Oh for crying out loud

We posted our passports to London using first class, signed-for delivery, last Monday. I just logged on to the Royal Mail site to check what day they arrived with NZIS, and this is what I found:

Your item with reference DL889157397GB was delivered from our SOUTH WEST LONDON Delivery Office on 29/10/07

Those passports should have arrived with NZIS on the 23rd, not the 29th. I am furious - this has set us another full week behind on getting them back, and we can't take any trips away without them. We might as well completely give up on our plans of going anywhere else in Europe before we leave this hemisphere for good.

I am not impressed with Royal Mail.

A formal affair.

On Saturday night we went to a formal in the Culloden Hotel, courtesy of Skry's parents who bought us all tickets to a charity ball as a wedding anniversary present.

This was the first time that I got to see my husband all dressed up - even for our wedding he was in jeans and a t-shirt - so I was quite excited about that. It turns out that he scrubs up quite well! Unfortunately I completely failed to get any decent, non-blurry photos of the two of us together, so you're not getting one. Sorry there.

There was an auction of items which had been donated to raise money for the hospice, and I bid up to a thousand pounds for a really cool jukebox pre-loaded with CDs, before hitting my limit and letting others take it up to £1200, which was a real bargain since it had been valued at something like £2500. I was sorry that I didn't get it - a jukebox in the living room would be fantastic - but Skry was quite relieved I think!

The food was great too. The Culloden obviously gets lots of large parties and crowds coming through, and they know how to get good food out on the tables fast. My potato and leek soup was absolutely gorgeous and my chicken fillet was tender and delicious. I can't comment on the strawberry cheesecake because I didn't eat it, but a woman across the table had two portions so it must have been good too. Well done the Culloden - you deserve those five stars.

Anyway, we all had a good night, and I was happy to see that we can both look smart when we want to. I also got to give my new clip-in extensions a whirl, and they looked fantastic so I will definitely be wearing those again. And the hospice must have raised an awful lot of money too, so it was a winner all round.

A few new jewels

Most of my crafty stuff is in storage at the moment, so I'm restricted in what I can do, but I was able to get a few more pieces of jewellery online. Here is my new etsy banner:

Actually, you know what, I am just going to make a jewellery blog instead. It shouldn't be related to our move to New Zealand so I really shouldn't be blogging about it here. Go to http://JennysGems.blogspot.com instead!

Our passports are in the post

So, still not much happening on the house doing-up front (Skry is taking care of all that), but we did get our passports in the post to London this morning. They have to be sent away - with a hefty fee - to have the actual visa stickers put into them. This should only take a week or two and we'll have them back again and be able to travel whenever we want.

I blogged on here a while ago about Photoshopping my passport photo rather than going to a photo booth to have them taken. I didn't make myself look different, just fixed a few minor flaws, but I was wondering if the end result would be satisfactory. Turns out that it was, which is good. I'll definitely do that again whenever I need my next replacement!

My 33rd birthday.

On Thursday it was my birthday, bringing me to the ripe old age of 33. I'm definitely a grown-up now. Skry took me out for lunch in Benedict's, where we partook of soup and sandwiches, and I spent the afternoon lying on the sofa reading the first Harry Potter book on my new Sony Reader, a very generous present to me from myself. It wasn't cheap, but I think I'll get a lot of value from it and it'll certainly help cut down on the weight of books I take away on holidays!

When evening rolled around it was time to get ourselves to Tao for dinner. A small crew of my friends met us there and we had great Chinese food and plenty of wine, and I got some lovely presents too. Tao is fantastic - the food is always good, the staff are always friendly, and it's Bring Your Own so the bill is always low too! Not that I had to worry about that part, since my generous friends paid for my dinner.

Following dinner, it was off to Lavery's for a few games of pool in the upstairs bar, then down to the bottom bar where we commandeered a table until closing time. Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun and it was also great to be able to (a) sit down, and (b) hear each other. I'm definitely too old to want to spend an evening standing in some overcrowded club with the music up to the level of a pneumatic drill. Seated and sedate is best!

Some of my birthday presents from Skry arrived in the post today - boxed sets of DVDs, including Buffy season 6 and Firefly. There are more sets to come, so we will have lots to watch over the next while. We're still waiting for the kitchen doors and worktop to be delivered, so the house still isn't on the market and we are just killing time at the moment. I can't think about it too much or I start to get really annoyed, but hopefully it will all come together before too long.

Edinburgh, part Two.

Thanks to Skry's comment on my last entry, I feel I should add these photos.

We went to Edinburgh Castle in time to watch them shoot the cannon at 1pm. I was able to get a good photo of the guy checking his watch before loading up whatever it is they shoot off.

Two seconds later the cannon went off. I nearly jumped out of my skin, as you can see. It's hard to hold a camera steady when something is exploding a few feet away!

A trip to Edinburgh

Last week we went to Edinburgh for a few days. We stayed with a former workmate of Skry's, and her boyfriend. I hadn't met either of them before, but we got on like a house on fire and it was a fantastic trip. The weather was unseasonably good, allowing us to spend a lot of the day in jeans and t-shirts, and making our sightseeing much more pleasurable.

The first night that we were there, we went to visit a friend in Leith. He is living in a penthouse apartment with stunning views, so we were able to spend some quality time on the balcony, relaxing and taking it all in. After popping out to the local eatery for some late dinner, we came back to the apartment and hung out with Tom and his flatmates for another few hours until it was long past everyone's bedtime and a taxi was procured to take us back to Edina Place.

The following day, Skry went to visit his former workmates for lunch, and I hit the shops. Unfortunately we were flying with FlyBe and had chosen not to pay extra for the privilege of checking in any bags, so I was restricted to window-shopping rather than actually buying anything. Probably for the best really, as I could have spent a small fortune! Edinburgh has a lot of shops to choose from.

The rest of our stay was spent doing the proper touristy things. We visited the Camera Obscura and had fun with the optical illusions (including some elbow-dropping of the plasma ball), did an open-top bus tour of the major sights, and spent several hours at Edinburgh Castle. There is a lot more to see there than I had realised, and we spent more than an hour at the war museum alone. And of course we wined and dined more than once with our hosts, Rachael and Ricky. It was a really enjoyable few days and we were sorry that hometime came around so quickly.

It's definitely Autumn now.

The weather has really taken a turn for the colder recently, although the sun shines a lot as well. All the leaves are coming off the trees, and the nights are drawing in fast. This is quite a nuisance for me, because my eyes still haven't recovered completely from the laser surgery I had last spring. This is perfectly normal, and I was told it could take a year for them to settle down completely, but it means that it's not safe for me to drive at night because of the starbursts I see around light sources.

Just as an example, this is what most people would be able to see at night:



And this is closer to what I see:


That is just with one car in front of me. Imagine what it's like with many cars, including ones coming towards me with their headlights on, streetlights, shop signs, etc. I just can't see enough of what is behind the starbursts to be able to drive at night.

Luckily I don't have very much reason to drive at night, as we have a good public transport network for getting into town to socialise, but it is a nuisance if we need to go somewhere off the bus route, like up to Skry's parents' house. I can't plan to drive anywhere in the late afternoon because it might be dark by the time I was ready to go home and then I'd be stuck.

I wonder what time it gets dark at in New Zealand during the winter. Or during the summer, for that matter. One more thing we will have to find out...

Photo from my phone.

I took this photo while walking into town in the sunshine. I have a Nokia N73, and the camera on it is really impressive compared to every other cameraphone I've had.

Getting my spend on

I love TKMaxx. I hate it too - it's impossible to find anything in there if you're actually looking for it -but when I don't need anything that shop is suddenly filled with treasures. I just had a very successful trip and here's what I got.

• Christian Dior Dolce Vita parfum, 7.5ml - on clearance for £14. Pure perfume for £14? Bargain and a half, and I absolutely love this fragrance for wearing in cold autumn weather such as we're having now.

• Calvin Klein Contradiction parfum, 15ml, marked down from £75 to £20. I haven't opened this yet as I am considering flogging it on eBay; I do like Contraction, but I don't really wear it any more, so it might be wasted on me. I'd love to see how the pure perfume wears compared to the eau de parfum which I owned before, but it is sealed and I don't want to open it unless I'm keeping it.

• Red wool winter coat, very stylish, £40. Marked down from £155 on the price tag, so I feel like I got a great deal, but I wouldn't ever have paid £155 for it so that deal probably isn't quite as good as it looks. But it's a great coat and definitely worth more than I paid, anyway.

• Selection of Le Creuset stoneware rectangular dishes, marked down from £28 each to £10 each. We already have quite a lot of Le Creuset dishes and saucepans given as wedding presents, and they are lovely to use, so I was thrilled to be able to add to the collection.

• Pack of four Max Factor Lipfinity lipsticks, in wearable shades, for £10. I wear these anyway and they are normally something like £8 each, so this was a great find.

• Scholl Party Feet gel cushions, down from £5 to £2. I don't normally wear strappy sandals or high heels, but if we are in the country at the end of October we are planning to attend a black tie event that will necessitate dressing up. Now I feel prepared!

All in all, a very successful trip, except from the point of my bank balance. No regrets.