My New Bedroom



Finally, after living in this house for nearly 18 years, I have a properly decorated bedroom. When we first moved in I gave the woodchip walls a quick lick of paint, put in a cheap carpet and hung the curtains from my old living room. It's been like that ever since.

This half-term, with Caitlin ski-ing and Adrienne in uni, it was an ideal time to use the free rooms to clear out mine and do it properly. This is what it looks like now, with none of my clutter anywhere and none of Carl's clothes on top of the units where they normally live because he can't be bothered to put them away properly. It won't last. I'm planning on moving most of my clutter back in later today.

Red Nose Sponsored Walk

This is Ellie setting off on a sponsored walk last Sunday in aid of Comic Relief. Her and her friends, and some willing adults, walked from Braunton down the Tarka Trail to the Braunton Inn, and then back again - three-legged!!! At one point there were actually five of them joined so I guess that makes it a six-legged walk. Apparently that was difficult so they gave up on that one.

Snow!

Everyone went to bed on Thursday night hoping for snow. When we woke up on Friday morning the whole of  England seemed to be covered in it - apart from us! No nice snow day off school, no white stuff at all. It did snow all around us though, so today we escaped the Barnstaple Bubble and headed for Exmoor. No sooner had we gone 2 miles up the road than we found it. We kept going though and went out to Pinkery on the Devon/Somerset border.

 We took the dog for a little walk and played in the snow too. Caitlin and Annie are having a snow ball fight, while Carl helps Ellie make a snowman.

 This is the finished article. The only thing we could find to make eyes, nose and buttons was sheep poo!

 The dog had fun too. She ran round like a mad thing, digging at lumps of ice, sticking her nose into snow drifts sniffing for mice, and begging us to throw snow balls for her. We stopped when the ice she was crunching was making her gums bleed.

It stopped raining!!

 Today we saw blue skies for the first time in ages! It was so nice that when we got to Instow beach to walk the dog there were almost more people there than in the height of summer.

Ellie was disappointed there were no ice cream vans around. Even the hut at the end of the slipway was missing - not just shut, actually not there any more. She had to walk all the way down just to make sure, she wasn't going to take our word for it. She'll do anything for food.

After our walk we went to wish my mum a Happy Birthday. It's not until tomorrow, though. Shebought her own cake and lit the candles herself but we stopped short of making her sing to herself. Happy Birthday Mum!

P.S. The air in my house this evening has been very unsavory. Please don't feed my dog so many sausages next time!

Christmas

Christmas was a strange affair this year. Christmas morning started at 7 o'clock with the discovery that Father Christmas had visited during the night. Ellie and Caitlin opened their presents at the end of our bed as normal but Adrienne was missing. She'd stayed the night at the boyfriends. She came home in time for Christmas dinner though.

After dinner we opened tree presents, then Beth, Andrew and Francis arrived and more presents were exchanged. We had tea and then everyone gathered round the telly to watch 'Doctor Who', as normal. But Mum and Dad were missing, Dad having broken his sternum two weeks earlier.

We went down to visit Mum and Dad on Boxing Day, had Carl's mum round for tea the day after and then Julie, Ken and Christopher yesterday. I feel I have over-feasted and now need a normal day, but there are just so many tempting left-overs!

Floods

 This was the scene outside my house on Saturday night. Carl got his digger out in the day and made a huge mound of mud at the end of the drive. We parked all the cars on on the hill. But the hill turned into a river and pretty soon the road was impassable. Our cellar flooded and the end of the garden but no major damage.

 We were supposed to go out to my works do but got turned around by the police because all the roads to Combe Martin were flooded. Then the environment agency floodline phoned to say we were in imminent danger of flood and should we have to be evacuated please co-operated with the emergency services. We decided it might be easier to stay at home. Carl, Caitlin and Adrienne decided to go out exploring at just past midnight. Apparently there was a party going on down by Co-op bridge, everyone had gone out to see the river at high tide.

This was the scene on Sunday morning. That red car had been abandoned and stayed there until this morning when its owner finally decided to come and get it back. South West highways have been out pumping the drains. The hills is now a small stream. And the waters are slowly receding.

Czech Republic

 Last weekend I returned from a week spent in the Czech Republic. Working - of course! I met with the teachers on our 2 year European schools project. This is us on the Charles Bridge in Prague, minus the teachers from Northern Ireland who met us a day later once we'd arrived in Karvina.

 We spent a lot of time in school and having meetings, but on the Wednesday we went with some children on a school trip into the mountains. It had only just snowed so there was no ski-ing, but the children did lots of sledging, in between practising their English conversation skills on us.

 We also did a fair bit of drinking! Champagne and beer at the staff Christmas party evening. Nice!

The best bit of the week was ice skating in the snow. Dodging the children dashing at 90 miles an hour from one side of the rink straight across to the other was a challenge. I did fall down once. But it was good fun!