I got bored with my cat...so I decided to grow a new one....

Little things that annoy....

There is a car illegally parked in Piccadilly, London (for those of you who might not know this is a very busy road between Piccadilly Circus and Hyde Park Corner).  It's blocking the traffic and has a clamp on it, but it's been there for 3 days....why hasn't it been towed away!? 

This is annoying to me because where I live in East London, you can get towed away for parking with half a tyre outside the white line which indicates where you can park partly on the pavement....and it's not even a main road!!

Moan over....

The view from the window...

One of my favourite blogs is by Lucy at Attic 24.  She has a lovely writing style and a good eye for a photo.  I love her posts about the outings the family have in and around her home town in the Yorkshire Dales.  I would love to be able to go for walks like that at the moment.

Unfortunately I'm having some issues with sciatica and joint pain generally which prevent me from walking very much, but I love the countryside and as I live in a particularly grimy part of London I often long to get out of town.  One of the things I do occasonally is drive out to my favourite farm shop at Calcott Hall Farm.  I don't go on a regular basis as it rather far to go on a regular weekly trip, so I use it as a bit of a treat.  I go for lovely locally produced fruit and veg, plus they have a great butcher and fresh bread. Plus lots of other general groceries by smaller producers that you won't find in the high street supermarket. Anyway...I digress... there are two routes I can take to get there, the first is the A12... no way, on a Saturday!  The other is via, Epping, or Theydon Bois, through Ongar and so to the outskirts of  Brentwood.  This is still a busy route (not half as bad as the A12!) but at least I get to see some greenery! I shop for yummy goodies, and usually treat myself to coffee or lunch on the way home.

So there I was on Saturday, in a little traffic queue waiting to go over the quaint bridge into Abridge. It was a lovely day, and the windows were open, I was gazing out over the field to my right, and just grabbed my phone and took a quick photo out of the car window....



The view from the window

The flash of yellow caught my eye particularly, even though I know it's Oil Seed Rape, and smells disgusting! Not a brilliant phot, but given that it was taken in 10 seconds flat...not bad!

Sunny reflection....

As part of the decorating and renovating that I've been doing recently, I now have a new front door. Which I love! I've posted a pic further down, but I just wanted to share this one first.  I was going out to put out some rubbish this morning, and as I walked into the hallway I was greeted by this lovely reflection from a burst of winter sunshine coming through the glass in the door....

Here's an outside view of the door so far, it needs another coat of paint, but the weather had been so so bad that it wasn't drying well and couldn't be rubbed down to put on another coat. I love it's bright redness, and it's really shiny too which is just what I wanted!  Shows up the rest of the house though,so that will need a new coat of paint too when the weather's a bit better.

Mmmm....tasty.....

I've had a squirrel rootling about in my garden lately.  He seems to be there most days for the about the last couple of weeks. Not too unusual for most of you I suspect, but we don't see them in Walthamstow very often...I think the herds of cats that hang around and the foxes probably keep them away most of the time. Anyway this little fella has been having a right old time grubbing about in the flower tubs and borders, but I haven't been able to get a photo of him.  You know the scenario, by the time you walk away to the other room to get the camera or your phone to take a picture, when you back, he's disappeared! Anyway, I managed to snap him yesterday, it's not a very good picture, probably because I took it through the glass window in my back door, so it's a bit fuzzy.  He appears to have a very tasty tulip bulb in his little paws!

Double 0 Heaven...

Well, despite a rotten cold, I managed to sniff and snuffle my way through Skyfall, the latest Bond epic(apologies to anyone in the cinema who may suffer later from my selfishness!)

I'm sure we all remember the delicious Daniel Craig in Casino Royale...reproduced here just for the sake of gratuitous eye candy...

Source: homemadecosmetics.blogspot.ca via Sandie on Pinterest

Then there was the grand Royal Premiere of the new film at the Royal Albert Hall, just along the road from where I work....just to give you an idea of the scale of the Hoo Ha, here's a very bad picture taken from the roof of our building, by a very kind (and tall ) young man who leaned precariously over the parapet to get it. The whole road was closed off for the whole day.....

So we come to Skyfall....on general release now (as they say)

Source: whereisthecool.com via Katie on Pinterest

I thought it was great. Back to the quality of Casino Royale, although I would say that Casino Royale might still be marginally better.  I recommend a viewing, there's a twist at the end, that I'm not going to tell you as I would have to kill you if I did.  But my friend and I turned to each other and said "Well...they kept that under wraps, didn't they!"

Enjoy!

Elvis has left the building!

Elvis is the plasterer, who has left me with wonderfully smooth walls in my bedroom which, when dry, will be gasping for a coat of paint!