Arborial silhouettes

I like the whisps of cloud across the sky. I'm finding that phography is opening my eyes to beauty that I'd not normally notice.

Pity the poor gardener at Brooklands Court

Beautiful Autumn leaves.

makes for nice photos though...

Autumn colours

Our life, boxed

Our flat is looking rather sparse now that all our stuff has been sent. Managed to cram it into 13 boxes!

Yikes!!!!

We came home to a rather scary house guest.

Our Pride and Joy

You may remember we spoke about our Orchid back in May. Well, we're deligted that it has finally flowered with avengeance - 5 beautiful flowers and one bud still waiting to open. It's our surrogate baby (that's what happens when you have neither kids not pets) so we're feeling like proud parents!!

Cambridge Boot Sale

Had lots of fun selling all our surplus stuff at the boot sale today. Amazing how much junk you accumulate during 5 years. We made £ 250 and met some cool (and some very strange!) people. When we get to Australia, we'll definitely consider boot sales as a way of getting hold of some bargains.

Ally's little ones

Ally's surrogate babies are doing rather well. Her balcony plant, which we were convinced was dead, is reviving very nicely indeed and the orchid has it's first ever flower stem so we wait with bated breath for its blooming. Ally's love and nurturing is clearly paying off...

Ally clearing snow from the car

Snowy Cambridge

Well, they've been warning us about it for ages and today it finally snowed with gusto. Everything in Cambridge looked very different, clothed all white. Poor Ally wasn't too charmed though as she had to drive an hour and half to an interview through icy roads. It's snowing everywhere in Europe at the moment - I was in Gothenberg this week and I've rarely seen so much snow. We have a rather chilly weekend ahead. Unfortuntely I've come down with the dreaded lurgy (a nasty bout of flu that downed Ally for close to a week) so I think I'll be staying in.

Dinner party

We had my colleagues from work over for a dinner party on Friday night. A great fun and very boozy evening. It's good working with such a great group of people.

Ally's birthday

It's Ally's birthday tomorrow and Colleen's next week so we all got together for lunch in Cambridge to celebate. It's been a stormy day with ferocious gusts but we had a lovely day indoors. Before lunch, Ally and I did our tennis lessons and we're making good progress - though not quite Wimbledon standard yet.

Xmas in Cambridge

Xmas in Cambridge. The desert was particularly delicious - berry flan. Mmmmm! It's lovely having Kerry to stay - she'll be here for a few days.

Surfing in the buff

Sitting by the heater, doing some surfing... Oh for that South African tan to be back!!

First snow...

First snow fall this year in Cambridge - this photo is taken from our balcony.

Autumn evening in Cambridge

A photo from our balcony of the sun setting on a beautiful autumn evening. Just had dinner and are settling down for the night. What bliss.

Re-united

Marrianne arrived today from South Africa - it's great to see her again. Johnathon and Amanda and Geena (the dog) came round for dinner so it was like a mini reunion. Lots of fun and laughter and memories of the good old days in SA.

Brooklands Court Life (Cambridge)

Strolling by the river

We have a nature reserve just 5 minutes from the flat. This afternoon, after lunch, we went for a lovely walk by the river. Very relaxing with people rowing and punting by. This is the River Camb, the main river in Cambridge.

Home Sweet Home

Here is a picture of our flat from the outside. Our balcony is on the left side, one story up. It's got a lovely garden and also looks onto a bowling field. A great spot to be sure.

A civilised lunch

We bought a table and chairs this weekend for the balcony so are being very civilised here with a delicious sunday lunch. It's a hard life here in Cambridge!

My first blog post !

Hi there all

Have you heard of blogging? It allows you to post stuff up on the web quickly and effortlessly. I though I would experiment with it to see how it works. Could be a great way of keeping a travel journey when we go exploring. Or even of keeping you up to date on our news and creating an archive at the same time to go back to for fun...

It's been a good week. I watched some more good movies: The Graduate, Run Lola Run, A Streetcar Named Desire. I've now seen over half of the 250 movies of all time as rated at IMDB. It's become a fantastic passion - I've just bought a "cinema studies" book from Amazon that first year cinema student have in their curricula. Fast learning what terms like Film Noir mean and so on. Soon I'll be very learned and be able to bore everyone silly on the tiny nuances of the great directors...

Ally and I are also busy collecting all the David Attenborough series in DVD format. We've got all the classics like "The Living Planet", "Life of Birds" and "Life on Earth." About 50 hours worth!! We watch it every Sunday night - becoming a wonderful ritual. M&M, you'll certainly have a lot to watch when you visit us - our DVD collection is growing rampantly, it's amazing how cheap they are becoming here. To buy a DVD costs barely twice what it costs to rent - except you then have it to watch over and over..

Work is going fine - and i've been in the office all week so it's been relatively relaxing. I'll be in the UK again next week. Ally starts working from home one day a week next week so that should be fun. She has to work at a running event down South on Sunday though, so it will be a short weekend for her.

My camera hasn't arrived yet - but I'm excited to try it out. I've found Yahoo provides an online photo album so i'll start uploading photos there for you to see. I think you can upload phots to this blog too - I'll have to experiment!

Anyway, I'm going to log off now and see if I can publish what I have written.

Cheers for now