phillsacre.me.uk

The random title is an oblique reference to what we were doing yesterday: priming the bathroom! When we had the bathroom knocked through we also had it re-plastered (the paintwork was cracking and coming off in places so it was worth doing). Up until yesterday, the bathroom looked very brown. Now it looks nice and white :) Phil’s parents came up and helped us (well, to tell the truth, Phil’s Dad did most of the priming).

We also did some work in the garden, i.e. put in a split log border along one of our flower beds. The back garden is looking pretty good now – although I don’t think one can ever call a garden “finished” it’s definitely much better than it was when we moved in. And I can’t wait to see it all in full bloom!

Anyway. Phil’s parents stayed for dinner, and then afterwards they went home and we watched “Firewall” which was on TV last night. It was a decent enough film but I couldn’t help watching it with a sense of Deja-Vu: an evil dude wants to rob a bank, so kidnaps a man’s wife and two children and basically holds him to ransom until he obliges (the man in question happens to be the VP of Security for a major bank).

I mean, the film itself was OK… Harrison Ford played the lead role and, despite being a little wooden at times, pulled in a good performance. Paul Bettany, the villain of the piece, was good despite me being a bit confused by his having an American accent to start with. Robert Forster (Arthur Petrelli from “Heroes”) was good but underused.

There were some plot holes, but nothing I cared too much about (it was just an entertaining film, not meant to be the best film ever!)

One thing me and Phil quite liked was the portrayal of one of the guys in the film: he was apparently a Christian, but this wasn’t portrayed in a positive or negative light – it was just sort of a part of him. At one point we hear his ringtone as “What a friend we have in Jesus”, and then later on we see him playing guitar in a church service, where they are singing “There’s a voice that must be heard (Jesus friend of sinners)” – one of my favourite rockier Christian songs. So it was nice to see a portrayal of a Christian character in a film which was actually quite realistic and not just a stereotype.

Oh, and finally, one little nice touch: at one point in the film, the Mum and kids are watching a scene from what looked like “The Empire Strikes Back”. If I’m right, nice little reference to a rather famous role of Harrison Ford’s :) (EDIT: according to the IMDB it was “The Forbidden Planet”. Ah well, it was only a split second, not going to watch it again just to check!)

I’ll start with the good news: last week, as I mentioned, we had some work done on our bathroom. That work is now finished! Yay! We still have a couple of things to do, but we don’t need the workmen back in. So the towel rail / radiator, shaver point, extractor fan and plastering is all completed. All we have to do now is decorate, i.e paint and fit some kind of flooring (we had a wooden floor fitted last week, but need to put down some kind of laminate flooring on top. Or something like that).

So we’ve been enjoying the additional space we’ve got in the bathroom, it’s fantastic :)

On Saturday we went down to stay with Phil’s parents. On Saturday evening we went out to the Royal Festival Hall to see a performance of Mozart’s 17th Piano Concerto, followed by Mahler’s 5th Symphony. I think my favourite of the two was probably the Mozart – but I would like to hear the Mahler again! I think the Mahler piece is one which you would appreciate much more if you knew it, and unfortunately it was the first time I’d heard it. The last two movements were beautiful, though.

Unfortunately, this is where the bad news comes in: when we got back frmo the concert, I found a note on the car. Someone had reversed into it, putting a dent in the driver’s side door and buckling it slightly. Fortunately the door still opens and locks, and the car wasn’t damaged otherwise, but it is annoying because now I have to get it repaired and deal with insurance and the like. Still, at least the guy who did it owned up – apparently in 70-80% of these kind of incidents, people just drive off!

Anyway, he gave me his details and I have called up my insurance company to put in the claim so hopefully it won’t be too long before it will be sorted. The garage are supposed to be ringing me within 48 hours.

So, it wasn’t the most pleasant way to end the day! But still, these things happen. On Sunday morning we went to church with Phil’s parents, and then after lunch drove down to West Norwood to see my sister Alison. It was really nice to see her, the first time we’d actually been to her flat. And after that we had a fun-filled trip back home… we set off at about 5:00, and got home at around 7:30. Not too bad, I suppose, given that we had to go through central London (well, skirt the edges of it really).

After that we watched “Lark Rise to Candleford” and just crashed out for the evening! So there you have it. Tonight I’m going to a charity pop music quiz, something which the company I work for has arranged. Should be good fun, although I was absolutely rubbish at the last music quiz I went to – I just think I know nothing about music! Not pop music anyway. Ah well.

Well, I suppose it’s time to post up a quick review of what happened last week! Philippa’s parents came up to help us do some decorating – we wanted to do the whole of the spare room in one week. The spare room had previously been rather a bright shade of pink, so we wanted to change it to something a little bit more mellow – “warm apricot” was the colour we chose for the walls. Anyway, it’s fair to say that we had a very successful week: the room is now painted (including the ceiling, skirting boards and door – not all the same colour, I hasten to add…) and looks very nice.

We also managed to do various other little jobs around the house and garden, so all in all it was quite a productive week.

The weekend was pretty busy as well! Phil’s sister Roz came up on Thursday and stayed until Saturday. On Friday evening we all went out for a meal at the Yew Tree in Great Horkesley (which was very nice, by the way, thanks for the recommendation Simon!) Afterwards, Phil’s parents went home and Roz came back with us.

She stayed overnight, and on Saturday morning we went into town to do a bit of shopping. I bought a couple of new CDs (‘We Live and Die in These Towns’ by The Enemy, and ‘Stabat Mater’ by Karl Jenkins) as well as a couple of new clothes.

In the afternoon Roz went home, and I headed down to London for Phil P’s stag do. We all went out for a meal at “Planet Hollywood”, which was very nice – albeit a bit on the expensive side! Afterwards, I went for a drink with Alex (everyone else had gone home… bunch of lightweights).

On Sunday, we went to church in the morning as per usual, and then afterwards we were invited round to the Savilles for lunch which was rather nice. We didn’t get back home until late afternoon, and we spent most of the rest of the evening clearing up the spare room (i.e., putting back everything we’d had to take out with the decorating).

Also we watched “Doctor Who”. I was actually quite impressed by this week’s episode – it was well written, and explored some very interesting themes. Just how much can the Doctor change time? Will it be a running theme in this series? They could do a lot with it… good stuff.

As I may have already mentioned, this week we are off work to do some decorating. Phil’s parents are up and are helping us out. We’ve been quite productive so far! The main goal of this week is to repaint the violently pink room (otherwise known as the spare room).

We bought some paint at the weekend, and we’ve been busy preparing and painting the past couple of days. All the walls now have two coats of paint and look really good, all that’s left to do is paint the skirting boards and radiator. So we’re not doing badly!

There are a few other little jobs that we want to do but we’ll have to see how it goes.

I realise that was a pretty pointless post, but it does at least explain why I don’t have very much time to blog this week :-)

It’s been a fairly busy weekend, once again! On Friday, I spent the evening sanding down the radiator in our bedroom (what fun!) to prepare it for painting. On Saturday, I spent most of the day painting the last wall in our bedroom which needed to be painted… it took a long time, but I think the fruits of our labour are paying off! It now looks much better than the mushroomy kind of colour which was in there before. The room feels a bit bigger, certainly a lot fresher.

On Saturday evening we went round to Wivenhoe for Alison’s birthday do. Matthew has already written about it, so there’s no need for me to re-iterate what he said! The only thing to add is, I was “Derek the Decorator” and Phil was “Brenda”… it was slightly unimaginative as I’d been decorating all day, but still!

Yesterday, we went to church in the morning for the family service and then came back home to finish off the decorating. Then we had lunch, didn’t do much for the afternoon, and then went to the Bengal Spice in the evening for dinner! It was delicious, as always. Afterwards we came back and watched Top Gear, it was a really good episode this week :-)

And… that’s all for the time being!

Well, this weekend was fun. On Friday evening, the A12 near Colchester was closed because a lorry with gas canisters in it caught fire. Unfortunately, it also meant that they closed the railway line… although the line wasn’t closed between Ipswich and Colchester, it still affected my journey home! Last week was pretty bad for trains generally, certainly in the evenings at least – more trains were late than ran on time! At least on Friday it wasn’t really ‘One’ railways’ fault.

On Saturday, we did some decorating. We painted another wall of the main bedroom, and also I started stripping wallpaper (fortunately only one of the walls has wallpaper on it… unfortunately it’s the longest in the room!). The wall we painted was originally a sort of mushroom / beige kind of colour… we wanted to cover it with a creamy white. Here’s a little tip: if you want to cover another colour with white, be prepared to do quite a few coats! We had to do three on the wall, it was ridiculous. We used up almost a whole tin of paint! Still, it’s done now.

In the evening we watched ‘Groundhog Day’, as I hadn’t seen it before. It was a very enjoyable film :-)

On Sunday we went to Fordham in the morning, and then stayed on for the harvest lunch. After that we came back home and I worked on the Fordham website for a bit. In the evening, Phil went round to Anne-Marie’s for a girly night there, so I invited Matthew and Dan to come round to watch Top Gear and have some pizza. That was a good evening, although I suspect we talked a lot less than the girls!

Anyway, that’s all for now…