The pics are: Dancing with Anh and Flair (knitters) at Club du Fromage, Spiral staircase in City Hall, Me and Richie in the Lake District, and Rachelle and I at her birthday.
The last post was 26th August, and it is now 25th October so I have been a little bit slack - well just too busy doing things to spend time writing about them. It's a lot easier when you are are on holidays!
For the August bank holiday (long weekend)Richie and I went to the LAke District with Rowan in her little car. We stayed at the YHA in Ambleside, right on the edge of Windermere, the biggest lake in England. It was very rainy (usual in those parts). We did a few walks and went to a castle and also visited Beatrix Potter's house and art gallery. Rich went home after the weekend and I stayed a few more days with Rowan. A lovely little break for the end of the Summer.
One weekend, Richie, Rowan, Rachelle and I went to Hever Castle in Kent. It is where the Boleyn Family lived when they weren't at court so Anne Boleyn grew up there. Its a lovely little castle in the counrtyside - nice for some! We collected a bagful of blackberries on the way home and made a lush blackberry and apple crumble.
I went back to school on the 3rd Sept, to find that the building wasn't quite finished. It's a brand new school - possibly designed by a person who has never been in a school before. The kids eventually arrived back on the 14th Sept.
Just before the kids came back I went to Bestival, on the Isle of Wight. There were 10 of us in the group - the theme of the festival was Outer space so there were 40,000 people all dressed up in spacey costumes, aliens, spacemen, etc. It was a really fun weekend, saw some great music - faves were VV Brown, and The Klaxons and Elbow.
The following weekend Rowan and I went to see Coldplay at Wembly Stadium. They were AWESOME. The stadium is huge - we were about a trillion miles away from the stage but once they got going it didn't matter much.
The next night was my 30th birthday party - Rowan and I combined forces and had a party in a pub in Angel. It was lots of fun, and we went to Club du Fromage for cheesy dancing afterwards. The best kind of night. The following day we met up with all my family (Al, Val, Bruce, Claire) and visited a load of Open houses in London. One weekend a year a load of building open up that you normally can't go into. We went to the top of City hall, a fantastic building on the South Bank of the Thames, near us. It looks like a motorbike helmet from the outside and has crazy spiral staircases all the way up. (see pic)
Then Rachelle had her 30th at Tigertiger at Picadilly Circus, so - more dancing! Bruce had his birthday in a pub and we spent the day with my family which was really nice. Alex my brother left for his round the world trip - he's in India right now I think, but he should be back in London in May ish.
Richie's Aunt and Uncle came to London for a visit and we went out for tea with them - was lovely to catch up with people form home.
We were OFSTED inspected at school - that is like ERO in NZ. They only give 2 days notice here and you don't know if or when they might walk into your room. Its quite a stressful process but it seemed to go well and to be honest I like that you can only get stressed for a couple of days before and not a whole term like in NZ.
Richie and I went to see Wicked the Musical - it was really good. Am looking forward to seeing more west end musicals.
Knitting club is going strong although we sometimes go to the pub instead of knitting.
Richie is well and we are looking forward to going to Italy straight after Xmas - we will fly to Venice and then go to Rome on the train for New Years.
I will sign off now that I have updated it all. I am sure that I missed out loads, since we have hardly been in to do the blog.
Hope all is well in your part of the world.
Steph
