Wednesday

Drove Mr Sthg New to work today and on the way back got a phone call while I was driving, so turned down a road into Wentworth Court thereby eliminating my need to find something new to do today!

Tuesday

More dead birds in the garden this time.New thing was heading to a carpet shop to see how much it would cost to re-carpet our hall and bedroom. We have Mr Sthg New's very critical friends coming to stay with us this weekend and I am frantically trying to fershen up the house with paint etc to avoid their comments on how rubbish our house is again!

Monday

Went for a walk along the canal with Mr Sthg New and I jogged off down an alleyway that I'd never been down before. Returned to Mr Sthg New like a sad puppy when I came across a dead bird.

Sunday

New thing was buying some weird mocha drink from Sainsbury’s and checking out the clothes department upstairs. Rubbish eh? I was tired....

Saturday

New thing was going to what used to be Bistro Roque in Kintbury, a restaurant that became a nursery for its boot sale.
Later in the day, I went to St Nicolas Church Hall (not a new thing as I came here about six years ago to an event where I met the wonderfully inspirational David Wilkie). This time I was here for election hustings where the seven candidates (including an independent candidate and a guy from his own party called the ‘apolitical democrats’ discussed immigration, nuclear weapons and a hung parliament. There wasn’t much focus on the economy or local issues. Alarmingly, the Labour candidate was absolutely nonsensical and appeared to base her knowledge of the local area on a visit to Hungerford and a visit to Thatcham; the UKIP guy talked about Louis XVI when answering a question about nuclear deterrents and prefaced one of his answers with “did anyone see the Daily Mail headline.....” I actually thought Richard Benyon, David Rendel and the apolitical democrat and also the Green Party candidate were very persuasive. I now have to decide whether to vote for the best local candidate; to get the Labour government out; tactically or cast my protest vote. Less than a week to do so now!

Friday

Costa Coffee in Newbury for the first time.

Thursday -the Ghost

Yesterday’s new thing was going to see the Ghost based on the book by Robert Harris that I have just read. Not only the chance to see the film but also to check out the new cinema properly! I was planning to see it next week but was drawn in to today’s showing as Robert Harris himself was giving a talk on the film adaptation before the showing. He told of how Roman Polanski called his house and his wife thought he was a call centre worker! However, they eventually got in touch and the director asked if he could write a screenplay based on Pompeii. The logistics of filming that were difficult apparently, so they decided to adapt “The Ghost” instead. He told of how Roman Polanski was demanding of his actors, writers and even the musicians, and some of the problems that came up as he was arrested during filming. Amusingly, some of the editing was completed in a special room near Polanski’s cell in prison. The film itself was ok and followed the book fairly faithfully, but I couldn’t ignore the extensive product placement and some of the stilted dialogue which was worsened for me because I couldn’t help think that Ewan McGregor sounded like Frank Spencer all the way through. I love Pierce Brosnan and Kim Cattrall but their accents! Am I being stupid – was it a plot device to have their accents fluctuate throughout the film? However, I'd still recommend the film as it's decently paced, there's a good storyline though and it all revolves around a very a interesting idea.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_AerBW0EcI

Wednesday

New car arrived (before I was dressed, embarrasingly) and the other new thing was watching the movie “Glastonbury” which I really enjoyed. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Glastonbury-Movie-Limited-page-book/dp/B000PE0JAC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1271941087&sr=8-1
Not only was there a performance from my favourite band, but it’s a great documentary charting the festival from the beginning (the clips of 70s locals are just priceless), through the traveller era to nowadays, covering great bands and showing you just how the place has grown. I really enjoyed it, thought it gave a really good flavour of what it’s like to be there. Can’t wait for this year!

Tuesday

Lunch courtesy of my boss at a posh place called Jungs in Beaconsfield serving pastries and beautiful cakes. Didn’t realise I was going, and since most of my clothes are outside on the line, I looked substantially more scruffy than the other clientele and definitely got the eyebrow from the staff!

Monday

Got a very strong massage at the wellbeing centre in Pound Street, Newbury as part of Feel Good Fortnight. Even though it was a tester and lasted 10 minutes, I feel wonderful!

Sunday

Home at last - new things included cross channel ferry, being interviewed by German TV and the ferry port building!

Saturday

Flight cancelled. So we hire an Opel Insignia and drive
And drive
And drive

Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Belgium, France and finally the ferry to England.

Friday

Skiing – so windy and slope closed. Ash on skiis. Came down a new slope and went over a ski jump! If I’d been wearing glasses, I would have looked like Eddie the Eagle!

Thursday

Wow, what a day. Dropped the parent and partner to the airport only to get a call ten minutes later saying that the airport was closed, as was every airport in Europe thanks to the volcano in Iceland puffing dust clouds through the airspace.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pazzn44zDs
So off to Oslo we headed. What a beautiful city!

Wednesday

Skiing again. New slopes! Checked out the opposite slope and took the ski lift to the very top, so coming down was a bit of a gamble but turned out to be extremely invigorating.

Tuesday

Day off from skiing (for wounds to heal,. Ha). Walked up to the frozen lake which I think might be called Lake Gala. Just stunningly beautiful – it must look totally different in the summer. Other new things included trying out Norwegian chocolate which I selected purely based on their names; Japp and Walters Mandler. Don’t know why I found that so funny.

Monday

Skiiing! Got back into the swing of it quite quickly and only fell once! Then took Mr Sthg New to a Chinese restaurant in Vinstra. There is a distinct lack of restaurants around here! The only other option was a pizza restaurant which smelt of bleach and the woman ignored us for ages. To be fair though, she is the only person in Norway who hasn’t been extremely polite and helpful.

Sunday

Mr Sthg New arrives, back to the airport and into a shop where I forgot my pin and my credit card got blocked when I tried to buy bananas. We then went to a Chinese restaurant in Lillehammer – home of the 1994 olympics (Lillehammer, not the restaurant!) where the boss got really impatient with me when my card wouldn't go through....

Saturday

New thing was Norway, where I’ve always wanted to go! And what a view over the country from the air and stunning views all over the country where you could see glaciers, fjords and snow-topped mountains. The airport seemed so clean and peaceful and we hired a Hyundai i30 to get us up north (well, about four hours north – nowhere near the Arctic Circle). Stopped off at a place called Veikro for dinner and then continued driving to a place called Gala (pronounced Gola –like the a pronounced as o in the only Norwegian word I know –skol -haha) right up in the Peer Gynt mountains.

Thursday

Inspired by the recent series called Inside John Lewis, I visited the store in Reading. I had a very pleasant time here shopping for bits and bobs and spent a absolute fortune! I can't believe I'd never been here before!

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP9wtdwgeok

Another absolutely brilliant animation film. Cloudy with a chance of meatballs is about an inventor called Flint Lockwood who invents a machine that creates junk food. Flint inadvertently sends the machine into the sky where it starts raining food onto the people below.
The food gets bigger and bigger, mocking the world's greed, waste and obesity, and in a finale mocking the end of Independence Day, Flint must destroy his machine, located in the heart of a giant meatball. Classic stuff; I don't know why this didn't get more attention when it came out..

Tuesday - High Society

Who wants to be a millionaire? What a great film! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_9QstdWGC4

Easter

It's all a bit of a blur since I worked most of Easter in my second job. I was seriously considering whether to continue with this after someone said: "you don't know much, do you?" when I didn't know if the shop next door sold what she was looking for or how many dinosaur eggs there were in the tin she was about to buy. If that wasn't insulting enough, a customer shouted at me about a reduction ticket which I was just about to process. His shout made me leap out of my skin and I pressed the wrong button, resulting in the rudest abuse about how stupid I was that I had to go and have a cry in the car. However, yesterday, a customer asked if I was a student which readjusted the balance and me feel a lot better. So the new things for the long weekend where going to the back of a shop, disappearing down various rounds in wBerkshire and then taking a new shortcut to aforementioned second job to avoid the inevitable Easter traffic.