Archive for February, 2010
My Year in Photos – February 27th – “Dark clouds on the horizon”
The view of the Madejski stadium – home to both London Irish rugby team and Reading FC – from the top floor of the car park of Mad House. I was taking Robert to Mad House at the time to give Sara a few hours to mark her exams.
My Year in Photos – February 26th – “Friday means beer o’clock”
Today’s photo was taken at one of the most joyous times of the week – beer o’clock (aka . 5pm) on Friday afternoon. It’s not a complicated concept – at 5pm we down tools and get free beer and crisps. Simple, yet brilliant. Since I usually drive to work these days, I’ve generally not partaken much recently, but this week I was delighted to find a stubby Heineken in the mess of beers on the table, so I opted to partake in the delights.
You may notice from the setting of the photo that I was *slightly* cheating on the concept of beer o’clock, in that you’re meant to leave your desk and mingle with your work colleagues. In my defence though, I was (on a dare) trying out Chat Roulette at last, at the end of which we’d attracted at least a dozen spectators. So it was a good group experience – especially the final part of it, which I won’t go in to here, but needless to say somebody was doing something on their webcam which made at least 2 people walk away hooting with laughter and shock!
My Year in Photos – February 25th – “Another wet day in Chiswick”
How’s that for the most uninspiring, doesn’t-make-you-want-to-click-it headline? Unfortunately, it’s about the most inspiring headline I could think of for today, since it was exactly that. Work was good, home was good, but very little of any major excitement happened, so I resorted to taking today’s photo on my walk across Turnham Green at lunch. Which was very wet.
My Year in Photos – February 24th – “No Parking”
In the past few months, the trees lining Chiswick’s leafy avenues have been covered in signs like this – stopping people from parking in the parking spaces underneath while the council chop big chunks off the top of them. Well, that’s what is SUPPOSED to happen anyway. Lately with the rain, they seem to just be place savers for whenever the council actually decide the weather is nice enough to give them a haircut.
As a result, almost every space in the road where I usually park while I’m at work is now coned off and marked with one of these signs – despite the fact that not a single branch has been chopped for 3 days now, and every day some poor sap (’scuse the pun) just comes along and changes the date on them to the next day.
You know me, I don’t like to moan… ; ) But it’s making my journey to work in the morning a lot more hassle. Not to mention how crap the M4 has been lately…
My Year in Photos – February 23rd – “A rainy Chiswick day”
Today’s photo was take as I went for a wander around Chiswick at lunchtime. That’s not to say that this was the most interesting thing to happen to me today, just that it was the only thing that would make a minutely interesting photo! I’ll try to find something more interesting to take a picture of tomorrow…!
My Year in Photos – February 22nd – “Busy at Zizzi”
Today’s photo was taken at lunch in Zizzi In Chiswick, where some of us were lucky enough to be taken today on a lunch to welcome two new starters at Tamar. There’s not a lot more I can say about that, but it certainly makes a change from bloody cupboards! : )
My Year in Photos – February 21st – “Making some progress”
After almost 5 and a half years, we’re finally making some good progress on the kitchen now, with today seeing the completion of what I like the call the “Cupboardy stage”. It was a bit hairy at times, with the plasterboard wall presenting a tough challenge for supporting a heavy cupboard, but we got there in the end.
All we have to do now is the worktop… and the hob and oven… and the sink… and quite a few other things. Oh well, at least I won’t have to do any of it until NEXT weekend!
My Year in Photos – February 20th – “My wife. In a box”
Despite it being the weekend, there was no rest and relaxation in the Elliss household – with painting to do, cupboards to build and hang and a number of other jobs on the (ever-increasing) list. Today we managed to paint the ceiling (two coats), put together all the cupboards, measured up where the fixings would go and even hang one of the cupboards.
It was touch-and-go at points, especially with a couple of the cupboards having to partially hang on plasterboard (the kitchen has a chimney, but the wall has been evened out – presumably to make fitting a kitchen less stressful… ironically) but the cupboard that we put up didn’t fall straight down again, so I can’t have done that bad a job.
Add to that long list a trip to the river (Thames) to feed the ducks and kick a ball around with Robert, as well as a couple of trips out to various DIY shops, and you’ve got one very tiring day.
My Year in Photos – February 19th – “So tired of shopping”
Our kitchen renovations didn’t get quite as far as we planned today, due to some small jobs that needed doing before we could paint. So we used our time wisely and did the weekly shop this morning, which is where this shot was taken.
The reason Robert was so tired that he fell asleep is because he had a very early start, 4.30am to be precise. For some bizarre reason, when Sara was putting him to bed last night, she forgot to put a nappy on him. So as you might expect from a 20-month-old, he woke up absolutely SOAKED, the poor mite. By the time we’d changed him and sorted it out, he was wide awake! Hence the early start…!
My Year in Photos – February 18th – “We’re TOTALLY plastered!”
Today was the day that our kitchen renovations finally moved to the next level, as the plasterers came in to repair all the rubbishy plaster left behind after we removed the cupboards and took off the tiles. To be fair to Leon and James (the plasterers), they did a bloody good job, in just 2 hours! Stellar.
Now that the walls have been skimmed, we can get to work on painting it, putting up the new cupboards, fitting the splash-back, changing the worktop, fitting the new sink and installing the new oven and hob… so almost there then? :D
(Come on, admit it – you thought the title was going to refer to the good news I got today, didn’t you? :D )