Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

The day started with snow.



I took some pictures on different settings, but I think I like the 'auto' results best.



Then we went to Trafalgar Square because I thought the fountains might be frozen. And they were.



There was even a warning sign. The pigeons looked cold.



Then we found a giant snowman on Carnaby Street.



And that was some of my day. I also went to a party, met Maeve, went to the National Gallery, bought presents and ate in the Cafe in the Crypt. But I didn't take pictures of those parts.

Christmas is a funny time. I had such a good time at home and am
feeling lovely and rested, but now I'm really not looking forward to
returning to normal life. Holidays are sometimes quite unhelpful.

But I'm trying to make January seem more appealing by filling it with
fun things. Next weekend, for example, we're meeting Sam and Melanie,
Maeve's coming to stay and I have a dinner party to attend in a
gentlemen's club to which I must wear a cocktail dress. The weekend
after Tom's coming to visit which will probably involve a visit to the
Science Museum. And if Andy's back holds up, we're going skiing the
weekend after for a week, which takes us to the end of January.

February is only a little month, and I find time passes quickly if you
think about your birthday all the way through. And the days keep
getting longer and warmer so I'll cycle more and more. And then it's
March, which has many birthdays, and which marks the start of the race
towards summer. Also, Legoland reopens in March so I may go there for
a birthday outing.

But in the meantime we've got a long drive back to London on Sunday,
then we're back to alarm clocks waking you up when it's still dark and
you're still tired, and the long and 6% more expensive commute to
work. When I grow up I want to work from home.

So I've just visited Bangor, and now I feel rather sad. In the two
minutes I spent there (looking for Christmas crackers in Tesco while
Andy filled the car with fuel) I managed to bump into an ex-CSO. It's
that kind of cosiness I love about Bangor - you just don't bump into
people you know in London. And London doesn't have such lovely scenery.

But then most of my friends have left Bangor by now and pretty much
all of them will be gone in a couple of years, so it's probably time
to move on. Sigh.

Well, we've made it to Fishguard so we're about halfway. Actually well
over halfway distance-wise but with another eight hours to go; I
reckon we could go faster than this ferry in Knocknagow.

I'm very excited because we're planning to drop in on my old school so
I can show Andy. We wouldn't need to visit it in person only the whole
of Waterford is unavailable on Google Maps (probably some secret
military operation involving blaas). Sad but true.

Poor Andy is getting very upset because Stena are playing some cruel
game where they let us all move forward then let ALL the other cars
get on before us. We may have to upgrade to Stena Plus just to get a
seat. Seems particularly cruel when we can't take advantage of the
free alcohol that buys us as we're both driving. Cruel, cruel world.

I think there's only one other person who actually uses the bike store at work even though Borrys the Bike Man told me there were 90. Cos I only ever see the one man, every single time I use the bike store, and nobody else. Today I even saw him twice.

He obviously cycles in every single day, so I naturally assumed he did some kind of lightweight, less-than-four-miles commute (I reckon three to four miles is the point where you can justify wearing full cycling gear). Turns out he cycles eleven miles. Twice a day. Every. Single. Day.

Dear Mum and Tom (who are both complaining about my profile being out of date): it's only two months out of date, my age was wrong for nearly a year and nobody complained. Maybe I'll change it at Christmas, but I think I'll invent a job for myself cos civil servant doesn't sound all that exciting (although it definitely is exciting).

Speaking of which, did you all see that 22000 people applied for the Fast Stream this year? Up from 16000 last year. Everyone's starting to see the wisdom of public sector careers now, band-wagon-jumpers. Although it's no easy ride: I walked SIX MILES for work today. SIX MILES! Don't let anyone tell you civil servants don't work hard.

Dame Judi Dench likes Ikea meatballs and can occasionally be found
eating them in the Croydon branch.

First of all, I've just added my blog email address to my phone so I can blog on the move, because it has occurred to me that I have lots of thoughts on London. Like how it's way colder than Bangor, and how the tube is noticeably busier when it's cold so lots of other people must be chickening out of cycling too.

Let me begin with the news that I am allergic to something. Yesterday morning my whole face went very red and swelled up slightly after my shower, but it went away so I didn't think much of it. But now the bags under my eyes have turned red and swelled up. I think I'm either allergic to salt (it happened after using Ocean Salt face-wash and after crying at a sad film) or Kleenex Balsam (I've been using them a lot to blow my nose and specifically to dry my eyes when I cried).

Now, I'm just going to start with a small selection, mostly because (like a good little housewife) I've got to go do the washing-up and ironing whilst Andy watches Top Gear. Foh.



This is the view out of our living room window, looking vaguely east along the branch of the Wandle that passes us. I have a picture of the main bit coming in a moment.



This is the view out of our bedroom, looking vaguely north. Not quite as nice: KFC, Pizza Hut, power cables and Sainsbury's (aka the SavaCentre) in the background.



But back to the Wandle, the main bit this time, which runs in a northerly direction to the west of our flat complex. This is it passing Merton Abbey Mills with our local pub in the background.

Maybe I'll have some photos of Abbey Mills itself next time.

Sam's new/old blog now has an exciting feature where it ranks the blogs on his blog roll in order of last updated. Even though I updated relatively recently, I'm already about halfway down the list. So now I feel obliged to keep on top of things a bit more so that I don't end up right at the bottom. But I'm about to dash off to a Christmas party (why? Why hold these things at lunchtime? It is so hard to know what to wear to a lunchtime party) so I'll have to write more later (cunning little trick there to bump me back to the top of the list twice in one day) -- since it is very very sunny outside I've just taken some pictures of our beautiful market so I'll try put them up this evening.