Thursday

New thing today was buying some doggy treats from Hungerford Pet Shop. (Not for me.)

Wednesday

New thing today was dragging poor Mr SthgNew to see Eat, Pray, Love at the cinema. This was meant to be a story about escaping from unhappiness and travelling to find yourself. Eat, Pray, Yawn, might be a better description. There was some lovely scenery as Liz, played by Julia Roberts travels to Italy for the 'eat' part, India to pray (can I just say here that we are trying to get a visa to go to India and it is the most bureaucratic form filling exercise I have ever come across - no such headache was portrayed in the film!), and Bali for love, but the film itself just seemed hollow and the main character impossible to identify with as she is so damn selfish. We all know that happiness isn't derived from being unhappily married and buying appliances for your perfect house on credit. Neither is it flitting around from country to country barely scratching the surface of the culture and just taking out the bits that you like. I gave it 3 and a half out of 10.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8csr68LjUM

Tuesday

A true panic as my boss summoned me to meet him immediately for lunch. And not at the office; he offered to drive half way to meet me. This was not good news. Anyway, the upshot is that my new thing for the day was a delicious lunch at Brasserie Gerard in Marlow.

Sunday

After a visit from my lovely cous and her husb and cute, cute, cute baby, who came round for lunch en route to their much more glamourous holiday destination, I headed off for my LAST EVER SHIFT at my second job where my new thing for the day was trying some dried physalis.

Monday
While I was working my arse off last night (sadly not literally as anyone who knows how fat I am will testify) Mr SthgNew thought he would go out and get vair, vair, vair drunk which led to me getting annoyed but not getting any sleep so today's new thing was going for a walk around Newbury's finest industrial estates to see if you can cut through and get down to the canal. You can't.

Saturday

New thing today was buying our wedding rings from H Samuel. I had entertained the idea of buying recycled rings from an antique dealer, but when it came to it, nearly threw up at the thought of handing over £500 PER RING, and hid in Rymans.
Mumbling nonsense about how I envisaged being married for two years and how I never wear much jewellery, Mr SthgNew compromised and we went into H Samuel where what we lost in the personal touch and a friendly sale, we got back in spondulicks. However, the wedding "fun" didn't end there as our other new thing was going upstairs in the florist to discuss our requirements where again, I was exposed as the unfeminine, uncaring person that I am.

Thursday

After spending HOURS in traffic, I got to Chelmsford for work but didn't manage to do anything new here, so on the way home, I swung by Fox's Outdoor Shop in Amersham.

Wednesday

New thing today was going to East Garston Shop.

Tuesday

Decided to get a march on the relentless passing of time and order some flowers for a friend's wedding anniversary. Unfortunately when I got to Lulu's Flowers, I realised I had forgotten the date and the address...

Monday

New thing today was a shop in Sherborne called Forever England before heading to the coast and reliving my youth in Weymouth by running up and down the rocks at Bowleaze Cove. That part of Weymouth is dominated by the beautiful and distinctive Riviera Hotel, which was Pontins when I were a lass.....
Having seen it from a distance for decades, I thought it was about time to explore the inside to see if it's as iconic on the inside - it really is a great bit of architecture, with a Spanish design and typical of the kind of place people went on holidays in the 50s and 60s. Hoping to find a bar , I was faced with two surly women who asked me to leave as it had closed last week. What they didn't tell me, which was a bit strange and was actually good news, was that it has only closed until next year for a revamp....

Sunday

"Helped" MrSthgNew at the Newbury Show today, so new things included trying out (and by that, I mean 'sitting in')new cars, vans, stalls and companies. Later, after congratulating myself on being super organised, I realised that I had forgotten my trousers for work, so another new thing was trying on all the pairs in the training room while being laughed at through the door by one my colleagues.

Saturday

Bit of a strange day, hoping that I would go to the cinema with MrSthgNew when he finished work, but he was too tired when he got home. Fortunately, I had sneaked into a room I'd not been into before at the gym.

Friday

New things today included buying a FANTASTIC rocking chair from Octopus in Newbury as a gift http://www.octopus-newbury.com/index.html
then onto a flower shop called Boki (where they thought I was joking when I said I would leave the floral decisions to my partner - I wasn't!) and then much later, a visit to my friend's new flat in Lambourn. Spacious, airy and light, I was really pleased for him. What was especially heart warming was that all of his friends had rallied round to see what they had spare, coming up with a massive TV, a hoover, two Freeview boxes and a curry. I handed over two candles and some flowers. And then ran....

Thursday

Not only are there not enough hours in the day as it is, but spending an hour in a traffic jam meant that my new thing today was a packet of sour cream, guacamole and lime crisps. I somehow don't think that the 15.2g of fat were negated by my neck exercises in the car or my vigorous fist shaking at the sky.

Tuesday

Sainsbury's Cafe! On a day when both of these stories were in the paper, one on exploding coffee machines and the other on the state of the nation's cleaning cloths!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-11302161
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/sep/15/restaurant-cleaning-cloths-health-risk

Tuesday

The Old Dairy near Russell Square for the launch of Renault’s Kangoo Zero Emission vehicle and the Fluence Zero Emission. Just amazing. There was a fascinating presentation on the launch of Renault’s zero emissions range, which, unlike other manufacturers, aims to position the ZE market as mobility for all, not just the rich (the £90,000 Tesla) or niche (G-Wiz). The first one is the Kangoo ZE which will be available to buy at the end of next year, followed by the Twizy in 2012 which will be a cross between a motorbike and a car with the passenger sitting directly behind the driver in a 1+1 configuration.
Later, the Zoe will be launched, a Clio-sized vehicle, followed by the Fluence, which resembles the Laguna.

Fluence

Kangoo ZE has only a slightly smaller payload than the current Kangoo, and will cost less to run thanks to the fact that there’s practically no moving parts that need to be serviced and the fact that the battery can be leased and will be on a par with the current price of diesel or petrol. The vehicles will come with a sophisticated sat nav that will give directions to the nearest charging station, such as at supermarkets and motorway service stations, and there’s the possibility of charging outside your home to give it a full 8 hour charge.



Kangoo ZE




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0QqKUutROE

All of this sounds like a utopia for the distant future, but it’s not far off and it’s great to be able to see and touch the cars. And in fact, we were then allowed to try the cars out as passengers. Both sleek and white, we certainly turned heads as we glided quietly through central London. And being on the inside was awesome – the car is so incredibly quiet that you can only tell if the engine is switched on by looking at the dashboard. In fact, it’s so silent, that by law, Renault will be obliged to add an artificial sound through a speaker when the car is travelling less than 20mph to warn pedestrians – my hopes that this would be a dog barking are unlikely to be taken up....Unlike a conventionally powered car, the torque is instant so we accelerated much more quickly and smoothly. I’m in!

Monday

New thing was the World Deli!

Sunday

A beautiful walk up to Combe Gibbet to walk off my ale consumption from yesterday and to marvel at the beautiful view. The gibbet has been here for more than 300 years, so it's a bit chilling to stand underneath it admiring the view when people would have been hanged here, the idea being that their hanging corpses could be seen from several counties. Shame then, that someone decided it would be appropriate to draw a graphic cartoon on it.

Saturday

New thing was seeing a great band called the Screenbeats at the Newbury Real Ale Festival (as well as trying 119 new beers and 30 new types of cider!) Hic!

Friday

Subway in Amersham after a meeting.

Thursday

Dinner with Mr Sthg New's family so hitherto unexplored parts of Wootton Bassett were today's new thing...

Wednesday

New thing today was going to the Indian restaurant at New Greenham Arts for a quick beer after the Greenham Common Trust annual event which was a superb showcase of what the Trust has achieved this year and a chance for local organisations to show how they’d been helped by the Trust. They were talks from local charities, and three very entertaining performances by a local band that had been helped out, a primary school choir and a silver band. As many people said during the evening, there’s nothing like the Greenham Common Trust and we’re very lucky to have it in our area; it’s handed out £13m since it was founded in 1997 and has helped charities, local organisations and is also the largest funder of local arts (wonder if they'll pay for me to see Muse at Wembley?)

Tuesday

New thing today was watching the Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a film from 1948, directed by John Huston.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQyqvFVe4Y4

Monday

Why I am so tired? My new thing was quite lame as a result; a crayfish and mango sandwich. Very spicy!

Sunday

Oooh, we're getting close to midnight so quick, I'll have a packet of Waitrose "pepper shock" crisps!

Saturday

More shopping today, much to my chagrin. Reading this time, where once again, after spending all of my mortgage and grocery money (and not just on wedding stuff - I was in the mood to buy baby stuff for a forthcoming birth and I thought this mood might not return, so bought £100s worth of tiny things!), I had to visit the public house - this time one called Bills Produce Store. What a great place - lovely beer and really enthusiastic and genuine staff. Then, back home where we watched Wallace and Grommit in Curse of the Were Rabbit. I know I've said this before, but it's worth repeating; Wallace reminds me of Ed Miliband. Anyway. Then to meet my lovely friend for a meal because she was the only person who thought I should have a hen do! However, before we took off for the meal, there was a FREE performance in town, a brilliant play based on William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience and Robert Browning's Porphyria's Lover, involving fireworks, violins (yay), stilts and a giant wagon. Striking and imaginative, it was great, but a little dark, and the most disturbing thing for me was not the people shouting down their mobiles during the most important moments, but how the crowd turned into a braying mob chanting and demanding an execution, which I found utterly terrifying! We're very lucky in Newbury to have this kind of thing put on for free. And I mean free, not paid for by council tax. Then back to the Art of Siam, which is a beautiful restaurant with lovely staff and nice food, for a lovely catch up with said friend who really made my day. She is a superstar.

Friday

Centrepieces! Why are they so expensive?? I am looking for cheaper ways of buying 10 of whatever it is that will be in the middle of each table, so had a look round the garden centre to see if we could get something unusual, useful and not too expensive. My first idea was to have goldfish in a bowl on each table, but my dad put forward an objection, based on the fact that the glass might get smashed during the obligatory fight.....
For what it's worth, I've been thinking back to the last few weddings I've been to and I cannot remember for the life of me what any of the centrepieces looked like.

Thursday

Today, Mr SthgNew and I went to the hotel that will be hosting our wedding reception and we sampled the menu to help us choose our main courses. MrSthgNew was in his element here sampling wine, lamb, chicken, while he put me in charge of "vegetarian and desserts". He was fully entitled to give me the duff end of the project though as I am such an idiot that I didn't even enter the hotel correctly, getting stuck in the revolving door and having to be rescued. At least I did this now and not on the wedding day...

Tuesday

We went for a lovely walk along the canal and we found an exciting shortcut to get us home (negating the point of the walk, but... you know....).

Monday

I need a very small font for this as it's so lame. Gu flapjacks. A WHOLE PACKET!

Sunday

New thing today was a bracing and windy walk along the Ridgeway (the wind coming from Mr SthgNew and the braces worn by me.....maybe), before a quick pint at the Harrow watching the lovely English scene in front of us, consisting of lovely downland and a cricket match.

Saturday

New thing today was trekking around Oxford. Mr SthgNew and I aren't big fans of shopping, but we needed to sort some things out for our forthcoming nuptials. Just small details such as rings, groom's outfit, best men's suits and flowers. Nothing important. I picked up a packet of Haribo to satisfy our first requirement, but Mr SthgNew was having none of it and made me visit every jeweller in the city. This was then rewarded with a couple of pints in Oxford's hostelries which is the kind of new thing I like.....

Monday-Friday

It's funny, isn't it? When you work, work, work, you don't get tired. However, truly relaxing at the festie last weekend has knocked me for six and I've struggled to find any energy. This is my disclaimer for the boring new things that follow this week!

The week's new thing inlcuded a chemist in Newbury, a road in Eddington, a new type of biscuit, and watching In Bruges (this one was the least boring, I thoroughly enjoyed this film and thought the two main characters were awesome, although Mr SthgNew insists that's because I have an affinity with Irish actors!).