Monday, May 28, 2012

Blame Canada

Long time no blog. And for that you can indeed Blame Canada! I have just been on a work / play trip to Toronto that stripped back the years and reminded me of why I used to absolutely love travelling. It was "like the old days"

However FauxSurreyHubby got very upset at this thought & worried I would not come home (fool) and so I had to point out that the good old days were indeed full of my gorgeous gay boys & rooftop swimming pools & fabulous cocktail parties & day trips & dinners but on the flight home I would be sad as I had nothing to look forward to whereas now I LOVE coming home! The KC was well cared for in my absence (only getting into trouble on my return - yesterday she had a big fight with something and there is now a claw / feather / barb of some sort stuck in her back. Ouch. Vets tomorrow..) so I was able to relax completely and get my head into serious work & serious play.

I travelled with a lovely colleague (NB who is NOT my daughter, Thank you to all the waiting staff who lost tips after making THAT mistake) & the hotel we stayed in had a 14 metre lap pool on the roof & amazingly whenever I went it was completely empty & so by the day I left I was back up to 650 metres in 25 minutes with only 2 stops! So a tiny weeny weight loss occurred!

Only tiny weeny as they have amazing restaurants (Drakes - stunning) & Tim Hortons is Canadian & they sell TimBits & if you've never had TimBits you've never lived. OMG they are the middle bits of the donut  (I know it's not true but I want to believe it!)! In a myriad of flavours.Yum. You buy boxes of 20 ...! 

On top of that we had welcome cocktails Chez Bruce (he knows who he is!) and dinner at Drakes which was outstanding and lunch at Strewn wineries and the essential trip to Niagara - both Falls & On the Lake, at the latter we took in a Noel Coward play before boarding planes home. And the seat / bed on Air Canada was truly decent enough to get 5 hours kip. All in all a roaring success! 

Oh and then bizarre moment back at T3 where, whilst waiting to pay the car park I recognised a friend from the good old days of travelling from Grand Cayman who I hadn't seen since 2004. Talk about coincidnce!

Thursday, May 10, 2012

A Window on the World

Bringing the house of horrors - sorry the des res - kicking & screaming into the 21st century: part 17. Windows. Yes the final window installment is taking place. The 2nd winter we were here we realised that replacing the windows on the back of the house wasn't a nice to have it was an essential (the fact the old window in one of the bedrooms came out after only a gentle push said it all) and so we bit the bullet & counted our pennies out & replaced all the old, shonky, rattly & frankly dangerous back sash windows with shiny new UPVC ones. And we were thrilled with the result. Roll forward 2 years and after more important extensions & electrics & roofing & decorating & knocking walls down we looked at the front of the house & thought - ah. We are not putting our best face on - the windows at the front are now at that super shonky / rattly phase & so we and counted our pennies again & the nice window man is back.

But of course being the house of horrors this is not a simple job. On the old windows (made in the 1950's) the pillars between the bits of glass were rather wide. So wide in fact that some clever person used the width of the pillar in our bedroom to build a wall & created our ensuite. Clever. However in this lovely new century there is no need for such wide pillars as materials are better & light is at a premium so nice window man has had to get creative. And it has taken him 4 hours or so - ie all morning to get the one new window into this tricky space. For context 2 years ago he had done 3 back windows in that length of time. But he reckons the hard work is now done & the rest should be plain sailing. I won't however hold my breath!

F**k off 2016

2016. A year to forget. Celebrity death-fest. The year that so many things broke. The year we got stuck. What a frankly cr*p year. I was goi...