What awful weather!

June has been a total washout this year. As we near the end of the month, I can honestly say that I have not fancied being out in the garden at all, and my tan is non-exis!tant. As I look out of the window now, it is dry, but windy, grey and cold!!! There have been no hot nights, when I have had to throw off the quilt.

There have been massive floods in the north of the country, especially around Sheffield. How awful it must be to have your house flooded. The flood waters are usually very dirty, and ruin all your furniture, walls, floors and belongings! It will take a long time for all those householders to get back to normal. There is a dam that is cracked, and might breach. If it deos there are homes in the way!

The nearest we got to being flooded was when we lived on the seafront. Between the sea and our house was a big green, then a bank, then pebbles down to the sea. We reckoned that we were actullay below sea level. When there were winter high tides coupled with high winds, the bank used to leak, and the green flooded. The green was not completely flat, and ther was a dip in it that came onto the road right opposite our house. One night the sea water flooded the road, and was just lapping our drive! I found the photos the other day, so when I get a moment, I'll scan them in.

The forecast for the weekend is for much more torrential rain for the whole country. Poor people who are already flooded!

Smoking ban

The smoking ban comes in on Saturday. That has come round quickly! I hadn't really thought about it much until we decided at the Family Centre to rethink smoking there. ATM service users who want a cigarette stand outside the back door, and we have an old paint tin for the butts (YUCK!) We put up a poll to ask whether they wanted to continue with that, or go out on the pavement. It's come back 50/50 really. So we're planning to let them smoke at the end of the drive, so that they don't cause a nuisance on the pavement for passers by. (Although it is a quiet area, and there are not many passers by)

Gosh I'm glad I've already given up smoking (about 20 years ago now!). I started at school, cos some of my firiends did, and once we got into the 6th form, we used to go out of school at break time for our fags! We used to go round the corner so we weren't seen - these days they light up the moment they are out of the school gates, sometimes even sooner than that! The whole of the 6th form were asked to be prefects, so we turned it down, so we could continue going out for our fag!

Another smoking memory that comes to mind is when I worked in a little accountacny firm round the corner here. There were 3 full timers, and a couple of part timers, and we all smoked like chimneys!!! It must have been absolutely horrible in there!! We drank loads of coffee, and sat at big old dining room tables that had wonky legs and were stacked up with books. Nothing wa sever filed away, so there were great big piles of folders and papers on our 'desks'. The boss used to come in on a Friday and buy us all cream cakes, and he gobbled his so quickly, it was disgusting!!! What a place to work! I didn't stay very long!

Cards I made with my HOTP kit from QVC

I ordered the TSV from QVC craft day last weekend. I have never ordered from QVC before, always thinking that they charge way too much for postage. But I rather fancied this card making kit, mainly becasue I iften don't like the cards I make, and want some more ideas. This kit is a huge book, full of papers that all co-ordinate, quotes and embellishments, not to mention the ribbons, brads (eyelet brads, button brads, and great big brads), and stamps (3 sheets of clear stamps). There are instructions for 42 cards, so I ma slowly working my way through them.

What I like about the kit:

Easy to follow instructions
The great big brads have rub-ons to go on them!
The insides of the cards are also decorated.
Loads of lovely ribbon
The stamps look really good, and I will definately use them lots

What I don't like:

The kit didn't include card blanks

Some of the papers are not very nice!

The quotes and phrases are a bit too gushy! But I could always put something else in their place, like a nice stamp.

Goodwood festival of speed

We had a fabulous day at Goodwood Festival of Speed. We are always very impressed with the fantastic organisation. We parked the bike in the 'proper' bike park this time, and there were huge stores for jackets and helmets etc, and a shuttle to the entrance. We went in the entrance near one of the paddocks. That's the great thing about Goodwood, you can go in the paddocls and touch the cars, you are so near. You sometimes get to see famous racing drivers too! Today we saw Jochen Maas, and a Scottish driver called A McNish (never heard of him, but he was signing autographs!) Last time we went, we saw Derek Bell and Jensen Button and usually see Sammy Miller. Anyway, here's a couple of the best photos from the paddock.

Every year they have an enormous structural display in front of Goodwood house. This year it was Toyota's turn, and these cars hung in space from huge girders! Very impressive!

The heavens opened at one time, and we sheltered under the Suburu tent, next to Colin McCrae's car! The rain didn't last long, but boy did it come down! There was a bit of thunder and lightning too. Then the red arrows flew by and did an awesome display. I LOVE the red arrows, and never fail to be impressed. I couldn't take a picture cos it was still raining then, and I didn't want to get my camera wet!

A fabulous, gorgeous blue Harley.

At the Porsche driving experience. You paid an extortionate amount to be driven round a small circuit in avery muddy car!

My best attempt at panning. This is the actual point of the Festival of Speed. It is a hill climb race, and all the bikes and cars are timed riding/driving up the hill. The vehicles come from all ages, and many are famous racing bikes and cars, and many are driven by old (and new)racers. Louis Hamilton, rookie F1 Winner, is going to be ther tomorrow (Sunday is the actual race day, Friday and Saturday are practices)

Stunt rider Christain Pfiefer on a BMW 800, stunning the crowds (even more so because the track was wet and greasy)

I love that Goodwood logo! This is the pedestrian bridge over the track. On the right hand side of the picture is Goodwood house and the paddocks, on the left all the big car manufacturers have huge stands to show off their wares.

In the Cartier 'Style et Lux' area. Always some very gorgeous cars here, and as you can guess, I have loads of photos from here!

Ferrari had pride of place in the stable block this year.

I really ought to blog more often....

Oh I wish i could blog every day. It would only need to be a line or two. In fact, the reason I don't is because I usually post on chat threads in UKS and Tandastamps forums. What I should do (and have done on occasions) is copy and paste into my blog! Problem solved! A couple of photos I took yesterday in the garden. Another reason I don't blog very often is that I always think the entries look so much better with photos, and I just can't be bothered to resize etc to be able to post them!!! These are popadoodledoo'd as well!

Ok one or two lines about today. It is still warm and humid. We (merlin and I) got a bit wet this morning on our walk up to Highdown. He seemed to really enjoy it this morning, he loves running through the long grass, especially when it is windy too! Work was pants, there isn't really enough to do for 3 hours most days, I just wipe down clean things to while away the time sometimes! I should probably suggest that I cut my hours, but then that's less money:( Just done my Anglo Italian stuff and nonsense, and now have to go to the bank and waitrose. Off to Crawley crop tonight, hurrah!

NJ had a maths exam this morning. A levels don't seem very taxing really! He's only had a couple of exams so far (but 3 this week!). They have only been for 1.5 hours - didn't we have 3 hour exams? He is not at all perplexed or stressed. He had an interview at waitrose last week, and is waiting to hear on that. Still pondering the church gap year scheme thingy.

LE is going into town with girlies after school. She is always out atm!! Still, I think i was too at that age, why not?

M's wobbly job is looking a little better in that RC in Phoenix will want a person just like him in August to fill a Eurpoean slot. Here's hoping!

Mum and dad came over yesterday. Dad drove his car for the first time in ages. He seemed really well, and jolly. Let's hope he is on th mend, and he gets a good long spell of feeling OK. I showed them my heritage album, and we talked family history alot. I ordered a few more certificates. Why are they so expensive?

Are there I go again - one or two lines becomes 10 then 20......

cool day!

We had a really cool day yesterday! At the end of our week off work, i was feeling a little disappointed with ourselves. We didn't go anywhere (except Mottisfont on Tuesday) and we only did small bits of jobs, like move half of the carpet that was on the patio to the end of the garden (to use as a weed supressor on the path).

So yesterday we went out! I persuaded DH that we should go for a ride on his bike as it was such a gorgeous day! We took lots of little 'B' roads around West and East Sussex, ending up at Balcombe viaduct. What a splendid sight! Then we had half a lager at a gorgeous little village called Lindfield (not to be confused with Lingfield where the lovely Craft barn is!) overlooking the village pond!

After tea we all went for a walk down to the beach and we took some great photos, a selection of which can be seen here!

Check out my Slide Show!

Other people's blogs

I woke up early this morning with backache, so instead of tossing and turning, decided to get up! I've now been up a couple of hours and have had time to potter about, drink tea, have breakfast, take some photos and sit here perusing other people's blogs.

I really should update the list at the side. I don't visit many of them anymore.

Just found a thread on UKS that listed some great blogs, some scrapping related, some not:

http://www.pencillines.com/ my present homepage
http://www.embers.typepad.com/ I'm still doing emily's 52 week challenge
http://a-true-friend.blogspot.com/ pet LO challenges (love scrapping my dog!)
http://scrapbooklayouts.blogspot.com/ I am so definately a multi-photo LO girl!
http://onelittleword.blogspot.com/ just found this one, it looks good
http://posy.typepad.com/posy/ a dream - country living at it's best!

I must check them out more often! Actually, I must visit here more often!