Norfolk

Last weekend, the Wife and I wandered off up to Norfolk to stay at her Nan's for a couple of days. A two fold purpose: firstly, a bit of relaxation after stresses of a years worth of lesson plans and trying to sort completely chaotic classrooms (and that's before the kids get there); and to unite with a sizeable faction of the Johnson family for Anne's 40th birthday. Bec apologises, she meant to do this update but never got the chance. I'm on nights tomorrow so am up late to break myself in........

Anyway, photos:

Cromer: When near the coast, it is rude not to visit a fish and chip shop, as evidenced by cousin Christina below

There are beaches (although forget going in the water, it is the north sea). Oh and there is no photo of the kite flying as we never quite persuaded it to......

Over in the Queens Back Garden (Nearly) on the Sandringham Estate, Kings Lynn, playing what could be roughly described as football. Thats "Soccer" to any confused Americanians.

Source of much entertainment was a trampoline in Anne & Chris's back garden, which kept a succession of kids small and not so small entertained for some time....

Stag!

Realised I never put on any pictures from my stag do.... blimey was ages ago now.

Anyway yes paintballing is great fun. Kind of.

It is less fun when you are the Stag and the final "game" is you run across the field while everyone fires as many paintballs as their trigger finger allows at you.

Thankfully, most people there weren't particularly good shots (mind you, I was not exactly standing still and presenting an easy target) and so I got off with only a few (dozen) bruises:

A nice little line down my back

And several all over the place on my front! The people on my right had the better aim it would seem. Still, I wasn't the only one with bruises. Enter Stew:

And as now seems to be tradition, Jon got hit in the neck. He needs to grow his beard even more next time to protect himself I reckon....

Stew Stag Do

Bit of a busy weekend. I went to Steve H's (friend from Uni) wedding on Saturday. Below be Steve, with new wife Jo, after the service. His facial muscles haven't yet got too tired to stop working!

I got completely stuffed by the M25 on the way there. Should've taken 1hr max, but it took over 2 1/2 hrs. This meant I missed the majority of the service. Grrr.

Afterwards, I went off to Lesser Nowhere, Suffolk, to meet up with Stew The Ex-Flatmate, Jon the Essex Beast and a load of slightly deranged Southampton Graduates (I tell you, there's something in the water down there) who either lived with Jon & Stew in the SouthamptusUnivus Era or spent most of their time there. One of the many strange practices I heard occured during that time was that it was commonplace to greet a visitor with the sight of bared buttcheeks. Just Plain Wrong.

I got there on time on Saturday (it took less time to drive 130 miles there, than the 50 miles in the morning) to meet the boys in a local hostelry with their stomachs bursting out of their trousers. I was there in sufficient time to partake in a beverage or two....

On the Sunday, we went somewhere I never thought I'd go to: the local golf club. Just to prove I did go, here's the proof:

After a particularly hard set of 9 holes (My first hole set the tone for my day: 14 shots! Heh I did get better though) it was time for refreshments:

The hardcore golfers stayed out for the back 9 whilst Jon, Dan and myself slinked back to the house to drink tea and watch DVD's.

Once the others were back though, it was game on for a little football match in the back garden. Stew, being the Stag, was required to wear cricket pads for the match. Also spot the Big Gay Pink house.....

This was hot work and Supersoakers were called into action. This jon just after his soaking. I don't quite know why he has that expression. All that hair, I'm sure no water ever touched his skin.

It was then barbecue time, courtesy Chief Firemaster& Chef Dan. Added to the logs on the fire was what may be a legend in the making: the Croquet Mallet Ashes. The ever-so-slightly competitive chaps bust the mallet in a "friendly" game prior to my arrival.

I will hopefully add more photos in due course. Blogger is completely pants at uploading photos (5 mins per photo, I reckon) and I've lost patience for the moment! Well, I've run out of things to go on about and so I'm just sat here waiting for the stupid thing.

Bits n bobs

A few updates.... things continue to be completely hectic at Residence du JR. I have lost count of how many times I've been to the dump... sorry, household recycling centre. However, we are slowly getting on top of things. All the new kitchen stuff has been installed and the old removed, the bedroom looks like a bedroom albeit one that needs painting. We can actually move in the spare room now without tripping over a hundred boxes!

All credit to Bec, really- she's done most of the legwork. But before I am accused of all manner of things I have a good excuse! I.e. work. 78 hours of it over 6 days. Which meant the times I was home was half an hour in the morning (newlywed or not, I wasn't expecting much of a response from bec at 0510!) and by the time I was home I was pretty much a zombie.

On the crossover between days and nights though, the remaining Colchester Johnsons excepting Gareth came over. We went off for a picnic lunch (well, breakfast for me) at a nearby common, which was rather nice. I then had to go off to work for weekend nights while they all went off for a pub lunch!

Once I was off work- did an extra day on overtime pay, keeping in mind impending Ikea bills- then we could start doing things together again! Aaaaah.

On Wednesday we went off to a nearby Blue Cross Animal Shelter to have a look at a rescue cat by the name of Ash. Unfortunately, Ash is a bit boisterous (likes to hunt, likes to search out other cats and pick fights) and so would have beaten up our elderly cat who lives with our neighbours: Pip is 18 and couldn't really cope with a young Tabby on a mission!

But there will be a cat at some point...... oh and came across these on the way. Not what you expect to see in North Hertfordshire! Zoom in and spot the highland cow

Ex-flatmate Stew's stag do this weekend..... heheheheheheheheheheh now that I'm a veteran of these things should be a laugh! Still waiting for official wedding photos, by the way.

Other bits: links bar to the right has been updated. Spot the new blogs. Mr Borge's is quite interesting. Foodie Partner Crime?????????? What is that boy on.

Honeymoon pics

A bit backward I know but I'll put some honeymoon photos up here first. There is a kinda logic to this as most readers of this were actually at the wedding and so don't need to see any photos! Slightly more problematically I don't have any wedding pics on my PC yet. But anyway:

This here is our private pool (flash huh) looking out down the valley towards Selci Lama...

We visited a number of towns around the area- Arezzo, Cortona, Assisi. On the way to Assisi we drove through the most enormous thunderstorm I have ever encountered. Closest thing I've been to driving in a hurricane- the rain was coming down so hard with such a wind we were crawling along the autostrada at barely 25mph, as any more and the wipers could not keep up. We heard that the storm did a fair amount of damage in Tuscany. Happily, our little hill villa was none the worse for wear.

Thunderstorm the size of the Home Counties apart, we had great weather, excepting last Saturday when we stayed in Montecatini Terme, where the rain caused an interesting reaction as evidenced below.

Most of the time though it was gelates as usual though.... :-)



We got a bit dressed up for dinner at the hotel in Montecatini... isn't she pretty :-)


So all in all a jolly good honeymoon what what. This is us tired and happy on the train home from Gatwick.....



In the meantime, Bec has worked pretty much a miracle in the flat the last two days I've been at work and has sorted out most of the bits and bobs in the spare room. Next stage is to finish opening the wedding prezzies and finally being able to discard the ancient uni crockery that has resided in my cupboards the last 8 years!

I'm on nights the weekend now. This will unfortunately be the pattern of things to come for the time being...... will be somewhat tedious to be coming home from work to go to bed as Bec is getting up.......