Chocolate chip & raisin flapjacks

Chocolate chip & raisin flapjacks
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

I decided to make flapjacks the other day, and I think they turned out rather well, so I thought I'd share the recipe!

Preparation time less than 30 mins
Cooking time 15 mins

Ingredients:

150g butter
150g demerara sugar
150g golden syrup
300g porridge oats
1 handful of raisins
1 handful of chocolate chips

Method:

1. Put the butter, sugar and golden syrup in a saucepan and heat, stirring occasionally, until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved. Add the oats, raisins and choc chips and mix well.
2. Transfer the oat mixture to the prepared cake tin and spread to about 2cm thick. Smooth the surface with the back of a spoon. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C/350F/Gas 4 for 15 minutes, until lightly golden around the edges, but still slightly soft in the middle. Let cool in the tin, then turn out and cut into squares.

Sushi Art =)

Mustard plant

Mustard plant
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

If you have ever wondered what a grown up mustard seed looks like.. here one is! We planted a whole load of the seedlings in our herb garden a few months ago, and now they are huge flowering mustard plants! I wouldn't recommend eating the leaves though.. they are all hairy and not very appetising! After I spent ages assuring James that they were edible, we both tried a leaf, and both ended up spitting them out! I think maybe it's best eaten like cress when it's only a few days old so it doesn't actually prickle your mouth!

First baby frog

First baby frog
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

Hooray! I spotted our first baby frog emerging from the pond today!

Coincidence.. I think not!

The Sun (25/06/08)
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

The aliens are coming, and they're starting to disarm us.. it starts with the lawnmover blades, next it'll be the forks .. hehe..

It's quite funny actually, the video footage on The Sun's website actually quite reminded me of those khoom fay things we saw in Godstone. It's a shame there were no photos of the one that chased a helicopter in Cardiff though.. that one sounds much more exciting!

Lawnmover crime

Today, I was more than slightly bothered to find that my lawnmover no longer managed to cut the grass. It started up fine, so there was no problem with the power, but it just didn't sound quite right.. somehow quieter.. and when moving it across the grass, it just sort of flattened it, as if it didn't have any blades at all! On closer inspection of the underside, I couldn't believe my eyes.. the blades WERE missing.. all that was left was just the ring which used to hold them. What?! I just don't get it.. I haven't removed the lawnmover blades, James hasn't removed the lawnmover blades, I seriously doubt any of our guests have felt the need to remove them.. so where have they gone in the space of time between the last time I cut the grass at the beginning of May and now? What makes it even stanger is that I checked with Stuart that it was supposed to have plastic blades, and that I wasn't just being stupid, and he told me that not only was it supposed to have plastic blades, there was also a spare set in the lawnmover box in the shed. Was being the operative word. Two pairs of missing lawnmover blades now. I can only think that someone, for some unknown reason, has got into our garden and nicked our blades! Why? I do not know.

By the way.. Happy Summer!

Petunia 'cherry ripple'
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

It's quite funny, I was going to take a nice summery picture in the garden to mark the first day of Summer, but it's actually so grim looking outside, I thought I'd just use one I took in May instead.. typical English weather! Ah well, this will not stop the barbeques.. bring out the umbrellas!

Ooh the new Star Trek film teaser trailer is out!

Check it out here! It looks good! Apparently they've now rescheduled the release date from 25/12/08 to May 2009 to increase the potential box office takings, but I'm not so sure.. I don't think Winter releases did Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter much harm!

Yoda Amigurimi

Yoda Amigurimi
Originally uploaded by *elena

I just couldn't let this pass without being blogged.. I think this is the coolest piece of crochet work in the whole world.. I want one!!

avoid contact with brain

avoid contact with brain
Originally uploaded by Avid Maxfan

I love some of the things you find in hospitals. When James was in St George's this last time, I was reading the label on the back of the Hibiscrub soap stuff that they gave him for his bed bath, and noticed this lovely little reminder.. (if you zoom in on this picture I found on flickr, you can just about see it: 'avoid contact with brain'!) Eek!

The Caterham Mirror -a bit slow off the mark!

The Caterham Mirror -a bit slow off the mark!
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

Oh dear, I can't believe it took the Caterham Mirror this long to work out that those fire lanterns weren't UFOs! It would only have taken a quick google to find out! ;-S

Khoom Fay over Godstone green

Khoom Fay over Godstone green
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

Driving back home through Godstone this evening, we were quite bemused and slightly concerned to be greeted by a giant, red, fire filled lantern, floating (unattended) about double-house-height above the green.. when we stopped off to fill up with petrol at the garage, we noticed a whole line of the things hovering over the village! We grabbed a photo as we headed towards Oxted and saw yet more of them rising up from one of the fields! After a little investigation, it seems they are Khoom Fay, Thai fire lanterns.. used as an alternative to fireworks for special occasions. They did look very pretty, but I am very glad that the wind was blowing them away from our house!

20/07/07 Flooding in Dorking

It kept raining and raining in Dorking on Friday! I took a peek out of the window of the office, and started to wonder if I should be building an ark..

Fire on the prairie! (well, Station Road West actually)

It turned out that the fire engines in Croydon were not the last we were to see yesterday. At about half past 10, we decided to grab a spot of supper at the Oxted Inn, little did we know that they stop serving at 10. What an outrage, lol. We were just walking down to the bank on Station Road West, past the clothes shop 'Personality', when James noticed smoke rising off one of the shoes in the window! They had placed the said item right on top of one of those large high wattage spotlights that always get left on after closing time. It had obviously been just too much for the shoe to handle, and it looked to us as though the thing was ready to catch properly alight. We were a little hesitant about phoning up 999 at first, as it wasn't as if it was a huge blaze or anything.. James kept saying.. "well, it's not actually an emergency", lol. But sure enough, in about 5 minutes, up turned two whole fire engines, and about 15 firemen! We wondered if they were going to have to bash the door down or something so get in, but it seems they have a special high-tech bit of kit for this very purpose! A pole. Through the letter box it went.. and there started a kind of fishing game. It look them about 20 minutes to hook the pole under the shoe, and knock it to safety. It was quite interesting to watch! One thing I did find surprising though, was that they didn't have an emergency contact number for the owner of the shop. I would have thought it might be a good idea for the emergency services to have access to that kind of information, especially if this kind of thing happens quite often! But as it was, they were looking around all of the neighbouring shop fronts for out of hours contact numbers -not ideal really!

Ants and storms..

Sorry I haven't written here for a while, I have been pretty busy with one thing or another..

I couldn't quite let yesterday pass without comment though. It seems to me that the weather is getting very strange. Yesterday we decided to go over to Croydon to choose me my free phone upgrade from the O2 shop, and no sooner had we stepped out of East Croydon station, we were in the midst of a plague of what looked like flying ants, but a bit larger. They were everywhere! People were power walking down the street, waving their arms, and squinting in a vain attempt to keep these beasties out of their eyes and clothes.. people running into shops for cover.. I've actually never seen so many of the things, or so large. We darted into a shop as soon as we could, and already we were covered in the things, and had to brush them off our clothes.

This swarm literally filled the whole of George Street which runs from the station down into the town centre, and North End, the main shopping street. I'm not sure if it stretched any further, as we didn't venture that far, strangely.

Anyway, we finally made it to the O2 shop, and just as I had selected the phone I wanted.. the flash downpour started. Bear in mind that we had just left home wearing summer tshirts and sunglasses. It was a warm Summer's day. And then ~crack~, thunder right above us, and a simultaneous flash of lightening.. and again, sounding like it hit something just down the high street this time. Then the heavy rain came.. and the high street was suddenly deserted, save for the groups of people huddled at the shop entrances, looking out in dismay. Within about a minute the whole street was awash, and then, about as quickly, the storm was gone and the blue sky returned.. along with two fire engines. It seems that the lightening did in fact hit something down the high street, somewhere in between the Whitgift Centre and Centrale, but we couldn't make out what.

What I find wierd about these storms that we keep getting, is that the seem to come with no warning. It's just like.. wham! You're in the middle of a thunder storm, in the space of time it takes to walk from one shop to another. I don't know how they move in so quickly. I'd be interested to see a satellite image of one of these things..

As we walked back to the station, I wondered where all of the flying ants had gone.. and then I looked to the ground, and I saw. What a stupid time to take your nuptial swarming flight. They won't be doing that again!

My Little Trojan Pony

My Little Trojan Pony
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog.

Wow this pony took a long time, I don't even want to think about how long ago I started this one! Anyway, it is now complete.. My Little Trojan Pony.. (ooh check out the magnetic foot btw.. lol.. I don't know why they give them all one magnetic foot!)

Ferry to Calais

Ferry to Calais
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog.

We took an evening ferry to Calais on Easter Sunday, and began our drive south. Before we set off, James popped into Halfords to check the list of things that you are supposed to have in your car when you're driving in France -warning triangle, reflective jacket, spare headlight bulbs.. although we bought everything, we didn't actually realise the significance of the last one until the sun went down, and we were travelling along a toll road in the dark. No cats eyes. In addition to this, there were no street lights! At one point James turned off the headlights to see what it would be like if the bulb went.. scary is the answer! Pitch black complete darkness! It's funny, you would have thought there would be no shortage of that sort of thing on roads that you have to pay to travel on, but hey, I am not complaining.. we had the whole road to ourselves almost all the way to Reims, and there was not a single pot-hole in the road!

Oui, bonjour

Paris, France
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog.

So a couple of weeks ago, we decided on a whim to take another little tour. Last time we did a mad dash around the UK, but this time we thought we would head a tiny bit further, and take our small pug back to its homeland.

Armed with our invaluable French phrase book, (it is always a bad sign when you can only say 'J'ai onze ans'), we jumped on a ferry and headed to the south of France.

Saturn

Saturn
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog.

I spotted this out of the window last night at around 9pm. Never seen anything so bright like that, apart from perhaps one of Mohammed Al Fayed's helicopters! We watched it for about half an hour, and it didn't seem to move. We also had a peek through the telescope, and it appeared to me to be rainbow coloured, although James says it was just green. With a little investigation, it seems likely that this is Saturn.

First view over downtown Manhatten

View from the top of the Rockefeller centre
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog.

This was the view over Manhatten that greeted us from the 'Top of the Rock', the observation deck on the roof of the Rockefeller Center. If you look towards the top right of the picture, you will see the Hudson river, and a very tiny Statue of Liberty! If you check this out on flickr, you will be able to zoom in a bit more!

New York: Hudson River Harbour frozen

New York: Ferry port near Battery Park
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog.

On our first day in New York, after landing at JFK, grabbing a taxi minibus to our hotel, which was in fact an amazing sightseeing tour in itself, dropping off our bags, and jumping straight onto the subway at 110th Street, we decided to head straight off down to the Statue of Liberty. For some reason, the Statue seems like the good and proper thing to see first.. the icon of America that has welcomed immigrants, and visitors, since 1886. In fact, I think the best way to arrive in Manhatten, would be by ferry from New Jersey. [Maybe they do that if you arrive at Newark airport, who knows..] It would be awesome to have that grand NY skyline arrival, but without the epic ocean voyage from Europe first -the flight was long enough!

After a brief stop off at the Rockefeller Center at 51st Street, where we spied the Statue from the 70th floor observation deck(!), we jumped back on the subway down to Ground Zero, still labelled, and referred to, as the World Trade Center stop. We had been informed by a very nice Eastern European guy, who told us he knew Belfast well, lol, that it was only a short walk from the financial district down to Battery Park.

We were amazed to find the harbour, where the ferries usually depart from, actually frozen over! It was *very* cold though.

New York: Central Park West

New York: Central Park West
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog.

Here's a photo taken from the sidewalk near our hotel to the west of Central Park a few weeks ago, can you believe that snow?! Maybe not as impressive as upstate New York, but really! Never seen anything like that before! I love how New Yorkers just scrape all the snow off the pavement and pile it up in the road, lol.

Star Trek XI update..

here! Paramount Pictures has confirmed the next Star Trek movie will be released on Christmas Day 2008. =)

Kipperfrog & Ninjabathy take Manhatten...

Oops, I just remembered I had this saved from a while back, it's about time I published something!

So, we are back from the land of falling ice! I would call it a minor miracle our plane made it back to London at all after the runway was turned into an ice rink, (all the previous flights cancelled), the safety video on the plane didn't work, the intercom system kept cutting out, the video projector nearly shook off the ceiling when the engines started up, the lunchtime bacon roll was frozen, and to top it off, lol, someone in the departure lounge said they had a "bad feeling" about the flight.. reminded me of that episode of Friends where Phoebe phones up Rachel on the plane and said she has a feeling there was something wrong with the felange, and everyone freaks out and gets off, lol. I always feel it's a bad sign when the pilot announces the wrong destination when you set off, and the air hostess says a prayer and signs herself with a cross during landing. Don't you just love American Airlines!

Anyway, what an awesome place New York is, we really did have the best time! =)

Here's the view towards upper Manhatten from the top of the Rockefeller Centre -what an amazing view over Central park! This is the first thing we saw after arriving in NY and dropping off our bags at the hotel.. needless to say, it was *extremely* cold, I would say this may be the very moment I vowed not to leave the hotel without a hat, gloves and 2 jumpers again!

New York

Ooh my goodness.. look at the weather in New York next week! Better pack our snowsuits!

<- There's a photo of upstate NY already, eek!!

Star Trek convention photos..

I've uploaded my convention photos to flickr.. there are quite a few, so it might be easier to go and check them out there for now!

Eeeeek!

Our neighbours' house, right across the road, has just gone up in smoke!!!! Firemen and police everywhere!

Update: Oxted school had the day off due to anticipated snow problems, so with lots of time on their hands, it seems that a group of them decided to break into our neighbours' garage, for a bit of drinking and smoking fun.. surrounded by stockpiled petrol. So that is how it started. They were spotted running away, apparently. It was lucky for the couple across the road that their son decided to stop by, as he was in the area, and noticed the smoke coming out of the garage.. I only saw what had happened when a siren outside our house jumped me, and I looked out of the window to be greeted with all the billowing smoke! Luckily everyone was fine in the end, and the house looks alright, so all is well.

First snow of the year!!

Borat update.. (Jak się masz?)

Ooh dear.. It looks like I was right about Borat.

"The Villagers Of Glod…
Borat's Kazakhstani village as it appeared in the film was actually a remote Romanian village called Glod. The villagers who appeared in the movie claim to have been paid a mere £3 each by the production, completely unaware that they were about to be portrayed as incestuous primitives. Having gathered the evidence against Cohen, the villagers' attorneys have filed for $30 million in damages. "

Annoying songs..

Do you ever have the sort of day, where you wake up with the most annoying song in your head, and it won't go away until you hear it? Of all the random things, this morning I woke up with the 'Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise' song on repeat in my mind. I wasn't entirely sure if I'd made this song up or not to be honest, it sounded a little unlikely to me, but sure enough when I googled it, there it was. I think it was the Star Trek convention that did it.

In fact, when I listened to the song it made the problem worse, because then I could remember snippets of the lyrics, and eventually I had to look them up. As if this was not bad enough, I happened to mention to James that at least I didn't wake up with that other song stuck in my head... now what was it...

It look me a second, and then I remembered. How could I forget.. Magical Trevor! So now, the song that took me near on 6 months to rid from my brain is back, and is now accompanied by Jean-Luc Picard. Help!

Star Trek 40th Anniversary Convention, Hilton Metropole, London

Yesterday, James and I went to our first Star Trek convention!

We set off at the crack of dawn, on an empty train, save one angry ticket inspector who told James off for feet on seats.. tut tut..

Stopped off in Croydon, and waited for our connecting train up to Victoria..

we couldn't decide whether this was the site of an ex-platform, or if it was the foundations for part of the Croydon regeneration project that they're advertising on the posters.. hmm..

At Victoria we grabbed a bagel and crisps, and then headed straight for the underground, eagerly anticipating carriages full of klingons. Lol, after our careful predictions about who exactly would be accompanying us to the convention, it became apparent as we got closer and closer to Edgeware Road that everyone else was headed elsewhere. We started to wonder if we perhaps had the wrong day, when not even a single pointy eared companion joined us. Mild concern as we departed the train alone.

As it happened, no sooner had we emerged from the station, we saw the Hilton, and a nice reassuring sign telling us that the door wasn't working, and we had to talk through some kind of secret hole in the side of the wall! Actually, it was quite cool. Luckily, when we got inside all the signs for the convention were up, so we merrily wound our way upstairs to the registration desks. We were met with a queue of about 30ish people..

to begin with it looked like it was a no show on the uniform front, although we were quite pleased when we realised the guy in front of us playing on his PDA had a next generation computer theme, including sound effects, hehe! Then, gradually, more people joined us, and the trench coats started to come off..

and by the time we had got our tickets we could see quite a few! <---

(you might need to zoom in to spot them)

This is the view of the foyer at the Hilton, I liked the completely transparent lifts in the centre, they were very posh.

The convention actually took up a couple of floors. The mezzanine level had rooms packed full of merchandise, and minor celebrities (like the crocodile alien that Kirk drops a boulder on); the basement conference centre was taken over for the main programme of the day, namely Q&A sessions with Connor Trinneer, Dominic Keating, and Patrick Stewart, autographs, the sci-fi auction, and various presentations by Richard Arnold.

Happy New Year!! =)

Happy New Year everyone!

New year's resolution -more blog posts lol.

Wow, the London fireworks were awesome, I loved what they did with the London eye, and that crazy boat with fireworks shooting from it! I'm really glad it wasn't my job to drive that thing.

Windsor & Wii

We went over to Windsor this afternoon, following a wii surprise this morning in Kingston. Games had to be bought, so we thought we'd go and see what Windsor had to offer. It's a very nice town, and definitely getting in to the Christmas spirit! We had animatronic reindeer, carol singing butchers, the lot. The Queen's Christmas tree up at the castle was also a rather good effort I think!

Guildford fog

I had the day off today so we decided to brave to cold to go and pick up some new gloves, and do a bit of window shopping in Guildford. As we got further and further from Oxted, the fog descended. By the time we got to Abinger Hammer, we couldn't see much more than 5 metres in front of the car, and by Gomshall we had some kind of black bin bag attached to to the underside of our car, and stinking as it melded itself to something important.. lol, oh well!

Anyway we stopped off at Newlands Corner on the way, for some chips & mayo to warm up, and decided to take a few piccies of the fog! I think it looks sufficiently frosty.

Scary teen slang

Lol. I am starting to think that perhaps I am no longer 'down wit' the youth of today', and 'talkin' da lingo'. I just thought I'd post this funny link that Ruth sent me. It's a BBC quiz on modern teen slang, so you can see how many words you actually recognise. Apparently, according to a study by Lancaster uni, teenagers use just 20 words to comprise a third of their speech. Lol, and I'm quite sure I don't know any of them. (I managed to get 3/10 in that little quiz through pure multiple choice guesswork, is it just me?!)

I was also thinking this earlier in the week when I went up to Barnet again, for the team meeting/all day lunch, and one of my colleagues mentioned that her teenage son referred to his girlfriend, as his 'link'. Now that's a new one on me! Apparently it signifies an 'open' relationship, but the 'link' can only go out with other people that are linked in some kind of network.. it all sounds far too complicated to me!

It's crazy how quickly this new language has developed, it sounds to me a little like a McDonald's menu crossed with Nadsat, the language of Alex and his droogies in Burgess' 'A Clockwork Orange'. Eek, lets just hope the ultraviolence doesn't catch on too, or the jelly moulds come to that.



Here's a quick festive photo I snapped at Victoria, on my way back from London.. if you look really closely you can see a Christmas tree in there! I just thought it looked pretty..

Wow, fame!

This family history stuff is so interesting! Yesterday my uncle happened to mention that he'd been speaking on the phone to a relative of ours, and it came up in conversation that one of her uncles had been a famous art forger. Well, with a bit of investigation, I found him, his name was sitting right there in our family tree, with the profession of 'painter' listed! So it turns out that Tom Keating was my grandfather's cousin! You can read about him on wikipedia, see his work at the Bridgeman Art Library, more images here, and buy his work from the Sygun Museum of Wales Sale of Surplus Items on ebay. Wow, who'da thought we'd have someone famous in our tree. I love that his Dad was a painter/decorator!

Strange thing at Oxted station..

Well, I was going to write about this on Thursday, but we seem to be having terrible trouble with ntl at the moment that's making the Internet soo slow/uncooperative! Interesting problem when you work from home, lol! (I notice it has a particular aversion to Friends Reunited admin for some reason, although I'm not sure I can blame it! My laptop didn't like genetic algorithms either, hmm.. ;P). Anyway, blogger has been a definite no-no for a while, but just at the moment it seems ok, so we'll see how long it will last before another mammoth phone call to ntl India is in order.

I'm sure you used to be able to ring them up and they would reset your box remotely to magic it better. Now it seems they can't. They tell you to disconnect all the cables in your house, running back to the phone to report after each one, turn everything off, then plug everything in again. He then got rid of me by saying I needed to wait 5 mins before turning anything on again. I was on the phone the first time for about an hour and a half, and he effectively told me in a very laborious manner that I needed to reset my box. Which I'd already done before phoning, hmm... Needless to say, it didn't work, so I had to phone up again! This time I said which particular website was being slow, and let him know that no-one else at work was having trouble with it, and he replied with the very helpful response "Well, it looks alright for me, madam". Lol. In the end he just ended up telling me to change my proxy server address by one digit, which seemed to help for some reason, but the speed does still seem to be fluctuating, a lot. Well, I don't know..

Lol anyway, there was a point to this post other than ranting on about ntl..

On Thursday evening we wandered over to the Oxted Inn for supper, and spotted some kind of incident at the train station. I'd been wondering what was going on because of the unusual number of sirens I'd heard going past the house earlier. Anyway, when we got to the station there were three ambulances parked outside, all deserted, but with the doors left wide open and the lights flashing. We were going to have a look inside the station to see if we could see what the matter was, but just as we got there the ticket guy had just locked up the front door so no one could get in. What I found strange was that there were no police, and the place seemed to be deserted. I would have thought that anything that would warrant three ambulances would also require the police, but maybe they'd already left. I'd just really like to know what it was, nosy as I am. It did seem odd!

J H Lorimers, Oxted, new toy shop!

Ooh, I just got a comment on my post about J H Lorimers in Oxted, and their lack of toys. I have it on good authority, from a Lorimers employee, that they are going to be taking over the old travel agents shop next door, and turning that into their toy section! Good news! =)

Hmm.. well just as I was writing that, my bowl of cornflakes decided to throw itself off my settee arm, and into my camera case, over all my memory cards.. yuck! I think I should avoid electronic goods for the time being.. my phone is still sitting in the airing cupboard from when I somehow dropped it in my drink of water last week. These things always seem to come in 3s, I just dread to think what the next will be.. maybe killing my laptop charger counts..

I want a Ugobe Pleo!!

What a cool robotic dinosaur! Have a look at this youtube video.. lol its so cute when it gets scared at the edge of the table!

Merstham -Playing on the motorway

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

well what can I say.. we have just got back from seeing one of the most controversial films of the moment.

My impressions:

-The section set in Kazakhstan I found a little bit wrong, I think this was because I got the distinct impression that a number of the people being filmed did not know what they were letting themselves in for.. I just hope they wouldn't be insulted if they had the faintest idea what they were taking part in.

-The section set in America, I found interesting, and a little scary. In a way it reminded me of 'Louis Theroux's wierd weekends', but what was scary was some of the genuine American reactions to the character of Borat, and attitudes that emerged, in particular at the rodeo, and the part with the misogynistic college boys.

-The humour in the film lies in a Mr Bean/Trigger Happy TV style comedy: a naïve and socially inept, yet unintentionally funny guy stuck amongst people who take everything in life very seriously.

-The Kazakhstan anti-semitism portrayed in the film is bizarre; I'm not sure why it was included!

-Why did he speak Polish?

-I wonder how they filmed the parts with the grizzly bear..

I'm sure I'll think of more later..

Mugenkyo Taiko Drummers

Well last night we went to see the Mugenkyo Taiko Drummers at the Dorking Halls. Taiko drumming originates in Japan as a form of entertainment, however this group of predominantly Scottish women, is the only one of its kind in the UK. The group was founded by Neil Mackie, who studied the art in Japan for a number of years.

It was amazing how versatile drumming can be, who would have thought that you could be entertained for a whole evening by six people with drums (well, and some gongs, singing bowls, didgeridoos, and flutes, actually!), but the drumming just on its own was compelling to watch! In the end, you did end up wanting to have a go.. I think this is maybe what they had in mind -ensuring that everyone received their complimentary programme with training course flyer inside! Good plan!

Remember remember the fifth of November..

Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...






So, yesterday we headed over to Tandridge Village for our Guy Fawkes night bonfire & fireworks!

We started off at 'The Barley Mow' for a drink, and the judging of the Guys. Every year, the kids of the village design all kinds of human sized Guy figures to be thrown on the bonfire (looks kind of sick actually!). They had some quite good ones this year, I think I saw a vampiric Elvis one which was cool! I wonder which politicians were being burnt at the stake in Lewes this year.. now that was a frightening experience; we went there a couple of years ago when I was living down in Brighton, and we spent the whole time trying to find police to stand next to to avoid fireworks being thrown at us by people in the crowd! Dangerous students!

Anyway, the torchlit procession then emerged from round behind the pub, which we joined to walk up the hill to the bonfire field..















Grabbed some tomato soup, and a veggie hot dog whilst they lit the bonfire with the torches!















It all looked very pagan..















And finished off with some fireworks!

Why Friends Reunited is better than MySpace

1. Myspace..
















2. Friends Reunited has given me the afternoon off for answering all my emails!

Shiny new Oxted Sainsburys

I walked down into town at lunch time, and it looks like the new Sainsburys local is open! It looks like its open til 11pm daily, which is excellent compared to Morrisons and their closure at dusk. The place was actually very busy, I will have to pop in at some point and see what sort of food they're doing. I also noticed that a new wine bar/bistro thing has opened in the town - near to Oxfam -interesting, it seems the night life of Oxted is on the up, it'll be Ikon Diva next, lol!

Oops I dropped a clanger!

Lol, I just got an email from someone who has accidentally deleted themselves from the site, claiming to have "dropped a clanger!". Hehe.. I love it! Poor old clanger.. =(















photo originally uploaded by biscuittin.