Too Young To Be Grumpy

I've added my wife to my blog, so she can post about stuff too :o) Maybe it'll be more interesting than the rubbish I write :oP

Last night I went all cheffy again (even though I wasn't really feeling like it) having decided last week I was going to buy some tuna steaks and do something cheffy.

We had a bunch of tomatoes going off in the fridge from when Daisy's Mum was down to visit (about 3 weeks ago now) and so I decided to use these to make a tomato-based sauce to cover the tuna.


The sauce consisted of:

• 6 small tomatoes chopped and softened in the microwave (going off is not a necessity)


• 2 green chillis deseeded and finely chopped (fresh from our chilli plant) - use only 1 if you're not good with hotter food


• 1/2 an onion finely chopped


• 1/2 a red pepper finely chopped


• 1 large clove of garlic crushed


• 1/2 tablespoon of Chives (I used dried)


• 1 tablespoon of Thyme (again dried)


• 1 tablespoon of Basil (again dried)

Bung all the ingredients for the sauce into a masher of some sort and blend until its not too smooth.




I fried the tuna (for slightly too long in fact - but then I'm not really a chef, so I live and learn!) and then cooked the tuna in the sauce in the pan for 10-15 minutes.



I then served it up with some boiled baby new potatoes, and some garden peas (tinned unfortunately, but there you go!)

I don't know where the time is going recently. Days are flying by in flits of er things... Blogs are getting unattended to!

On Monday we went up my parent's place to grab some of the plums they have on a tree in their garden. Daisy's going to make a plum pie apparantly, although its still yet to arrive :o) The tree is quite tall:



...so I ended up using a rake to "grab" the plums with the prongs and pull them off. Worked quite effectively. I think we stripped the tree of all the decent plums that the wasps hadn't already got.



Then when we left my folks we trundled up a country lane near by, parked up and began our bounty hunt. It's wonderful to think all this free food is out there. We will get some blackberries, but this time we were hunting hazelnuts. In fact, in the 30 minutes we were there, we managed to get a goodly amount:



They still need stripping of their outer shells and cups, so they'll be a bit smaller but it's probably saved us a few quid buying shop packaged ones. They might even taste nicer, and will be perfect for all those yummy cakes!

Ok, Yesterday I took a brave plunge to do some recipe mixing and I wanted to make a wheat-free version of the Chocolate and Hazelnut Cake. I'd already made a couple of wheat-free Chocolate Orange Cakes, so I figured why can't I just do a bit of simple ingredient substitution and all will be well. So instead of using wholewheat flour, as the recipe stated, I used the "flour-substitute" from the chocolate orange cake, which was ground almonds and cocoa. Both of the original cakes were from Esurientes Blog.

I tried it and it worked! I made a cake! A super yummy chocolatey cake! It was a bit brittle and when I tried to move it from the cake tin base to the cake box it cracked in half, but it still worked.



Ingredients

250g Margarine
125g Light Brown Soft Sugar
125g Caster Sugar
4 Eggs
120ml of strong black coffee
200g ground almonds
50g Cocoa, seived
2 heaped teaspoons of baking powder
200g Hazelnuts coasely ground
250g plain chocolate

Method

1. Line springform cake tin with greaseproof


2. Preheat oven to 180^oC


3. Beat margarine, brown and caster sugar together


4. Add eggs one at a time beating after each is added


5. Add in the coffee (the mixture always curdles for me here, but that's ok)


6. Fold in the almonds, baking powder and three quarters of the chopped hazelnuts and chocolate (i.e. keep some back for the top)


7. Mix it all up until it looks like a cake mixture


8. Spoon into cake tin


9. Add remaining quarter of chopped hazelnuts and chocolate to the top


10. Cook for about 1 hour 30 minutes or until the top is springy and a skewer comes out cleanish


11. Leave to cool, but even then it is brittle and need to take care removing the paper.

It really is a yummy recipe, and we went around my folks to pick more plums off the tree today, and it was nearly all gone! It's much moister than the original hazelnut cake, and more chocolateier (because of the cocoa). Yum!

Sorry about the dull title, but I couldn't think of anything more encompassing.

It's was an absolutely beautiful day down here in Dorset yesterday (looks like it again today!). The sun was shining, and the sky a deep blue without a cloud in sight. I got up pretty late, but my wife and I eventually set off on a 6 mile cycle ride down to a country house near Poole, called Upton Country House, owned by the local council.

Like alot of the big country houses around here on a bank holiday, they were holding a craft fair. As we'd been to the one held at Kingston Lacy House last year, we decided to look at the Upton one. However, I think everyone else, including the exhibitors, were at the Kingston Lacy one. It took us barely 3 minutes to go around the exhibits, which weren't really all that interesting, to be honest. At least it only cost 50p each to get in.



We wandered around the grounds for a bit, which really are lovely, then we had some lunch at the Peacock Tea Rooms. It was a bit expensive, but it had a unique selling point wandering around.



After having an ice cream, we headed back home and arrived about 3'oclock. I could've sat down in front of the 'puter and did some work on my various websites, but decided I wanted to do something more productive, so I headed into the kitchen and put some more beetroot on to cook.

While they were cooking, I boiled some eggs and made some pickled eggs:



I then went all cheffy and made a wheat-free cake, but a wheat-free cake I didn't have a recipe for. In fact, I combined two recipes. I decided that after yet another day fixing my car, my Dad required another treat. The beetroot that were cooking were going to be his (as we've already got some), but I thought a cake would also go down well.

So, I took the recipes from Esurientes Chocolate and Hazelnute Cake and flourless chocolate cake and made a new cake. I'll post the recipe in another post, to avoid making this post go on forever.

My wife made us a nice broccoli and cheese gratin for tea from the Weightwatchers book 'Time to Eat' (except we used nice cheese!).



We then rushed up Mum and Dads to give them their goodies and have a bit of the cake for afters!!!

We were all ready to go to bed when I was doing a bit of commenting on photo blogs and ended up helping to fix some bits and bobs on Tobias Reynolds photoblog. I'd never used PixelPost before, but it seems quite good (although the layout of the code needs alot to be desired!).

So I got to bed about 1:15am.. a late one for me. Don't think I've been up that late in about 8 years!

34 % Nerd, 34% Geek, 47% Dork

For The Record:

• A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.


• A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.


• A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

You scored less than half in all three, earning you the title of: Joe Normal.

Take the test - What are you?

This is the first time I've experienced the summer glut (although I always seem to experience a summer gut).

We've now got a whole load of beetroot outside ready to some in, as well as 4 broccoli flowers that will make around 8 meals. Our runner beans are beginning to make enough for a few meals and we've got over 30 chillis on our chilli plant.

So, last night I harvested a few of our beetroot. I wasn't sure really what to expect, but it turned out ok.

First I needed to steralise a jar, so I got an ex-Branston Pickle jar and washed it out thoroughly in warm soapy water and bunged it in the oven set to 120^oC for 5 minutes. In the meantime I went out and I picked some big looking beetroot:



Then I took them in, chopped off the stalks and the roots (leaving a small amount so they don't bleed out) and gave them a wipe.



I then wrapped them in foil and baked them in the oven at 190^oC for 3 hours. Yes, 3 hours. My cooking timer only does 99 minutes, so I had to do 90 minutes, and restart it when it beeped!



When they came out, and had cooled down a little, the skin was easy to pull off. So that's what I did:



When they were all red and naked, I chopped them up and put them into the jar I'd steralised. Some I sliced and others I diced. It gave me very pink fingertips!



I then poured in some Sarson's pickling vinegar (don't sniff this as it'll blow your head off!) and made sure the jar was full but all the beets were covered. The vinegar instantly turned red. I then put the cap on and bung it in the fridge.



I guess I should've labelled them with a date and stuff, but we're already eating them so I don't think there'll be a problem. Particularly as it's the only jar we have at the moment.

We had some for lunch and they were really pretty nice. Not too dissimilar to the shop-bought stuff I've had before, mind.

I've officially launched my secondary business that is part of my plan for removing myself from the clutches of a really dull office job. It's basically website design, with a selling point that the websites I design will be accessible (that is they'll be easier to use by blind or visually impaired people and people with learning difficulties). So if you want, or know someone who wants a website, I'm your man. The launch involved getting the website online, and that was it. So feel free to visit Helpful Design today!

Ok, plug over.

Just to let you know I've currently got some beets in the oven cooking themselves as I'm making a beetroot pickle this afternoon. Look out for the post soon.

My Dad phoned me up to tell me my car is fixed, which is "great" as it means I can go back to work.

Everything was going swimmingly until I decided to come home this afternoon. In fact, it went rather swimmingly after that too:

The Meeting

I always dread my Monday morning meetings. My boss is rather a high flier in the world of academia and likes to ensure all his minions are doing as they should. These meetings tend to be a bit "we're doing this" - "we need someone to go to that" - "What have you been upto X?"... fortunately Mr.Boss was away today (on holiday sailing around the English Channel I suspect), so we had a stand in. She's an even higher flier in the world of academia, although fortunately we aren't her minions so she was a little less bothered. However, unfortunately we still had the "What have you been upto X?" bit, which is generally the bit I hate. "I've been busy trying to setup businesses so I can get out of here" I hear my brain holding back.

The Car

Anyway, the rest of the day went ok. I actually did a fair amount of work even! On my way out of work I was given a lift around to the car park by a collegue in his wife's extremely posh MGF. That was nice. I set off home. My route home is approximately 66% motorway, followed by 33% roundabouts interspersed with short stretches of dual carriageway. As I approached the 66% mark, and the first roundabout, my oil light popped on (well, the car's oil light).

"That's strange" I thought to myself. "I only checked that the other day before the trip to Wales"

On accelerating out of the roundabout the car didn't feel quite right. It didn't want to go. I looked in my mirror and was horrified at the enormous plume of black smoke I was covering the car behind in.

"Oh dear. This doesn't look good."

The car was getting less happy. The next roundabout came, and as I changed down a gear the rev-ometer dropped and the car stuttered. EEKS! I began my toe-heel extravaganza that I learnt when I was a much less sensible driver that still had ambitions of becoming a rally driver. It worked for about 10 yards, but the car wasn't having it. Fortunately immediately after this roundabout there was a pull-in, and that's where my car expired.

Because of Saturday's videoing stuff I'd left my mobile in my bike bag -- back at home. So I headed to a nearby pub and the owners were kind enough to let me use their phone. I phoned Dad who duly dropped everything he was doing to come a get me. When I got back to my stranded car, I noticed a big puddle of oil under the front. I looked inside. The whole engine bay was spattered in oil. Eek.

Dad arrived and towed me to his place. He said an oil pipe had snapped off and I'd have to get a new one ordered. Tsk.

The Garden

For tea, Daisy was making a lovely thai green curry with the remains of last night's chicken while I went out and watered the veg and stuff. I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before, but tonight I found out where all the caterpillars that are eating my veg hide - in the broccoli flowers! There were piles of them in there. I had a massive squashing spree. I then got the hose all ready and as I started it up, it began spurting from the reel. Bugger. It was from the centre of the reel too. Double bugger. So I unwound the whole reel and found the pipe had come loose in the centre. I re-did the pipe and before I could get on with the actual watering tea was ready.

So after a superb dinner, I went back out. I watered our veg. As I was watering our Sunflowers I heard a noise. It started as a "psss". A second later it was a "pshhh", and before I had worked out what it was it became a "POOOOSHHHH". The hose split and pushed its way out of where the gun attaches. Water went everywhere. Sprayed in our sunlounge. Sprayed into the air. Covered me from head to toe. Grrrrrreat.

I turned off the water, snipped the end of the split hose, screwed it back in and continued watering.

I'm back inside now. Stripped off out of my wet clothes and feeling much better.

What an evening, though.

Best thing is that I don't have to go to work this week - legitimate reason too: no transport! 30 miles is a bit far to cycle.

Today was an absolutely beautiful day. The sun was shining bright and the sky was crystal clear and a deep blue in the morning. We went up my folks to take them the pictures from yesterday, and then headed into town to do some essential shopping. Unfortunately we forgot some change, so didn't have any money for the car park (charging on a Sunday - the rotters!), so we had to park a little way away and walk in. I didn't mind too much, though, because it was such a lovely day.

When we got home we did a few chores and had lunch. Then I made a cake.

Chocolate, Hazelnut and Coffee Cake

I got the recipe from Esurientes blog, who is always posting absolutely gorgeous sounding recipes. If I had more time, I'd probably try all of Niki's dessert recipes. Anyway, you can find the recipe and method for making the cake here.

I only had chopped hazelnuts and considered whether to grind them up a bit, but in the end I didn't. Also I accidentally put all 250g of chocolate into the cake, and didn't leave any for the top, so I ended up putting about 320g of chocolate into ours. Oops!

Here's a couple of pics of the finished article, which is absolutely fandabeedozee.


Here's the full cake. It didn't stay full for long.

Sliced and just dying to jump in my mouth.

Roast Dinner

Earlier in the day, we'd decided that tonight we'd have a roast dinner and harvest the broccoli flowers from our veg patch. I really wasn't sure about what they were going to taste like. I mean, I've tasted broccoli before, but this is the first time I'd tasted something from my own veg patch. I don't like runner-beans, but Daisy was up for having a couple of huge ones that were dangling off our plant. I said I'd try them :)

We'd bought a lovely corn-fed chicken from Somerfield, and cooked it up. As it was getting dark, about 30 minutes before the chook was ready, I headed out to do my harvest bit.


There's the broccoli, prior to decapitation.

There's a big one you have Mr.Bean.

Mr.Broccoli has the chop.

Chopped into florets - a surprising amount from a single flower. Easily enough for two meals.

These are the little critters left hiding in the flower. I washed them all out, and here they are at the bottom of a bowl of water.

The bean all sliced and diced. Looks perfect -- if you like that sorta thing.


A yummy chicken roast.

I wasn't sure about the broccoli until I tasted it. It was absolutely yummy. Almost sweet. I don't think I would have believed you if you'd told me as a kid I'd be saying "yummy" about broccoli, but there you are. I guess I'd never had the fresh stuff before. I'm chuffed how far the single flower went too, because it means I've got quite a few more meals outside in the veg patch. I still didn't like the taste of runner beans, though - fresh or not. But even so, the fresh veg made the tinned peas and the frozen roasters taste really quite weird. Next time, I think we'll have to have real 'taters for the roasters.

Have to say that the corn-fed chicken was delicious too. It was rather pricey, and didn't have alot of meat on it, but it was a very tastey chicken, and it's nice to know it was probably a happy one.

Nothing like finishing off a roast with a nice piece of that cake again!

Well, I had a pretty good day today cycling around after the horse and carriage. The weather was lovely and there were lots of people out on Poole Quay and in Poole Park to wave our bride and groom on their way. I took 1 hour of video, which now needs to be edited down a little into a nice presentation which I can stick on a DVD and give to my sister to give to the groom. The groom is the blacksmith who does my sister's horses shoes. I didn't find the cycling as hard as I expected, actually. Either the horses are going slower than they used to, or I'm fitter ... hmm.. must be the horses going slower! Perhaps it was just because it was a nice flat course, down by the sea.




We had an Indian Takeaway round my folks, and then after we'd headed home, I put the pictures that Daisy took up the computer (see two examples above). Unfortunately, the CF card we're using in her camera seems well dodgy and has buggered up two of the photos. When I was copying these across, Windows XP died on me. When I restarted Digiguide lost all its settings, Thunderbird lost all my email and all the settings I had (and I had a load of email boxes). Fortunately after some scrambling I found all my email again - it was all still there, Thunderbird just forgot about it. Still required a load of fiddling though. Damn computers.

Some point soon, I've got to rekindle the fire under my old beast of a computer that sounds not unlike a jet engine. It has all the video editing capabilities, so it shall be used to make this wonderful presentation - ha! I shall endeavour to post a small video clip when I've finished, although I can't promise, as it might be prohibitively large.

Ahhh, oh for a lie in tomorrow morning!

In 30 minutes I'm off into Poole to do some wedding videography. I'm not one of the wedding guests, and I'm not the official videographer, yet I'm still going to be videoing it.

Why? My sister runs a horse and carriage business for weddings, and when she was first starting up I did some videos of some of the weddings she did that she could use for her advertising. The videos were effectively a wedding from her point of view - all the getting ready, the before, during and after with the tidying up. This is what I'm doing again today. The reason I'm doing it is that the person getting married knows my sister and my sister wants to be able to give him this video as a present. I don't know if he'll have his own videographer, and if so I usually do my best to keep out of their way -- after all, they're there to do a job, and I'm only really there for "something nice". However, I will always get shots that the professional videographer won't, because I cycle along side the carriage on my bicycle doing some videoing. Even if the professional videographer does something similar with their car, they'll have the engine noise. I usually rush ahead, stop, video them going by, then rush ahead again; each time I rush ahead I video them as I overtake. It works quite well, although holding my breath so I hold the camera still and you can't here me puffing has to be the hardest bit.

Daisy decided to conduct an experiment on herself this week, and on Tuesday evening boldly declared that she would not be using computers or watching television in the evening for one week, as they seemed to be sucking up her free time. And indeed they do.

However, come Wednesday evening, we both ended up watching this history of Question of Sport, or something. Then Daisy helped me out with some proofreading on a website I'm designing (actually, she ended up saying "let's start again"!) and she ended up spending more time at my computer than I did.

Oh well, it was a nice idea.

Time for an update on the garden.

All this nice weather in the past couple of weeks, with regular watering by my own fair hand, of course, has caused our vegetables to come alive. Fruits are now growing on every single one (well, only just in the case of the sprouts).

So, I'll take you on a little trip of my very own small holding:

Sunflowers

The sunflowers have now all flowered, and some have grown new heads like some strange alien thingy and flowered all over again. The tallest of them has only just come out into flower - a lovely dark red colour. It's 6'5" (198cm) tall from the top of the pot, which is not bad at all. It's certainly way taller than me.

Brussell Sprouts

The sprouts have had a hard time of it this last month, with attack upon attack from caterpillars of the cabbage white butterfly. The leaves are very holey, but a careful look at the stems and it's possible to see the buds beginning to sprout (no pun intended) where the sprouts will grow.

Broccoli

Like the spouts, the broccoli have also had it hard - in fact, probably even harder - but they're now all coming out into "flower". It's actually the flower you eat on the broccoli, and one of them has a nice big head, so I'm sure we'll be having some tasty organic broccoli this week for tea!

Beans

The beans were planted last minute, and probably haven't really had enough time to grow. However, there's a couple of small runners beginning to show their pods. Shame I'm not all that keen on runner beans.

Beetroot

I've been mightily impressed with our beets. They've just got on with it, done their growing and nearly every plant has a good sized beetroot underneath it. I'm going to have to start pulling them soon, otherwise they might go woody.

Pumpkin

I'm sure our pumpkins have a desire for world domination. They are growing furiously and have completely filled up the quarter of the vegetable patch I generously gave them. They're beginning to encroach on the other plants with their ribbon-like tendrils grappling onto stuff. However, they're doing great and as you can see in the photo, there's a pumpkin a size of my hand already growing, and it still looks like a juvenile. There are lots of flowers on the plants but no other pumpkins, so I haven't got to start pulling fruits off yet to make this pumpkin grow enormous.

Tomatoes

The tomatoes are going ok. They went rather wild a few months ago when I fertilized them, and with my lack of knowledge of how to grow the things properly, they've mainly bushed out rather than producing many fruits. However, there are at least 8 tomatoes growing, and quite a few more flowers that have yet to go over, so there's hope for a few more yet.

Chillis

The chillis are doing great in our "sun-lounge" - kind of a lean-to conservatory. They haven't really been effected as much as the peppers which they are growing next to, and as you can see in the photo, are generating a number of nice fruit. In fact, the chilli that is shown in that photo is currently being cooked into a curry by Daisy. There are at least 8 other fruit similar to that one on the plants.

Peppers

Our peppers have been under attack for some time now from aphids. I hadn't realised until recently that the strange curling up of the leaves was due to aphids, but having spotted the effect in my gardening bible, I realised and on closer inspection I could see the little critters. I took a photo for you (and believe me that was easier said that done because they are soooooo tiny tiny). I have looked up how to get rid of them (apparantly with a spray of diluted washing up liquid), so I might try that although I'm a little worried I'll make our peppers taste of "Fairy Lemon". The plant has some flower buds on it, but they seem to have stopped doing anything. I suspect this is because of the aphids. Let's hope they've not caused too much harm to the plant.


Right.. My curry's just about ready - time to taste that chilli!

That's me that is - I am a monkey. A monkey in a big zoo. I come to work, I sit, I type, I go home. I don't enjoy. I've been examining the wonders that might exist outside this infinite loop I am stuck in, and they are, tautologically, wonderous. I have decided I need a plan. A plan of action. A 2 year plan. In two years I will be not only working for myself, but working in a nice environment. I've decided. Although I don't think I'll move to Fiji, I'm going to have to start calling myself Dave Lister as he always wanted a farm in Fiji. It gives me a headache just being here. If only money wasn't so important....

I have a list of things to do. The first of which is to apologise for lack of updates. This week has been hectic - both from a work perspective (yes, I know I'm supposed to be on holiday, but I've been putting in at least 4 hours work a day), and a social perspective (yes, I was only helping to entertain one person, but it's harder than I always imagine).

During the week, I've been busy working on some websites as part of a new venture into website design. I seem to be able to do it, and certainly have a good understanding of what makes a good design, so it has become a second venture alongside my internet retail enterprise, which has yet to start. I will probably start up a secondary blog where I can "talk web", and it may just be interesting. I found this blog of another web-designer, actually not far away, who seems to be doing ok. His sites seem ok, but he's making a good move in going CSS. It's far more accessible to those less able to view the web.

During the week I made another three cakes. I made the flourless chocolate orange cake again (originally from Esurienties Blog) - and I made it twice, one for me, and one for my Dad who's wheat intolerant. Last time I made a hash of the ganache, but this time I put it in the fridge for about 30 minutes prior to spreading it and it worked much better. Unfortunately, I'd missed a few pips and they were a little bitter when you came across one. Anyway, here's a picture of the better one:


Flourless Chocolate Orange Cake

On Friday my wife and I went out and lay on the sunloungers and tried to get a moon-tan. In fact, we were watching the Perseid meteor shower that happens every August. It happens because the earth passes through the trail that the Comet Swift-Tuttle has left in space. It's called the Perseid because the centre of the meteor shower (where all the meteors appear to originate) is in the constellation of Perseus. This is in fact the direction the Earth is travelling through space. We saw about 10 meteors and a similar number of satellites, including some that were spinning causing a flashing effect as the Sun glinted off them. I took some photos, but didn't catch any meteors. Here's a nice photo of Cassiopea (the W-shape top middle) and Perseus (the arc of stars underneath):



Anyway, we've just got back from convoying my Mother-in-law back to the Severn Bridge, from which point she is able to find her own way home to Monmouth. It was a very nice day today, so I took some photos. In fact, on my 256Mb card I can only take 44, and I took all 44. Here's some nice ones:


It's "Combine" season and there's alot of churned up fields around, which actually make nice photos.


The Severn Bridge was opened 8th September 1966, but has now been augmented by a lower, longer one. I still prefer the old one. It's like our very own version of the Golden Gate Bridge.


At the Severn Bridge, the new Moto services have been built in front of the old ones, that are now offices. The old spy-scopes are still there, but unusable.


There's my lovely missus watching over the lethal straits of the River Severn. The River Severn effectively ends here at the Severn Bridge and becomes the Bristol Channel.


On the northern side of Bath, there's a small town called Pennsylvania, and from there you get a great view over Dyrham Park and towards Wales. This is what the Severn Bridge looks like from there.
[incidentally, the mountains in the background are around the Trellech area and are approximate 24 miles from where I took the photo!]


Bath is a beautiful old Roman town, and I've driven around it so many times on my way to Wales. I'm glad I made the stop to take some photos of this lovely place.


Nearer home, there's more hay bales. I stopped and headed out into a field to get some other harvest shots. It's a shame all this harvesting gives me a fever!


There'll be more photo intensive posts on their way, as I've just been out getting photos of the current state of our gardening!

I've been really busy in the last couple of days getting this website I'm working on going, and I'm much happy with it. Unfortunately, of course, it means things like my blog have been rather neglected.

Unfortunately, I'm off to Wales for 2 days to collect mother-in-law, and as internet connectivity at mother-in-law's house is nae better than a sending a floppy disk by post, so it's back to being quiet here.

For those who don't know, I also have a photography blog where I post photos I've taken - although these are not your snappy "here's my veg patch" photo. Talking of which, when I get back I'll update on my veggies, as I'm pretty chuffed at what's happened so far. We've got broccoli, tomatoes, beans, beetroot and chilli all growing! Yay! The pumpkins are trying to take over the world.

Anyway, just cleared much of a pile of tree cuttings, with some early morning trips to the dump, tightened the fan belt on my car ready for its trip to Wales, and now we're almost ready. Just a spot of lunch, and then we're off.

Have a good Sunday and Monday.

It's been a bit of a busman's holiday for me, to be honest, but that's not to say I'm not enjoying every minute of it. At least I'm not under the pressure of "the boss". It's all for my own gain. I've been doing some web-design work for my Salsa teacher, and I'm quite please with how it's going. We cycled over to her house yesterday and she gave us the text to put on the website and some photos to scan in. It makes my job quite a bit easier.

At lunchtime there was a ring on the door, and I went to see who it was and all that was there was a brown parcel. I love brown parcels and I was doubly excited as I knew this was my new macro flash that I'd been waiting for for a couple weeks, and it was replacing my old broken one. Of course, I went straight out and did some photo taking, before returning to do some work on the web-design.

I suspect today is going to end up a very similar day, although Daisy and I might go into town and spend some WHSmith vouchers that I've had hanging around for far too long :o)

Last night we went to the cinema for the first time in ages. We went to see Tom Cruise's new film, War of the Worlds. Well, it's not all that new anymore, but it's still his latest. The story is based on the The War of the Worlds classic novel my H.G.Wells. The premise of the original story was that martians (beings from Mars) were watching us and decided it was time to take over the Earth. They landed in big saucers that grew three legs and destroyed much of mankind. However, they then ended up being killed by bacteria that they were unable to see from space. It kind of ends up as an analogy of they way they were studying us and the way that we study bacteria.

Anyway, the film builds upon a previous film, The War Of The Worlds [1954], and the brilliant musical version by Jeff Wayne.

My first impressions of the film is that is wasn't as good as I hoped it was going to be. I think this is partly to do with the differences between the original story and the new one. But that's not to say it wasn't a good film.

I won't go into lots of detail about the differences because although they end up being a tad confusing for someone who knows the original story, they are basically asides to the new film. In fact, the new film is only very vaguely based on the original, in my opinion. There were some small plot errors (such as how some people were using video cameras and there was a working car when the alien's EMP apparantly stopped everything electrical working - broken or not), but the main plot was coherent, although much more of a "blast"-fest than many of Spielberg's usual heart-warming stories. The ending was typical Spielberg cheese, though.

I'm really interested to see how the Pendragon version that's nearing the end of its production will turn out. It's a very authentic version of the original story (set at the turn of the century for a start). However, that's not to say you shouldn't go to see this new movie. It's clearly well made and a good no-brainer. I particularly loved the beginning where the EMP storms arrived and everyone was watching. It evoked the feeling I get every time a thunderstorm is near me.