In short

Last night Rayne posed me some questions in the comments of the post below. They seem as good a place as any to get back into the swing of things.

Are you back yet?
Yes – *waves* – we got back in the early hours of Sunday. We had a late flight on Saturday, which was then delayed, making it a very late flight.

How was your trip?
Really exhausting … and the concert was cancelled. You may choose your own expletive here, but I’m going to go with bugger. But we had some adventures anyway and covered a lot of Viennese ground, hung out with some cool people and did our best not to get swept away in a storm.

Where are the pictures?
On my hard drive, coming to the internet ~~soon~~ ~~one day~~ soonish. I took a fair number of shots, including many pictures of fancy buildings that I’m not sure I’m going to be able to name. I know which one was Stephansdom. Then there was some sort of gate … I’ll have to get my map out.

Why is your Dad always cranky?
Hard to say, but he’s kinda old and that’s how old people get. Though I have warned my parents that should they ever go mad, they’re going straight into a home. I won’t stand for any nonsense.

I forgot to mention

I’m going away again. Just another flying visit to Austria to see the musician. Suzy and I leave horribly early on Thursday morning and will be back horribly late Saturday night. The concert’s in Vienna at the Donauinselfest, but Vienna is stinkingly expensive to fly to (by which I mean, I don’t know, a flight costs more than about tuppence) so we’re going to Bratislava and then getting a bus to Vienna. I have it in mind to sleep on the bus. Suzy has it in mind to stare out of the window and point at things. I expect I’ll join her in doing that, but I can’t help thinking that my Plan A would be better.

So Thursday’s a day for whatever and then Hubert’s concert is on Friday night – his first gig on his Linz Europe Tour that will lead him down the Danube to the Black Sea (my God, you wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve typed that and other very similar phrases over the past eight months). The musicians are performing on a stage barge on the Danube, with the audience on the river bank. The Donauinselfest is an enormous festival and there will be thousands and thousands of people there. Incidentally, the concert is also being broadcast live on the radio, so you can listen in at 8.40pm BST on Friday too!

Saturday … I don’t know what we’re doing on Saturday. We might head back to Bratislava early to have a look around before our flight back to Stansted. But we’re going to need to get ourselves some Slovakian currency if we want to, you know, pay for stuff there. And possibly a bit of research on what to look at once we’re there wouldn’t go amiss. But I haven’t done that. Not even a little bit. Because I’ve been in denial. Which is in Egypt. I didn’t even know where I was going to be staying until yesterday, hence the shunting of the trip to the back of my mind, to a dark and dusty corner where I didn’t have to think about the lack of plans ahead of me. But now that I know some Things, Stuff and Details, I really should look at finding out some information about where I’m going. Before I actually go there.

I hope you’re all looking spiffy …

… because the 7 Days self-portrait project is a-coming back. I thought I might see if I could make a more exciting logo for this run, but soon discovered that my Muse had gone on strike. Something about not having enough handsome men to stare at. So, I just made the old logo green and changed the dates. I’m quite the revolutionary.

The summer 7 Days project will start on Saturday 7th July, which is also incidentally the day of our traditional summer party. So my first picture may well show me looking somewhat frazzled while preparing delicious food. My fellow God, Lauren, and I hope that you pretty people will join us again for a week of narcissism.

Gardening by number

Potato haulms above ground before I earthed them up: 12
Potato haulms above ground after I earthed them up: 11
Tallest potato plant in inches: 27
Daily mentions of my veg patch: 28,000
Daily cursings about the failure of a sixth pumpkin vine to grow: 16,000
Number of seeds planted in an effort to grow a sixth vine: 4
Sprouting garlic cloves poked into the ground to see what happens: 4
Garlic bulbs I expect to harvest: 0
Sunflowers eaten by pests: 1
Tallest sunflower in inches: 33
Minimum height in inches I would like the sunflowers to reach: 47
Sunflowers I have transplanted around the garden and forgotten about: 14
Sweetcorn plants falling over for unknown reason: 1
Years I thought my bottle of plant food would last: 5
Minutes my bottle of plant food lasted: 5
Sweetcorn seeds I thought would germinate: 3
Sweetcorn seeds germinated: 31
Sweetcorn plants donated to Sam and John: 9
Amount for which I will sue if their harvest is better than mine: £5000

Click for the set

Panda eyes are a sign of happiness

A couple of weeks ago John and Sam came over to see us. They’d been on holiday in San Francisco, so we hadn’t seen them for a while. They spent the afternoon at Sam’s parents and then arrived here to find a house full of people. I’d been out to lunch with Helen, Suzy and Lauren and the latter two had followed me home to ~~bother me~~ hang out for a while. Then Dave turned up to collect Lauren, to stop her bothering me.

Suzy stayed quite a while into the evening as Nick wasn’t at home, so she thought she might as well stay here and enjoy my thrilling company. Eventually my continual staring at my site stats was too much for her and she headed home. After waving her off I went to join the others in the sitting room.

“Now that Suzy’s gone,” John said, “We have some news…” While on holiday in San Francisco, John had proposed to Sam in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge. She accepted. My brother’s going to marry my schoolfriend and I can’t see the keyboard any more because my eyes are full of tears. Again.

If you want to make me cry, just talk about this wedding. A little later that evening after all the talking and celebrating, I said to Sam “I’m going to have a sister-in-law!”, only it came out more like “I’m going to have a *sob* siiiister *sniff* in *wail* laaaw!”. The same thing happened when I phoned Suzy the next day to tell her what had happened after she’d left. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to tell you this without crying … John and Sam *gulp* … no, I won’t … are going to get married *snivel*“.

The challenge for Mum was not telling her side of the family, though she kept speaking to them on the phone. We were going to be seeing them all in 2 weeks at Granpop’s 85th birthday party and John and Sam wanted to give their news in person. So I couldn’t write anything here either, just in case my cousin read it.

Eventually Sunday 3rd June dawned and we all headed up to Northamptonshire for the party – with me fit to bust from the excitement of it all. When Sam and John arrived, Sam did a beautiful job of hiding her hand so that nobody was blinded by the glare from the three big diamonds on her finger. After a while Mum rounded up the closest family members and the Marchants who already knew joined them too so that John could announce his news. Everyone was delighted and as I wiped my eyes Sam asked me, “These are tears of happiness, aren’t they?”. Absolutely! Just remind me to get some waterproof mascara before the wedding.