Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I finished this book eight days after the release date. I did enjoy it and feel sad that there’ll be no more. However, I found too many problems with it to rave about it as I know some people are. As much as I’d love to love it, in my honest opinion it’s ‘not quite up to scratch’ when compared with previous books in the series. A full review can be found in my Reading Diary which can be accessed via the link on the right-hand side of this page. 

Reunions

One of dad’s guitar buddies popped around this afternoon unexpectedly. Unfortunately dad was out but the guy’s coming back this evening after a gig he’s doing locally. He lives in Scotland, so we only see him every few years, and he’s extremely busy too because he’s a professional guitarist now, backing famous names. It’s weird because we’ve got tapes of the two of them when they were in a group in the late seventies and it seems so far away from what they’re both doing now. Anyway, it’ll be a real treat to hear the two of them play together again. They might even invite the old group singer over because she only lives half a mile away! I won’t hear much of it though because I’m going out dancing tonight.

On Thursday I’m meeting up with a friend I haven’t seen for a year. I’m really excited because she is the only friend with whom I’ve ever felt 100% comfortable, where I can be completely honest and chilled out. We are so similar and it’ll be great to catch up. It’s a real shame that she lives in London now. I’ll let you know how it goes if I remember!

Somewhere in Time

Having just finished the book Somewhere in Time by Richard Matheson and consequently watching the film for the second time this year, I have suddenly found a great appreciation for Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody On A Theme of Paganini, 18th variation. Beautiful piece of music as is John Barry’s composition for the film. I think as you get older your tastes widen and I seem to be liking classical music more and more.

Tree Surgery

Just been having immense fun performing a tricky operation on our magnolia tree with seceteurs on a long pole!

Feel like much has been accomplished. Still not sure how we fitted all of the cuttings into half a green wheelie bin though…

Juicers

In my town, there is this great take out place where you can get fresh fruity drinks made-to-order. There’s one with pineapple that I love and a carrot and apple one too. It’s pretty expensive but a great treat in my lunchbreak at work. While wandering around the cookery section in the bookshop, I found a book on smoothies and juices and copied down some of the appealing recipes. At home, I threw some kiwi and orange pieces in the blender and poured the resulting sludge into a glass. It tasted ok but the colour was off-putting and the texture was vile. The majority went down the sink.

I decided that I would need a proper juicer. Mum and I don’t want an expensive one to start off with (they can easily go up to the £100-£200 mark) but just a tester to see how we get on with it. Also, the expensive ones are really chunky machines and we just haven’t got the space for something like that in the kitchen at the moment.

It came down to choosing between three.

1. Moulinex BKD344 from Currys at £29.97. This one looks the most sophisticated of the three. I like the design because it’s easy to see what’s happening and, although it’s not of great importance, I like the little silver lip that the juice pours from – it adds a bit of style. It’s got a larger pulp container than the other two models but it has a weaker motor system at 200w. It was the smallest juicer on display at Currys but is still larger than the other two models.
2. Energi Vitality Juicer from Argos at £22.99. I haven’t actually seen this one face to face but, as you can see, the white plastic makes it look much less stylish. It is much smaller than the Moulinex which means the pulp container suffers, providing only a 400ml pulp container compared to the 700ml of the Moulinex. However, it does have a 300w motor, which should mean it’s more effective on the tougher fruit and veg. The safety lock system doesn’t look quite as strong/secure as the Moulinex felt when I tested it today but it does boast non-slip feet in its specification!
3. Lloydspharmacy Juicer from… Lloyds Pharmacy at £9.99. This one has no decent advertising on the net but I went into the chemist to have a look at it. It is similar to the Argos juicer in that it is white plastic, small, with the reduced pulp container and a lacking-in-confidence safety lock system. The spout is not impressive either and, like the Argos juicer, suggests that it is more functional than elegant, probably filling your glass with the drip-drip technique rather than the smooth pour. I can’t see how this one is really that different from the Argos model in its specification, which, financially, puts the Energi Vitality Juicer out of the running.

 It therefore appears to be between the Lloydspharmacy Juicer and the Moulinex. The questions to be asked are as follows:

1. Are you willing to pay an extra £20 to buy a juicer that looks more stylish and possibly performs more smoothly?
2. Do you want to pay three times the price of the Lloydspharmacy Juicer in order to gain an extra 300ml in the pulp container, thus meaning you have to empty it out less often?

For me the answer to both of these questions is ‘no’. Firstly, very few people will ever see me using the juicer, so I do not need to impress them with its style; it is purely a functional tool that mum and I will occasionally use. Secondly, I doubt we’ll ever be making more than one or two drinks at a time so the small pulp container shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Is it really that much effort to empty it if it gets full before you’ve finished juicing and doesn’t the resulting smaller size of the entire machine have great benefits on the storage front?

We are going to go for the cheapest one: the Lloydspharmacy Juicer. Who knows, if we really like it and get into juicing all our drinks, we might be able to justify a bigger, dearer machine. However, at the moment, it seems sensible to introduce ourselves gently and cheaply and see what it’s all about.

Apologies

Sorry for the lack of blogging since my last exam: having too much fun to be stuck in front of a computer. So far I’ve hoovered the car, done lots of baking, finished HP5 and started HP6, earnt lots of money working at the coach company, sorted out the garden, organised a group trip to a show in January, tried to rescue some of the cross-stitch, watched too many ‘Deal or No Deal’s and ‘Superman’ episodes, decided on a couple of holiday destinations, tidied my room a bit although there’s still plenty to do, bought far too many clothes and generally been a lot more chilled out: my biggest stress today was deciding which hairdryer to buy in Comet. If only that were the most stressful I could ever be.

Summer Holidays!

My last exam is over! It went fine and now I have three and a half months of freedom. What am I going to do with myself? I know it’ll zoom by in no time but at the moment it seems like ages. I’ve got to make sure I make the most of it: days out, holidays and little projects like sorting the front garden out and getting photos sorted and printed (got a backlog to Christmas). Also, reading - lots of reading – there are so many books I want to read! Then I’ve got a model of the HMS Victory that I haven’t touched since last summer; a cross-stitch that went wrong but I’m determined to save; Wimbledon to watch; more money to be earnt at the coach company; baking to do; clothes to buy; guitars to play; a bedroom to tidy; decorating to do and a car to be washed and hoovered. So many stressless and accomplishable tasks that I’ll be the most chilled out person you know!

Never Ending Antibiotics

I’m on antibiotics at the moment. It’s supposed to be a course of four tablets a day for a week. I started them last Wednesday evening. However, due to the side effects, I got the pharmacist’s permission to miss them out on Friday afternoon and Saturday because I wanted to be on top form for my exam. I picked up the course again on Saturday evening (interestingly, I haven’t had the side effects since that 18 hour break). Then I forgot to take one on Tuesday morning and again on Wednesday afternoon. Here I am on Thursday evening and I’ve still got another day and a bits worth left to go. I wouldn’t mind if the tablets were a bit smaller but it’s like swallowing a golf ball and often it takes three attempts by which time I’m worried that I’ll never get the stupid thing down. The belief in your ability to get the tablet down is crucial I find. When I think to myself ‘I’m not going to do it this time’, I don’t and then the tablet goes all soft and tastes funny which makes the situation worse. When I think ‘I’ll be fine this morning’ it generally works. Must. Think. Positive. Not long to go now anyway.

A Day in the Cotswolds

We had planned on going to Ross-on-Wye and the surrounding area on Sunday to meet up with some friends but, when we realised this was inappropriate, we decided to head elsewhere instead. We toddled off to the Cotswolds, aiming for Chipping Campden but not knowing where the rest of the day would take us.

Mum and I had been there in the last couple of years but dad couldn’t remember it too well. He got his bearings as we walked towards the Market Hall and then we heard music that we recognised. We headed in that direction and stumbled on an open air service led by the three churches of the town. It was the culmination of a weekend’s celebrations. We hung around for a bit, appreciating the music that we knew so well and bumping into old family friends who used to go to our church but (we didn’t know) have now moved there. We were shocked by the number of people present. They had to find more seats to cram into the area, bringing the congregation to well over 200 in this tiny village. And some people would have us believe congregation numbers are falling. After a while, we headed back up the high street and found a lovely tearoom where we had morning coffee. The weather was gorgeous and we sat in the garden. Afterwards, we made our way back to the service and caught the last part of the message, which was simple, funny and effective. 

When it had finished, we wondered what to do next. Dad was determined to find a local to ask where Jeremy Clarkson lives – apparantly it’s near Chipping Campden and has a massive jet aircraft on the front lawn – but the rest of us persuaded him against this.

We decided to head in the rough direction of Broadway, where we could find some lunch. On the way we got distracted by a signpost for Broadway Tower and, beause we’d only ever seen it at a distance, we headed up the narrow lane to investigate. It’s a lovely structure and looks much smaller close up than it does from miles away. It’s built on the highest point in the Cotswolds and was a gift for the wife of the Earl of Coventry (I think). When Debs read the information board and mentionned that James Wyatt was the architect, I started jumping up and down with enthusiasm, eager to share my knowledge about him. He, along with Robert Adam, was one of the greatest architects of the Georgian period, very fashionable and the ‘trend setters’ of their day. The likes of Thomas Telford were greatly influenced by these two architects in their own designs.

We found a tea room just outside Broadway for lunch and, although it was a beautiful day and vey busy elsewhere, it was quiet, shady and relaxing in this garden. There were so many plants that each table seemed to be in its own separate area and you had no idea how many other tables there were hidden around the place. It was like the secret garden. The food wasn’t brilliant but satisfactory.

Afterwards, we headed into Broadway where we planned on getting an ice cream. However, everyone then admitted that they didn’t really want it and was only going to have one to be sociable because everyone else was. We decided not to waste our money and headed for a cookery shop that we like in this town. We always buy kitchenware in Broadway in the same way that everyone walks by the river when they’re in Stratford or heads for the docks in Portsmouth. We came out with a variety of wooden spoons, a new spachelor and one of those potato masher implements. Then came the real treat.

Dad has been reading Roald Dahl’s ‘Boy’ and when he got to the bit about hiding-the-dead-mouse-in-jars-in-the-sweet-shop, he made us listen with him. It’s an amusing story and makes you go all nostalgic for the old traditional sweet shops and all those sweets you rarely hear of these days. Broadway’s got one of these shops. It’s so fun to gaze through the timber framed window at the jars complete with old fashioned labels and say ‘oh, I used to have them when I was litte’ and then hear mum say exactly the same thing about a sweet you’d never heard of before. Debs was tempted to get some mint imperials and things that we call ‘tablet mints’ which do have an official name that we always ignore. I bought myself some boiled sweets that I call ‘buttermints’ but I think their official name is buttermint bonbons or buttermint creams, I’m not sure. Nan used to buy them for me when I was really little. They were kept in a small tin in her pantry along with Debs’ tablet mints and we would delight ourselves in going to get one each time we visited nan. If we were lucky, we were allowed to go back for a second one. We then phoned nan and asked her if she wanted anything. She asked for chocolate raisons, dolly mixtures and three other sweets that I’d never heard of – probably ones from her own childhood. One I recognised when I saw it. It was called coconut ice and is a block of… something with one strip of white and one strip of pink. I loved looking at all the different jars on the shelves and wishing I could try this one and that but you have to buy them in ‘quarters’ and I wasn’t prepared to spend that much money!

Afterwards, we took a drive out to Snowshill Lavendar Fields because mum has to drive a coach load of ladies over there later this month and she wanted to suss out a route. I have no idea how she’s going to do it because it’s all up hill on single track road. She’s nervous about it now too. To be honest, I can’t see why anyone would want to go there – it’s just a load of purple fields with a gift shop and tearoom on the one edge.

Next we aimed to go to and see the GWR (Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Railway, not Great Western Railway) for which we had seen a signpost in Broadway. We kept following the signs and the closer we got, the more we saw event signposts pointing in the same direction. It turned out to be a ‘weekend of steam’ and as we pulled into Toddington Railway Station, we were shocked as to the number of cars parked there. We had stumbled on yet another weekend celebration.

We parked up and went onto the platform. There were no modern trains whatsoever, barely any sign of modern life actually. It was all old-fashioned benches and lamposts and only steam trains that arrived and left at very regular intervals. There were completely clued-up anaraks all around and our limited knowledge of trains soon became evident when I asked dad why one of the trains ‘hadn’t got a chimney’. I felt no shame in being a complete novice in this field however because I knew that our expertise as a family lay in aircraft and buses, in which a lot of these anaraks would probably be the complete novices. We can’t all specialise in everything.

We watched trains come and go and commented on how nice the carriages looked and how much we were reminded of the railway children. However, I was on edge the whole time. Last year dad and I went to Stratford and, as usual, we stumbled on something we hadn’t really expected. The Shakespeare Express was about to leave Stratford station. We dashed over to the platform to get a good photo because the lighting was brilliant. We waited ages while the engine was warming up and billowing out black smoke. Then, just before it was about to depart, the engine let off a bit or steam. Or rather a lot of steam. I have never heard noise like it in my life. It was like standing in front of a jet aircraft. Even with my fingers pushed so far into my ears that they nearly touched in the middle, I felt like my head was going to explode. Dad and I both sacrificed the ultimate photograph of it pulling away in the name of our health and ear drums. For the whole time on Sunday afternoon I was ready to run at a split-seconds notice. The one time that it did happen (an engine called Black Prince that actually looked like a monster), I was typically not expecting it. I tried to run but with dad holding onto my arm determined to do nothing but a brisk walk, I didn’t make it very far away. Meanwhile, mum and the dog had beaten the 100m world record. Despite this little episode, it was a good afternoon and felt days away from the open air service in Chipping Campden that morning.

To round off the day, we watched Some Like It Hot in the evening while having supper. This is such a great film and the scene with Jack Lemon and the maracas had Debs and I crying with laughter as it always does.

It was a lovely day and one that I will remember when we get back into the dark depths of winter once more.

Post-Exam Report

I have less than ten minutes before dinner’s ready so here goes…

It was hot in there. Very very warm and I had to ration myself on the amount of water I could drink because I only had a small bottle with me.

I got there 25 minutes early which allowed plenty of time to find a loo, checkout the seating plan and listen to loads of people worrying, which does not help your nerves one jot.

Once in the exam room we had to fill out a load of forms, which was like a test in itself. I didn’t know many of the answers and had to leave some of them blank.

They told us to start a bit sooner than I anticipated. I’d expected a whole preamble about no mobile phones and make sure you do this but don’t do that. None of it. We filled in the forms and were straight into the exam.

Of the ten questions I definitely could not answer the first two. I had expected as much since I hadn’t revised the early topics. Then ‘Was Germany responsible for the First World War?’. I put a nice fat tick next to this and scanned down the rest of the list. Something about art in Weimar Germany that I could answer at a push but preferred not to. Then a question about the fall of Weimar. I had revised this one hard and was determined to do it. However, the question was looking at it from the angle of the ‘traditional elites’, a topic which confuses me somewhat. Slightly disappointed and worrying that my best topic was doomed, I moved on. A question about Nazi propaganda and terror. I could easily have done this but, because my long essay was on propaganda and you’re not supposed to repeat yourselves in the exam, I didn’t want to risk it and ignored the actual wording before I started kicking myself. We were now heading into my weaker areas of German history. A question about the way that the Germans interpreted the Nazi past during the cold war years did not receive a second glance because this is not the sort of history I’m into. (Looks like it’ll be that Weimar question, I thought). I saw the letters GDR in the next question and didn’t even read it because I’d revised nothing about East Germany. Last question: ‘Is Germany still a divided nation’. Despite not having a clue how I’d answer this one it did appeal to me. I panicked a little. Only one essay title had jumped out at me and I needed two. Four minutes of the precious two hours gone. (Eating dinner and typing now btw).

I dived into planning my first essay and then wrote it. I had a little panic early on because I couldn’t remember the details of that Franz Ferdinand situation that sparked off the war. I hadn’t revised this bit in particular and was relying on my year 9 history lessons. I had revised about the deteriorating relations of international powers before the war and turned the essay quickly to this. About half an hour into the exam, I remembered some revision I’d done on domestic problems in Germany around this time and praised myself for bothering to learn the dates of riots and strikes since 1900. I managed to work these into the essay, saying the authorities sought war as a solution to and distraction from these domestic problems.

My mind drifted back once or twice to the list of questions during this first hour. I kept wondering why the divided nation one kept appealing to me more than the topic that I had revised more clearly. By the time I’d read through the questions one more time, I knew that I was going to do the divided nation one. I set about writing the plan but before jumping into the introduction, I stopped and spent thirty seconds planning the Weimar essay in my head. No way did I want to get 10 minutes into one essay and decide it was the wrong question and begin the other one with time running out. However, I decided that the divided nation essay plan sounded much better. With a slight ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this’ feeling in my stomach, I began writing an introduction. The essay went a bit pear-shaped in the middle to be honest but I still think it was the better choice and I stand by that decision.

I’m a bit worried though because my mind always works too fast for my hand and I often miss letters, words or half-sentences out in the rush to get my thoughts down. This really brings the quality of my writing down in exams. I managed to check the first essay but never got on to the second essay. Mmm… (Just finished dinner – was good.)

When dad and mum met me after the exam, they asked what topics I did and I told them how I had shocked myself with the second one. Dad’s face showed similar disbelief. However, on reflection, I think it was a good one to do. Over the year, the course was split into pre-WWI, Weimar and Nazi Germany and then post-WWII. The teacher said that ideally your two short essays and long essay should cover these three periods and mine have. I am ‘at peace’ with the situation, as they say.

I have no idea when the results come out.