Horsing Around

All thanks to the Students Union, ‘mini me’ and I had one of the best days out ever last weekend...
We were lucky enough to get some free tickets to the world cup pentathlon in Greenwich Park ! We arrived at two o’clock, not knowing what to expect, although we had ridden horses on odd occasions before we had not ever watched any competitive horse riding.

Prior to our arrival, the competitors had already completed two events at another location (fencing and swimming) and were all set to begin the riding phase of the competition. We had an excellent view, and the action was very dramatic. At one point ‘mini me’ confessed that she enjoyed it more than cricket, which was almost sacrilege, but I was prepared to forgive her as it was so exciting ! There was one clear round from the Chinese pentathlete, though she was a hard act to follow as almost every other rider had a few incidents and accidents. The worst was definitely the Canadian, whose horse refused a jump... The poor lady did a mid-air somersault over the horse’s head and landed head first on the bars – ouch ! Luckily she and the horse were fine though, and she bravely got up to carry on her round...

The two of us were so inspired by her performance that, during the running and shooting phase of the pentathlon, we were the only ones shouting ‘Go ! Go ! Canada !’ at the tops of our voices, and were rewarded with a few odd looks from the rather more restrained spectators around us ! ‘Mini me’ was particularly thrilled to see herself on the big stadium screen at one point...

J’s record of the week :

‘Summertime’

by

DJ Jazzy Jeff and
the Fresh Prince.

‘Summertime ! Wow, What an evocative song...’ I said to myself as I downloaded it this week, remembering the first time I had heard it aged 17. It reminds me of teenage beach parties, fake gold necklaces with $ signs and my first pair of Nike Air trainers ! As we listened to it for the fourth or fifth time, ‘mini me’ remarked ‘Why do we keep having to listen to THIS song Mum ?’ I replied with this analogy... Imagine you are 17, and you have never heard slightly-old-skool-yet-new music like ‘Feel it’ by the Black Eyed Peas before ! That’s how it was !!! Actually, she still didn’t ‘get it,’ but never the less, she let me listen to it one more time before flicking back to Eliza Doolittle ! Jerushah X

The Water Blog

A water bill with added OUCH !

This week I received my water bill for the entire duration of time that we’ve been in our house (since mid-February), and it came to a whopping £147.02 !!  I’m sure I have my birthday paddling pool party to thank for most of that... It was with a grim, resigned sort of face that I went to the bank to pay my bill earlier this week, and there and then I made a resolution that... THINGS HAD TO CHANGE ! I’ve come up with a few water saving solutions to share with my lovely blog readers, so I’ll see if it has any impact on our bill next time :

      Using a kitchen timer for shower time. Since moving to the new house (which came with an abandoned cooker, incorporating a timer), my wind up kitchen timer has been a bit redundant. I’ve recently put it to good use in the bathroom allowing 3 minutes per shower (my daughter loves this and the novelty hasn’t worn off yet !

      Yucky warning... read on if you dare ! I took the top off the cistern and carefully lowered in a full glass bottle of water, which (as it takes up volume in the cistern) happily saves 1.5 litres per flush.

      Recycling bath water 1. If my daughter chooses to have a bath, I often hop in afterwards so that the water gets used twice.

      Recycling bath water 2. I always take the watering can up to the bathroom after bath time and use the old bath water to water my containerised plants and our minuscule lawn.

      New rinsing technique... Rather than putting the dishes under a running tap, I fill up a plastic bowl next to the sink for rinsing.

Let’s see if any of it makes a difference !

Rain gauge action :

I now have the completed rain gauge data for June... You may be interested that the longest run of dry days, June 1^st – 5^th was followed by the wettest day. This was June 6th on which we had 29.5mm ! The three wettest days were June 29^th (20.5mm), June 18^th (12mm) and June 6^th 29.5mm). Our monthly rainfall total was 99.65mm !

J’s record of the week :

Everybody loves the
sunshine

by

Roy Ayers

I thought this song would be appropriate for a month in which we’ve had a total of eleven dry days ! This record was released in 1976 on an album of the same name. I saw Roy Ayers in concert on New Year’s Eve 2009, at the Jazz Cafe in Camden. He performed this song beautifully, the only problem was that when we came out of the concert, thick and fluffy snowflakes were falling !  The snow earlier this year seems a distant memory now... Let’s hope there are many more sunny days to come. Jerushah  X