This month has been a bit cold and quiet to be honest. There have been moments of bike riding, very few and very short, But we can turn corners, we can change gears, we just have very little distance.
We did travel down to Limini Coffee in Doncaster for the launch of their new offices and training facility. Greg has become interested in an opportunity relating to coffee and is getting wonderful help from Youri, Howard and Sam. Sam is i this picture with Glen, a kiwi who writes and runs a coffee forum in London . Coffee people are lovely folk. Greg also met a PWC guy who is helping him with his pitch and may help more, who knows. It was a lovely night,we got to play latte art, learned more about coffee and had a really good night.
Leeds, every year it seems, although I had heard this year it wouldn't, hosts a german christmas market in Millennium square.
It is a fantastic version of what can be a rather ordinary thing we are told. There are little shops selling chocolate marshmallows of huge size, nuts of all sorts, cheese, sausages, mulled wine, bierkeller, garlic bread, pickled fish, it goes on and on, and there are rides and trinkets and christmas decorations, candles, but I did say it goes on and on. There are even dodgem cars. Speaking of which. Gail's work do for xmas was held in Manchester, I had another invite to go to another party so I remained in Leeds. At the party Gail went to there was a MonteCarlo show and meal. I hear tell it was a fantastic night with interesting entertainment and DODGEMS. I have seen photos of Gail having the best of times but as the camera was not doing it's thing that night unfortunately the record is on others facebook pages and this is the best one of Gail and Jon racing I can copy to blog, thanks to Karen D. for sending me the original.
Back home of course it snowed, but you may know it snows here. This shot from our front door showing the grit truck spreading salt and grit on our road. Heaviest November falls in 17 years say the experts, locals say we are in for a lot more if it is like this so early. There are signs, birds, trees and hedgerow animals do things predicting a bad winter the locals tell us about. I can't recall all the tales but we have been hearing things like, a big plum crop on the autumn hedges equals a long cold winter, we picked lots of plums this year for example so it must be true. Or its our fault.
There has been other things happening other than snow. I went to Barwick-on-Elmet historical meeting one night because they were honouring the links the old Leeds Savages had with the town. A hundred years ago, almost, the original Savages took over a small house there for weekends in the country and proceeded to create a frisson and elicit activity in the quiet town leading to some notorious adventures being captured in print and paint. About seven of us current Leeds Savages went and did some readings of our work and displayed some paintings and one even did an impromptu performance piece. The assorted historians were most appreciative and showed us original Savage works in journal, sketch and oil paint form dating back to the art deco, nouveau and arts and crafts era.. Many of those artists were recognised and famous in their time and are now. Some travelled to Australia no less, and I was informed of this many times on the night.
Being commonwealth citizens means we are not welcome to stay in the UK and we have been making enquiries to see if we can extend our stay here. Our time here is up in 2012 but if Oz had fought on the other side in the world wars we would be welcomed as EU friends for as long as we liked. As it stands it looks like us Aussies have to pull something out of the hat if we want to stay. We are looking into that too.
There have been other things like looking at auctions, re-financing our house here, and general mucking about little towns and village pubs but as I said, November has been a quiet month blog-wise if not sorting out life wise.
I probably won't update before xmas, so do have a very merry xmas!
It is a fantastic version of what can be a rather ordinary thing we are told. There are little shops selling chocolate marshmallows of huge size, nuts of all sorts, cheese, sausages, mulled wine, bierkeller, garlic bread, pickled fish, it goes on and on, and there are rides and trinkets and christmas decorations, candles, but I did say it goes on and on. There are even dodgem cars. Speaking of which. Gail's work do for xmas was held in Manchester, I had another invite to go to another party so I remained in Leeds. At the party Gail went to there was a MonteCarlo show and meal. I hear tell it was a fantastic night with interesting entertainment and DODGEMS. I have seen photos of Gail having the best of times but as the camera was not doing it's thing that night unfortunately the record is on others facebook pages and this is the best one of Gail and Jon racing I can copy to blog, thanks to Karen D. for sending me the original.
