I had a superb week this week. I only went to work for two days, which is a good place to start. Better yet, I spent the other three days with Mum, Dad, Leavy and Pippa. We had lots of outdoor time: we looked at barges in Maldon, took a day-boat up the Thames from Datchet, and walked in Richmond Park. We had lots of quality time with the dogs, and they had such an adventure going on their first train, bus and tube. Pippa found it all a bit stressful but Leavy took to it all like a duck to water, sprawling across the floor of the tube, clambering around the bus and wagging her tail at everyone we met. I'd write more but I'm too hungry to type - maybe Tuesday I'll say more.

Ow, my legs hurt. We set out this morning for a 38-mile cycle around the Yorkshire Dales. 3 miles in we realised this was not going to be easy. We were cycling into what felt like a howling gale, and the route was an awful lot more hilly than it looked like on paper. So we wimped out a bit, and cycled 18 miles instead, taking a little detour to Malham Cove which was very lovely. I just mapped our route on MapMyRide - it says we climbed around 850 feet, which is quite a bit really.

Anyway now I'm hungry and I want to eat an entire cow or something. I think we're going to go get a curry which should fill that stomach hole, and eat it with a small bottle of champagne my work buddies gave me when I left on Friday. It's approximately Andy and I/my/mine/our (can't quite figure out which word fits here) four-year anniversary, so combining that with the cycling trip, I think we have a good excuse to drink champagne, stuff our faces and vegetate on the couch.

This weekend I made:

a picture of a camper van for Andy (quite cartoon-like now I've photographed it) and ...

... three cushion covers. I enjoyed making the cushion covers quite a bit (they're so jolly, and even better, machine washable), and am now looking forward to my pattern arriving so I can make myself this exciting dress:

I think I'm going to have to figure out a way to transport my sewing machine to Geneva. After a full, frustrating day's shopping on Saturday where I bought just one thing (and even that is a bit big), I need to  learn to make my own clothes a la Gran.

I think putting multiple pictures in is too complicated, so I won't do that too often. Here are other things I have done recently:

• gone to Thorpe Park with our neighbours Daniel and Nathalie
• took a tourist boat to Greenwich and pottered around the market
• took a Clipper to Greenwich and visited the Royal Observatory
• went to Wiltshire for a five-mile walk
• cycled to Woking, just because it was about the right distance away
• went to a clothes-swapping party where we agreed to start doing sewing/crafty stuff together regularly.

I've done lots of other stuff too, I'm sure, I just can't think of it yet. Here's Thorpe Park:

I thought that while we're sitting around waiting for anything interesting to happen, I'd take the opportunity to update you on what I've been up to lately.

A month or so ago now, I went to afternoon tea with Katy. We put on our posh frocks and ate fancy sandwiches and cakes, and drank fancy tea, at the Sanderson. It was such fun, even though it was raining very heavily. Look how pretty the cakes are.













I also went to the Lake District for some yomping. We were fortunate enough to have very lovely weather. In fact, we were also fortunate to be allowed to go outside in the lovely weather - I often find myself stuck indoors on sunny days in London. We were very energetic and walked Mountain No 2 (Helvellyn) on Sunday, and Mountain No 3 (Skiddaw) on Monday. We did Mountain No 1 (Scafell Pike) two years ago, so we're working our way through the list of England's highest mountains.

What was exciting about both mountains, but particularly Helvellyn, was that although it was very hot, the snow on the top hadn't melted. So we were wandering around in blazing hot sun, shorts, tshirts and lots of suncream, throwing snowballs at each other. Here's some pretty pictures:

 

Aren't elections funny? A bit like Christmas or birthdays, you look forward to it so much and then are rather taken by surprise when it turns out to be a day like any other. In fact, apart from the UKIP plane crash, there hasn't been very much election news.

I'm aiming to stay up until 3:30 as original predictions suggested loads of results around then, but turnout has been so high that I think it'll be later than that. I don't think I can stay up any later than 3:30 and still function tomorrow.

The whole people-not-being-able-to-vote thing is very disappointing, what an awful shame. But there's some happy news too: let's just take a moment to pause and reflect on the fact that at this very moment, the UK Parliament consists entirely of women. 100%. Okay, that's just three people, but isn't it exciting?

What I made during the leaders' debate

Leaders debate

That was fairly fun, and I drew some nice pictures of flowers while they were bickering. Aren't elections exciting?

22:01 Look at Nick go! He's learnt from Dara O'Briain, he's naming all the people he talked to during the evening, threading their stories into one nice little anecdote. "I spoke to a guy called Joel this evening, and he said ...."

21:57 I know what they're talking about, but the word 'carer' is a funny one. Nick is saying that those people who care the most, who care for the longest, should have respite. He makes it sound like some kind of competition - I totally care about, like, peace and shit, I've cared about it for a reeeeally long time, can I have a break from caring please?

21:50 Hang on, let me just check I've understood that, Dave. Stop the National Insurance rise, and use that money to buy cancer drugs. So, reduce the Government's tax income, and spend that decrease on cancer drugs ... nope, you've lost me. Why didn't the others pick that up? I must stop being less partial.

21:43 Gosh David, that's a heartfelt thank you for that Indian NHS worker despite saying earlier that you didn't want any foreigners coming in.

21:24 Well done Nick, I agree, all these crazy waste savings are not going to sort out the economy. I don't know anyone else who isn't allowed free tea and coffee at work except me. In the last six months I have claimed precisely nothing on expenses. How much have they claimed?

21:15 Oh piss off Dave, he's being mean.

21:11 Heeeheeheee Dave nearly forgot he's got a new baby on the way ... "and hopefully another one ... another two on the way" (to school).

21:06 Nick should stop looking directly at the camera, he seems much more natural when he looks at the others.

21:02 Oh no wait hang on a second, Call-Me-Dave reckons that part of the apology for the expenses stuff is to cut the size of Whitehall by a third - really? What did we ever do?

21:00 I'm going to stop doing this and play arts and crafts for a while. The Guardian and Sam are going to have to live blog faster.

20:58 Third time lucky Gordon! His feeble joke about posters didn't get a laugh, his 'this is not question time, it's answer time' only got a laugh from him, but finally his 'airbrushing your posters but not your policies' joke struck home and got a little giggle. Sam's right, he's just not a funny man. At least he's trying though.

20:57 Weird camera shot there of Nick Clegg's leg.

20:55 Oh god Gordon, that's a very awkward joke about posters ...

20:52 Now I support Nick's policy on prison reform absolutely, but 9 out of 10 prisoners reoffend? I am pretty darn certain it's 7 out of 10 - get your facts straight, young man. Is Gordo plugging Dave's national service thingamy?

20:51 Nice clip of an audience member shaking his head at what Gordon was saying there. That's a thumbs down from Mr Curly Hair in the back row, Gordo.

20:50 "... my city of Sheffield where I'm an MP ..." - no you're not, Nick, you stopped being an MP on Monday.

20:48 18 minutes in and I don't think I can take another anecdote. "I was talking to a real person the other day and they said ..." - aaaaaaggghhhh. Dave is talking about prisoners reoffending. What an enlightened solution he has - lock them up for longer.

20:44 Nick Clegg was apparently saving lives in a paediatric hospital a few weeks ago - my hero.

20:42 A border police force? Did David just make that up on the spot? He is almost a parody of himself at this stage - it sounds like something the commenters on the Guardian article on Armando Ianucci's twitter post might say - they were busily coming up with things they were going to do to take part in Cameron's government. That was a very funny set of comments, my favourite was "I don't like my neighbour so I'm going to deport him."

20:40 I'm not sure I'm quite up for live blogging this thing, but I might just make a few observations as we go.

Does anyone else think the Labour manifesto looks quite like my blog
template? Copycats.

Geneva

I've got a new job in Geneva. I'm off to the Quaker United Nations
Office to spend a year working on human rights and refugees starting
in September, and it's terribly exciting.

The excitement is tempered by my sadness that it means living away
from Andy for a year, but he's being ever so wonderfully supportive -
this is something I really want to do, and I think I'd regret passing
up on the opportunity.

So I'm focussing on all the exciting things: living in a very
important city but one that's much smaller than London, living in the
clean fresh air of the Alps, living on the shore of Lake Geneva,
hanging around the United Nations and going to the Montreaux Jazz
Festival. Andy and I will just have to travel to and fro lots. Oh and
I found out yesterday that the other Programme Assistant is another
Irish Quaker I've known since I was very small, isn't that nice?

A lovely day

You've probably noticed the wonderful weather. The great news is that
this wonderful weather has arrived just on time for three days in the
Lake District. It is a rare and wonderful thing when you live in
London, looking out a window on a sunny day (in this case the window
of the train to Penrith) and knowing that you're actually going to get
to make the most of the weather. I'm going to be yomping in glorious
sunshine. I've brought sunglasses, suncream, light-weight walking
trousers and tshirts. I considered not bringing a warm coat but I
thought that might be pushing it a bit. So hooray for spending sunny
days in the great outdoors, exercising in the clean air.

Sam brought me some lovely icing tools for my birthday, and combined with my new food colouring and fancy icing knife and glitter and whatnot from Mum I have all the gizmos I could ever want for icing cakes, so yesterday we baked cupcakes and then decorated them. I'd show you a picture but my camera's in the other room - sad you're missing out, though, because they're all daintily arranged on my V&A cupcake stand. They're not beautiful (it's my first go) but they're quite cool. Next time I think I'll separate my icing into two or three and make several different colours - then I'll take some pictures. It was very good fun though, we all got a bit giddy with all the sugar and pink and squeezy fun.

Hello trees, hello sky, hello flowers

Some of the best news I've heard, well, today (it's only half nine so I suppose that's not saying much) is that we're going to have a spectacular spring. Now that the long, gloomy winter is over, doesn't that just cheer you up no end?

And I can feel it in the air – these last couple of weeks have been so much more wonderful than the miserable, cold, grey winter. The birds have suddenly appeared, and they're so loud I can even hear them over the traffic. In fact, I woke up early on Sunday morning and couldn't hear any traffic, just very loud birdsong. Even better, on Sunday afternoon I saw my first woodpecker this side of the Atlantic in a back garden in North London. And on Sunday night, a heron.

Unfortunately, spring has also brought an infestation of greenfly in our beautiful herb garden. I think it might have got in on a bunch of daffodils. When I looked at it last night it was absolutely covered in little white things which, on closer inspection, turned out to be hundreds, or maybe thousands, of baby flies as well as some grown-ups. Our previous infestation (of ladybirds) seems so jolly and nice by comparison – in fact, Sam says the ladybirds are our allies in fighting off greenfly. But there were only two ladybirds around yesterday (I had evicted the others the night before) so I couldn't figure out how to get rid of the greenfly. We've ended up hacking the whole thing down. It's gone. Dead. Finished. It was about time anyway – the roots had grown so big they were pushing the top of the plant up and the smaller plants (dill, thyme) just weren't getting a look-in at all. We did salvage the herbs themselves though – we've washed the parsley and basil, chopped it up and stuck it in the freezer. I just need to figure out what to do with the chilli peppers and maybe make some mojitos with the mint.

You may also like to know that Sam is staying with us, and although I haven't brought him for any outdoorsy exercise yet, he has still managed to injure himself outdoors by falling over on the trolley ramp by Sainsburys. His knee is all swollen and cut, and he's having a good time complaining about it which is the important thing.

In which I have a birthday

Yesterday I turned 25. It's devastating, really. I'm not in my early twenties anymore. I've been around for a quarter of a century. And just to rub salt in the wounds, this is what Wikipedia says about the number 25:

"Under 25" provides a common cut-off point for designating youth.

(I'm sorry, if you've come here from Sam's blog you probably expected a more exciting fact. I feel like I've let you down)

So I am now officially old. My youth has been cut off. Wikipedia said so.

I did have a nice day though. Mum came to visit, and we jointly went to visit Ian in Bristol. We went to the zoo where they had lots of mini animals. There really was "a sort of a tiny potamus" (like in the poem, aka a pygmy hippo), and there were lions and flamingos and seals and penguins and butterflies and monkeys and stuff. My favourite bit was the Twilight Zone, where they had all sorts of twilighty creatures in a very dimly lit room, and you had to peer into the enclosures quite carefully to spot what was in there. There were some nice things in there, like sand cats and monkeys and tiny lemurs, but there were also giant jumping rats which are just not cool. They also had a fantastic glass-sided tunnel complex with naked mole rats running around inside. That was very cool.

On Friday Mum and I went to see Oliver. She amazingly arrived with one minute to spare, having landed in Heathrow an hour before. I forgot how many brilliant songs there are in Oliver. The little chappy who played the Artful Dodger was superb, he pranced around the place with a cockiness that was brilliant on stage, but I wouldn't like him as a little brother, he looked rather precocious. Griff Rhys Jones was great as Fagin too. The sets were amazing - they moved around to give the impression that people were running through streets or going underground or climbing or whatever. My favourite bit was Who Will Buy - the choreography and the costumes were just beautiful, all twirling around and cartwheeling and stuff. I could have sat watching that for hours.

I've just spent ages trying to reply to all my birthday wishes on Facebook. I've mostly caught up but I've run out of steam. There's only so many times I can come up with new ways to say the same thing, it's just too damn difficult.

I've just been to the cinema with Siobhan to see A Single Man. Andy's away this week, you see, so I'm doing things he wouldn't enjoy. That film is definitely one of those things, but I liked it very much. What a beautiful, beautiful film - beautiful clothes, beautiful buildings, beautiful music, beautifully shot. I left the cinema feeling like I'd just been to an art exhibition or something.

On the way I popped in to the Coliseum to book tickets for Satyagraha with my new Access All Arias card which gets me very cheap tickets to the opera because I'm under 30. The man at the ticket desk was extremely irritating, pompous and patronising. I asked for Upper Circle tickets, and he told me there were no AAA tickets left, explaining that there is only a limited allocation of AAA tickets for each performance. So I asked if there were tickets for other tiers, and he spoke to me very slowly, like I was stupid, saying, "That's what I'm trying to explain to you, there are no tickets." He 'helpfully' told me that if I turned up 3 hours before the performance, in person and with my student ID, then I could join the standby list. Thing is, right, it's not a bloody student privilege, it's for under-30s. There are people under the age of 30 who want to go to the opera who have JOBS. Which means we can't turn up at 4pm just on the offchance that there might be a ticket. You also can't book AAA tickets online, and nobody answers the phone if you ring. I thought he rather undermined ENO's efforts to make opera accessible and friendly to young people by being so patronising and making it so very difficult to actually purchase a ticket.

Do you think it's okay to only have popcorn for dinner? It's just, I ate so much of it at the cinema that I'm completely full. But it doesn't seem like very healthy sustenance. I do have some asparagus in the fridge, but I had asparagus soup for lunch and I don't want to turn into an asparagus.

I had a nice day yesterday. Andy and Katy and I went to a little place called Twyford near Henley to visit Aaron, Annabel and their little baby Finn. Although he's a lot bigger than last time I saw him. He's a very fun child - he doesn't cry much, he gets fascinated by everything, and he gets a major kick out of stick his hand in my mouth.

Twyford's lovely (or whatever the nearby place that Aaron actually lives in is called). We went for a yomp in a forest with Finn in his rucksack carrier thing. Finn looked very comfortable and fell asleep straight away. The sun was shining and the air was much cleaner than it is here, and we had a nice big roast in a pub then went to another pub by the river. All in all it was a nice break from London life.

Devastating snub?

According to a politics.co.uk headline, during dinner last night Mr Zuma sought to recover from a 'devastating Sainsburys snub'. Goodness me, I thought, was it Lord Sainsbury? Did he refuse to shake hands or, perhaps, spit in his face? Did the local Sainsburys refuse him admission? Did they turn down his application for a Nectar card?

 

The reality is rather more mundane.

 

"South African president Jacob Zuma finished his state visit by attending a City dinner last night, as he sought to recover from a devastating snub at a local Sainsbury's.

 

Mr Zuma, who has stayed as a guest of the Queen at Buckingham Palace and engaged in high-level talks with Gordon Brown in Downing Street, was touring the local Sainsbury's in Greenwich, south-east London, when the incident occurred.

 

Despite being flanked by a coterie of bodyguards, as well as Sainsbury's chief executive Justin King and environment secretary Hilary Benn, one elderly couple utterly failed to acknowledge him.

 

John and Catherine Przeslawski, aged 92 and 86 respectively, were instead busily engaged in choosing which cheeses to select from the cheese-counter as the presidential swarm swept past.

 

''We didn't notice anybody, we were too busy choosing our cheese, we didn't see the president at all," Mr Przeslawski said afterwards."

 

I'm not even sure that needs further comment.

The Butcher and Grill

Today Andy and I are very full because we've been to the Butcher and Grill in Wimbledon Village for a mixed grill. The best mixed grill ever. We had delicious rump steak, lamb chop, sausage, bacon, calf's liver, kidney, duck egg, mushroom, sundried tomato, chips and bearnaise sauce. It was all such deliciously wonderful meat, so tender and beautiful. And then, when we were completely full, we found space in our dessert tummies for creme brulee. Yum yum yum yum yum.

This was all because Andy has been offered a new job at Sport England. He's not sure whether he wants it or not as it's not quite the one he applied for, but being offered a job is always something to celebrate, so we did.

And another thing ...

Do you have any suggestions of things for me to do in London? If so, let me know and I'll try do them.

Ireland v England at Twickenham

Last weekend (27 February) I went to my first international rugby match, Ireland vs England at Twickenham. Andy had managed to get tickets through work, so we went with his parents. Our seats were right at the very top of the stadium, very very high up, but with a fantastic view of the whole pitch. Only thing was everything looked a bit blurry and out of focus to me from up there - I'm going to have to get glasses for that kind of occasion it appears.
Although the place was mostly full of England fans, the Ireland fans definitely made our presence felt. England fans just wore normal clothes, but Ireland fans were bedecked in green. Puma, the new sponsor of the Irish team, had people giving out free flags, hats and inflatable bangy things to Irish fans, so we were quite visible. It was a little strange being there with three England fans though - every time I jumped up and down with glee they sat there looking a bit sad that their team was losing.

My favourite bit, though, was walking back to the train station after the match. The Irish people all around me were singing, in a way English people never do. They were singing the Fields of Athenry, Molly Malone and the Black Velvet Band, just snatches of songs coming up from different parts of the crowd. I think it's only on occasions like that, when I can see large groups of Irish people in contrast with large groups of English people, that I really notice how different the two countries are, and I start to understand the stereotype of Irish people being so much more relaxed and friendly than people from other countries.