Wednesday 31st December

New Year's Eve

We'll be having a relaxing night in. We had duck for dinner (quack) and will have a DVD or two for dessert (probably with some chocolate). Not very energetic we know but yesterday and today saw us braving the sales in Kingston and Wimbledon, so I think we're done with crowds for this year. Plus when we were out earlier today we almost froze to the pavement it was so cold. A few more days like this and I'm sure we'll have snow : )

We hope every one will have/has had a great New Year's Eve see you next year. Lots of love Nick and Hayley.

Posted by Nick

Monday 29th December

Gobble, gobble, gobble

I think we've now recovered enough to update the site again. Our Christmas day dinner was quite literally of monstrous proportions. We started eating at about noon, and carried on for about ten hours! Everyone seemed to eat lots, but the plates of food stayed piled high as though there were some magic at work. The fact that there was plenty of food was ultimately the goal however as it became apparent nobody in the flat would actually have to cook a meal for a couple of days. Mmmmmm, I love leftovers.

As a flat we received this cheerful pot plant from Jane (Hayley's mum). This rare form of flora fits in well with our houses ability to nurture botanical entities. We received lots of games this year. From our housemates we got the Lord of the Rings board game. This game has more rules, cards, playing pieces and boards than is probable yet is one of the more clever and addictive games I've played. Jane also sent me a magnetic dart board which proved a very popular addition to the house on Christmas day. Thanks to my parents, Duncan & Karen and Hayley, we more than tripled our collection of DVD's. We now have a library of titles that make up for not having a TV.

Thank you to everyone who sent us cards and presents, they helped make our first Christmas away from New Zealand one filled with happy memories and very little in the way of homesickness.

Posted by Nick

Wednesday 24th December

It's Christmas Eve!

When the Christmas season first started to dawn on us, we were slightly worried it would be a depressingly frugal affair. Miles away from home we envisaged a stark tree with very few presents. As this photos attests, our fears were totally unfounded. Friends and family from Australia and New Zealand were kind enough to boost present numbers to the level I believe is technically known as a ton of presents.

We're not fixated on presents, but it's a little hard not to notice them when they take up such large portion of our lounge.

Tomorrow we will be having dinner for eight. Duncan's cousins Katie and Becca are staying with us at the moment and guests seven and eight are friends of Duncan and Bronwyn from Palmerston North. We've got a handsome bird (called Harry) in the fridge and more food than our kitchen has ever seen before in one sitting. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

Snow is not on the cards for tomorrow, in fact it should be about 12°C. This is quite tropical when compared to the recent spate of negative numbers that have chilled our fingers and numbed our noses. I'm still holding to my prediction/hope of snow in the new year, though many of my work colleagues are cursing me for even suggesting snow.

More later, right now I've got some presents to rattle.

Posted by Nick

Sunday 21st December

The 6 word update

Return of the King was good.

Vaguely posted by Nick

Thursday 18th December

The truth is out there…

Here's a photo I took while waiting for the bus in Sutton this evening. I liked the effect of the light, though I have to confess I'm slightly confused as to how I achieved this particular shot. It's not so much an issue of what ISO did I use, or what aperture setting, as much as it is where did that light come from? The other photos I took are of sky, fading from blue through to black sky. The nearest light was across the road, and not in the direction I was pointing my camera. So I figure my options are:

a) It's a UFO
b) I'm incredibly talented, or
c) I'm very confused about cameras, and need to be taught how to hold one.

I know which option I'm voting for, but I'll let everyone else make up their own mind.

Posted by Nick

Tuesday 16th December

The last couple of days have been very clear, and very cold. On clear days a familiar sight over London are the vapour trails caused by the (literally) hundreds of planes that fly in and out of the city's five airports. This morning as I stepped out of the house I was greeted by this canvas of jet-made clouds and sunrise. Hayley's response was " That's not what I saw, when I left, it was black". Still I thought it was pretty.

We've already got our tickets to Return of the King and we go this Friday. I can't wait to see it, though fortunately we won't be waiting as long as our housemates who agreed to wait till the new year to see it with friends in York. We promise we'll try not to buzz too much about what sounds like an epic finale to the trilogy.

Hayley is popping down/across to Tiverton (in Devon) to visit her aunty Louise this weekend which should be a nice pre-Christmas start of her holidays trip. I'll be alone but that's okay as I have Christmas presents to wrap…

Posted by Nick

Thursday 11th December

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

We went to Kingston on Saturday with the idea of doing some (Christmas) shopping and getting a little tree. The tree we had originally seen and decided to buy was about 1 foot tall. We just wanted something small to make us feel a festive. We couldn't however go through with such a modest display of cheer and ended up getting it's larger sibling. Not a giant tree but still a lot bigger than initially intended. Of course with a bigger tree you need bigger ornaments, well more ornaments anyway. Having precisely no ornaments we then set about scouring the shops for nice but not expensive baubles. We found bauble nirvana at Ikea - home of plasticy goodness. A few extra chocolates and candy canes and some lights and our tree was almost dressed. All we needed was an angel which we found at our local Elys department store.

The new hard drive we ordered has arrived and been fitted into our computer. This has made such a difference to the work we do on it. For one thing we now have all our mp3's back where we can listen to them easily (yes, all 7GB of them) and I can now work in photoshop without running out of disk space and causing all kinds of havoc with whatever applications happened to be open at the time. The new hard drive also reassuringly doesn't makes grinding noises at regular intervals like it's predecessor. In the tradition of Mac users everywhere, we had to christen our new drive. So here we introduce to the world "George". Hayley chose the name because we're in England, but I just think of the curious one.

Posted by Nick