Category: personal

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Personal news update:

Not much to write about at the moment. Work is still the dominant feature in life.

  • Drove 375 miles yesterday to deliver some plants to Cambridgeshire. Driving a Transit Luton in a strong wind is never much fun.
  • Took Hels’s car for its MOT test today. It failed. I’ve been and purchased the parts required to make it pass, and Tim is kindly fitting them. However, he’s already hit a problem, though hopefully it can be remedied quickly.
  • I’m currently printing all the inserts for the wedding invitations (where to stay, how to find it, etc.). We should get them in the post next week.
  • I’m working my way through a huge backlog of work emails that I’ve filed but not yet replied to or dealt with. PFE has reached a stage where an admin assistant would be useful, but the money is not available to pay for it. So it looks increasingly like I’ll be working longer hours to try and get everything done. Still, at least I remain in total control of everything, and I guess that is a positive.
  • And, whilst losing the football last night is a disappointment, I can see absolutely no justification for this idiotic behaviour.
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Mini-hiatus

Sorry for being quiet – mostly due to work pressure, but also because I stepped out of life for a few hours yesterday to spend some time with H.
Normal service will be resumed shortly.
Visitor number 150,000 passed this way at 11.45pm yesterday, having arrived here by searching yahoo.com for "47kg propane". Hmm.

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Normal life?

Sometimes I wonder what life will be like when Hels and I can finally stop stressing about selling flats, buying a home and organising a wedding, not to mention work, family and all the rest. We’ve yet to experience anything that approaches what most people would consider to be "normal life" together. We frequently talk about the prospect of blissful times together, when we don’t have to do anything to a particular deadline, don’t have to worry where we will be living, not have to plan a major event and concern ourselves with the needs and desires of other people – and, most importantly, don’t have to hold those discussions over the telephone because we live 65 miles apart. We can’t wait for those days to come – at the moment, the prospect of those days is all that is keeping me going. Positive mental attitude. Positive mental attitude. Positive mental attitude. If I repeat it enough times, it may sink in and actually work.

[EDIT: actually, that’s not entirely true. What’s keeping me going is a very beautiful, amazing and wonderful woman who I love very much and who I know loves me too. But I didn’t want to say that too loudly in case you all threw up.]

In other news, happy 40th birthday today to Lord Percy. I spent a few hours this afternoon with Lord Percy and Lady Bren, helping to tidy and pack at Percy Towers, as they are moving to the new and more imposing Percy Towers, complete with columns, tomorrow. To say that they are mildly stressed would be an understatement – I hope I provided a little light relief.

And talking of light relief, Elaine over at Little Blue Fox has submitted an excellent new image to the Little Otik photo competition. Go see.

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Litte Otik

I feel that I should explain the whole Little Otik thing, as I may be being a bit obscure for you all here. Some time ago, I went with Lord Percy and Lady Bren to see Little Otik at the cinema. It’s a film about a tree stump that looks like a baby.
B and G were working in their garden the other day and found a dead Pelargonium that looked like a little man, complete with hair. Naturally, they were reminded of the film, and with my birthday approaching, decided to put it in a spiffy little box and give it to me as a present.
It’s fab!

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Busy day

I’ve been busy.
And I’m missing H.

Ho hum.
Anyway, I spent most of the day talking to Australians, visiting a garden, looking at a plant trial and trying to find some important papers that seem to have been eaten by my desk.

And to keep Lord Percy happy, here is a picture of your hero and mine, Little Otik.
he's dead, Jim

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Glorious food

Apologies for the on-going lack of content here. I’m up to my eyes in work, particularly preparing for tomorrow’s plant fair at Pashley (you are coming, aren’t you?), so blogging has taken a back seat for the moment.
Levity was provided last night in the form of dinner and birthday cake in the company of Charlie and Peeeet, with their friends Simon and Mikaela – and my beautiful fiancée, of course. A splendid evening, and something that we do far too infrequently.

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Bugger this…

For reasons that I won’t go in to (mostly my own stupidity), whilst I should be on the first phase of my holiday now (relaxing in the bath at Hels’s home), I’m stuck in Chichester until tomorrow morning.
Thankfully, this hiccup is not disastrous due to some fortuitous flight timing, so, to use a well phrase:

Bugger this, I’m off to Lisbon.

See you Friday (maybe Thursday night if you’re lucky)

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Careless

Remember this?
me
I lost that pair of sunglasses today. I think I left them in one of the houses we went to view. Which is annoying. I’ve had them for five years, and they’ve been to America (three times), Spain (twice), France (three times), Denmark, Portugal, Sweden, Germany and Holland, not to mention all corners of the UK. Still, it’s a good excuse to finally buy a new pair.
We viewed two houses this morning, one of which was nice but not quite right (6.5 out of 10) and another not really right at all (4 out of 10). We wanted to view some others, but the property market in the area that we are exploring seems to have suddenly sprung to life. Hopefully, we’ll get to see a few more in the near future.
After that, we went to Brighton, looked at and sampled some chocolate and then sat on the beach having drink and food in the glorious sun whilst admiring the millpond-like sea.

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Moving experience

Hels has received an offer on her flat which she has accepted. My flat is in today’s newspaper, so hopefully there will be lots of viewings this weekend and I’ll get an offer soon.

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Bluebells

Today, we went for a long walk through West Dean Woods to Cocking Down (no jokes please), seeking vistas of bluebells. We found some, but not the great swathes that we had hoped for, although we were rewarded by plenty of patches of bluebells, drifts of wood anemones, a glade with masses of milkmaids and lots of primroses, cowslips and violas and bugle. We did enjoy fabulous views across the Weald, and also over Selsey Bill, the Solent and the Isle of Wight. We also passed a number of Andy Goldsworthy‘s chalk balls, which are slowly and surely mellowing and dissolving into the landscape. All of this was followed by tea and cake in the visitor centre at West Dean.
This evening, a trip to the cinema to see Under The Tuscan Sun (mostly romantic slush clearly aimed at an American audience that has never travelled to Europe, but harmless enough and quite entertaining) has been followed by fajitas and flopping on the sofa.
If married life is like this, then bring it on.