SpaCeMonKeY UK

Tuesday, March 24

I managed to get Rob to eat Quorn again last night. I tell him that it is the meat from the Quornimal. In my mind this is a sort of dog-sized version of Highland Cattle but with the horn of a unicorn. I'm not really sure how that fits together. ;)

(Rob doesn't like vegetables. Meals without meat are not a hit...)

Sunday, March 22

I hadn't realised that James had started a blog war with me! I should have been blogging more - what if he catches me up? Not that I know how far behind me he is... oh no!

I haven't done a lot the last couple of weeks, since we've been looking after Ali's dog Rex while she was away. This resulted in the following sort of routine:

6.45 Get up, eat breakfast, get dressed, drink coffee.
7.10 Go to Rex's house and take him for a quick walk round the park.
7.50 Catch bus to work.
8.30 Start work.
4.10 Finish work, catch bus home.
5.00 Go to Rex's house and take him for a walk, sometimes waiting for Rob and sometimes going by myself. This part of the day also included watching Neighbours, which is clearly very important.
8.00 Eat dinner, with Rex lying on the sofa keeping watch in case there happened to be extra food we needed to get rid of. Then watch TV and stuff with Rex occasionally pestering us to play with him.
10.00 Go back to our own house, make packed lunch for the next day, go to bed with a lovely mug of hot chocolate...

So that's pretty much what we did for two weeks. It was fun spending more time with him, though when you have a dog your life kind of has to revolve around them. So we didn't go to see Watchmen, which I would like to do. Maybe we'll get round to it now we're not dog sitting.

Apart from that, hum, what have I done? I can't think really. Spent a fun afternoon with Ali, mostly in town looking at books and CDs and things, though there was some wedding dress related research as well. I suspect there may be more such things in my immediate future. ;)

Sunday, March 8

I didn't notice last time I posted, but I have posted 600 blog posts! This is the 601st. I kept meaning to write about my weekend in Wales (last weekend), so I will put a few things down now before I forget...

Friday morning we set off for Pennant, in Wales. Although this looks like an English word, 'Pen' means 'top' and 'Nant' means 'stream'. So presumably it's the top of the stream, rather than being a top stream in the 'really good' sense. We arrived at The Old Kiln and had a drink. The place was good, very smart. It had underfloor heating and everything!

We then decided to go to a nearby town to get some milk. This was at about 4.30 in the afternoon. Unfortunately, we managed to have a sidewall explosion on the front left tyre on our mini, and ended up stuck in the middle of nowhere! New Minis don't come with a spare wheel as standard, you see - they come with a foam inflating kit. Which is no good if most of your tyre is no longer there. D'oh! The good news was that it was one of the few places in Wales we had a mobile phone signal. The bad news was we didn't know who to call to help us. So in the end we phoned the RAC and joined up, after which (for an extra charge) they did all they could to find a tyre and help us.

We were stuck there for some time. But an amazing thing happened - a nice lady had driven past us a couple of times, the second time stopping to see if she could help. Then she came back a third time, bringing supplies to make tea or coffee. She made proper tea, in a teapot, by the roadside. And she gave us jam tarts she'd made that afternoon. It was the best cup of tea I'd ever had...

Eventually we managed to get back to our holiday home, with some milk, and had dinner. Hooray! The next day was a bit less eventful. On Saturday we went to The Centre for Alternative Technology, which wasn't as good as I'd hoped it would be. It had a sort of hippy feel to it - I'd hoped it would be useful for 'normal' people. Rob didn't want to eat there, since it was all vegetarian, so we went back into Machynlleth to get some lunch. Then we went to Ynis-hir nature reserve.

The nature reserve was somewhere else something fairly unlikely (like the tea/jam tart lady) happened. The lady there asked if we'd like to join the RSPB, so we did. When Rob filled in the form she noticed where we'd come from. She was born in Leicester and lived on our road for many years, before going to uni in Aberystwyth and ending up in Wales. I thought that was a fairly unlikely event, really!

On Sunday we went to Hafod, which was fascinating. Everywhere was picturesque - mossy with streams and interesting rock formations. We walked a lot, it was tiring since we're not used to hills. We made it to the Cascade Caverns, which were well worth the walk. Probably the best waterfall I've ever seen. You have to go through a tunnel in the rock to get to it.

Monday was our last day, so we packed everything up then went to Lake Vyrnwy, which is another RSPB nature reserve. After another walk to a waterfall, we went to a tea room and had a Welsh Cream Tea (basically a scone, cream, jam and tea, as you'd expect, with two Welsh cakes and some Bara Brith). Yum... Then we set off home...

So that was it. It was a lovely weekend (though the tyre adventure added expense); it would have been nice to stay longer. I have put some photos on Facebook, if anyone wants to see them. :)