Track Pump

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

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

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!

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!

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!

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

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.