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Our Visit to Witney – Part 1

Tom the Scientist and the Lovely Laura have finally moved into their new house in Witney,  No. 30, which is all very romantic and exciting! And, we decided it would have look very rude if we weren’t the first visitors over their threshold to check out their guestroom see how they had settled in.

I also offered to help plumb in their new cooker (with a bit of Andy’s help) – after all, I mused, how difficult could joining up a couple of pipes to the gas supply be?

I thought it best to send Darrell and Nigel into town for a coffee, a look round the 99p Shop and to gather some tourist information for our anticipated many future weekend stays, enabling Andy and I to work in peace and concentrate on the task in hand.

However, I am afraid I had a crisis of confidence and the responsibility of what I had promised weighed heavy upon my shoulders….

And in the end Andy said that if I just wanted to hand him his tools when he asked for them that was fine by him ….. no one but be any the wiser.

My relief was tangible ……. Andy had realised my limitations and so for the time being at least, I will remain a stranger to hissing gas and blow torches!!

But, I was a diligent assistant to Andy, once he had explained what his various utensils were called and what they were used for.

And Darrell and Nigel were suitably impressed by our work upon their return!!
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

We’re Sort of Unofficial Ambassadors For The Eurovision Song Contest Support/Interval Act …..

Sometimes we get the most AMAZEBALLS e-mails that leave us quivering robustly for the rest of the day….. and yesterday was one of those days   ….. because the Lovely Natalie from Republic Media got in touch with us ……it seems our love for the Eurovision Song Contest, our televisual highlight of the year has got us noticed ……

This is what her e-mail said …….

To say we were thrilled to be given a “heads up” is a tiny understatement to which we replied to straight away ….. saying that we would diligently tell everyone about Emin so that all our followers watching the interval in Eurovision will say "OMG that's Monkey, Darrell and Nigel's "new aqauintence of a famous singing nature"!!" (but that’s in the private stuff, which we have deleted from the picture below....... for the moment!)

We have visited Emin’s website …. http://www.emin-music.com/ ………

…… and to be honest it’s hard for us as “metro men” to opinine upon another gentleman’s appearance but a lady “what” we know quite well told us, after visiting Emin’s site, that he is Gorrrrrrrrgeousssssss  ….. with a capital G and he sounds pretty hot too ….. and then Darrell is sure she nommed, despite trying to avert his ears!

Now what can we say to that ? …… Once into her stride she also added that if Emin was actually singing in the contest he would get her douze points every time ….. unlike Englebert who she says is now definitely a null point!

Anyway judge for yourself ladies (and gentlemen)  http://www.emin-music.com/

Parsimonious Spending At The Easter Monday Fair …..

On one of the stalls at the Easter Monday Fair Darrell and Nigel both spotted  this wonderful miniature building kit.  It had never been opened and immediately they decided to club together the required 25p to purchase it. It contains real tiny bricks, slates, windows, cement and tiny weeny, Nigel sized tools, in fact everything to make a  watermill, how totes brill is that?

However I fear a mess akimbo situation ……….

…… and fear the worst as Darrell has been romantically musing about  how this could be the first step towards him starting and starring in project for Grand Designs ….

What is he like??

With slates this size, I think he has a mahoooosive way to go, so Kevin McCloud may have a long wait on his hands!

Thoughtful Purchases From The White Elephant Stall

Despite the inclement weather, Darrell and Nigel had a really good afternoon at the Village Easter Monday Fair,  but it was only after tea when I discovered just how well they had done with the bits and pieces they had bought from the White Elephant stall.

….. Now I daresay most people would have ignored an unopened plastic bag containing some sort of plastic foliage, but bless him, Darrell immediately recognised it as an artificial aquatic plant and quickly snapped it up for 20p knowing that it was something that Andy would perhaps want for his new fish tank ...

……… which we are all robustly excited about! We already have a marine tank, but since the last puffer fish died in the tank in the fireplace Andy has only kept fairy lights in it, but last weekend he started to prepare it for some more fish, by filling it with pipes, water, some lovely blue gravel and something that looked suspiously like luncheon meat which Andy said would “cure” the water, whatever that means.

So he was indeed thrilled with Darrell’s thoughtful and fortuitous find and immediately began preparing it for the tank. Darrell in turn was immensely proud that he had been able to contribute to the new tank  in such a useful way.

It might be a while yet before we can get any fish, but we have heard mention of guppies ….. how very exciting!

Really Wet Rain For Our Village Easter Fair

Yesterday it rained that really wet rain, and we wondered if the village Easter Fair would still go ahead.

After some robust debate Darrell decided to chance it, taking an excited Nigel with him as it was only a few yards from our house, and Nigel had already gotten a  heavy waft of the hot dogs and hamburgers they were cooking outside.

A lot of the stalls had been moved into the church …….

….. which was quite romantic in religious sort of way ….

….. but Darrell felt it best to remind Nigel that it was still a House of God and trying to swing from the, albeit very tempting candelabra type light fittings, was not quite a sin, but very close to one!

So just in case, they both lit a holy candle and hoped Nigel’s religious faux pas hadn’t been noticed by anyone, but especially God!

They were both drawn hypnotically to the cake stall where several slices of Lemon Drizzle Cake and Chocolate Tiffin were purchased for our Easter Monday tea…..

….. But unfortunately the bouncy castle was out of limits. Poor Nigel, when he saw it was empty he thought that his long ambition of having one all to himself was about to come true, only to have it cruelly snatched away from him as decreed by Health and Safety !

Although the road was still closed off, the usually throngs of people milling round bustling tables were sadly missing, the only stall brave enough to stand up to the rigours of the wet rain was …..

The Candy Floss Man ….. and as Darrell so succinctly put it ….

It would have been rude not to have purchased just a little slab of fudge from him for all his efforts!

Anyway despite the rain, I had an hours peace and quiet and Darrell and Nigel came back home with the aforementioned cakes and fudge, a large cream vase, a seagull brooch, three pretty teaplates a build your own watermill set (of which more later) and a large plastic aquatic plant for Andy’s new fish tank!  So rain certainly did not stop play, and Cliff Richard warbling's were not required!!  Happy Days!

Our Easter Bunny Hunt

We had the most brilliant Easter Sunday ever …….

The Easter Bunny had been in the night and had hidden baby chocolate bunnies all over the garden. Nigel was sooooo excited and also most anxious that we found them all as quickly as possible before they melted thus rendering them uneatable.

Darrell and Nigel decided to work together as a well honed and robust chocolate bunny finding team machine …….

…… with Darrell as the brains (??????!!!!!!)

…….. and Nigel as the climber, delver and penetrator of all pertinent nooks and crannies!

We had so much mahoooosive fun …… and managed to find twenty bunnies in all, which was most eggcellent and bunnytastic!

Darrell and I decided that it would be best if we rationed the bunnies to one each per day to make the Easter joy linger a little longer …….

……. and more importantly, because we wanted to avoid any unpleasant projectile sickness situation with Nigel due to the over consumption of chocolate and seasonal excitement!!!!  A Hoppy Hoppy Day in the style of a Hello magazine type feature!

He’s Been ……… ! The Most Wondrous Easter Ever

OMG …..The Easter Bunny has been and it’s all just too unbelievable for words.

When Darrell and Nigel woke up, they found that a mahoosive pile of presents had appeared on their beside table and they made such a din and commotion that I rushed in to see what was occurring!

The posh chantenay carrots and Twisted Chocolate Bar had disappeared and in their place were some chocolate bunnies and a note from the Easter Bunny rendering poor Nigel almost apoplectic with excitement.

On the back of the note the Easter Bunny explained that he had bumped into our friend Christopher, who was adopted by Dianne and Doug and now lives in Florida, where he has freshly squeezed orange juice on tap, it seems that Christopher had asked him if he would kindly drop off a few Easter gifts for us, if he was passing the UK!!!

Well, as you can imagine, our flabber had never been soooooo gasted and for a little while we fell into a deep silence lost in our thoughts …….

We opened up Christopher’s card first and all welled up  ….

….. and just this once, I overlooked Darrell blowing his nose on the duvet cover, such was all our emotion.

All the presents were exquisitely wrapped in tissue with lovely frog stickers and ribbon holding them together and as there were no names on we decided to take it in turns to choose one, Nigel going first …..

…… he unwrapped the most beautiful bucket covered in monkeys, he was beside himself, especially as we are going off to Dawlish Warren on our first Sun £9.50 holiday of the year in a couple of weeks time. The bucket will go with us, to make sandcastles and to carry any holey stones and other beach treasures we might find ….. what a wonderful present!

It was mine and Darrell’s turn next and we chose parcels that felt the same ….. inside we found wondrous windmill pens ….. Darrell wound his up and it went round for ages.  These will be so useful when we are back to work, as they will afford us a little cool air while writing the copious notes we have to attach to each pile of rush photocopying and laminating we send out.

It was Nigel’s turn again, and you can see by the look on his face just how overwhelmed he was when he found this shell tortoise in his parcel, a new friend for Brain Brian the Mouse he had at Christmas.  It takes a lot to make Nigel cry, but believe me he sniffed profusely.

And finally Darrell and I each took one of the remaining two parcels …..

…. to reveal, for Darrell a “Poussin Dansant Solaire” and for me an “Insect Dansant Solaire” or en Anglaise - a solar dancing chick and ladybird, how utterly totes fantastic is that?  When you put them in the sun they dance!  How can we ever say THANK YOU to Christopher and his new family for making our Easter so happy and the Easter Bunny for delivering them ……. we never, ever expected this.  THANK YOU SO MUCH!  It was a very emotional morning!

We have made a small vignette of our new toys, you will no doubt notice that Darrell and Nigel are sooooo utterly enchanted by what they were seeing that they were temporarily rendered incapable of any bodily movement whatsoever, bless!

Thank you Christopher, Dianne and Doug, you’ve made our Easter!