SUNDAY 29th JUNE

Yes folks, it's a hattrick. Three updates in three days. I hasten to add, before shock sets in, that today's entry is less of an update and more of an attempt at gloating.

We had a very quiet day. I spent the day in bed in an attempt to speed my recovery, and also as a concession to laziness. Hayley read a book and all was serene and restful.

Our site stats have been down this last week, inspite of increased activity on our part, so that's all the crumbs you'll get from us tonight.

SATURDAY 28th JUNE | HAPPY BIRTHDAY JULIE

First of all a big Happy Birthday to Julie, who incidentally shares her birthday with Pat Morita. Wax on, wax off...

I'm in a slightly more benevolent mood towards my throat today. I think the worst of it is passing, although at the moment I am being blessed with a side splitting headache.

We were going to go microwave shopping today but I think that will be put on hold till I'm in a better to position to focus on the task at hand. The lack of a microwave has made its presence felt even more than the lack of a TV. Something I never would have thought possible.

I did go shopping yesterday, but I didn't find anything that screamed buy me. The remote control Dalek was tempting but not tempting enough. I think I may purchase some hard to find Neil Gaiman cd's from his online store

PS: I think Strepsils® do work : )

FRIDAY 27th JUNE

I don't like sore throats. That is to say, I don't mind when they're in other people, but I have a distinct dislike for my own at this moment. I bought some Strepsils® from the super market this morning, though I'm not convinced that they are making any difference.

I'm going into the city today to meet Hayley for lunch, and maybe if I'm lucky I'll get to see where she works. They seem to have quite a lot of security at the university so mere civilians such as myself may not be able to venture into the hallowed halls of learning. After lunch, depending on how I feel I thought I might have a wander round the shops in the city to see if anything there caught my eye (hooray for birthday money).

Time for another Strepsils®, maybe this will be the one that makes me feel better.

TUESDAY 24th JUNE

My word, has another week passed already. We have been busy though. We've even redeveloped our web site. This new design uses all sorts of new tricks that I've learnt in the last few weeks, most of them involving CSS. It's all right I won't go into too much depth about the geeky under pinnings, needless to say the changes I've made will make future style updates (and archiving) significantly less painful. If you think it looks broken (more than usual) on your computer, let me know so I can fix it. While I'm still talking tech, I'll take this opportunity to let you all know that Apple has just released new hardware (the G5) and a new version of their operating system which has everyone (well 3/4) in this flat very excited. Duncan and I watched the web stream of Steve Jobs' keynote last night. Broadband rocks. It was just like watching TV, which is a huge novelty for us as we don't have one. We do however have this.

On Saturday Wimbledon had its annual village fair on the common. It was very English, and exactly what you imagine a village fair to be. Although we were disappointed that toffee apples were not in attendance. It was a beautiful hot day and for lunch we decided to retire to our local Pitcher & Piano. They have huge sofas, good food, and beer. Mmmmmmmmmm beer, D'oh.

For those of you interested I still haven't found work yet, though I am still applying. It's slightly frustrating as it's really the only thing that is causing any bother here. Everything else is much nicer than we could have imagined, even the weather, though everyone tells us "It's not usually this warm". Fortunately I've had some web work to do for a New Zealand client and this has filled in some of the days, otherwise I'm sure I'd be quite loopy by now. Well, alright, more loopy. Don't be difficult, you know what I mean.

I'm pretty sure I've filled my contractual obligations on content for today, so I'll let you all recover somewhere quiet for now.

TUESDAY 17th JUNE

In case you were wondering. Yes, it's been a busy month so far. Hayley was very busy last week. She got to travel up to Manchester and down to Surrey entertaining Russians from, well, Russia. Not that she was really doing the entertaining, the entertaining was taken care of at sites they were visiting. It's all to do with urban regeneration and a project she's working on. It's all very confusing. Any further correspondence on this issue should be sent directly to Hayley : )

On Saturday afternoon we had lunch up at the village which was a very restful affair. We ate at an Italian cafe and sat outside in the sun feeling very gentrified. In the evening we packed a picnic dinner and headed to Clapham Common. Tourism London has been promoting tourism to Londoners and one of these events has been movies in the park. The film we got to see was Ocean's 11. Good fun and a lovely evening in the common.

On Sunday afternoon Duncan and I headed to the park for a friendly game of football. Yes, you can all stop laughing now. Actually, none of the Brits present could believe that I hadn't played before. They said it normally it takes years of practice to be that bad. No not really. It was great exercise although not necessarily the wisest choice of activity given the temperature, 28°C.

Despite our radio silence all is going well here and at least half of us are settling into a normal routine. More updates are on the way, but then we've all heard that story before...

WEDNESDAY 4th JUNE

To the observant few out there who called us up on this. The hole in the photo of our previous update was not in fact caused by squirrels. Or if it was they were squirrels with access to heavy machinery, as this was in fact a photo of quarry in Norfolk. Our squirrels on the other hand do inflict a great deal of damage on our lawn, just not as excessive as alluded to.