Scotland

 

Ferry to Mull - all calm at 7am

 

Interior of the Queen Mother's summer house at Edinburgh Botanical Gardens

Falkirk Wheel - replaced 10 lock gates on the canal

 

Beautiful Oban/Kerrera coast line

 

Tropically warm waters on Iona

Recommended Read

Tips for Vintage Style by Cath Kidston - loads of great ideas!

Wall art

Spied in the gift shop in the Royal Arcade in Norwich along with loads of other cool designs.

The coolest shop ever!

Lisbeth Dahl

Dream garden accessories

Holiday

We're off to Oban bright and early this morning. While I'm gone there will be pretty picutres every so often. Enjoy :)

Breakfast Epiphanies

I picked up Breakfast Epiphanies in the library a few weeks ago and wondered immediately why, as I'm still trying not to read trashy chick lit! But despite the cover it's blurb caught my attention and I read on.


It tells the story of Toby and Sara. After they decide to get married, Sara realises that the big Catholic wedding she had always imagined didn't feel right anymore with her having lost grip on her childhood faith and Toby's agnositicism. She gives herself a year to go on a quest for renewed faith. They visit countless religious leaders and follwers around the world to contemplate following a complately new religion together. The thing that annoyed me about this quest was that they never properly investigated Christianity, but thought they had it covered by going to Lourdes and talking to lapsed Methodists (who only went to church out of routine). So many of the failings they found with a lot of the beliefs they looked into might have been answered for them.

I was hoping the book might give me some insight into how other couples deal with differences in their faith lives - if an agnostic and former Catholic can work it out I thought, a minor quibble about church between Ben and me might fade into insignificance. And it did in a way. By reading the book I was able to assess what it is I'm really looking for in my faith life and maybe it encouraged me to be a bit more independent in that process. Maybe more on my conclusions in a couple of weeks.

Leek Tart

That cooking I did a few weekends ago now was leek tart, recipie here. It was really easy to make and was very yummy!

Two gentle exercise videos

Didn't fancy doing tae bo today so found these on Youtube - they're nice and gentle, yay!

15 minute abs workout
10 minute cardio kickboxing workout

The exciting news

Our weekend tale starts a few weeks ago in my unassuming mind, when I had a bizarre dream about looking round a new estate. There was a show house and flags, a hill with new houses and lots of people around. The bed in the house we saw was sunk into the floor like a swimming pool but that's beside the point...

Two weeks ago Ben went to see a financial adviser to find out about setting up a pension. In conversation he happened to mention that we were trying to save up for a house deposit. The adviser just happened to be linked with a broker who deals with a shared equity scheme for Bovis - a scheme I might add that is pretty cool as you don't even have to pay rent on the part of the property that the developer retains, you just need to pay them back within 10 years (so selling the house would cover that).

Hmm, we thought.

Last Sunday we cycled over to this local estate and had a look at the block of four flats available on this scheme. And what do you know? As soon as the lady handed us the key we walked up an inclining road (I can hardly use the word hill in Norfolk!) And there were more people around than we expected. But thankfully there were no sunken beds in sight.

A sunny day, French doors from the bedroom to the south facing garden, an open plan kitchen/dinner/lounge and it being on "Lobelia Lane" were all we needed to fall in love!

Today we went to see it again and put down our holding deposit so it's ours! We're waiting for some legal details before we can start the process and it won't be complete for another 10 weeks or so, but this seems to have fallen into our laps in some divinely inspired way.

Fanfare Le SNOB

The opening of the Festival couldn't have been more captivating! During the first song I was a bit afraid of Fanfare Le SNOB - they seemed mystical, something like the witches out of Macbeth with a sinister edge. Ben said their pointy hats made him think of the KKK... but by the end of the performance they felt like friends and I didn't want them to leave. If you ever get a chance to see Glissssssendo take it!

Here's a video of them - not a patch on actually being there but it gives you a sense of what it was all about.

Looking forward to the fireworks in Earlham Park tomorrow night!

(updated as found embedded video)