Corking

Well I find myself at home in the warm after football training was called off. I’d been hoping the forecast snow would hold off until after 10.30 when practise would be over and I could warm up on the under ground with a sneaky cream egg. At it is the snow came early enough for the training to be cancelled before I’d even left the house, second best option for the night really.

Football seems to be going well so far and I’ve lost much of my apprehension in the previous blog. Either I’m fitter than I thought (not likely) or the coaching staff are going easy on the team in the cold weather. Still I’m keeping up at training, next step is to not wheeze like an asthmatic elephant while doing so.

January disappeared suddenly but not before the brother had taken James and I out with his lovely Swedish dentist as an anniversary treat. We went to see Avenue Q, and I can highly recommend it. A dirty and hilarious Sesame street and well worth a laugh. With such little dittys as ‘Internet is for porn’ and ‘If you were Gay‘ (video not great) you’ll be sure to offend someone when you hum them on the tube.

February has proved to be an action packed month so far. My last day of study before my diploma exam on Spirits was a long day. 7 Vodka’s at 9am anyone? Followed by Tequila, Gin and Pernod before lunch. I just have to try and remember it all for my exam in March. I must cut an interesting figure on the Tube in my Spurs kit reading up on the distillation of rum.

The biggest change of the month has been upheaval at work, the biting credit crunch has meant needing to say goodbye to a colleague and friend. Very sad and something I don’t wish to do again. I also said farewell to working from home and have resumed my trudge back and forth from the train station, thanking Dona with every step for the fur coat. (Still holding on with the odd mending now and then, but an absolute lifesaver in the snow). First week back and with only one day left I’m looking forward to the weekend eagerly.

This really is for Susie; who has been complaining, with fair cause, about the destitute state of my blog. Plus I don’t imagine anyone else would bother to read it. I was going to to an epic tale detailing life here with foot notes and diagrams…. but that would never get posted.

So here (in handy instalments) is what’s been going on in our wee corner of London town…

It’s been damned cold that’s for sure. Saturday the high was minus 1, we couldn’t even reach zero at mid-day it was that cold. Ordinarily this wouldn’t worry me as the obvious thing to do at those temperatures is to stay on the couch with a good book and a cup of tea. As I’m a third of the way through ‘War and Peace’ you can guess what James and I were up to.

But in the last month or so I’ve taken a step which may or may not be a super move, the jury is still out. I’ve signed up as goal keeper with Tottenham Hot Spurs ladies football team (yes that’s right the ladies version of the team in the FA Cup.) Well, technically I’m in their reserves but lets not split hairs.

Only problem is, I’ve yet to actually play for them. The weather has been so cold over here, with -5 frosts in the centre of London and what not, that our last three games have been called off. The reason given was ‘Frozen Grounds’, not a problem I ever imagined possible. But hard frosts on the grass which never thaw, even under direct sunlight, are a bit dangerous to play on.

So hence the indecision, I still haven’t played for the new team so don’t know how its going to go. My broken hand seems to have mended well, I’ve not had any trouble at practises – not that there have been many of them either.

No, the bit making me hesitate is Tuesday night practises. Thursday night practise, when I get to meander off and do some real keeper training, is great and is the only one I’ve managed so far thanks to work. But Tuesday is fitness night, and apparently its very tough.

Very.

As in ‘don’t eat for four hours before hand or else’ tough.

Tomorrow night will be the first night so fingers crossed.

Ok this blog has been sadly neglected for many months, but I’ll feeling more like correcting that than I have in a while so here goes….

For the last few months life has seemed either too busy or too slow to write about. Too much to do rather than write and then nothing to write about. But of course that isn’t true.

Since August I’ve been to Ireland, France, Germany and even back to NZ, I’ve joined a footy team again (yay) and broken my hand (boo), sat three exams, been to a wedding, taken many baths and spent entire weekends doing nothing but Warcraft. Sounds like a lot when you put it like that.

The latest adventure on the list was the trip to NZ for Jen’s wedding. My sister is at last happily married and it was a lovely day (pics here). A super 2 weeks in NZ and off work seems to have kick started my brain from its winter slumber and I’m waking up again.

So no promises to keep this very updated but it is a start. Even if its a fair bet that most of my blogs will involve footy, WOW and my very new and very small garden. (Huzzah for tomatos which actually have some taste!)

Just came across a story of a flight in NZ delayed so the Pilots could get their takeaways. Only in NZ would the plane load of passangers sit on a plane while the pilot went inside to pick up his fish and chips. Only in NZ would they know not to get between a man and his Watties sauce.

More here.

James has rediscovered the joys of World of Warcraft and after only a few weeks hard grafting with his new Mage character is now a level 45. This has taken quite a few evenings and one might think I’ve been using my time wisely writing and blogging. But Sean Bean has been on the box. UKTV History have been doing re-runs of the 1990′s series of ‘Sharpe‘ and frankly what else is a girl to do?

Still its coming to an end just in time for the second series of ‘Rome‘, the joint effort between HBO and the BBC. It is quite fantastic, American money thrown behind a british script and actors make for ripping viewing. Well worth watching. The first series leads up the the assassination of Julius Caeser and this next covers the power struggle following.

It is just as well the viewing has been good as the weather certainly hasn’t been. One month into summer and we are struggling to get over 20 degrees. The UK has had the wettest June on record with thousands forced from their homes up north. London has missed most of it but at the moment the Wimbledon Tennis Open is on so the weather has truly packed up. On Tuesday this week a freak thunderstorm flooded main roads and the hail was banked up ankle deep. I’ve been rained on every day this week – Ah a British summer. (James’ photo of the hail from our flat).

Still finish on a laugh as they say and I’ve just come across this in the Harpers Wine and Spirit magazine. A new series of Manga comics devoted to the subject of fine wine is proving popular in Japan. Kami no Shizuku (‘The Drops of God’) had this tasting note:

“The aroma is like a rock concert, with notes of butterflies dancing over a pond and an aftertaste of Jesus Christ and his disciples.”

Damn I’d love to try that wine.

Its been something I’ve been meaning to do for donkeys years, every one has ‘learn a language’ on their ‘to do at some point’ list. My language to learn is French. I’ve had a notion it would be a handy language to get a grip on ever since I started working in wineries.

I did make several sputtering starts at it, but now things are getting more serious. Working on the right side of the world has made a big difference as has working in a trade where it’s absence is sorely missed. Our Burgundy contacts speak, unsurprisingly, French and while some have excellent English some have the same grasp on English as I currently do on French.

Having successfully negotiated a weekend in Paris last year when I managed to buy food, tourist tickets etc. I thought I’d made a great start. But thats all it was, a start. The trip to our afore-mentioned Burgundy suppliers at the end of the year proved that getting food was about all I could do. Conversation while eating the food was a different matter all together.

So after a winter of listening to French tapes, I can speak and understand at a basic level. But reading – now that is something else. The ‘Teach yourself Beginner’s French’ grammar book from the local library is going some way to help. Unfortunately, my grasp on grammar itself is rather shaky. The partitive article, the conditional perfect – these are terms I know I learnt once upon a time and promptly forgot them after the end of year exam.

Learning them again in a different language is challenging, especially with the French having gender nouns – the wine is male while the jam is female. But its actually quite fun. And hopefully come the trip again I’ll be able to do more than smile and nod……

Well thanks to the free trial on offer after their ‘Burning Crusades’ release, I’ve wasted most of my weekend playing World of Warcraft (WOW) again. Impressively my character was still on their system. They say they keep them for at least six months, but as it has been a year since my subscription lapsed I was expecting to have to start all over again.

So I’ve spent a very geeky weekend getting my gnome up to a level 37. My aim is to get up to a point where James and I can play together (he’s lvl 43). Its addictive and takes up a huge amount of time – but hey its fun. As London is finishing off on the warmest April in over 300 years and heading towards what is likely to be the warmest summer on record, I may just have to stay cool by drinking Pimms and playing Warcraft.

Ah what a geeks life. I’d stay to chat but monster killing time is ‘a wasting….

I’d very carefully put my photos up on Flickr set to a privacy level viewable only by ‘friends and family’ as listed on Flickr when I realised most of my friends and family weren’t listed. So while it may look as though I haven’t put any up since the middle of last year I did…. you just couldn’t see them.

But you can now so go have a nose at some snow, some markets and dinosaurs.

http://flickr.com/photos/pollyoconnor/

So if you’ve been looking at this blog lately, you’ll see that I haven’t updated it in …well, months actually. I just got an email from Susie asking (essentially) if I was dead – its been that long since I got in touch with her.

So in all that time I must have done fantastic amazing things that keep me away from the computer right?

Uh…. not really.

Sorry.

It is now December and officially winter over here. While its cold, its actually been very mild compared to last year – well so far anyway. Its still about 10-15 during the day and hasn’t really dropped below 5 at night. This time last year it was barely above 5 during the day and about -5 at night.

The mild weather seems to be ending though, there have been gale force winds and quite a bit of rain in the last week. Yesterday a storm front blew over London going from sunny and bright to huge winds and nearly horizontal hail back to bright and sunny all in about 20 mins. There was apparently a tornado (a wee one, just a baby one) in one of the northern suburbs. A few houses damaged… some hairstyles mussed up… But of course when I was going through the tube station first thing this morning the headline on the local rag was screaming ‘Tornado Sweeps Through London!’. Sigh.

Still though its on the way out, this mild weather has been having an effect. Almost everyone in London is getting sick one way or another as its not getting cold enough for the bugs to die. Or so my doctor said when I was in to see her last week. She said it was either viral or bacterial. I thought it was a little vague and then James pointed out that meant the only thing she ruled out was genetic. Uh huh… I was ordered off, given pills and I succumbed to an evil northern hemisphere bug at last and spent several icky days in bed.

But I’m up and about now, just in time to take the day off to spend a long weekend in Glasgow with the family. Its my Aunt Sue’s birthday today so will be there about midd-day and spend the weekend with her, my gran and my wee cousins before xmas.

I’m on the train at the moment and we have typically just slowed down to a snails pace and edged past about 20 rail workers sitting on their trucks by the tracks smoking and yarning. Rail workers doing absolutely bugger all, now there’s a surprise. They were probably discussing their next strike action over the chocolate on their biscuits being too thin. Oh what a cynical english bird I have become….