Christmas tree festival with Annie

We were so lucky to get to have cousin Annie come and visit us for about 24 hours this weekend! She arrived on Sunday morning and reunited at Waitrose in Haywards Heath in the bakery aisle. So exciting! Then she came home with me and we hung around the house until mid afternoon when she joined Rhodri and I at the first annual Christmas Tree Festival in Danehill. This was a weekend long festival that we managed to catch the final hour of, and it was a display of Christmas trees inside the church, with each tree having been assembled and decorated by a particular club/ group in the community. Such a cool idea!

The badminton club had spray-painted shuttlecocks to be silver or gold and turned those into tree ornaments, the karate club had made little reindeer doing flying kicks as ornaments, the Parish Council had decorated a ladder with tinsel and put photos of the council members on it, including our own Chairmen Lewis who adorned the top.

The grand masterpiece was a tree that was 100% made of hand knitted green squares by various members of the community.  All of the 'tinsel' and ornaments were also hand-knitted - amazing.  As we walked around admiring the festival entries, we were offered glasses of mulled wine and then invited to partake in the snack table which had mince pies and other baked goods. We gladly made a donation to the money pot and helped ourselves!

All of the proceeds and donations for the event would go to the charity 'Off the Fence', which is the local Brighton-based Christian charity for resisting poverty.  The green squares of the Christmas tree would be knitted into blankets.  I hope it goes again next year. Its a lovely idea.

Company Christmas party

For the first time in 5 years, my employer decided to host a Christmas party. Prior to that, there had been an annual party but I never attended and neither did Rhodri (this was due to a bit of bad feeling about him being laid off and also the fact that I was rather unsocial at work and so had not many friends!). But this year, it was game on! I have been making a bigger effort at being social, and now I actually do have friends at work since I play soccer/ football at lunchtime every couple of weeks or so. Anyway, this year we went and the theme was 'Rio Carnival'.  Last weekend when I was taking Tryfan and his mates to the cinema, I went shopping and found The Dress that I would wear to this event. I've been a bit excited about wearing this dress because it is soooo green and fancy!

Anyway, the event was fine, and even fun. 

Rhodri was fairly well behaved and we both had a good time.

The Rio Carnival part of the evening was quite well done because there were random displays of acrobatics and dancing by some proper performers from time to time throughout the evening, and they were great!

Forest walks and other highlights

This has been a low key weekend, but in a nice way. Rhiannon has been working for some of the neighbors as a follow up to last weekend's flyer distribution (!!), and Tryfs has been helping this weekend to finish the distribution.

Since we've had Winnie for the past week or so, we've been able to go on some nice daily walks or runs with her. In fact, Rhodri and I went by ourselves today and it was quite nice to just walk and talk! Winnie made friends with other dogs and ran around in her cute way.  Too bad Sioned is coming back today to pick her up. Wish they lived closer, but actually we do get to see them relatively often, so we are grateful for that.


Then today at rugby, Tryfan won Player of the Month. Look how cute he is next to the big poster of the raisins!

Boys will be boys

Look at these two crazy boys
They need haircuts!

A new campaign on a dark and rainy night

Rhiannon has signed up to go on a month long volunteer expedition to Ecuador in summer 2021.  A long way off, yes, but she needs to raise £4550 in order to go on it.
Although she and Sophie have been running the football cafe on a Saturday morning, it isn't enough to get that sort of capital so now she has produced a flyer which she started distributing today.

Rhodri had a client round the house in the afternoon (was supposed to be 2-5 pm) so it was convenient for us to be out of the house and this seemed like a good chance to go door-to-door.  I hid in the bushes with Winnie while Rhiannon went up and rang the doorbell to speak about her expedition and offer the flyer.

Here she is approaching the first house, preparing her spiel as she walks.

 It soon started raining and got quite dark, and by the time we got to the Coach & Horses pub at 5:30 pm, it was pitch black and heavily raining. Pretty much the worse-case scenario for going door-to-door distributing flyers! And then the pub wasn't even serving food until 6:30, so we just had snacks and a drink and talked to some neighbors we saw there.

Rhodri was supposed to come join us, but his client was still at our house so we gave up and walked home around 6:30. The client didn't actually leave until 9:30 pm!! Crazy. Rhi and I had a very nice snuggly time laying in my bed and watching Netflix together, popping downstairs to get snacks and squirrel them away back upstairs. It was a really great evening actually. And before the end of the night, she already had received a job from someone who saw the flyer - result!

Birthday excuse

This year I decided to invite some ladies from the village to join me at an evening exercise class called Swoove Ignite. This is basically a sing-a-long zumba class with easier dance moves, and every now and then you make big whoooooping sounds. Its so ridiculous and fun!

 There were 10 of us altogether, and we stopped at the Sloop pub on the way back home.

We all vowed to get together and do some swooving and slooping more often, especially in these dark and cold months when one needs a bit of a nudge to get out and do something fun.

Nethercott Manor

As part of my birthday present this year, we went as a family to the Escape Rooms at Tulley's Farm and attempted the Nethercott Manor room. None of us had ever done one of these before, but we had a really great time. We did not manage to escape, though!

Afterwards we went out for dinner at Tarana in Turners Hill, which I drive past nearly every day and have always wanted to stop at! It was great since it wasn't too crowded (being a Sunday night) and they had a buffet on which was very reasonably priced. Win win!  A great way to end the weekend / start my birthday week. 

Beautiful view

Some mornings are just so beautiful, especially when there is a cloud inversion across the valley.

Pune!

I left on Monday morning (Nov 4th) to go to Pune India for the week. It was a long way to go for just a few days, but I guess it was worthwhile.

 I was traveling with my colleagues Suha and Alex. This photo I took of them was more for the purpose of capturing the scene in the background, where two men were posing with a mural of a fairy and a butterfly. It was a bit strange.

At least I got to see my old friend Anand on my last day there before catching my flight home. In fact, we also took time to walk past and even visit the bookshop of the Osho Meditation Centre https://www.osho.com/. This would only really be interesting for any of you readers who has watched the documentary mini-series Wild Wild Country...

Anyway, I had a long but ok flight home.  When I arrived home this morning at 7:45, everyone was still asleep and I didn't have a key! I had to knock on the door until someone woke up to come let me in. But how nice to get straight into bed and snuggle on a Sunday morning!

The scene back home while we were away

Auntie Sions and Winnie had a great time with the troops while Rhods and I were away.

Salisbury

After our big night last night, we got up early this morning to have breakfast and then find a pub to watch the Rugby World Cup final match of England v South Africa. It was pouring rain as we set out, but we were able to find a nice pub and find a place to sit.

Of course nearly the whole pub was supporting England, except for a lone (and loud!) Scotsman and us. England didn't play very well at all and South Africa won in the end. It was a memorable way to start the day.

After the game the sun had come out and we walked over to Salisbury Cathedral.

We went on a tour which was outstanding, and then we had a bite to eat in the beautiful cafe.

We drove back on Sunday morning after going on a little walk around Old Sarum, the site of the first Salisbury Cathedral. These photos don't do it justice, but it was just stunning colors and light this morning.

An exciting send off event

Rhodri and I went to Salisbury today in our new car!

We were invited to attend Wendy Searle's send off event as she prepares to go for the world record of female unsupported solo crossing of Antarctica. Here is an article about the event...
https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/18006232.wendy-searles-record-breaking-solo-race-across-antarctic/
and here is another one.. https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/50262980

Wendy is leaving next week to start her adventure, which will be updated here: 
https://southpole2020.com/

I was so happy to see my long lost friend Polly at this event! We went to the pub nearby afterwards and even got to see ourselves on the 10:00 news on BBC as the BBC South edition covered the event as well. 

Halloween 2019

Today was by far our most low-key Halloween ever.
In fact, it was so low-key that I didn't even take any photos!
By the time I got home from work, Tryfs and Oscar had set out on foot to go trick-or-treating round the hood, with the same exact costumes they have been wearing for the past 5 years in a row.
Rhiannon and I quickly carved some pumpkins in a fairly slap-dash sort of way, and then put them out on the driveway to entice kids. In the end, hardly anyone came to the door and it was all a sort of non-event. Oh well. 

A long lost friend reunited

Our old friend and colleague John was in town this week and we managed to reunite with him for dinner on this rainy Saturday night. We picked him up from the Haywards Heath train station and then went to the Witch Inn for dinner.

We had pretty good food and a very enjoyable evening all around!
Then we dropped John back at the train station and headed home.

Chessington - Take 2

We've been here once before, on Easter Sunday, in what was a very long, hot, mainly unpleasant day. That particular day Emma complained and managed to get us all free tickets to return before November, and this was the day we chose! As it happens, today was an inset day for school, so it was perfect for skiving off at Chessington.

Although it was more crowded than we expected, we still had a good time. This is what Tryfan wanted to do for his birthday rather than having a party, so I bought Fast Track tickets for all 6 of us as a birthday present.

 It was a pretty fun day, actually, although it was reaaallly nice to get back into the car to drive home. And now it is the start of half term and the weekend as well! Good times all around.

Tryfan turns 12

Our little Tryfs has turned another year older and is now 12 years old!

And then in contrast I found this photo from nearly 8 years ago

We watched rugby in the morning (two games, back to back) and then Tryfan set up his new Playstation 4 with Rhodri while Rhiannon and I went to look after Tee for a couple of hours.

We went out to Chiquito's for dinner, then home to watch a movie and have some cake.

And so, at 12 years old, our Tryfan is...

- Considerate

- Helpful

- Big into reading

- Good at sports

- Forgetful (always leaving his stuff behind... its not a good thing)

- Loves playing video games (although his time allowed to play is very limited and quite often he gets banned)

- A good kid all around

- Good company in general and we love him

A new lampshade

Meanwhile, I've been working on a new lampshade.
We had a disastrous first attempt at this but now this one does have a beautiful stained glass effect on the ceiling.  It is made with string and a balloon, and the little squares of Quality Street chocolate cellophane wrappers.

Stable boots

Here is Rhiannon showing off her new stable boots while she prepares to do some poo picking in the field with Tee. Lou and I went for a walk in the forest and called by to visit her.  It was a beautiful Sunday morning and such a pleasure to walk over the forest with my dear friend Lou.

Crawley Town FC

In a bit of a spontaneous arrangement, Tryfs and I joined Cat and Bruno to watch the Crawley Town Football Club play against Colchester. At halftime Crawley was down 0-1 and then they came back to win 2-1, scoring 2 beautiful goals that were just so exciting to watch. In this day and age of digitized media, instant replay, slow motion, etc, it is refreshing and so fun to be in the moment with none of that. If you are not watching the game, you've missed the beautiful play and its never coming back. This afternoon was rainy and windy with mild temps, although it does feel quite chilly after just sitting there.
What I especially love are the chants that each time has about specific players, like "We've got Morris in our goal" to the tune of "Whole world in His hands". It just makes me laugh, and its so funny to shout and chant along with my friend Cat and our boys.  We had to scoot home straight afterwards, though now I can't remember why...
In the meantime, Rhodri and Rhiannon had been shopping to buy some stable boots for her to use while she is looking after Tee.

Friday nights and beyond

Since the start of school in September, we have had a sort of 'normal' start to the weekend where Sophie and Oscar come over to have dinner and stay the night. Then in the morning, Sophie and Rhiannon cook bacon to then sell as 'bacon butties' at the Football Cafe in Forest Row.

They all look pretty cute lined up at the breakfast bar, eating pizza and being cheeky.

Mornings with my girl

During the week, Rhiannon and I are the first to wake up and start the day. 

I treasure these brief morning moments, even though we are often both a bit grouchy and ruffled. We shared a beautiful sunrise together today. 

A week in Paris

This past week I've been in Paris for work.
The week started on Sunday evening when I drove Michel to the airport. We had flights at the same time, so we got to hang out and reflect on the weekend before saying goodbye.






I had a late night arrival into Paris, then an hour drive to Melun. Monday through Wednesday were spent there in Melun, then on Thursday morning the group of 3 of us traveled into Paris city center to spent the remainder of the week.

It was a beautiful autumnal stretch of days.

One of the highlights was seeing Flo for dinner on Thursday night

Today (Friday) I left the office late afternoon but not before a team field trip up to the top floor of our office building where there is a nice terrace with a view of the Eiffel Tower. It was really nice to arrive home this evening. In fact, Rhodri ended up going into London tonight to meet some friends, so I got to just drive the car home myself from the train station. That was handy. And now its the weekend!