Happy New Year

If you're in Australia :-)

I think my new year's resolution will be to get some wedding photos on line!

Get visas fast!

It may have been as quick as I've ever seen a government department move (privatised agency or not). In less than a week, Maithrie got her visa. Prayer, perhaps? It's not yet clear whether Dr Dido or Dr Aristophanes will be joining her.

A typical conversation

Shortly after arriving in Kandy I had the following conversation - over and over again, it seemed. At least twice, anyway:

Maithrie (in Sinhalese, or it might be Greek): Blah blah blah blah.
Shopkeeper (or as it may be, taxi driver or waiter): Blah blah blah blah.
Maithrie: Blah blah blah blah. Blah!
Shopkeeper: Blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah.
Maithrie: What do you think, Paul?

It's got better now, fortunately - or maybe my telepathy has improved. My Sinhalese remains shamefully nonexistent.

Olga and Andy (dot info)

Yes, they even have their own website. But since they don't have any pictures of the wedding up there yet, here are a few to get things started!





Some of their friends, old and young (or maybe old and new), were there to see them off!

There were some ex-skiers, illustrating Olga's artistic talents (Olga can explain all - I'm not going to).

And some fellow barn-dwellers!


It was a great day, and a wonderful chance to catch up with old friends. Some danced far into the night - others just put their feet up, and talked far into the night :-)

Dr Aristophanes and Dr Dido

It seems that congratulations are in order for the furry philosophers who, according to their minder, seem to do an awful lot of her writing.

After years of helping with her research, it appears that they were even smuggled into the Viva to defend their Thesis. They must have communicated enough of the subtleties of their conclusions (through the bag they were hiding in) to their guardian to convince the authorities that she really did know all about Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Monty Python and other important works from the past few decades.

Congratulations as well to their minder, who gave them the audience and recognition they might have been, so unfairly, denied! So well done! Congratulations!

A Doctorate for a few years of reading science fiction and fantasy, and watching Monty Python. How cool is that ;-)

And why was I in Budapest?

No - none of these are of me ;-)

The day was an interesting fusion of traditions from Ireland and Hungary. The excellent translations helped enormously, since I still only have about five words of Hungarian: Hi, Yes, No, Coffee, and I love you (and some of these are more useful than others)!




Allegedly it's a tradition that if the bride holds a baby, she'll have lots of them! I wonder if anyone warned David?



There was food and drink, there were speeches (in which David got off remarkably lightly), and there was music and dancing.




Judging by David's expression, cutting cakes must be much harder than it looks!

David and Zita lasted very well, considering they'd been up late the night before sorting out the seating plan (or so we were told).



All in all, a good trip!

Not so good Friday

I knew I was going to have to get up early. 8am is an ungodly sort of an hour for a service, even a Good Friday one, so I had set my alarm. Actually two of them. Still, when I heard an insistent noise through the mists of sleep it seemed dreadfully early. I didn't realise until later just how early it was.

Through the fog, it dawned on me that the phone was ringing. It was the police. "There are police officers outside your house", they said. "They want to talk to you." Before I could review my life for major undetected crimes, they went on to explain that my car had been stolen.

"Err... OK. I'll be right down!"


Seconds later, dressed, downstairs, and almost lucid, I pulled back the curtains to reveal a pile of glass, a door with a hole in it, some wide-awake neighbours, the police, and no car. At least not mine - there was one with a flashing blue light, and some heap the joyriders rode in on. Kind of them to leave it for me.

"Were you really asleep through all that?"

Apparently I was. While I slept, the whole street seemed to have been awoken by the sound of my car being stolen - car alarms, joy riders, my window being smashed with a rock, a neighbour's car being hit, and later on, two police officers battering on my door.

I slept like a baby. Actually much better than a baby - it's their baby's habit of not actually sleeping all night that meant my next door neighbours were awake to see the incident, after all!

So much for the Good Friday service, and meeting up for breakfast afterwards. I got to talk to glaziers and locksmiths and insurance people and detectives and fingerprint men instead. Still, the house is secure again, and spring is a better time of year than winter for a hole in your house! And I had a fairly pleasant chatty day... it's funny how disasters help a feeling of community - especially other people's disasters ;-)

I also discovered that some insurance companies are on holiday now. I have a nasty sinking feeling that this will be the start of another saga - but I'm always prepared to be proved wrong by unexpected tales of integrity from the insurance industry!

Then my "friends" texted me a picture (does that make sense?) of them having breakfast: "Shame you couldn't make it!"

Friends are great, I'm told!

We had real beds...

We had real beds last weekend (most of us, anyway). We'd look a lot worse if we'd been sleeping in a barn, like last time.