Enjoying the Sunshine

We have had a lovely time this weekend so far. Yesterday we went out for a run in the cars with our neighbours Dawn and Julian. First of all we stopped at Druidston for some lunch, sat on the terrace overlooking the beach in the sun, then we went to St. Davids where we stopped at The Bench for one of Gianni's special ice-creams. Finally we ended up in Porthgain where we had a drink at the Sloop Inn, sat in the sunshine like proper tourists. Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera with me.

Today as it was another lovely day we decided to go a bit further north and head over the Preselis towards North Pembrokeshire. We went to quite a few places we have never been to before, starting with Cwm Gwaun, or the Gwaun Valley which was really beautiful with plenty of bluebells in the woods. We then climbed over the Preselis and came out just above Fishguard with stunning views over Newport beach.

We then decided to go to Cwm yr Eglwys (translates as valley of the church and pronounced eggloose) which is a little bay where the church was swept away in a storm in 1859

All that remains now is the graveyard and the bell tower. It was a very pretty place and I took quite a few pictures (the rest of which are on Facebook). You can see from the next one how close the church was to the beach, no wonder it was destroyed in a storm.

Derelict churches are obvious in vogue for blogs at the moment!! From Cwm yr Eglwys we stopped at a little pub in the middle of nowhere where we had a delicious sunday lunch before going further around the coast via Cwm Tudu (pronounced Coombe Toody) and heading to Newquay (the Pembrokeshire one, not the Cornish one!!)

Newquay is quite pretty, I've not been there before but I thought it was quite touristy, a bit like Tenby of the North and not really my cup of tea, but we did have a nice walk around the harbour where Noel took this pic of me sat on the sea wall.

After Newquay we headed home. It was pretty chilly by this time and I found a blanket in the boot of the car but fortunately Noel didn't get a picture of me with it wrapped round my head looking like something out of the Taliban while we drove back over the Preselis with the roof down!!

Murderers!!!

OMG!!! one of my cats murdered Stuart Little!!

On a less grisly note this was Nugget watching Erin eat her breakfast this morning, "go on, give us some, go on pleeeessseee!!"

I am still feeling pretty crap this morning, don't know what's wrong with me but I just don't feel right, personally I suspect it might be an overdose of housework seeing as I spent most of Tuesday cleaning and polishing. I feel a bit sick and quite achey (no Swine Flu jokes please).

I did managed to go out to real life pub quiz last night and we did rather well against the mighty Whetham. We only lost by 7 points and at one stage were only trailing by 3 points. In two weeks time we are the question masters again which should be fun.

The Great Dress Hunt

Erin and I embarked on the great dress hunt this morning. They are not really having a "Prom" as such but rather a presentation evening with a meal, presentation then a disco and the dress code is "Smart Casual" so no ball gowns for dinner suits.

We headed for Carmarthen, that being the closest place where a decent selection of shops can be found. We had a moszey around M & S but nothing lit her candle although she did take the opportunity to get meaured properly for a bra. 30DD.. for a little thing she is quite well endowed.

Next stop was Monsoon... always a good place to find a fancy frock and she selected a few dresses to try and was gutted when the size 6 wouldn't quite fit (bitch!!). In the end we narrowed it down to two. This beautiful silk number which has the most stunning combination of colours and really looked lovely on her.


And this one which really suited her and is a much younger style.


We had a walk round a few other shops and tried to make up our minds then finally headed back to Monsoon and tried them both on again. Previously we had decided that the first one was better, but on the second try on it was definately the halter necked one, it just looked stunning on her so we got it. This is the picture of it from the website, I think it looks better on her.


So we headed home, me discernably poorer and Erin very happy. Now t behe search begins for shoes... god help!!

I am off to real life pub quiz now against the ace team the Whetham... sure we will lose, but we have been doing really well lately.... wish me luck!!

Grrrrrr... Thieving Gits!!

You may remember me mentioning that as well as the posh coffee machine I bought Noel for his birthday we were also buying a Tassimo machine. Well I ordered one, through Amazon but not directly from them and a good deal I had as well, it was over £20 cheaper than they were in the shops. However there is no point in getting a bargin if the bloody thing dosn't turn up!!


I ordered it last Sunday and as of last night it still hadn't turned up so I emailed the company I ordered it from. I had an email back this morning informing that it has been delivered and signed for at 10.49am on 21st March.... that in itself would have been impossible as Noel, Ffion and I were all in work and Erin was in school at that time.

So yet again it would appear that it has been delivered to the wrong address and some thieving git has signed for it instead of admitting that they had not ordered any such thing.


As you might guess this is not the first time this has happened. Some of the confusion arises from the fact that we are 3 Castle Hall Drive which is just off Castle Hall Road which also happens to have a number 3 (as you would expect)... to make matters worse a few years ago someone called Karen Smith lived at 3 Castle Hall Road, you can imagine the confusion that caused. When things have gone astray in the past I have called at the other number 3 (which is only one house up from me) and enquired after my things, always to be told that they have not seen hide nor hair of them (a likely story!!!) But what can you do if someone denies all knowledge, I can hardly barge my way in and search the house, much though I would love to.


So yet again I have had to telephone a company and explain that I have not received an item, despite the fact that they have written proof that it has been signed for. At the moment they are investigating it with the couriers and hopefully will be getting back to me in the near future. In the past most companies have always sent a replacement item but that isn't really the point, why should some thieving git get a brand new coffee machine, mobile phone, books etc etc for free while I have to do all the running around and put up with all the hassle of chasing things up and having to wait for goods which I have paid my hard earned cash for!!

Property Magnates

About three years ago we invested in another property to rent out and bought a two bedroom flat on a local estate. Then in February another flat in the same block came up for sale so we decided that our money would be better spent in property again, rather than sitting in the bank earning bugger all interest, so we bought it. It is the bottom one in this picture.. the other one we own is on the left and upstairs, out of shot.

Noel has been working flat out since we bought it, getting it tidied up and ready to rent out. These are some before and after shots.

The kitchen before

And after .... and the bathroom before

And the bathroom after.

Lounge before (I was very tempted to keep the carpet.....NOT!)

And finally the lounge after.

I won't bore you with pics of the bedrooms because they have basically just had new flooring and fresh paint on the walls, a bit like the lounge. The other flat we rented furnished as it was rented to a contractor working down here. We are not sure with this one yet, we are waiting to hear from the Estate Agent as to what would be best, so hopefully in the next week or so we will get it rented out and phase 2 of Noel's pension plan will spring into operation.

Tweet Tweet

I've been "tweeting" with "Twitter".

For the uninitiated (that would be you Jane!), Twitter is a free micro blog site where people post short updates of their activities called "Tweets", a bit like Facebook status updates. Only with Twitter there are lots of celebrities you can "follow" and interact with. The most follwed of all is Stephen Fry who as of this evening had 444,014 followers. Jonathan Ross and Philip Schofield are also prolific "tweeters".

This evening I received my first tweet reply from a celebrity... and just my luck it had to be an english rugby player!!! I decided to follow Will Carling as I though he might have some interesting insight into international rugby, albeit from a Saes point of view but it was worth a go. However the good Mr. Carling appears to be obsessed with Hell's Kitchen (something I don't actually watch). And we earlier this evening he made the following tweet.

willcarlingI think Danielle or Miss Dynamite get the chop.But how come Danielle hasn't had to cook really? She just stands near the pass?Hell's Kitchenabout 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

To which I jokingly replied

KazCymru@willcarling for a big macho rugby player you seem very obsessed with cooking!about 2 hours ago from web in reply to willcarling

And lo and behold I got a reply \0/

willcarling@KazCymru obsessed yes! But not big or macho to be honest!!about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

My first celebrity Tweet.... I wonder who I can get to reply next!!!

Bored Blog

I am so bored I am resorting to blogging about the coffee machine I bought Noel for his birthday.. desperate or what??

As usual when it comes to buying presents for my beloved I was stumped. He is impossible to buy for. He dosn't read books, he has no particular interest in music and his only hobby would appear to be hanging around with Meurig, so as usual I was struggling.

When we were in Bath a few weeks ago, we were in the Kitchen shop, which is one of our favourite haunts ... sad or what! And they were demonstrating coffee machines which use the Nespresso capsule system

We tried a sample and were very impressed, it was lovely "real" coffee and very simple to make. We have a coffee machine but rarely use it as it tends to make too much and is a pain to clean afterwards. This system however, just makes one cup at a time and involves no cleaning up at all, you simply pop a capsule into the machine and press either the Espresso or the Lungo button and you get a perfect cup of coffee. It is also very compact and stylish.

He was really pleased with it \0/. We have used all the capsules that came with it so I must now order more. They are only available from the Nespresso Club and can be ordered by phone or via tinternet. The simplicity of the system is great, the only downside being it only makes either an espresso size cup or a very small coffee cup which is nice for a treat but not when you really fancy a nice big mug of coffee, so we have also invested in a Tassimo machine for "everyday" use.. plus the kids can make hot chocolate with it... I know... more money than sense.. but what the hell!