London Baby!

Track Pump

2009-10-14T02:18:00.000-07:00

I finally caved and got a track pump for my bike - a Blackburn Air Tower 1. Its a beauty. My beloved Brompton's tires have been a bit flat lately, and I can't get them up to much pressure with my teeny weeny hand pump, so I thought it was about time I became a proper cyclist with a proper pump. The tires on a Brompton go to a suggested max pressure of 100 - mine were at around 30. A mate in work who also has a Brompton's tires were at 20. I pumped up both bikes to around 80, so today we got in way faster with less effort, but with killer sore arses.

Some days I feel like stopping cyclists on the street and pumping up their tires - people cycle with such flat tires they put in so much effort and get nowhere. Their commutes could be way more enjoyable if only they knew!

Fran and Peter

2009-10-05T01:48:00.000-07:00

Fran and Peter are visiting London at the moment. They arrived on Friday and we went out for a nice meal and drinks in Soho. Then over Saturday and Sunday we saw pretty much every single tourist attraction central London has to offer. A busy few days! Then yesterday we had afternoon tea, which is the largest amount of food I've eaten in a single sitting, and around a million cups of tea. Brilliant!

This is an odd little car that we saw in the Science Museum that matched Hugh's jumper.

Drum Hero

2009-10-03T02:39:00.000-07:00

We got the drums for guitar hero! Here's a picture of Hugh giving it holly early this morning driving our neighbours nuts. Great craic though. Also note how fashionable Hugh's pyjama trousers are. Very rock and roll.

Half Marathon!

2009-10-01T08:10:00.000-07:00

This is me and some friends from work looking pretty pooped after finishing the Run To The Beat half marathon last Sunday. In the picture is me, Alissa and Helen. I finished in 2:27:15, averaging around an 11 minute mile, which I was really pleased with. After the 11 mile mark, I must say I was totally going to pack it in, but there were so few people walking that I was too embarrassed to. A few of the guys from work did it too, and they got some pretty impressive times. Us girls will have to actually train for the next one and see if we can beat them.

Some other pictures of the race are available here. Look at Sony Ericsson Run To The Beat London and enter Mc Carthy (the space is very important).

Wonderbrass!

2009-09-30T03:41:00.000-07:00

Hugh has opened his inaugural brass instrument repair workshop in the spare room in Godmanchester. He has all the tools he needs now and is set to go after training with Trevor Head last year. He's already fixed a bunch of Trumpets and Trombones and even a vintage heralding trumpet, like in old medieval films! It's a pretty sweet set up, and he's hoping to fix up a bunch of instruments from the schools around his borough. he's called it Wonderbrass, but it was a real tough decision between that and Kiss My Brass.

Engagement!

2009-09-29T02:56:00.001-07:00

It's old news by now, but myself and Hugh are engaged. This is a picture George took for us with the glitzy ring and Hugh's best smile. We will be getting married in July next year and have finally settled on a place - Ampleforth college where Hugh went to school. The Abbot has kindly agreed to celebrate the wedding, and we have dresses and suits already, so now we can start thinking of the reallly important stuff, like the cake. I want something like this masterpiece:

Beer Ball

2009-09-28T08:57:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone, it's been a while since I've blogged about anything, but I'm going to try doing a few updates a week from now on, especially for the folks in Australia.

This is a picture from a softball tournament my team hosted this weekend in Finsbury Park. It's called Beer Ball and the rules say that you have to have a beer in hand from the early morning, and you have to chug it if you do anything stupid. And if you do something particularly stupid, like getting the start time of the tournament wrong and showing up after the first game was finished, oops, you get spun around in the air while chugging. Also you had to play with a ridiculous hat on and every now and then you would have to do pretty unhelpful things, like batting left-handed and everyone swapping fielding positions. It was great fun, and only one injury; poor Claire hurt her ankle pretty bad tripping over one of the bases and got carted off to hospital.

Fancy Cars

2008-07-27T06:18:00.000-07:00

Myself and Hugh went driving cars in an abandoned airfield outside Oxford yesterday. It was with a company called U Drive Cars. They have a range of kick ass cars, and you can take your choice of cars out for a few laps with a professional driver as a passenger to make sure you don't plough yourself into a wall somewhere. Hugh drove a silver one, a red one and a green one. For any more detailed information you'll have to ask the man himself. One was a ferrari and one was a James Bond car. Here's Hugh with all of them.

Hugh didn't drive this one, but I thought it was hilarious. It's some form of crazy English car.

Sleepy puppies

2008-07-21T11:38:00.000-07:00

These are Hugh's parents' puppies. We rented a boat recently and they were good as gold on board. They alternated between ripping things up and sleeping, but at least they weren't running around or jumping out. The first puppy is Jaffa. She is small but diabolically clever. The next is Beamer who is a real pedigree looking beagle, and Jaffa's Igor type servant.

Godmanchester

2008-07-19T08:50:00.001-07:00

Hugh's family had a big house party a few weekends back. Ian and Roisin came to visit us for it. We took a rowing boat out in Finsbury Park near our flat, and we got mobbed by baby swans looking for food. Ian managed to pet one but the rest of us chickened out for fear of having our hands pecked off.

Then on the way to Hugh's parent's house we had to go through a field of huge cows who took rather a fancying to Ian and Roisin. There were also millions of rabbits in this field which we tried chasing, but they are fierce quick. And Ian tried to catch a squirrel, but it was like lightening.

One of the neighbours in Godmanchester rebuilds monster trucks and he has a yard full of them. Here's Roisin expressing her disbelief.

Maple Tree Race

2008-07-14T03:49:00.000-07:00

The race is on here in XBridge to grow the fastest Maple tree. My friend Kat went home for a visit and came back with some Canadian Maple tree seeds. One set has gone to the BView developers, one set has gone to us. So we have gotten off to a flying start and have already planted the little fellas in a little compost pellet thingy (technical term). More progress as it unfolds...

Nerd Fest

2008-06-23T06:24:00.001-07:00

Last Thursday myself Meg and Kat went to the Firefox 3 launch party in the Shooting Star near the Liverpool Street Station. It was fantastic fun and we got loads of free Firefox Swag, which we are adorned with in the picture. Kat was quite dangerous with her jaunty sideways hat action, but thankfully noone actually lost any eyes, just a few close calls.

Bits

2008-06-12T00:24:00.000-07:00

These are the other parts of Audrey. The fork and handlebars have been painted and I've put them back on. The ball bearings were filthy and coated in solid old grease, so now that they are clean and have lovely fresh grease on, they are turning brilliantly. I'll get a picture later to put up. It's pretty cool.

New Dress

2008-06-10T00:10:00.001-07:00

It has finally happened, Audrey has been painted. During the week I sanded and rust treated the frame, forks and handlebars. Then I primed them by painting them gray. This is how the frame looked on Saturday morning:

Then myself and Kat painted it all a random mix of red and blue. Here's Kat in her wonderfully unmatching socks in the back yard. Do you see the millions of leaves by her feet? We have a bloody enormous horse chestnut tree next door that floods us with leaves in the winter and a crazy japanese tree that does the same in the summer.

When the red and blue dried we stuck on lots of little stickers, then painted it black. Using a tweezers we took the stickers off and were left with some pretty cool patterns. I was considering putting a few stars around them place, but in the end what we did was write a load of my girl friend's names on the frame! It's really cool. It's very subtle so isn't really noticable till you look closely. This is the frame looking like a normal black bike:

And this is the decal on the front. I tried to save the original paint for the decal, but it was so rusty that it had to be treated and the treatment melted the paint. I like this one though, Audrey Hepburn; and the H is very similar to the Hercules H that was there before. Below is my name on the frame, I'll put up more later.

80's Night

2008-06-02T03:51:00.000-07:00

There's an 80's clob near where I work called Reflex. We've been trying to go for a while but it gets completely jammed, so last Friday we made it a mission to get there on time so rocked up around 7 o clock for a night of total 80's mayhem. The place itself is pretty dingy, noone has felt the need to clean since the 80s, but the music and atmosphere is excellent. I never knew the people I work with are so fanatical about the 80s. David Hasslehoff is revered as a total hero in this place, here's a picture of me giving him the adoration deserved. No girls can pass without having a mandatory hug photo taken, this gem is near the front door. The night only got madder after this and now i am the proud owner of an inflatable electric pink flying v guitar.

She's Nude!!!

2008-05-29T13:58:00.000-07:00

OK so this is what Audrey looked like for the last few weeks. I decided to take her apart completely, but soon found that stubborn rust and crazy attachments meant that I didn't have the tools necessary to take everything off. Especially the handlebars and fork gave me huge problems. Never fear though, the solution came to me yesterday - the wrench-master 4000. Well I don't know what it's real name is, but it's fantastic. It's a ginormous wrench with good teeth so it can get purchase on about anything. It also doubles as a hammer. Nice.

These are the parts of the handlebars and fork after myself and Hugh eventually managed to beat it into it's individual parts.

And this is me with the indecently naked frame, wielding the wrench-master itself. I've started sanding the main frame now in preparation for priming. Note the tiny silver patch towards the front of the bike? Great eh? Only around 500 more hours of sanding to go...

Exhibition

2008-05-29T13:28:00.000-07:00

Last weekend myself and Hugh went to his school, Ampleforth, to see his brother Peter playing cricket. It was a weekend called Exhibition, where the parents are invited to come see various sporting events and shows around the school, and annual awards are given to the students.

This first picture is the pavillion on the 1st cricket pitch with the school in the background. It's a monastery school. The big building in the middle is the church, to the left is the monk's area, and to the right is the school itself. The living areas for the students is off the right of the picture. It's an amazing place.

On the first day of the cricket, the opposition batted first and got 228. Peter and one of the lads on his team opened the batting and between them got 229 not out. Pretty impressive! The other lad was "given his colours" for such an outstanding show. This means that he is given a red school jacket and hat, an award given to only the best cricketers. It's pretty sought after! The guy was delighted with it and his father was there to see him being awarded it and everything. It was really cool. Below is Peter batting.

Baby Duckies

2008-05-27T12:12:00.000-07:00

I'm too lazy at the moment to get any new pictures off the camera, so here's another from Canter Parcs a few weekends back. There were ducks and ducklings everywhere. They weren't that shy of people either, so walking through the main village there'd be kids legging it after ducklings with the Mom in hysterics, of both species.

Vegetables 2008

2008-05-15T13:07:00.000-07:00

It's raining here at the moment so I'm not able to do anything with the bike, so here's a few pictures of this years vegetables. I started them from seed around 6 weeks ago, in seedling trays out the back garden. I planted tomatoes, broccoli, onions, carrots, leek and lettuce.

Since then they have started getting pretty big! First here is a pot of broccoli and next is a tomato plant. The tomatoes are definitely my favorites and I like to water them and talk to them before going to work in the morning. Hugh is looking into loony bins for me.

Cool New Wheel!

2008-05-12T14:05:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I took Audrey's wheel apart. This is what the hub looked like at the start - pretty gross. The spokes snapped very easily so I was able to pull them all out of the wheel pretty easily.

As soon as they were all gone it was very easy to take the hub apart. These are all the parts. The balls sit in a rim just inside the hub and they are held in place by the bar and the shaped nuts. They are covered in grease which makes the bar able to turn around against the balls easily instead of rubbing off flat metal. I cleaned and rusted and treated the metal and it turn out like the next photo - pretty good improvement!

I took one of the old spokes to my local bike shop and was able to buy replacement ones. They come in 2 parts - they have a nipple (he he he) at the end that goes through the hub and they look like a screw at the top. Then there is a bit that looks like a long nut that goes in through the rim and connects onto the spoke. You can tighten it with a normal screwdriver and the idea is to keep the spoke from coming up though the screw cause it will puncture the tube.

I followed Sheldon Brown's instructions on how to respoke the wheel. It's a great article and really easy to follow. It's a lot easier than I thought. It's not completely true, as I obviously don't have a truing stand, but I got is as close as possible by looking at it spinning on the bike upsidedown. The spokes alternate at being on the right and left sides of the rim. If the rim is bending to the right, tighten a spoke on the left to pull it back. And hey presto - a shiny new wheel! When the rear wheel is ready I'll bring them both to the bike shop to be trued properly.

Center Parcs

2008-05-12T13:38:00.000-07:00

Myself and Hugh went to Center Parcs a few weekends back. It's a holiday village in a forest called Elveden near Cambridge, just a bit North of London. It's really brilliant fun. They have all sorts of sports and stuff to do. We did quad biking, archery and learned to scuba dive. We spent loads of time in the massive swimming pool with its many slides and rapids and lazy river etc. Hugh is a bit of a speed demon and would dive head first down all of them. I however am a chicken and would slide down as slowly as possible causing massive queues and generally being a bit embarrassing. One time there was a little girl in the queue for the biggest slide in front of Hugh. She changed her mind when she got to the front so Hugh went down in her place. At the end he was caught by the girl's very surprised Mom. Quality.

This is the view from our hotel room balcony. It's a bit different from the traffic and carnage visible from our flat in London. Below is a cute Elveden squirel, which are by far my favourite animal. At the bottom is Hugh lording over the snooker table.

Operation "Wheel"

2008-05-08T03:28:00.000-07:00

The next thing I have done with audrey is to take off her front wheel. In modern bikes, when you are taking a wheel off, you can loosen the brakes so the tyre can fit through. Not so with Audrey alas. The wheel came off the fork very easily, a nut on either side of the hub, but then it got stuck in the brakes.

The way rod brakes work is that they are pulled up to rub off the rim. So they are always narrower than the rim so that it can work. The only way to take the wheel off bikes like this is to take the brake blocks off completely. So I did, and now poor Audrey looks very unhappy altogether missing her mud guard, brake blocks and wheel.

This is what the outside of the tyre looks like. Most of the exterior has fallen off, and it has left a cool looking weaved twine pattern. Is this what modern tyres look like too?

It was impossible to pull off so what I did in the end was wedge a screwdriver underneath it and cut through it with a junior hacksaw. It smelled awful too. Gross. The tube inside was very brittle and i was able to tear it with just my hands. The tape between the rim and the tube was still in great condition. It says "Halford's for cycles and accessories". Apparently Halfords was set up in the late 1800s so this must have been among it's first products. I wonder did they make any other parts of the bike?

This is what the connection looks like from the top of the spoke into the rim. I hope these haven't changed much so I can get a tool to remove them.

Rust Treatment

2008-04-30T12:57:00.001-07:00

I applied the rust treatment to the front mudguard. It has turned the thing black! But that's what it says to expect on the bottle, so I'm happy with it. Already it's looking more like flat metal instead of a collection of dirt. See the difference it's made in the colour and the smoothness after the many sandings? It's going to look brilliant when it's done!

Front Fender

2008-04-30T05:34:00.000-07:00

I have started the mightly Audrey clean-up. First to get the once over is the front fender, or mudguard to us europeans. It was easy to take off - a nut on either side of the front wheel and a nut on the frame just above the top of the wheel were holding it in place. As you can see, it is brown with the rust. See in the second picture the rust is actually lumpy like barnacles? Madness. I took it off a few days ago and rubbed it with some pretty harsh sandpaper. So much rust came off! It was all over the floor. Then I washed it with a hose and let it dry. Then i sanded it again and washed it with Mr Muscle bathroom cleaner. Amazing! It's no longer brown but it is black in patches and slightly pock-marked. This evening I plan on painting it with a kind of rust-killing liquid. I'll get a photo of the pack to put up. It claims to kind of melt rust and harden it so it's strong like metal, but it turns the surface black. This is fine for most of the bike as it will then be painted over, but i'm going to have to come up with some better idea for the shiny metal parts. More to report later. Oh, loads of cobwebs and dead crap fell off the frame which had been wedged in by the mudguard. Gross. And i noticed a nice big spider hiding under the saddle too. Eek.

The Crack

2008-04-29T13:27:00.000-07:00

This is the great almighty crack in the Tate Modern. I hear it's gone now, this picture was taken a good while back. The green flamboyant shoes are Hugh's and the more normal shoes belong to one Mr John Hearne. The crack is a massive crack, surprise surprise, which has been cut into the floor of the turbine room of the Tate Modern art gallery. It's really long and stretches the length of the room. It's quite deep in parts, i'd say around 3 or 4 feet. There's great mystery around how it was constructed, there were massive curtains hung around the turbine room so noone could see. The building is 5 floors high and the turbine room stretches up to the top on around 1/3 of the building. I'm not sure how they could have driven the crack in without disturbing the foundations, so chances are the Tate is a ticking time bomb at the moment.

The previous installation in the turbine room was the slides, which were, surprise surprise, 3 big slides. One of the walls of the turbine room is glass and looks into each of the 5 floors. On the 1st, 3rd and 5th I think, they started yellow slides which curved down to the turbine floor. It was very funny to see people shooting down them and you could hear them yeeping as they went, but I much prefer the crack. Loads more people can enjoy it at the same time. The second photo shows loads of people milling around a fork in the crack. Hundreds of people were in the room strolling around, pretending to fall in, seeing how far they could get their arms and legs in, etc. It's brilliant!

Audrey arrives!

2008-04-29T11:54:00.000-07:00

So this is my new old bike. She answers to the name "Audrey Hepburn"and she is one demanding lady. She has some absolutely beautiful features though. Primarily amongst them some pretty well established rust and a desire to shed spokes like there's no tomorrow. This is the current view that a rider would behold if she were willing to be cycled:

Not so pretty with the rust, but totally enchanting if it's actually in front of you. This is what she looks like from the front.

The brakes are 2 long bars, shaped very like the handle bars, but a little bit lower. They are very comfortable to hold. The rear one is actually working! The handlebars themselves are very curved so you hold them like you would hold say the arms of a hedge clippers. They are remarkably comfortable and will be really handy for fitting on the inside of cars and busses.

My plan is to take her apart piece by piece and de-rust and clean everything thoroughly. I'll replace any parts that are beyond repair but fix up as much as i can. I'm really looking forward to tackling the rear hub - it's an internal 3 gear system which are reputedly foolish to take apart. Nice one! When everything is clean, possibly repainted and varnished etc i'll put her back together and hope for a miracle.

Old bike anyone?

2008-04-24T02:08:00.000-07:00

This is a circa 1920s bike that I'm thinking of buying and fixing up. It's in fairly rag order, but the bits that are most important are still sound. The wheels (possibly including rims) and chain will definitely need replacing, but that is necessary in a lot newer bikes than this one! Look at the brake system, it's amazing! They are called rod brakes, and it's still possible to get brake blocks and everything for them. The bike is in Watford, which is around an hour out of London, but they claim that the wheels still turn, so i reckon I can get it back to the flat for some extensive surgery.

I'll keep ye posted! All that's needed now is a good name for it...

Margaret

Notre Dame

2008-02-19T02:37:00.000-08:00

This is the cathedral at Notre Dame in the center of Paris. It's massive. Inide there are loads of stained glass windows and a really dramatic alter (first picture). I don't really know much about it other than that, but I hear there's a lovable Disney character living in the bell tower.

Eiffel Tower Ctd.

2008-02-17T04:06:00.000-08:00

These are photos taken from the second floor of the tower. The top floor was closed cause there were too many people up there. The second photo shows the shadow of the tower. The buildings are around 6 floors high so you can see how big it actually is!

Eiffel Tower

2008-01-31T13:08:00.001-08:00

Me, Hugh, Mom and George went to Paris for the weekend for my birthday. These are some of the photos from the 2nd floor of the Eiffel Tower - the top was too busy to get up to. The queues were massive! Blogger is having a load of problems uploading photos at the moment so i'll upload some many millions more tomorrow.

Fancy Dress

2008-01-21T03:45:00.001-08:00

Myself and Hugh went to a fancy dress birthday party last weekend for the girlfriend of one of the lads I work with. It was great craic. There was around 200 people in various disguises, so a lot of people had the same costumes. Hugh went as Clark Kent and there was also a superman and supergirl. I was a gladiator and there were a few other gladiators too, but it's ok cause I battled them all to the death and won.

Even more rats!

2008-01-01T10:57:00.000-08:00

These are Niamh and Lisa´s rats in Galway. The last time I saw them they had 3, but now there are 4! The more yellowy coloured ones are babies. They are really really cute. Last night before going to bed I got them really hyper playing with them so they spent all night running around making loads of noise so poor Ciara on the couch couldn´t sleep at all. Oops!

Margaret

Happy New Year!

2008-01-01T10:45:00.000-08:00

Happy new year everyone! I rang in the new year in Galway with Niamh and Lisa. We went to a great gig in the Roisin Dubh and had some absolutely fantastic chips too. After that and the dreadful amount of chocolates and crisps we had, I´m definitely ready to start some new years resolutions! This is Niamh looking fabulously arty in some cool specs.

Christmas Swim

2007-12-30T16:18:00.000-08:00

Every year the Monkstown rowing club where I used row has a Christmas morning swim for any lunatics who want to freeze their arses off before the turkey. This year loads of lads did it and one brave lad even did it in a thong, the guy in the lead in this shot:

Catriona´s Dad took his boat just outside the pier to get a new angle on the proceedings.

Christmas in the City

2007-12-30T15:51:00.000-08:00

Here´s a few photos of Cork for those of ye further afield this Christmas. it´s Oliver Plunkett Street, Patrick Street, City Hall and of course Hillbillys.

Margaret

Best of luck Marcel!

2007-12-30T15:38:00.000-08:00

This is Chris, James and facing the camera, Marcel, who I work with. This is usually what I see at work when I look right, but alas no more as Marcel has moved on to a new job! Farewell and good luck.

Margaret

Christmas

2007-12-24T02:44:00.000-08:00

This is a funky bookmark Charlie sent the other day from Australia. Suggestions for names are welcome When choosing, take note of its underlying sinister nature.

And this is my amazing new phone curtosy of Mom. As you can see, not only is it a phone, but also a portal to a new dimension. Great!

Christmas tree!

2007-12-22T08:25:00.000-08:00

This is my lovely assistant Kat displaying the glamerous Christmas Tree fashion of Arthur Road London. Wonderful.

Decoration

2007-12-21T10:46:00.000-08:00

This is a decoration that´s hanging in our front room in London. Hugh got me a fantastic digital camera for Christmas so there´ll be hundreds thousands and millions of photos from now on!

Margaret

Mystery Photo

2007-12-20T01:40:00.000-08:00

This is an interesting photo i found on my camera the other day. I think it's a magnet on my Mom's fridge. Who knows?

I'm off back to Cork this evening for Christmas, so here's a picture of good auld Shandon.

Margaret

Fancy Dinner

2007-12-17T01:19:00.000-08:00

I got some old rolls of film developed recently and these are from a fancy dinner I cooked in Passage aroudn a year ago. Above is Charlotte, a friend from college who is now travelling around South America somewhere the last I heard. Below is Claire, who is currently teaching English in Japan.

And last but not least here's Yvonne, Laura (massive smile, fair play) and nigh on invisible behind the amazing drink disguise is Niamh.

Margaret

Cover yourself up!

2007-12-13T02:03:00.000-08:00

Myself and Kat from work went to a festival a few weekends ago, and here's a spectacular sight we saw! Also here's Kat trying to steal the limelight by climbing sneakily on board a race boat via a super bike. Excellent!

Margaret

Fish Pond

2007-12-07T01:41:00.001-08:00

This is the fish pond we have in our back garden. These photos are pretty dark as i took them before work a few mornings ago. The pond is covered in a netting which keeps the damned neighbours millions of falling leaves out of it, and stops birds, cats, etc eating the fish. The bamboo canes stop the netting falling into the pond.

We have lots of statues and stones keeping the netting weighed down. This is one of them, he's some form of high brow garden gnome. And finally the fish themselves. I think there are around 20 of them and they are around the size of a hand.

Margaret

Christmas Party

2007-12-06T04:55:00.000-08:00

I had my work Christmas party last night in Turnmills in Farringdon. It kicked off with a champagne reception, followed by exquisite meal and much dancing and craziness. Here we are having a bit of a boogie on the dance floor.

This is Marcel and Chris. They are developers in my team. Marcel is the guy who took the photo of me that became the flickr icon of the day. Chris is showing us his business face. Lovely.

Margaret

Our House

2007-12-05T01:51:00.000-08:00

Hugh and I have moved into an apartment in Holloway. It's around 10 minutes walk from the Arsenal stadium on one side, and around 30 minutes walk from Camden on the other side. Holloway is a great place too with loads of cool bars and shops and even a cinema.

This is our kitchen. It's really nice and has loads of counter space. The rest of the kitchen is really big and there's loads of space for a kitchen table, fireplace, music system and these days, a Christmas tree. I'll get a picture of that soon.

This is our front room, with telly and couch. It's a grand size and the couch is pretty comfortable.

If you walk to the arch at the end of the front room, you come to the conservatory room, with the Wii set up. It's deadly. Plenty of space for jumping like a maniac playing the Wii, and also note the wealth of drawer space.

And last but not least, my bike, Betsy 2. Those of you who are familiar with my bike will recognise it, but it's actually a different bike! By pure fluke our local bike shop was selling this exact copy of my bike when I was looking to buy one. Fantastic.

Margaret

XBridge Bowling

2007-11-27T07:12:00.001-08:00

Yesterday myself and Hugh went bowling with a few of the lads from XBridge. It was fantastic fun. Hugh did quite well and played some pretty impressive bowling. I played utter rubbish and played some impressively disastrous bowling.

Standing next to us in the picture above are Christine, Jeff and Martin. Below is Kat (who was in direct competition with me trying not to be the outright worst) showing off her own unique bowling style.

Margaret

XBridge

2007-11-27T01:33:00.000-08:00

This is a few of the lads that I work with in XBridge. This was a few weeks ago at a "Teck Drinks" party. This is, left to right, James, Ross, Christine, Me, Marcel, Phil, I think that's Jim in the background and Ritesh. Most of us are developers, with a few business people thrown in for good measure.

Margaret

We're in London!

2007-11-26T01:38:00.001-08:00

Hi everyone. Sorry it's been a while, but now that we're settled in London we can start blogging again. Me and Hugh moved to London a few months back and are living here:

We have the ground floor of a converted terrace house, and have a little back garden and everything. We even have a fish pond in the back garden, i'll try and get a picture of that soon.

Since moving over we have both started new jobs, Hugh teaching music in a primary school in Notting Hill and me work as a software engineer in the financial district in Moorgate. We also joined the Brent Symphony Orchestra and played our first concert last Saturday.

It was in a place called St John's Wood and was good craic. A friend of mine from work came and took some photos. He's a really good photographer and puts his favourite shots up on flickr. The one on the top here got flickr's icon of the day award during the week. This is his account:

http://flickr.com/photos/7431997@N02/

Margaret