Being Very Clever

Am aware I have not updated the blog recently, and my apologies to anyone who had noticed and was actually bothered! But I have been away, "being very clever", and have a certificate to prove it.

So, aside from work and the usual, what have I been up to? Sorting out the house, as always, but have got rid of all the spare furniture on eBay (total profit so far £122 and rising) and have started to repaint the lounge a nice neutral colour, but can't really do any more for the moment as need somebody (ie my dad) to come and move various wiring bits and rewire plug sockets. But one wall is done, although it is the smallest one.

Had a nice trip up to London last weekend - had planned to catch up with a friend but realised at the last minute that there were train engineering works at Basingstoke meaning that the trains were disrupted and it would have taken me like 4 hours to get there, so I decided to drive. And since I arrived up there with the car, the decision was made (perhaps foolishly) to go to Ikea as we both needed to get stuff from there, so we had "fun" there trying to dodge all the dysfunctional couples having their sunday arguments. Got another CD tower though as I couldn't quite fit everything onto the ones I already had.

This weekend just gone, we had a brief trip to France on the overnight friday night ferry and getting back late on saturday. Was good fun - went to see some of the D-day beaches, had lunch sitting outside, then hypermarket on the way home. Didn't really get much but wanted a few bottles of wine and so bought a couple of different Sancerres for a Christmas taste test. On the way back we accidentally sat in the livelier of the bars on the ferry, and had some DJ Radio-1-wannabee who cajoled everyone into taking part in the bar quiz he had organised. I didn't think my brother would be up for it, as last time we did one was ski-ing 2 years ago and I remember him saying initially that he wasn't going to take part as some of the other groups were northerners and it would be humiliating if we didn't win! But the rest of us persuaded him and in the event we did win (a bottle of wine, tickets to the tobogganing evening and masses of Milka chocolates in fact). But this time he was up for it and inisted that we call the Gibbs family team the "Bushwood Country Club", although I have no idea why. The questions initially weren't very challenging (sample "which is bigger - an ocean or a lake?") but got a big harder as it went on, and we again managed to win by getting 16 out of 21 points. We won 2 novelty santa hats, a CD travel case, an iPod sock and the certificate which I have scanned on here. Rich pickings indeed.