Productive Weekend and 4 sleeps to go...

Had haircuts on Saturday morning (by our friendly travelling hairdresser), then played a bit of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on the PC (I'm still amazed that my video card was up to it), which is actually extremely good, plenty to do and see, excellent models and textures, intuitive spell casting system (with mouse gestures off, anyway), I'm just trying to find and assemble all the members of the DA in the Room of Requirement at the moment...Saturday afternoon we stripped Colin the camper van right down to his essentials (ready for Cornwall in a few days time) then that evening watched X-Factor (it being the funny early episode with all the terrible singers) then I tried to find a copy of the movie Apollo 13 somewhere (actually *everywhere*) in my house and failed completely (and made a right mess in the process)...I could only locate the VHS copy and didn't fancy watching it like that (Help! I've become a video format snob, the days of being happy with VCDs are obviously behind me)...

Sunday I got up early and did some paperwork that I've been meaning to do for a while now, then we went over to Oxted to take a look at the (almost) finished new community hall (where we plan to hold the wedding reception) and it is *awesome* - the perfect size (a little larger than a badminton court), everything brand new (right down to the fold-away stage, tables and chairs), big kitchen with industrial-sized cooker, dishwasher and giant American-style fridge (caterers should be happy with that little lot!), then stopped at my folks for a spot of lunch (crunchy greek salad (with home grown cucumber), hot chorizo and crispy bacon chilli salad and pan fried new potatos with rosemary and garlic, served with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar), then off to do our shopping at Oxted Morrisons (bought *far* too many sweets and crisps for Cornwall), got home mid-afternoon and went up in the loft to get out the surf boards, wet suits and camp kitchen, out into the shed to try and find a ground sheet (found a huge tarpaulin that will do just fine) and then finished off packing the last few bits into the camper. Just need clothes and wash kits now and we are ready to go...anyway, I then cooked us a lovely roast dinner (lamb with all the trimmings), checked out the long term weather forecast on the Met Office website (high pressure all next week over the south and west, good outlook!), and then it was time for baths and bed...

Oh and I also finished the third Harry Potter book, so today it was on to number 4...zero inconsistencies in books 2 and 3 (well, that I spotted anyway)...

Only four more sleeps to go, then it's sun, sea and sand for a few days R&R...thank *GOODNESS*! ;)

Healthy Snacks and Morrisons Reigate

See how good I am being? ;)

Took 5 minutes out this morning and prepared myself a bowl of chopped carrots, peppers and a handful of mini plum tomatoes (which, incidentally, are *very* sour, but that serves me just about right for buying criminally out-of-season produce from far flung lands)...

We did our shopping in Morrisons in Reigate yesterday, call me a creature of habit, but I really don't like visiting new supermarkets, it always seems to be the same story -

• You spend the first five minutes feeling like a lost puppy
• You can never find everything you want (I still don't have a clue where they decided to keep the icing sugar, and no, it's not with the regular sugar or near the bags of flour, but it wasn't important enough to actually seek out a member of staff)
• Shopping takes twice as long as you have no idea of the layout
• Because they have different things in stock you end up buying a load of stuff you don't need
• Pricing is different (we miscalculated by £30, the bad way, when totting up in the queue, whoops!)

- extra special woe specific to Morrisons was -

• No cauliflowers in stock, not even organic
• No members of staff visible (can't move for them in Tesco in their "Here to Help" T-shirts)
• The cheapest bit of lamb was nearly £9
• There were peppercorns all over the floor in one of the aisles, and in all the time we were there no-one made any effort to clean them up (not funny if an old dear or a kid had gone over)
• Everything I picked up seemed to have a "best before" date of the 9th of Jan
• Only about 4 tills open (every one of them had about 5 trolleys waiting), this also clogged up the ends of the ailes, very poorly laid out...especially considering all the wasted space beyond them...and we could have driven there and back to Gatwick twice in the time we were waiting...
  

Sorry Morrisons, Tesco have it hands down...

Devon Holiday - Day 2 - (Caves and Cobwebs)

So, the weather looking pants (rain hitting the tent pretty hard overnight) we opted for some under-cover (well, as far as possible) activities - Kents Cavern was top of the list for the local attractions (the other blatantly indoor nearby attraction - Sorely Tunnel - upon investigation turned out to be a partially flooded, partially collapsed empty tunnel with attached kiddies play area) -

- Anyway, Kents Cavern is a (roughly) 2 million year old series of passages and chambers created by water erosion (at the time, of course it was somewhere rather different on the globe, but plate tectonics shifted it to Devon where hundreds of bears, hyenas and at least one famale human being (who was eaten by one of the other two types of resident) sought shelter in later years)...it was then, at some stage, largely filled with mud...

Many years later it seems that some Romans crept in, because at the foot of this striking calcite deposit (nicknamed "The Face" for fairly obvious reasons) archeologists found several piles of carefully stacked sestercii...(I think I probably would have taken one look at it in the flickering candle light and fled in terror rather than paying it some money, but anyway)...

Had a good chance to try out some low light settings on the camera, caught this shot (above) of falling drips forming a stalagmite (click it to zoom in) which I was quite pleased with -

- and this one of the "Wedding Cake" -

- and this is a 50,000 year old stalagmite (protected behind the glass shields on the right), to put it in context (as it only grows by the thickness of a human hair every year), this deposit is 5 times older than the English Channel... ;)

Anyway, back out into the rain for the quick dash to "Bygones" which is in a converted cinema, it's actually very impressive, the owners have mocked up a complete Victorian high street -

- complete with sweet shop, blacksmiths, bakery etc. -

- they also have some rather interesting curios from days gone by (in this case thank goodness!), we stopped for a cup of tea in the little cafe and then headed back to the camp site (via Totnes Morrisons to buy some steak for tea)...

Later on, after a few beers I went over to the ablusions and was rather suprised to find a queue of young lads waiting for the toilet (or so I thought), when (getting a little desperate) I impatiently muttered "What are they doing in there?", it quickly became apparent that this queue was not for the toilet at all, but for the use of the socket by the sinks to charge mobile phones/ipods/PSPs....!

There's a feature of modern life for you... ;)