reading them...then you buy more plants...and hide them from your spouse...then you sneak them into a gap, which is too small!

Marriage is like a jacuzzi

2009-05-29T22:21:00.001+01:00

I use both facebook and ebay daily. That is I use facebook several times a day - I check it as often as I check my email. I tend to use ebay only once a day unless I'm actually bidding on something. Most of the time I search for plants - I find it a wonderful way of finding new species, which I then add to my list of plants that I'd like (if I had money and space).

A couple of days ago a facebook friend brought this ebay item to my attention. I'm not sure how long this will be on the web, but do check it out if you want a laugh...

A few excerpts:

Available for sale is my ex-wife's Trek 1000 Alpha. This is one of those items she absolutely had to have so her life could be complete. Somehow I wound up with it in the not-so-equitable distribution...

Although the previous owner was posessed with demons, I can not guarantee the bike, itself, is haunted.

Proceeds from this sale will be invested in anger management classes for me, and possibly a few additional voodoo dolls of the ex.

Remember, marriage is like a jacuzzi. After you get in and get used to it, it's not so hot.

Eaten by a bear

2009-05-22T20:38:00.000+01:00

I was going to blog events from our trip to Cumbria in the order that they happened, but came across this today and simply couldn't wait a few days to blog it.

Recently I blogged about the website www.last.fm - a great free site for playing music. Today I had it running for quite a while whilst doing some work and after an hour or so it stopped and gave me the following message:

I love this so much!

Sunday 10th May

2009-05-20T19:12:00.000+01:00

On Sunday we set out to have a walk around Grasmere. Unfortunately the weather deteriorated the closer we got to Grasmere and by the time we arrived we simply sat in the car park in the rain and then left. Instead we visited the main branch of lakeland in Windermere.

On the route to Grasmere we passed Yew Tree Tarn

This is Rydal Mount, once the home of William Wordsworth

Later in the evening we had a walk around the woods at Brockwood:

Barrow in Furness

2009-05-20T18:58:00.000+01:00

On my birthday we went to Barrow in Furness to see some places from Ian's youth and to shop at asda.

The car park was rather windy, but we were lucky enough to have a friendly herring gull land on the car bonnet.

Brockwood Hall

2009-05-20T18:17:00.000+01:00

Last week Ian and I stayed at Brockwood Hall near Millom in Cumbria. Ian and Gary had been there for some sort of event when they were children, but all Ian could remember from that time was that he had to guess the length of a piece of string.

Brockwood has a number of self-catering wooden cabins, the largest being close to the main hall and the smaller ones being located in the woodland on the hillside. We stayed in Esk - a two-bedroomed cabin at the bottom of the path. The location was fantastic, the cabin being surrounded by bluebells and ramsons, although the adjacent rookery was a little noisy during daylight hours.

Esk:

One of the larger cabins:

The view from our bedroom window:

Stafford North

2009-05-18T17:59:00.001+01:00

On our way up to Cumbria we stopped for some food at Stafford North services on the M6. It's definitely my favourite service station on the route North. The main dining area overlooks a large pond (or small lake). Having observed a heron whilst we were eating we went outside to see if it was still there and were rewarded with a lovely photoshoot:

CJE in Exeter

2009-05-02T21:44:00.000+01:00

Dad and Jo arrived in Exeter last night for a visit and this morning we had a wander round the garden. Dad and Jo were polite enough not to stand on the new lawn

William was not

Dad picked up a newly emerged small white butterfly to help it warm up

The verbascums have just started flowering this week

This afternoon we visited Chudleigh Knighton Heath and Stover Country Park. As usual I took the opportunity to photograph Dad photographing something else:

For more posts from Dad see CJE in Exeter.

The back lawn

2009-04-29T20:51:00.000+01:00

We've put a huge effort in during the last couple of weeks clearing the lawn and preparing for it to be turfed. The turf arrived this morning and although we were nearly ready for it we still had a lot of soil to shift before we could put the turf down. By the time we were ready for the turf it was already pouring with rain, but we both wanted to get on with it so we stayed outside. William gave us more support in the rain for around 15 minutes and then decided that we were crazy and came indoors.

This is the garden 6 weeks ago on an equally miserable day:

After the gravel had been removed and the old grass cleared:

Yesterday, Ian having dug over the soil in an attempt to level it:

This evening we removed all the large pieces of clay and then raked it over, but it was too wet at that point to get a photo. This is how it looked when the ground finally got too soggy to continue:

At least we don't have to water it tonight.

Funny pictures

2009-04-27T23:17:00.001+01:00

Some of these are absolutely hilarious...

http://icanhascheezburger.com/

Thanks to Jeremy at the Garden Pond Blog for the link.

Follow the yellow brick road

2009-04-25T18:24:00.001+01:00

We've spent a lot of time deciding what the paths in our garden should be made of. We've considered grass, decking boards, bark, gravel, slate and stone. Finally we made a decision for the path that goes round the back of the pond - yellow bricks. Today Ian helped me remove the rest of the grass and then I started to lay the bricks. They're a little bit wobbly as I haven't found anything to push the soil down the cracks between them yet, but I think it's going to be a lovely path.

Country Music

2009-04-17T22:39:00.000+01:00

Ever since I first watched the annual country music awards in the mid 1990s I've been a big fan of modern country music. I only manage to catch the awards show on television every 2 or 3 years, but until now it has been my main source of information on new artists. When I see new artists, most of them were born in the 60's and 70's and have been singing for a couple of decades, but they're very rarely mentioned over here in the UK.

My favourite country artists to date are Martina McBride, Trisha Yearwood, LeAnn Rimes, Carrie Underwood, the Dixie Chicks, Tim McGraw, Chely Wright and Jessica Andrews.

In the past I have subscribed to various music sites so that I could try new music and play albums that I don't own. Having recently cancelled my subscription I had a look around and found last.fm - a wonderful free site for playing music. You can type in your favourite artist and then get a constant stream of songs by similar artists. This has been wonderful for my country music education and already I have found some new artists that I really like - Deana Carter, Jo dee messina, Lila McCann, Blake Shelton & Julie Roberts.

I'd definitely recommend trying last.fm and for anyone interested in country music the film Walk the Line is a must-see.

At The Willows

2009-04-15T16:23:00.000+01:00

Ian and I visited the Willows on Easter Sunday.

Every Easter I visit my father and he assures me that he will be able to find me a frog in his garden. Until now the frogs have all chosen to vanish when I appeared. This time I was lucky...

The cherry tree in the front garden is absolutely beautiful

In the country lanes

2009-03-31T23:58:00.000+01:00

Although the land we viewed a few days ago turned out to be too far away the trip was made worthwhile by a pair of pheasants by the roadside

English nature reserves

2009-03-28T20:00:00.000Z

I have a request for those of you who visit UK nature reserves...

I'm making a web application - basically a map of England showing the location of all nature reserves. Rather than just having a marker pointing to a random location within the reserve I'm aiming to actually draw on their boundaries. The project will be helpful for developing my GIS skills and should be a useful output on a webpage in the future. In the past I've had a lot of trouble 1) finding individual nature reserves (particularly those without any sort of signs within the reserve itself) and 2) knowing when I'm within their boundaries.

There are a number of ways to determine their boundaries - existing maps and websites, books, emails to the organisations that run them or people who know them well etc. Some nature reserves even have signs showing aerial maps like the two below. These can be very detailed and accurate or just an outline. If anyone has any photos of signs like these I'd really appreciate them sending them to me. Also if you happen to visit any in the future (it doesn't have to be the near future) I'd appreciate you grabbing a photo.

Although I'd be interested in extending this in the future I am only currently planning to include actual nature reserves, rather than country parks or other regions of the countryside. I've no idea how many there are in the UK - in the south west there are 40 owned by Devon Wildlife Trust, 55 owned by Cornwall Wildlife Trust and a number of others owned by the National Trust, RSPB etc.

In addition to photos of signs if anyone can think of any nature reserves that I'm unlikely to know about - ones that are privately owned or not owned by one of the usual organisations I'd appreciate you telling me about them.

A big thank you to you all in advance for this (especially to my father who will no doubt end up rooting through folders and folders of photos).

Photographs

2009-03-27T16:39:00.000Z

Since buying my first digital camera I've taken thousands of photographs, but my family have seen only a very small proportion of them. I'm hoping to display them on my own website, but since that'll take some time I've decided to upload some of my favourites to flickr.

I'll be uploading more over the next few days and then at intervals in the future.

Aubergine & courgette bake

2009-03-18T14:07:00.000Z

I tried this recipe the other day and it went down so well that Ian has declared it to be his new favourite meal. It feels a bit like lasagne, but is vegetarian and in our opinion much tastier due to the mozzarella.

Chocolate Apple Cake

2009-03-07T18:29:00.001Z

As promised, here is the recipe for the chocolate apple cake. At some point I'll type it up, but for now here's a scanned image.

I didn't have an electric whisk, but it still turned out well.

Enjoy!

To be radical, or not to be

2009-03-05T08:57:00.000Z

Ian and I have spent a lot of time at Ikea over the last couple of weeks. Since getting a catalogue through the door I've been drooling over their kitchen and bedroom storage systems. Being a hoarder I have a special fondness for boxes, folders, drawer inserts and anything else that reduces clutter and makes things easier to find. We were really hoping that we would find a kitchen that we liked the look of so that we could use their storage systems, but hadn't anticipated finding 2.

I'd always had my heart set on a country kitchen with either wooden or white cabinets. In fact until we actually bought a house I couldn't imagine even being interested in something more modern. One of our options is oak fronts for the cupboards and that would definitely be the safe way to go. Unexpectedly Ian and I both fell in love with a kitchen that neither of us could have dreamed that we would like - the shiny black one pictured below. I even liked one with lime green cabinets, but wouldn't go as far as buying it.

Unfortunately there are lots of reflections from the clutter (and really horrible blinds) - I think you actually have to stand in it to get the full effect.

Despite being black it has a really bright and clean feel because of all the shiny surfaces, although I can imagine that it would be a bit like buying a white car - every little bit of grease and dirt would show up on the doors. We also have the problem that we're intending to knock down the wall between the kitchen and dining room. If we had wooden worksurfaces and a wooden floor then the pine dining room table would match, but how would we furnish the rest of the dining room? More black units? Would anything else match?

Ikea have some great kitchen designer software that you can download. I've designed the entire kitchen, but we can't make a decision as to whether we should go with the safe wood option or be radical and modern with the black.

Decisions...

Square

2009-03-03T12:48:00.000Z

The combination of having time, some new baking tins and central heating has resulted in me doing lots of baking. I'm in a square cake phase at the moment - so far I've made nutbread (thank's Dad for the recipe),

gingerbread

and chocolate apple cake...

Definitely recommend all three. Shall blog the chocolate apple cake recipe in a day or 2.

Super king!

2009-02-25T14:08:00.001Z

Ian has never managed to fit on our bed without his feet sticking off the bottom, so after Christmas we decided to be extravagent and invest in a super king size bed.

This shows the king sized mattress on top of the super king.

William enjoyed the temporary double mattress experience immensely.

Quite an event

2009-02-16T20:11:00.000Z

Today we decided to take a trip to Bristol to go to Ikea for the first time and look at their kitchens. We also went to asda at Bristol as their food is much cheaper than Sainsburys. It appears we picked the wrong day - it took us 3 and a half hours to get home due to a burning lorry on the M5. The lorry caught fire in the early afternoon and the motorway is still closed now at 8 pm. How is it that in Australia they can deal with fires covering thousands of acres, but in Somerset they can't handle a single lorry. According to the news on the radio "what you have to understand here is that we have burning paper and cardboard...". All good fun!

Chirruping

2009-02-12T11:21:00.000Z

No, this is not a blog entry about birds. Two days ago I was downstairs and heard a strange sound from above - very brief, less than a second, but shrill. My instinct was that it was a bird on the roof, but then I realised that it wasn't quite natural. My next thought was that it must be someone next door - they're often making drilling / sawing sounds as they've been doing some rennovations to their house. I came to the conclusion that they were sawing metal pipes (they did have their gas heaters removed the week after we had our central heating put in). Only when the sound began to repeat at regular intervals of about 3 minutes or so did I realise that it was coming from our house.

It turns out that when the battery is low our smoke alarm 'chirrups' (it actually uses that word on the alarm). The smoke alarm was here when we moved in and to my knowledge it's not happened before. I think every house I've lived in has had a smoke alarm, but this is the first I've ever heard chirrup.

Picture tag

2009-01-30T16:30:00.000Z

I have been tagged by my father on Rambles From My Chair with a picture tag.

The rules are:
Go to the 4th folder in your computer where you store your pictures
Pick the 4th picture in that folder
Explain the picture
Tag 4 people to do the same.

I chose the insects folder on my computer, and the 4th folder was the butterfly folder. The 4th butterfly was Argynnis paphia, the silver washed fritillary.

This photo was taken at one of my favourite nature reserves in Devon - Bystock Pools. In addition to a large lake, some smaller pools and lots of heathy ground Bystock has a beautiful meadow that's host to a wonderful array of insects.

I'm afraid I'm going to fail at tagging people to do the same. Whilst I do read a couple of other blogs, other than family (and all but one have been tagged), the writers of those blogs have no idea who I am.

The lowest ever score

2009-01-27T17:28:00.000Z

Today I'm quite glad that although I worked for the University of Exeter for 3 years I don't actually hold a degree from there...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7852553.stm

Home

2009-01-26T18:03:00.001Z

Some photos of our new warm home...

It's over

2009-01-25T09:46:00.000Z

It has been a difficult week. The plumbers were quite friendly, at least much more so than the last two we had in, but both were ill and though not our fault we both felt guilty to the point of almost feeling sick at one point. They were supposed to arrive on Monday, but because John Elliott (they have the same name as Ian, which is why we chose them) had a bad back they didn't arrive until Tuesday when they had an additional helper. On Tuesday afternoon Alan Elliott (John's step-Dad) told us he'd come to our house that morning instead of going to the hospital to confirm that he had lung cancer. His words were 'he couldn't let us down' and now he has to wait til next Friday to find out. Given that they had already arrived a day late he decided he couldn't go to his appointment. Sadly his step-son didn't seem to have tried to convince him to go.

I had hoped that the plumbers would proceed room by room so that I could put some furniture back, but they didn't put all the floorboards back until Friday afternoon. We spent yesterday moving furniture around and I'm pleased to say that we are nearly there. Of course little is where it used to be due to the presence of radiators, but we're very pleased.

William behaved very well on the whole and very few of the tools upset him (although at times he was frustrated at not being able to leave the lounge, there being floorboards up in the dining room). The one thing that did scare him was when they filled the system with water and Alan let the air out of the lounge radiator. If there's one thing that William really fears it's hissing sounds. Ian once hissed like a snake after watching the film Anaconda and William fled the house.

I shall blog some photos of the house this afternoon after we've finished the kitchen.

Central Heating

2009-01-21T14:51:00.001Z

We currently have the plumbers in fitting central heating in our house. The chaos has been extensive, but it seems to be going well (although William isn't enjoying it much).

This is the house before they arrived...

The worst devastation was in the kitchen, where we had to remove a cupboard so that they could access the pipes from the old boiler. We now have a total of 3 cupboards in teh kitchen, one under the sink with the usual cleaning products in, one high up that has tins and jars in and one under the single square of worktop that we have left for crockery etc. The glasses and mugs are all in the lounge on the tv stand. All good fun!

A day in the life of William

2009-01-19T13:10:00.000Z

Our tabby cat William is definitely a creature of habit. He has two distinct behaviours - sleepy (usually asleep, but always deigning to be fussed) and awake. When I say awake it's difficult to describe William when he's in an active mood. You just have to experience it. Not that he goes running around that often (though he does have his kittenish days) - it's just that he cannot sit still and the least little thing will get him off his seat and into a different room. William is unusual in that whilst he does like his comforts - duvets and warm spots he also likes to sit on uncomfortable things. Paper is a favourite (important documents being his preferred choice, though he will settle for post), although nettles, gravel, wood, books, tools, boxes are all good substitutes.

A typical day in the life of William could be described as follows:

'Early' morning - William will be found sleeping on the duvet on the sofa, refusing to be woken by anything as boring as humans or breakfast.

Between 10 and 11 William will allow the postman, the phone or the first pangs of hunger to wake him up, will saunter to his bowl, sniff disdainfully at its contents and then either pop outside for a drink at the pond or back to the lounge for another nap.

Late morning - mid-afternoon William usually enters an active phase, characterised by following whoever is 'fortunate' enough to be present in the house. When I say 'following', William really likes to lead, but he lacks the confidence. This results in him jumping up immediately after you, fighting you through the door and then remaining under your feet, but usually slightly ahead as you proceed to another room. Inevitably if you end up in the kitchen he will use the opportunity to see if there is anything worth eating in his bowl. If Ian or I choose to do something upstairs during these periods William likes to 'help'. He will help you move furniture by standing under or behind it, help you take a bath by howling outside the bathroom door, help you work by sitting on the study windowsill, scattering things on the desk on route.

William helping to write Christmas cards.

Each time William reenters the lounge he likes to take a scratch at his scratch post (provided that he can find it - it usually gets moved around every 3 or 4 days).

When he does decide to eat, after eating a couple of mouthfuls William will go sit in front of his catflap, stare outside to make sure that there is nothing dangerous lurking and will then slowly proceed through the flap for a bathroom trip. William really takes his time going through the flap, often leaving a paw or two or tail behind for a minute whilst he assesses the situation (not that he's ever reversed back through when I've been watching). Though he leaves the house very slowly he usually hurtles back in and if it's a 'good day' leaves a lovely trail of muddy footprints when he does. William will then proceed back to his bowl for a few more mouthfuls, but likes to leave some food for a snack later on.

Although William will leave the lounge at the same time as Ian or I he will always come in just after we have sat down. This would be fine if the hall wasn't freezing cold and if William didn't insist on opening the door wide and letting in a draft. I have not the patience to count how many times I shut the door after him on a typical day. Luckily this should change when we have central heating.

In between active periods and from late afternoon 'til human dinner time William will sit in front of the lounge fire (if it's on) on a sofa or will look out the window. Often he has to compete with the washing for a spot in front of the fire, or perhaps something more unusual like a pile of drying pine cones or some wellies that got left out in the rain the 'right' way up (ooops). If he isn't tired William will sit upright staring at the flames, it being his equivalent of television.

Human dinner time can be a sleepy time or an active time. If it's an active time it invariably results in William being thrown out of the lounge for unacceptable attempts at stealing food.

Early evening can be an active period, but late evening is always sleepy time. William likes to sit in front of the fire until he's fully roasted and will then come and sit on a knee if one is available. After a little while on a knee he likes to get off and sit between us, a very safe place with potential for fussing on both sides. This is generally the time at which William is most relaxed.

When we go to bed William usually goes outside, usually waiting until we're almost asleep to come back in (for some reason our catflap is very loud).

I'm looking forward to seeing how his patterns of behaviour change when we have central heating and no longer use the lounge fire.

Veg box

2009-01-12T19:44:00.000Z

As usual we began the new year with resolutions to be more healthy. I got as far as buying a book on nutrition, but Ian did something far more sensible by signing us up to receive weekly vegetable boxes from a local grower. The seller forgot to email us to let us know when / where to pick up the first box so we were lucky enough to get this one for free.

Although it had been sitting under a hedge for a couple of days the only damage done was the addition of 22 slugs that Ian kindly removed before I photographed the box.

Never seen a parsnip look like that before and it will be our first acorn squash. I fancy trying a recipe on the web for acorn squash with apricot preserve. Will blog it if it's any good.

Rowhorne

2009-01-05T21:42:00.000Z

Today we found out that our offer on the land nearby had been rejected. Not wishing to be disheartened we immediately set off to view another plot at Rowhorne, again just outside Exeter, but this time on the opposite side to our house. The land was described as being a sloping field leading to a wooded copse, with a mass of bluebells covering the floor in Spring and a stream running through and another gently sloping field on the other side of the copse. I had a feeling when it said the second field was gently sloping that the first would be unmanageable for anything that we had in mind. I don't think this picture truly conveys the slope that this field is on - Ian had to hold my hand as we walked down the edge and it was much steeper in the middle. The second field was not gently sloping - it was a hill - much higher in the middle than on any side and not even close to level at any point.

Apart from the incredible view the one thing that made the visit worthwhile was a fantastic group of icicles formed at the highest point of the land where a trickle of water normally runs down.

Backing up blogs

2009-01-04T11:05:00.000Z

I found this useful:

This page lists the latest N posts from the blog:

http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=NInstead of N, type the number of posts.

If your blog has less than 1000 posts, you can save this page:

http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=1000

Christmas Presents

2008-12-30T21:05:00.000Z

I love these biscuits that Bryony and Mark bought us for Christmas...

and they taste great too!

Manoki the giant otter

2008-12-30T19:38:00.001Z

Today I had a lovely trip out to the Chestnut Centre with Ian, Dad, Bryony and Mark. As usual the highlight was Manoki the giant otter. Until a couple of weeks ago he was the only one of his species in the UK, but his potential future mate Penumbi is now in quarantine in the New Forest and should be joining him in May.

I look forward to meeting Penumbi in the near future.

The Church of St Michael and All Angels

2008-12-30T19:26:00.005Z

After leaving Ian's grandparents house in Millom we took a trip to the church in Bootle, Cumbria where his parents got married. Bootle is the nearest village to Seaton Hall, formerly owned by Ian's family on his grandfather's side. Consequently a number of Ian's relatives are buried in the churchyard.

This is the gravestone of Ian's great uncle Harry, beekeeper at Seaton Hall.

I love the bee!

Dec 27th: A trip around Cumbria

2008-12-29T16:11:00.000Z

Our route: Millom to Esthwaite water, Grizedale forest, Tarn Hows, Coniston and back.

Ian's primary school: Thwaites school

Esthwaite water

Grizedale Forest

Tarn Hows

The shop in Coniston where Ian's Mum used to work

John Ruskin School, Coniston - Ian's high school

Coniston Water

A purrfect Christmas

2008-12-29T15:30:00.001Z

William settled into Formby very quickly and soon forgot that there was an outside world.

Formby Pine Woods

2008-12-29T15:10:00.000Z

Ian, William and I are in the North at present, visiting family for Christmas. Much of our time has been spent in Formby and on the 23rd we took our traditional Christmas trip to the pine woods / sand dunes.

Sadly the red squirrel population has declined dramatically due to a virus and for the first time in my life I didn't see a single squirrel.

Carol Wagon

2008-12-17T18:28:00.000Z

In Formby the Rotary Club collects money each year by taking the 'carol wagon' round the streets in the run up to Christmas. The carol wagon consists of a caravan or truck pulled by a tractor, covered with Christmas lights with an open end in which father christmas sits. As a child I would listen out for the carols playing and watch from the bedroom window.

I'm not sure if something similar occurs in York, but if it does it never went down my street. I'm pleased to say that our road is on the annual route of the Exeter 'Christmas float'.

Tree Day!!

2008-12-05T19:46:00.000Z

Of all the people we know that get a live Christmas tree each year we always seem to be the first to get a tree. This is because we have yet to spend Christmas at home (in Exeter), so we get the tree early with the aim of enjoying it as much as possible before we head up North for the actual Christmas holidays.

This year was no exception and we headed out on Tuesday (after Pete kindly cancelled the weekly lab meeting). When we left it was sunny, but upon arrival at the nursery it was pouring with rain. Luckily we had decided to try getting the tree somewhere different this year - St Bridget Nursery http://www.stbridgetnurseries.co.uk/ in the hope that it would be cheaper than otter nurseries. It turned out to be just as expensive, but they were kind enough to have all their trees in the shelter out of the rain, which saved us a tree-drying-off period.

We opted for a nordmann fir. Actually I'm not sure that they had any other species. We were so busy trying to find one of the right height that I didn't notice if some were noble and others nordmann. We got a tree that was too tall for the lounge, but chopped off the top foot. I really like that it has some strong branches at the top as it means the decorations go all the way to the ceiling.

We had wanted to put the tree in the bay window as we did last year, but with the new shelving on the wall it became difficult to fit the sofas in with the tv in its usual place. Still, we've done our bit for the street with our reindiator.

Over the years I've bought and been given some lovely decorations. I shall blog about some of my favourites very soon.

Reindiator

2008-12-01T18:44:00.000Z

Yes I did spell that right! We bought our reindiator last year, but it being close to Christmas when we got him we didn't manage to put him up outside the house. Instead he lived at the end of the bed throughout December, next to the radiator. Ian kept getting tongue-tied when trying to say reindeer and the name reindiator stuck.

This year we made sure that we were ready for him. Ian installed an outdoor power socket at the weekend and this evening we put him up. As I turned on the lights a little boy walking down the street with his mother went "oooooooooo". A wonderful first reaction.

The reindiator is very curious and is constantly turning his head to see up and down the street.

Water and Ice

2008-12-01T09:32:00.001Z

I was going to blog about this last night, but luckily I had already packed my laptop ready to come to the office today (monday being the day I pop in for a meeting or two). Last night I was not in a good mood (to put it mildly).

Last year we got a plumber in to fit out new bath, toilet and wash basin. Less than 6 months later the bath tap fell became loose and a few weeks ago it fell off entirely. This would be alright if they were the kind that you could fix from above, but it required pulling out the bath to get at and we didn't manage to put it back on. That and the fact that we haven't had a shower for a year prompted us to get in another plumber to fit the shower and fix the tap. We weren't too impressed with the last plumber so decided to go with a different company. The plumber arrived on Friday, told us the other plumber had made a complete hash of fitting the taps and then proceeded to promptly fix everything. We were very impressed with his speed and efficiency. 2 days later an entire bathfull of water flowed through the floorboards and into the dining room, coming through the light fitting and above the window. When we took the bath panel off we found that the pipe that the water is supposed to drain into had completely come away from the pipe attached to the plug. Now admittedly he could not have left it in such a ridiculous state because we have used the bath since he left, but he cannot have checked that it was fitted properly before he left. Unfortunately it appears that there was little holding these two pipes together in the first place. So... is it hte fault of the plumber who came a year ago and didn't attach the two pipes together properly or the fault of the plumber who came last week and dislodged the pipes when he moved the bath? Luckily the damage was minimal - being only to the wallpaper and carpet which we intend to replace next year anyway. Had it not been, whose insurance should it have come out of and who should we get to fix the two pipes together?

Both ponds iced over completely for the first time this morning. I was surprised how quickly it happened given the size of the large pond - I thought we would have a day or two with a thin surface of ice first, but this was quite thick. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo in the rush before work, but will do so next time it happens.

Brown paper and a pillow case

2008-11-23T11:52:00.001Z

Believe it or not that's what we were using to stop people seeing in the hall window for the last year (in the absence of any form of curtain). Finally we've splashed out and bought a curtain rail (though we've used a curtain from the spare room). I will now be able to match the pillowcases in pairs again. Hooray!!

The stairs

2008-11-16T16:00:00.000Z

It's amazing how long it takes to 'get round' to doing things around the house. The previous occupant was in a wheelchair and as a result the stair carpet has always been missing a section due to her stairlift. When we arrived there was a roll of matching carpet left for us in the hall and yet it quickly journeyed to the loft, not to be seen again until this week. I remember thinking that it was a top priority for sorting out and yet we quickly got used to the missing section. All it took was a couple of hours to redo it. Admittedly it's not the neatest job, but it's only temporary until we redecorate the stairs and landing. It does make the house feel much cosier.

Christmas

2008-11-16T15:40:00.000Z

Is it just me or has Christmas come particularly early this year? I have to admit that Ian and I been singing Christmas songs for at least 2 weeks and the Christmas things we've bought haven't actually made it into storage until December. Still, I was most surprised to see that Otter Nurseries had a wide range of Christmas trees available yesterday. Today we visited Bernaville Nurseries for the first time and they too had Christmas trees (though admittedly theirs were live in pots). Driving to the nursery we saw a house with Christmas decorations up outside - the big inflatable santa variety. Is it the same where you are?

An introduction

2008-11-13T20:07:00.000Z

I'm very pleased to introduce you to the latest member of our household - Snowball. We got him from Otter Nurseries last week, and he's been in the lounge ever since.

Pickles

2008-11-13T19:58:00.000Z

Today we pickled some of our beetroots and very pleased we are too.

Halloween

2008-11-01T14:10:00.000Z

Like my father I'm not fond of trick or treaters, but I do enjoy carving pumpkins for halloween. As a child if we could not afford a pumpkin we would carve a swede (not as easy as a pumpkin, but they still look pretty good). A couple of years ago we got a pumpkin carving set - consisting of some little saws and a tool for scraping out the pumpkins. They're very accurate and easy to use.

Last year Halloween came just after we got William and Ian decided to do a cat pumpkin. This became known as Williamkin and then I liked the name so much that I began to call William Williamkin.

This year we had smileykin (I've never done star-shaped eyes before and after I did he seemed to want a smiley mouth)

and otterkin:

In the trees

2008-10-27T21:08:00.000Z

Mum is currently visiting us in Exeter. Today, despite the rain, we went to Stover country park - a place we enjoyed visiting with Dad a few weeks ago.

We took a walk around the lake and were pleased to find a raised boardwalk on one side. Up at mid-tree height we were able to watch lots of birds feeding closeby - coal tits, black caps, nuthatches and a jay.

We also saw two robins in different holly trees - very Christmassy.

The melon

2008-10-21T17:38:00.000+01:00

There are so many things that I meant to blog at the time and didn't. Does anyone else ever find that, and if so do they do delayed blogs or just give up?

One of our biggest edible successes this year was the melon that Ian grew on the dining room windowsill - see my Dad's blogs for details:

http://scriptorsenex.blogspot.com/2008/08/melon.html

http://scriptorsenex.blogspot.com/2008/09/melon.html

The melon took a trip to Formby for our annual harvest dinner and then came back down to Exeter before it was eaten. We were a little concerned that it might not taste good, but it turned out to be delicious. Even I thought it was good and I don't even like melon.

So here are a couple of pictures of the melon eating...

You can't fake a reaction like that!

Lemon moose

2008-10-21T17:23:00.000+01:00

Last week we went for my leaving dinner with some friends from the lab. Sonia recommended the Nobody Inn just outside Exeter - love the name. A lovely country inn that specialises in whisky and wines - their wine list was at least two thirds the size of my phd thesis (though of course we got so confused we ended up ordering the house white).

On their specials board they offered salmon with 'lemon moose'. Embarrassingly the waitress walked in whilst we were laughing at the spelling and to our surprise she said it would be most fun if there was a spelling mistake and could we tell her what it was. We explained the difference between moose and mousse. Five minutes later she came out with this lovely fellow (pictured here at home the next day - hope they didn't mind us snatching him)

How adorably cute!

Busy busy

2008-10-21T17:03:00.000+01:00

For the last two weeks Ian has been cycling to Uni and leaving his laptop there in the evenings. I too have been limiting my own computer usage - some days I haven't even checked my email (a definite first for me). One of the fantastic things about having the internet is the million ways to get in touch with people, but it can also make what was supposed to be a quick 5 minute email check turn into a couple of hours in front of the screen. I regularly check 2 non-work email addresses, work email, email and messages on facebook, a dozen or so blogs and then as soon as I turn the computer on everyone starts to skype me (unfortunately often skypes are work-related). I have therefore been taking a break from it all, but now I am back so please give me a couple of days and I shall get to those emails you've not had a reply too.

Not spending 10 hours a day in front of the computer has given me time to do lots of other things. The house has been turned upside down with tidying and sorting jobs (unfortunately it's still at that half finished stage where it looks worse than it did before, but is actually much more organised), the area for the second pond has been cleared (mostly by Ian), the front garden is looking less like a waste disposal site and we are a couple of steps closer to finishing the bathroom.

I've learned 2 key lessons from my exploits this week

1) always stir paint for at least 10 minutes - I realised this when I accidentally painted the bathroom yellow when it was supposed to be soft oatmeal (closer to peach). I did stir the paint a lot and was considering complaining that it wasn't the same as the tester, but having slapped it on the wall I had to finish. Luckily a marathon stirring session for the second coat has resulted in the colour we actually chose. Phew.

2) Never ever ever remove the filling from a futon if it looks like it's going to be tricky putting it back in. We realised this back in Tor Close when we considered washing the cover, but William having been sick all over it this week we thought it worth the risk. Big mistake. We now have a binsack full of bits in the wheelie bin, 2 binsacks (aaah - a new skype conversation. Should have known I wouldn't get through this blog without an interruption) of broken stuffing that could potentially be useful for bean bag type items, and a very thin and uncomfortable futon that will cost £200 to replace. Ugh.

Anyone for french marigolds?!

2008-10-21T16:57:00.000+01:00

Ian regularly checks the local freecycle listings. We've obtained a number of items of furniture, gadgets and things for the garden this way. Recently we got an enormous number of seed packets from someone in a little village in East Devon. Most are annuals and all are out of date, but generally I've had no trouble with out of date seeds. Will give them a try in the Spring and see if I can grow some for sale (most of the packets are duplicated at least 3 or 4 times and I could fill the garden 5 times over if they all germinate).

Fat puss

2008-10-13T20:08:00.000+01:00

Not a very polite name I know, but this is how we have come to refer to the chubby white cat that frequently makes himself at home in our front garden. This in itself is not a problem, indeed when our only contact with him was in the front he was known as 'white puss', but now he has become more of a menace his name has changed.

Earlier in the year we were woken in the middle of the night by William howling on 3 or 4 occasions, to find that fat puss had decided to come in the catflap and have some of Williams food. Upon coming back from a weekend away for my birthday we found William hiding behind the television. When he finally came out (to go hide behind the sofa instead) we found that he was limping and had scratches on his face and head, which we can only assume were inflicted by fat puss (though of course we may have the wrong culprit, but he is the only cat we've seen in our back garden this year).

William is currently hiding behind the television after another painful encounter. We managed to tempt him out for some food and before he hid again I pulled a cats claw from the top of his head (I assumed it was a bramble thorn before I pulled it out). He appears to have no other injuries.

Ian has now stated that he is going to keep a supply of tennis balls handy and throw them at fat puss if he dares show himself again. Look out puss!

Exeter central library

2008-09-28T18:18:00.000+01:00

Yesterday Ian and I joined the library. Apart from university libraries I haven't been a member of one since I lived in Formby. This of course is terrible, considering my parentage, but the truth is that I've always owned more books than I had time to read. This of course is still the case, and will only be exacerbated by my reading library books, but I am no longer concerned about that.

Our trip to the library was very exciting. Several of the sections quickly caught our attention, including history, natural history and a wonderful languages section. Exeter central library has language courses for over a hundred languages, admittedly most are accompanied by cassettes and not cds, but we do have a cassette player as part of a stereo in the study. I think it will not be long before we borrow some Russian and German and I was very pleased to see the Japanese 'teach yourself' course. Dad was kind enough to get me the book for this, but to listen to the cassette as well would be very helpful.

We came away with a varied selection of books, from a history of Jerusalem to a book on treehouses (not that we own a tree big enough to put a treehouse in, but the pictures are incredible).

I can honestly say that I would never have joined the library had I not resigned from my job. Although I would have found time to borrow the odd book or two the whole idea would have left me more frustrated at my lack of reading time than those couple of books would have been worth.

Pepper and orange soup

2008-09-24T16:56:00.001+01:00

I have started a list of all the things I want to do in my time off. This includes finally learning to drive and learning to cook. Not that I can't cook, but I've never really played around with recipes or new foods. This is partly because I don't like handling meat and until this year have never owned a vegetarian cookbook.

Whilst Dad was down in Exeter we went to Otter Nurseries and I bought a book of soup recipes. Yesterday I made pepper soup. At least it was called pepper soup and it had 4 peppers in, but really it tasted of orange, despite the juice of a single orange making up such a small proportion of the liquid. The soup had the right consistency and definitely didn't taste bad, but I just wasn't sure about the orange flavour. Ian (having more of a sweet tooth), thankfully was more impressed so he will finish it off tonight!

A new era, a new blog

2008-09-24T16:46:00.000+01:00

For once in my life I have made a bold decision and have resigned from my job at Exeter University. I'm going to take a few months off to do all the things I've been wanting to do since long before I started my phd and to decide what kind of job I would like to do.

I have decided not to restrict what I'm blogging about here. I suspect it will become a jumble of all the sorts of things that I get up to in my time off.