March Madness

Hi to everyone again!

We haven't had a hugely eventful month thus far, but we've been busy booking up trips and just generally 'living' in London for a while. It's been a pretty good month actually.

The weather has changed a fair bit, and so have the clocks - forwards by an hour, in fact, for daylight savings - we love daylight savings over here - summer in Europe is hard to beat, and with the increase in sunlight and temperatures, our moods have had a shift in the more pleasant direction too!!! :-)

Even though the weather has been getting a lot better, it's still been a bit all over the place. We had one day where Damo was out taking photos around London, and it was Sunny and probably about 12 degrees at about 1pm - Damo got a phone call from Trav to see if he wanted to go meet up and have a few beers. By the time it took Damo to walk from St James's Park to Bond St tube station, which is about a half hour walk, it was snowing hard! Very strange. Then for the next week or so, there was snow. It was very odd - we'd had a week or two previous where we had the temperature get up to about 18 or 19 degrees celcius, and sunny.

We had Mel over for lunch one day so that we could organise our Tuscany bicycle tour. We had a few glasses of wine and a whole lot of tapas/nibblies - it was lovely. Unfortunately, the few glasses of wine turned into many, and then there wasn't much Tuscany happening. It was a lovely day so we decided to take a rug and a bottle of wine down to Ravenscourt Park and we sat there and ate, drank and were merry! It was sensational.

We came home from then and proceeded to have some more nibblies for dinner, and then sat down to watch a movie called 'Under the Tuscan Sun' - considering the trip we were supposed to be organising we thought it might be good to get us in the mood - unfortunately by this point in time it was all too late, and we had had a couple of wines too many.

This trip still isn't booked, but we are going to do it, so we're really looking forward to it.

The trips that we have booked (and confirmed) so far at the moment are:

April - Easter - Amalfi Coast - Italy

May - 2nd Long Weekend - Monaco Formula 1(tm) Grand Prix (Damo has his tickets....) :-)

August - Long Weekend - San Sebastian - Spain

August - Week off work! - Greek Islands Cruise - Greece (With a group of friends)

September - 6 days - Oktoberfest - Munich, Germany (We're also sightseeing in Bavaria while we're there)

The trips that we haven't booked or confirmed (but are intending to go on are):

June - We're taking a long weekend - Belgium - Damo is off to Rockwerchter (Massive music festival in Belgium - camping with Damo's workmates!!!)

July - Week off work - Tuscany - Italy - (Cycling tour with a group of friends)

November - Week - Egypt

So at least we've been busy trying to get on top of all that - it's amazing how much planning has to go into organising each trip though - it's really quite time consuming.

Last weekend we went over to Andria and Steve's place at Notting Hill for a wine-tasting/dinner party. It was just the four of us and one other friend of Steve's - they both work for Google (Steve and his mate), and they were really nice guys. We had a great night, with a couple of Chateauneuf-du-pape's too many (and miles too much food!) :-)

Unfortunately we've captured bugger all photos of anything we've been up to lately, but Damo has just bought a new camera and hopefully that'll inspire him to start taking a few more piccies!

He bought this - Canon EOS 30D with a EF 70-200mm f/4 lense and an 18-50mm f2.8 lense. Mainly bought it so he could get some decent shots when he goes to Monaco, but no doubt it'll come in handy during all of our travels.

We're both going to book into a photography course soon so that we can learn how to make the most out of it.

Consequently, Damo has been spending a bit of time trapseing around London taking a few piccies with the new camera. He did get sidetracked one afternoon when Trav gave him a call to see if he wanted to catch up for a few pints, but he's been enjoying it, so that's good.

Backlit Big Ben & Parliament - (Look kids... Yeah, we know Dad - Big Ben, Parliament)

St James's Park (Just before it was snowing...)

Pretty Flowers

A likely suspect that might be familiar to many of you...

Anyway, that's about all we've been up to - we're off to a party at Damo's bosses' house tonight.

We hope you are all still well, and don't be shy to put some comments up here if you're reading it! ;-)

Dinner with mates and Borough Markets

This last weekend just gone, we were both feeling a bit exhausted after quite a busy few weeks in a row, so we decided that we'd go for a pretty cruisy, relaxing weekend.

We ended up getting invited around to Elliott's place on Friday night for a dinner party and a few bottles of wine. This was a last minute thing, and Elliott invited us late Friday afternoon to come around - prior to that we were expecting a quiet Friday night at home - funny how things like that happen.

After getting to his place pretty late due to shocking traffic (there's something completely unexpected in London - NOT), we settled in with Damo giving him a hand cooking the fajitas, and both of us having a few glasses of wine. In attendance were Elliott, Kat, Antony, Karolin, Sam and (her partner - can't remember his name.... Martin, maybe?) and both of us.

There was plenty of wine being guzzled, and as it turned out, the dinner was very delectable also.

All in all we had a thoroughly enjoyable night.

On Saturday we woke up a little late-ish (about 9am), but it was a nice day though, and we didn't want to be stuck inside all day. We got going about 10-ish and headed off to the shops to take a few things back and pick up a few essentials. We were going to go into a park in the city because it was such a lovely day, but by the time we finished at the shops, walked outside, it was pissing down... Of course. We modified our plans and decided that we'd go to the Borough High Street markets to pick up some fresh fruit and veges for the week and also to have a wander around tasting all of the yummy food. It was great. They always have things like marinated olives, cheeses, breads etc with little morsels available for tasting. We spent most of the afternoon doing this, and then just prior to leaving we decided we'd head off to More London to have fish and chips on the banks of the Thames overlooking Tower Bridge.



Just for a little bit more information, Tooley Street (where we used to live) is one of the oldest streets in London. It got absolutely hammered in the London Blitz, and there is a museum on Tooley Street called "Britain at War". Apparently 68 people died on Tooley Street.

We finished up at More London, made our way home, and rented the Da Vinci Code on DVD as we had both just finished reading the book (and were a little bit stuffed from the previous night). We were both underwhelmed as we thought that they didn't really capture the thrill of the chase, so to speak. It was ok though.

Sunday had us just doing some chores around the house, finishing off watching the movie, and generally having a lazy day - we went down to Chez Kristof which is a cafe just near us (it's about 4 doors down) for a spot of breakfast, but thankfully it was pissing down, so in weather like that you don't feel as guilty for doing very little. Chez is a great place to hang out on a Sunday just drinking coffee and reading the paper.

Nikki was heading out to meet Olivia for coffee in the afternoon (Also at Chez Kristof). While she was off doing that, Damo did absolutely nothing around the house, and just lied on the couch watching Clerks X on DVD on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Ahhhhh!

Damo in F1

*Damo speaking*

I just recently became a part of F1 for this year. I thought it would be a good year to be involved considering that I'm off to the Monaco GP this year.

So therefore, my name will be printed on the Honda Racing Team RA107's front wing.

If you want to do the same thing, you can go to http://www.myearthdream.com and follow the links to pledge.

I should probably also mention that it's going to be microscopic, literally.... The new livery for the Honda this year is a picture of the Earth from Google Earth (pictured below), and the colours will be made up of people's names who make environmental pledges. I've pledged to turn off the TV at the set and to not unnecessarily charge my mobile phone. So my name will be appearing as 1 pixel of the front wing livery of the Honda RA107 - and I got it for the bargain basement price of £1.

*end Damo speaking*