Flowers now :-)

The weather has finally warmed up and so today, as Millie and I had our walk around Worthington Park, there were many more flowers to snap. It was one of those crisp and sunny spring mornings too, very lovely.

There are two plaques, at different ends of the park, which I have been meaning to take put here for a while. The new one is to celebrate 100 years of the park and the old one is from the opening day.

The tree below is Mrs Worthington's, complete with birdboxes (I suspect they are more recent).

Work is beginning to feel a bit more manageable as we head to the last week of term and I have just 4 more days of work to do before vacation time :-)

Next Thursday is Annie's birthday, so we are heading off to Blackpool, with Millie, for a birthday by the sea. I'll aim to take some pictures when we get there, too. We're staying in a Hilton on the front and at a really nice "January sale" rate (I think it was January when I booked it!). Millster has been to two hotels so far and is rather a star at this, so we're looking forward to taking her to #3.

Before then, however, we do have another play-date Sunday, so weather permitting, there may be more to report.

Much love my darlings :-)

K xxx.

Sunday again!

Hey ho, here we are again. This was another busy old week, mostly just with teaching though, rather than exciting stuff as such.

Millie and I did get to Worthington Park on Friday and took a couple of shots of the snowdrops. Things are really late flowering here this year as we've had an actual WINTER for once. So all my usual early daffodils aren't even out yet. So I posted these snowdrops earlier last year, but they're still good to see now.

Today though, now that was really exciting. Millie had a play-date! We went along to Wythenshawe (best place on earth in Mill's view, as you know) and waited. Our friends have recently taken delivery of a lovely Jack Russell puppy, called Elvis, and at 4 months they decided she is brave enough to come face to face with the Mill-monster!

We had some time for a bit of tree-trunk and stick work before they arrived and then .... ta da! Isn't she gorgeous?

Needless to say our heroine wasn't terrifically friendly. (There was a flash of growly bared teeth at one point) but by the time we'd walked around to the football fields she'd decided she could fetch ball alongside the youngun.

Annie, meanwhile, had the nerve to feed Elvis a treat in full view of Millie!

All in all we thought the date was a success and we're aiming to repeat it next weekend, so I'll hope to get some more pics of the girls then :-)

Much love, K xxx.

Sunday - busy week!

This has been one of *those* weeks. Monday I went to a thing at the police HQ to hear about a policy on rape. Then I was teaching till late.

Tuesday my lovely aunt had a new ankle put in (went well, she's still in hospital, but everyone seems happy with the bionic ankle so far). Then we had a Trafford Rape Crisis meeting here at the house, in the evening.

The meeting was wonderful as three more women came along and seem keen to get involved. So, we now have a steering group of 8, all off working on stuff. We're waiting to hear whether we will get any funding from our local council (local government).

Next was a busy day at work on Wednesday with visitors in for a look around. Thursday my dear friend Michele was due to come and stay, while her Dad was in our local hospital for a biopsy. Sadly they didn't get a bed for him till Friday morning, so that was all a bit more stressful than anyone needed. Anyway he's had the bio now and we wait to hear more.

Friday night our choir sang at the re-lainch of our People's History Museum, in Manchester. That was a pretty exciting event and I really loved singing there. http://www.phm.org.uk/

Since then? Well more-or-less, I've been in bed! LOL

In the midst of all this I lost my favourite pair of specs. So today Annie and I have driven around the various places I was at on Friday, in hopes of finding them. No luck :-( So I guess that'll be more specs sometime soon!

Hey ho, now we're off out for Fish'n'chips!

K xxx.

Wythenshawe

We woke up to more snow this morning. There isn't usually a great deal of snow here in an entire winter, but this year has surely been an exception. I was quite surprised by the night-time's fall as I hadn't heard any weather warnings the evening before. However, it has been pretty warm today so the bulk of the snow was already melting by the time I got myself organised to take Millie and the camera out to Wythenshawe. The tennis courts were still pretty and white, as nobody had been out on those today (odd that) but the path, where Millie and I were walking, was much more melting and muddy!

Nothing is flowering yet, but there were some bits of tree and fungus that caught my eye. I liked the combination of snow, fungus and tree here.

One of my birthday gifts this year was a remote control for the camera, so I found a dryish place to perch the beauty and then snapped you a comical shot of a rather bundled up looking old gal ;-)

No plot today, in view of the white stuff, but hey, I posted! xxx

50, not out!

At the beginning of February I turned 50 and so now I have extreme old age to blame for the truly sporadic nature of my blogging ;-)

In a feeble attempt to deny this aging, I had a party which was set in the 1970s and talked various of my best friends into dressing up in silly clothes. Manda and Colin, usually seen in this blog digging at the plot are here transformed into Agnetha and some other bloke, from Abba. I decided to dress up as a punk rocker and my beloved hairdresser, Karen, fixed me up with the best hairdo of my life to date. Some well placed tippex and a few chains and badges later and - voila! So odd-looking that some of my friends drove past me entirely unaware, when I was heading down the road to the party. Never having looked anything other than truly unremarkable (fat and forgettable) I found the whole process of dressing up like this really interesting. Who knows what will be next?
Annie, meanwhile, was stuck with a suit I bought on Ebay and which turned out to be for a slimmer 70s chick than yours truly. A. reckoned it was something her Mom would have worn, back in the day. However, with the additions of the T. Rex t-shirt and blue shades, I can't see that myself.

The band played (they're so kind!) and Andy did look lovely as a Village Person. Phil says he was dressed as himself, back in the 70s, but none of us knew him then to tell you whether he's the same shape! The pretty lady brave enough to stand next to Phil is his lovely wife Chris, who also found a very cool costume for the 70s, as you can see. You might notice that Annie the suit is now playing drums, what a musician that girl is! We lost our last drummer and Annie seems to have tired of the endless struggle to find a replacement. I think she is developing a new sympathy for drummers though, now she's trying that out herself. The handsome young chap on the left here is Alex, Andy's son. Alex provided a really great addition to the sound and was very patient, humouring the old folks!

Loads of truly wonderful friends came along, lovely Sal looking very fetching in a maxi-dress of the era. I really wanted to get Annie to wear a dress like this and a long wig, then we could claim she was Karen Carpenter. Somehow though, I lost out that suggestion ...

Paul looks kinda nervous there, or maybe he's just working out his next dance routine? We had a number of prizes for dancing, during the party, and the competition to do a Swayze lift got quite serious, towards the end of the day. The food turned out pretty well and this amazing cake was the star of the show.

Here's Eddie, cake-mistress extrordinaire, seemingly terribly pleased with a 70s lollipop. I should have pics of the inside of the cake too, then you'd truly be bowled over, but you know how it is with cake ...

On one song the band were kind enough to let the aging punk play her new paino too. So here's a lass concentrating REALLY hard.

A number of people were very kind in helping to set up and tear down the event, including my goregous cousin Janice and her handsome squire, Martyn. M has just taken up bass guitar, so hopefully next gig ...

Lots of friends clubbed together to help Annie organise that piano for me, as my dream gift. Others like Dave, Damian ...

Laura, Cath, Mark and Fi (Paul, John, Eddie, Sallie, Jane, Chris and Nick) organised beautiful flowers, booze and a donation to my new pet charity, Trafford Rape Crisis.

All in all, I am ridiculously lucky. And that's not even counting anywhere near all of my lucky stars.

Allotment update: The boys have been digging and we've spuds chitting again, veg lovers, so there may well be news from the plot, in the next couple of weeks!

K xxx.

Christmas Time

Merry Christmas one and all. We've had a good time so far. Before the holiday actually arrives we have a European Market on in Manchester, which is famed for its bratwurst and gluwein. So here's Annie, smiling away whilst she munches on her sausage!

Manda and Colin were kind enough to invite us to feast with them on the 25th, so we were wonderfully fed and really enjoyed our day. Over here, Christmas dinner is much like Thanksgiving over there, in that it features a turkey and then some very traditional trimmings. Manda excelled herself in the kitchen and they also have a very fine wine waiter at that house ;-)

I joined Manchester Community Choir in September and this is one reason for less blog-time since then. Despite such an obvious drawback, the choir is really good fun and I love to sing (I think you knew that already). I've taken part in two gigs with the choir, over the holidays. Firstly we went and busked in the streets of Chorlton, to raise money for the Medical Foundation for the Victims of Torture and then we sang at a Christmas Party for asylum seekers. Annie came along to the first gig, and so here's a picture. We must be doing the reindeer calling song at this point as Liz, the conductor, has her special hat on!

We've had some winter weather too, which is pretty unusual over here. Snow arrived a few days before Christmas and actually hung around for a bit too. It has almost cleared now, but we have more forecast - amazing for us - and not terribly good news as the country is generally poor at coping!

However, Annie and Millie and I had a nice walk around the field over the road in the snow, with Annie safely on her "buggy".

My sister and niece are currently on a train heading north to visit us, so I need to get moving now and fix some good stuff for tonight. However, I'll be back soon :-)

Thanksgiving ... even this is late!

Deary me, where to begin? I have a whole trip to America and heaven knows what else to tell. The snap above shows me with my favourite blue raspberry sno-cone, at Allegan County Fair, from September. I think, since then, life has just been enough busy that I haven't made time to get here and then the plot needs a lot doing ... so that's another story.

Meanwhile though, we are well and we had a lovely thanksgiving. Colin and Manda came over and also our dear friend Eddie. She is a big-time Laura I-W "Little House" fan and so was keen to experience a true Thanksgiving. So we tried to put on a decent show with turkey, dressing, gravy, candied carrots, scalloped corn, green bean casserole and mash. Sadly the pictures don't show any of that as all I seem to have are before and after shots! But still, you can giggle at my table settings and so on.

And we do have a shot with dessert ready to be eaten. Dessert was Annie's authentic pumkin pie, apple pie and brandy cream. YUM! Meanwhile Millie was nearby in case anything came in her direction.

Hopefully I can get posting again now that the holidays are heading towards us fast. Meanwhile, happy December to all.