Tuesday 23 June 2015

Champagne and Chocolate Cake

Hello. Ahem. Hello Everyone. I have something to tell you.

Oi, listen up, there's news.

Quite sizeable news. To me at least.

I had champagne and cake for breakfast on Sunday. 


This champagne.


And this cake.


I was woken up with a cake that proposed to me. 


AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here are the shinies.

Two totally different family rings that we've had restored just for us.

Many nervous phone calls and much excitement have since occurred. A fair bit of fizz to boot.

We're going to get married! Eeeeek. I have just about calmed down enough to start enjoying it.



There will be many questions, I'm sure. We have very few answers to match up to them right now. You're very welcome to ask them anyway. Like seriously, ask. If they're a bit personal, maybe don't ask in the comments, ok?

Like why an I not wearing trousers in this photo. A good question. 
I feel like the job at hand is to deliver that particular piece of news to all those who might like to know it, and then to run away and give it a little while to settle in.

Ladies and Gents, this is my future Wife. 


It's going to take me a while to get used to saying that.

The entirety of the remainder of this post is soppy pictures of us that I'd like to take this opportunity to inflict upon you. Head on over to her blog for all the sappy details.

Once again, EEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!








Next week I'll be in France! Tuesday blog time may or may not happen, dependant upon festival internet access and whether or not I can be bothered.


Tuesday 16 June 2015

Undomesticatable?

Check out the BBQ I was at on Friday.



Turns out I just can't be trusted.

At all.

With anything.

Yesterday I nearly lost my entire work email account, including years of archived stuff that's probably essential to doing my job. I got it back again, but gave myself a bit of a scare.

This week sees me trying, and only partially succeeding, to be a functional domesticated adult. Mostly this is a moan about how being all domestical and keeping a house nice and pretty and clean and not stinky is tricky.

I wore a skirt today, not really through choice, but because all but one pair of work trousers were in the washing machine. Together, at the same time. All but the one pair that went through the wash yesterday and weren't dry yet. Because my forward-planning is crap. This skirt was worn with my one wearable (only one small out-of-sight ladder) pair of tights, because I can't be trusted with tights either. When someone invents bulletproof tights that I can't put a giant ladder in the first time they get worn I'll be at the front of the queue.

You see, I have plans, nice, shiny grown-up plans in which I will have clean laundry and all my shirts and blouses will be ironed and on individual hangers. Plans for an alternate reality in which I keep my dishes in the cupboard and cutlery in the cutlery drawer, and not on the draining rack. Where I wake up awake and not desperate for an immediate supplementary nap, and don't eat bakery macaroni cheese for lunch because I haven't managed to make time to make sandwiches.

I have plans to be the sort of functional, responsible grown up who lives in a house with fresh flowers on the mantelpiece and real fruit in the fruit bowl. Real fruit that alternate reality me will actually eat.

There would totally be a market for a fruit bowl with a false bottom which conceals a biscuit tin, right? Brb, off to the patent office.

Yesterday evening I had the house to myself for a few hours. I put on classic fm and got shed-loads done. I even made myself a little tartan shoebag, just because it'll be nice to have one. My Grannie would be proud if she was still with us. I hoovered and cleaned things and did 2 loads of laundry. Got me thinking. If I didn't schedule something for every waking minute then I could make this place look really nice.

We've got a week and a bit till we escape for our French adventure. Everything I'm up to this week is pointed at that. At work it's about me doing all the stuff I should have done before going, because I actually quite like my colleagues and don't fancy dropping them in it. At home it's about laundry, mostly. I have a plan, you see, that will give me a full week's worth of work outfits all clean and ironed so that I can come home brain-dead and get away with it. Not to mention the exciting business of holiday packing. Which in this case is coupled with the slightly-more stressful business of costume packing. Which cannot happen until the aforementioned costume is, y'know, finished. In this case I think my to-do list is:

  • Put a zip in spare skirt
  • Put a popper or a button on my other skirt
  • Put new elastic in my long underskirt
  • Hand-sew the edges of my new blouse
  • Patch the hole in my long white dress
  • Hot-wash all the white stuff
  • Tidy up the poorly-made edges of my bodice
  • Stain my dark-grey shoes black and sew some elastic in so I can pass them off as suitable parade shoes
  • Collect the new corporate identity t-shirts (which are now ready - phew)
  • About 3 day's worth of ironing

Then there's some other stuff. Like buying gifts for people we'll see there. Euros - got to sort that too.

Then wouldn't it be nice to go away feeling like everything is rosy in the flat and that we can come back to our happy spotless home.

Wouldn't it be nice if I could spend less time passing my self off as having it all together, and spend more time and energy on actually getting it together? What if the TV licence people come round? They keep threatening to, because no-one genuinely doesn't have a TV. They wouldn't find a TV, but in looking for one what else would they wind up looking at? Well, they'd probably find an airer out with clothes on it that have been dry for a while but haven't been put away yet. They'd probably find 2 or three mugs in the living room, alongside some incriminating biscuit wrappers. They'd no doubt find some dishes still to be washed and some other random things out on the kitchen counter. They'd find at least one, probably two gym bags in the hallway alongside thousands of shoes that never quite make it into the shoe rack, but like to hang out next to it, with a handful of items of junk mail that haven't made it to the recycling box.

Friends - help me out. Invite yourself round. Give me like ten minutes notice and then just show up. I am vain and proud and will clean for you.

Baby steps, starting with little things. Today I bought L these on my way home, so that I would have a reason to sort out the clutter on the mantelpiece.


That wooden block to the left of the jug is sample of the kitchen countertops that are going to go in our shiny new kitchen in about a month's time. Watch this space. It's a fairly safe bet that I will tell you all about it. 

I have also discovered this wonderful, if slightly profane website

On a totally unrelated note, if you have 5 minutes this video of Aberdeen is pretty cool, and makes me all fuzzy and happy that I live here.

Tuesday 9 June 2015

An Uncluttered Stream of Consciousness

Today a friend of mine asked the Facebook hivemind for recommendations for starting a blog. Amongst the comments was the sage advice that an "uncensored stream of consciousness" was what they thought was the most helpful all round. I love the idea. Somewhere along the line between me first reading that and getting home the word "uncensored" became "uncluttered". I frankly don't know if I can manage either.

I love that advice. It gives me hope that I can just witter at you all for a few paragraphs and call it a legit blog post and get on with this evening.

So here are the things that are going on in my life. 


In 2 weeks and 2 days time we'll be on our merry way to France, where it seems we may be performing here.


This is taking up both a significant portion of my time, and of my idle thoughts. All the things that need to have been done for the trip before we go. All the things that need to be done at work before I get my 7 days off. Lots of daydreaming about how it'll be 20-odd degrees and I'll be able to wear shorts without freezing my toes off. And even more practising.

The most recent practise being this past Sunday. At which, during our first set, I somehow managed to trip up my Mum, who hurt a foot and wound up sitting out the rest of the day. Well, turns out it's a broken toe! I am in the family bad books. Two weeks before she was to go and perform at a dance festival, I broke her toe! "Woops" doesn't quite cover it.

So then I get to thinking about costumes, and how I actually really quite like our set of costumes. Costumes can be a divisive thing. Someone likes an idea and someone else doesn't. Someone's got stuff already and someone else is starting from scratch. What counts and what doesn't? What will the Costume Police allow and disallow? I remember going to a festival in North Carolina in 2006 (which was absolutely awesome, it should be said), but before we went out there, I wound up crying at my Mum because not a single item of costume I had actually fitted. I had landed a skirt that I could only just fasten and made me feel sick, to be paired with a bodice that was noticeably far too big. I had a t-shirt that I couldn't wear on its own without showing a few inches of middle, and a dress that was held together with safety pins. I was an ungrateful and incredibly lucky sod, because we'd been able to round up all the necessary bits of kit for me to have a costume, and I was off to America to dance in it. But at the time, I was down on my luck because here was huge chance to go and dance in a cool place, and I was going to look crap doing it. I was also 16 and somewhat self-conscious, which was probably the real cause of the waterworks. Either way, Mum told me to shut up and get over it, and I got hold of a needle and thread and did my best with what little 3-D spacial awareness I had.

Excuse the poor quality. This is a photograph of another poor quality photograph. Of 17-year-old me in a dress that's held on with some very frankenstein safety pinning, but only I needed to know that. But there we are, in America, doing our thing. Covering very nicely as well even if I do say so.
Did all right really.

And then I left home, and started to dance with other people. And this beauty came in to my life.

Can't say I entirely know how to use it, but I'm figuring it out. 

There's nothing like having to make a thing yourself, with no prior experience and not so much as a pattern to follow, to make you let go of any perfectionism you may once have had. You'll settle for any old crap if you've made it yourself. I have a tartan skirt that I made 4 or 5 years ago, that still requires 2 safety-pins every time it's worn. One because I'd never put a zip in before and sort-of missed a bit, and the other because I was too cheap and lazy to put in a popper or a button on the waistband. I hope to remedy these two things before it's next outing. Heck, I hope to make a whole damn spare skirt before we head off. Ain't I getting full of my self.

Costumes, they're scary and stressful, and I get it.

But the trick is to hold on really really tightly to the thought that no-one else needs to know that this skirt isn't actually hemmed, and that that bodice isn't lined, and is barely interfaced and it's all held together with pins and tit tape. Repeat after me - "it's just a costume". 

And then I have to do the actual dancing. This last practise was our first real attempt at stringing things together in to a full coherent set. We're getting there. We even did some of it in costume. This is the point where I start to feel tested in terms of how in shape I am or am not, and where I start to get an idea of how tough doing all of that properly, in a costume, in likely high temperatures will be. The Broadswords, by way of example, takes 3 minutes. Of hopping on one foot with your arms in the air. It's great fun, but dear Lord it wipes me out. Wish me luck.

So today my stream of consciousness is quite cluttered. Rather like my flat, which is one of the things cluttering up my thoughts. My desk too. Probably my inbox as well. Instead of a single coherent and unbroken stream of logical and entertaining musings, we have the mental equivalent of a broken sprinkler.

Today has been a day in which the office I work in has been rather more populated than normal, and tomorrow will be busier, if anything. I saw a meme on Monday that said "the first five days after the weekend are always the hardest". Boy, do I agree. There's a lot to be said for the 9-5, and I wouldn't want to go back to the 3 job juggle of a few years ago, but that week where I didn't have to go to work, that was pretty nice. It's got to be said. I'm working on being one of those people who wakes up and looks forward to going to work. It's a work in progress.

Also in this week's news. I am now a person who owns chinos. I'm not sure whether to be sorry or not. Is this another one of those "grown-up" things? I don't know if this is me discovering new things or being unfaithful to my baggy jeans allegiance. All things must change, it seems. Next I'll wind up wearing those slippers that look like Finnish pasties and driving a car that unlocks when you press a button.

Seriously, you can't tell me there's not a resemblance here?



Ahem. Apologies for the incoherence. Next week I may even have an idea, a topic, something interesting to tell you about. It could happen. 


For now, I'm off out to the gym to see if I can't take a fractionally less leaky balloon to France.

Tuesday 2 June 2015

Lunchbreaks and Updates

This is my lunchtime. 


Me, my lunch (made for me this morning by the lovely L because I'm not so good at the whole getting-out-of-bed-on-time thing. It's got a double layer of cheese in and everything. Thankyou!), my squishy trainers and my computer. The experiment at hand here is how much of a passable blog post can I write in an hour?

Tuesday didn't happen last week, sorry. Also not sorry, but in a nice way, I hope. So many things. Here is a speedy re-cap of the last fortnight.

Pirates happened. 



This happened.

And it had nothing to do with me. And if you're reading the risk assessment, then it didn't happen at all.

I wore a skirt.



Pooh Sticks happened.



Everyone was sleepy. 

Well, I was for sure.

Then L and I got in a car and drove a thousand miles in six days. 

Which is a long way when half of the M1 is a 50mph limit.

In the last week-ish we have both set eyes on all of our parents, siblings and associated children. I count this as an achievement. I'm a little bit confused as to why Santa hasn't come actually.

And while all of that happened, this funky round tent was chillin' in someone else's gorgeous garden. 


The best spare bedroom ever. 

This is a deeply symbolic photo (honest Guv, hear me out). What it represents is essentially a free tent.

Our little Rowan Tree Tents enterprise is finding itself a tiny bit of momentum. And it's not without the help we've had from you lot in sharing, liking, spreading the word and putting up with me banging on about it. So we really owe you an update.

Since we went live with this in March/April we have had:

  • 2 bookings
  • 1 more confirmed booking in the diary
  • 2 potential bookings in the diary
  • 1 query that didn't work out

Those three paying customers will amount to what we invested in buying that additional tent!


Our next hurdles are probably numerous and complicated, but we'll give it all a damn good shot. Currently I'm minded to put a bit of effort in to our little baby website. It's not really the finished product I would like it to be. So, I'm on the scrounge for helpers. That would be you lot. Got a spare minute and fancy being nosy?

Go check out our website, please!


And when you do, be critical. I am looking for suggestions on how to make it flow better, be simpler, maybe use less words, and be easier to understand. I am looking for suggestions on how to get a good range of key words in to the first bit of text of each page, and help out Mr Google and his search engine. I am looking for typo's and funny turns of phrase that probably shouldn't be there. I want to make it funnier and friendlier. 

I want it to be easy to find, and then for people to say, "yes, let's go hire one of these crazy things". 

Not much then, right?

Here is our highly technical, professional-looking email address:
Or y'know, most of you came here via facebook, so you probably know me. Tell me things, people. 


I have 16 minutes of lunch left so I'm off to see if I can use these to get me a free coffee, because I'm down to coppers and euros. 



Mmmm, coffee. See ya!

So, erm, *cough*, Thank You to all the people who pictures feature in this post.