A birthday - I haz one, and Cats on Tuesday (a day late)...

Yes, today is my birthday and I have the day off work.  Hurrah!  For my birthday treat we went to the RSC last night to see Patrick Stewart in The Merchant of Venice.  It was superb, the first time I've seen it performed so that you can tell it's a comedy.  It was set in Las Vegas and had a casino, showgirls, American accents, and a singing Elvis impersonator.  Just brilliant!  

And now to cats on Tuesday Wednesday.  This week Pepper decided to attack Charlie, and Charlie being Charlie attacked her back and scratched her face.  She's still sulking.  Posky has also been sulking because his favourite vet Linda, who does the acupuncture, is on holiday so he can't go to see her until next Friday and is limping whenever he thinks anyone is watching him.  That means that only Mrs Pod and Charlie were the cat representatives willing to help unwrap cards and presents this morning.  Well, not so much help as stick their noses and paws in.

At first Mrs P just supervised...

Then decided to get personally involved...

... at which point Charlie decided that ribbon would look better on him

Charlie shows that man cats really can wear pink...

And finally... I almost forgot to say, Helen, Cath and myself completed the charity walk for Rainbows Hospice on Sunday.  There were over 600 walkers taking part (including a real parrot, and a West Highland Terrier being carried in a rucksack) and we had great fun.  Here is a rather bad photo taken on my phone of Cath and Helen pre-walk.  Five minutes earlier and the photo would have been of them stuffing their faces with cupcakes.

British Heart Foundation Charity walk at Chatsworth

Instead of Bradgate Park we decided to put our Sunday morning yomp to good purpose and do a sponsored charity walk at Chatsworth House in aid of the British Heart Foundation.    Seventy two miles up the M1 to the Derbyshire Peak District at a disgustingly early hour... and these are some of the images I took 'on the hoof''.

Obvious really!

Sculpture in the park

The first climb...

We're used to cross country walking but this part was truly, truly horrible.

It went on and on and got steeper and steeper - I thought I was going to be sick!

Not sure what this was but it had water cascading from the top of it...

Chatsworth House

Chatsworth cows and sheep



The end...

Sunday in the park...

I actually took my camera with me on this morning's walk.  It was cool, blustery and just a great morning to be out of doors.  We got to Bradgate Park at about 7.30a.m. and slogged up to Old John where we met a group of fellow masochists who kindly offered us food.  We unwillingly declined as we had our hike in front of us and then after admiring the view for a few moments, set off downhill trying to avoid two stags standing on the path who were 'looking at us in a funny way'.  We made it around our normal route in record time without mishap (apart from Cath almost falling off the path) and decided we must be getting fitter as we didn't feel as if we needed oxygen quite as badly as usual after tackling the last hill back up to the car park.  Something strange happened on the way home though, we had to nip into Sainsburys (post-Starbucks) and I picked up a copy of the Mail on Sunday for D as it had a feature on Nigella.  It's not a paper I'd normally even put in my rabbit's cage but D loves Nigella so it had to be done (I like to think he would have done the same for me if it were George Cloony).  What was really odd is that I had to be over 16 to buy it.  I kid you not, it said on my receipt that the checkout operator confirmed I was old enough so I asked her about it.  Was it the fact that the Mail is such an awful paper it can't be allowed to corrupt the young, or just that Nigella was seductively inviting people to 'come into my kitchen' on the cover of the magazine, wearing a dress that looked as if Dulux had had a hand in spraying it on her?  One of life's little mysteries...

Old John with rather dramatic cloud formation...

Apologies for the poor quality of this one - the stag was so close to us I became inept and couldn't change the settings on my camera in time!  He was posing so nicely too...

The views make it all worthwhile...

At least this bit's downhill...

I love the look of red berries and have to take a photo of them whenever I see them - it's like a pavlovian reflex...

Not a Bradgate Park wild rabbit.

This is Ben snuggling up to D this morning to watch the Grand Prix

A nice Sunday...

 I won't talk about Saturday which, due to male ineptitude and general unpleasantness was written-off, but Sunday was great.  I left everyone else asleep then went to pick Cath up for our Sunday morning yomp around Bradgate Park.

Charlie demonstrates the 'after breakfast, before mid-morning snack' sleeping position

Whilst Pod does her 'cushion slug' pose

How can a day not go well which starts with your best friend giving you a BIG jar of giant olives at 7a.m?  I love olives... it says on the jar these have to be eaten within two weeks of opening - it won't be a problem. 

THE OLIVES!!

Then it was off to Bradgate Park.  It was misty, cool and damp, a hint of autumn in the air.  We started off by climbing up to Old John, a folly on top of the highest hill in the park with fantastic views, then to the War Memorial and then we just walked for an hour and a half.  It was a lovely morning with the deer appearing out of the mist and the bracken just beginning to turn.  By the time we made it up the last hill back to the car park the sun had burned through and we were hot, tired and very ready to collapse in Starbucks on the way home!

Old John

The War Memorial

The Park deer

The reward!

Then it was home, shower, change and I then decided to go to the meditation centre at Kelmarsh in the depths of Northamptonshire for lunch.  It is a lovely, tranquil place with a World Peace Cafe which serves the nicest veggie food.  D hadn't been before but was impressed.  They have a lovely black cat who lives there but who ignored me despite my overtures of friendship. 

The Kelmarsh Panther - guarding the path to enlightenment...

D then wanted to visit Harrington, a place not far from Kelmarsh with an abandoned airfield.  We walked probably a couple of miles up the taxi-way and back - me admiring the view and enjoying the peace and quiet, D taking photos of old concrete bunkers.

Yet more walking...

Then it was home with enough time to catch a few more episodes of The West Wing on DVD before bed.  What's not to like?

Better late than never...

Seems ages since I posted anything, mainly because it is ages since I posted anything! We've still been keeping up with the walking - Cath and I now do cross county at Bradgate Park on a Sunday.  The first time we did it my glutes and quads were so stiff the next day I felt as if I'd repelled the north face of K2.  Thankfully it's got better since then. 

Finally got to go to Ironbridge - lovely place and didn't realise it wasn't that far from where we live

Crochet-wise, I made a pom-pom cushion and started on a shrug and a capelet

And I finally finished the throw for the sofa in the study...

I even cooked something!! Made some chilli jam which is a relish with a bit of a kick...

...and some ginger cookies.  D was so amazed he took a photo of them.  They were all meant to be stars but I got bored so also turned out a couple of pumpkins and a bat...

Busy, busy, busy!

It feels like I haven't stopped to think let alone sit down and relax this weekend.  Friday night we went to Stratford to see the RSC's Morte D'Arthur, which was an experience!  First the director Greg Doran came on and apologised for the fact they hadn't had time to do a full rehearsal as it was such a long play (it was on from 7.15pm until 11pm), and things did seem to keep going wrong techinically, and finally 15 minutes from the end Greg came back on and said he was stopping the performance as Sam Troughton who played Arthur had been taken ill.  He did look and sound awful - hope it was nothing too serious.  Visually the play was stunning, and the effects were so clever, well worth seeing.  The language is completely different to Shakespeare, none of the rich poetry, and the characters too are quite 'flat', but it really will be a wonderful production once they iron out the problems.

On Saturday we went to the Great Central Railway's World War II Event which was great fun.  Took quite a few photos and the only annoyance of the day was that as the event was spread over four locations, we had to pay £5 to go on the platform at Loughborough Station and another £5 to go into the event at Quorn Station too.  A bit steep methinks. It should have been £5 for the event, plus extra if you actually travelled by train.

A tree near the field where we parked - I just like trees

Lola Lamour, excellent 1940s style singer

World War II Nurse

Spiv

Shopkeeper

G.I.s

Today David kindly helped me with my fitness kick by coming on a 10km walk with me, and we did it in 1 hour 45 minutes!  I even had the energy to go shopping this afternoon and bought him a swiss roll in gratitude (he was shattered and had to go and lie down :O)), I also attacked two of our garden shrubs with shears (have probably killed them as I've no idea what I'm doing despite my Dad being a gardener), and pulled up some ornamental grass that was threatening to take over the front garden.  And tomorrow it's back to work...

We did it!

Helen and I completed the Moonlit walk on Saturday night in 1 hour 50 minutes and had a great time doing it.  The atmosphere was wonderful with people in the streets cheering the walkers on.  About 400 ladies took part, and 3 dogs did it as well, I saw one wearing his medal at the end!  Helen had done a 7 mile run in the morning and then went swimming 8a.m. Sunday morning - I'm not sure if she's insane or just Wonder Woman!    It has to be said the breakfast after the walk left something to be desired, I had a remarkably wizened veggie sausage that was fished out from somewhere below a counter in a hot dog roll.  Still - it was a great night anyway.  We hope to do it again next year, and this time Helen wants us to take supplies of chocolate to eat en-route - not sure if my stomach could take a bar of Cadbury's on top of aerobic exercise, but what the heck.  I didn't have my camera with me (too heavy), but managed a few dodgy shots on my phone before the walk began.  Helen says she particularly likes the one of the back of her head as it makes her hair-do look glam!

Helen with fab feather boa

Helen with fab hair-do.  I was trying to get a picture of the black dog in the background!  Where is a DSLR with 200mm zoom lens when you need one?

One of the dogs that took part with his 'team'

I loved the rabbit ears and the fairy wings

My first medal!