Live from Hurst Fort, Milford-on-Sea

The miracle of my pda allows me to update the blog while we have our picnic lunch at Hurst Fort, on the Solent coastline. We've picked a great day, the weather is lovely. We might go for a walk in the forest this afternoon; it's only a 90 minute drive from home, we should do this more often. Oh,the less said about the rugby, the better!

Watch out for aliens

After a busy day today, Olga got her Schengen Visa from the Netherlands embassy, although she has to go back to London tomorrow to collect her passport. Lucy registered with the Police in High Wycombe, she's now been entered into the Alien Register... or something like that.
England v South Africa tomorrow night - I'll be optimistic and say England to win by 10 points.

England 3 -0 Russia

Last night Olga and her mum came with me to watch the Euro 2008 qualifier in the POW in Marlow; there was no singing along to the national anthem, and a sharp exit after the final whistle. There's always the return game in Moscow next month...

The before and after..

Here is the fluffy Mishka from before his trim on Tuesday

and here he is afterwards. He wouldn't pose properly for me, but you can see his eyes now, and his head just looks a lot narrower! Ola should be trimming the rest of him on Wednesday to even up his look, at the moment he's got a slim head stuck on a very fluffy body!

Bath time

While I'm concentrating on Mishka, it was bath night tonight, as he's off to the poodle parlour tomorrow for a haircut. We've not got the old bath ready yet to use as his personal bath, so he had to make do with an IKEA storage box and some Boots Baby Shampoo. The lead was there as a precaution, but he only ran off once.

Out of context, I know

I know this is out of flunter, but I'm practising with the video editing software at home, and found this video I took in February 2007, when we had 6 inches of snow overnight, and couldn't get into the office. Mishka hadn't seen deep snow before, never mind played in it.

Should it be the Autumnhouse?

I just wanted to show that the "summer"house is progressing; with the help of Kevan the builder, we got the roof in place last week.

Then on Sunday I was able to get the doors on... so it's just a small matter of the felt for the roof, another coat of preservative and then the glass. Maybe we'll need to run an electric heater in there by the time we can actually use it!

Stand by your beds!

Olga's mum and sister arrived safely on Friday afternoon; there had been quite a saga behind the trip, with Olga's mum having to make the 8-hour return journey between Lesnoy and Ekaterinburg 4 times in 9 days to apply for visas, collect hers, then collect Lucy's, then go back again to have the visas corrected (the British Consulate had only given Lucy a 2 month visa instead of 12 months, and there was some confusion about the English spelling of "Lyudmila"); finally both mum & Lucy had to go from Lesnoy to Ekaterinburg again to catch the BA flight to London.
Friday night was a quiet night in, with Mishka enjoying all the extra attention, but yesterday work started, as the girls tidied up the garden and started painting the dining room, while I was out playing cricket (and being on the receiving end of a very dubious LBW decision for 0; aren't all LBW decisions dubious?! The opposition's captain & opening bat was given out LBW by the same umpire, but he had scored 202 by then, so it was only fair to give another batsman a chance!)
Today is more garden work I think, the lawns need mowing and the summerhouse won't finish itself...

The new approach...

For those who have been to the house before, you might remember how poor the steps were, with cracked paving stones being a danger to life and limb. So we've replaced all the old slabs with new ones, and put some over the plain concrete step in front of the door. It looks much better now, and will be a lot safer for visitors!

Kitchen - Progess!!

So, the kitchen units and appliances are all fitted now, although the kitchen is still some way from being "finished", we need to tile the splashbacks and paint the walls, but we hope to get that done in the next few weeks. Here are some pics from this morning, with Olga making breakfast like the good wife :-)