It's raining

Hi Folks, it's raining outside (anyone spot the song reference??) and it's time for a long overdue blog post. June and July have really sped by! We're doing well, feeling more and more settled in our new home and still just glad to be up here. We've done lots of work in the back garden, which is now turfed, and have planted lots of flowers in the front garden borders too. Our courgette plants have been mega-productive over the last few weeks so we've had lots of courgette based meals - in fact friends who we've had over for dinner must think we're obsessed with them!!

Kate won me an mp3 player the other week, so some days on my train journeys I've been able to listen to music now. In the meantime I've been working my way through George R R Martin's excellent Song of Ice and Fire series - all mammoth tomes of 600 + pages. Anyway, for completeness, they are A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords (parts 1 and 2), and a Feast for Crows - the latest book in the series has only just come out but I've just borrowed it from the library.. in the meantime I'm just finishing a book about Wellington's elite rifle unit in the Napolionic Wars.

The other day we went to see the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (cbso) perform an evening of John Williams film scores, which was amazing - and even better because it was another of Kate's competition wins (the last thing I won was tickets to BBC's Gardeners World Live at the NEC in June, which was also great). Part of the competition win was also a £50 voucher for a posh restaurant, but we saved that for another night and went and saw Harry Potter in 3D at the cinema afterwards which was also amazing.

Still having a few frustrations with my rides to the station - having got a replacement bike after its the theft, that subsequently got vandalised at the station the other day too. So whilst I'm taking the issue of cycle security up with the train station operator I'm running to the station again. Now that the farmers have ploughed the fields near us, it's also been easier to got for runs at the weekend across the fields - although some of the paths are still quite overgrown with stinging nettles and thistles.. which punish my legs a bit!

Oh, since my last post we've got a new ginger kitten - George. He's lots of fun, has far too much energy, and I'm pleased to say that he's getting on very well with our other cat Flo. Eden loves them both and has just this week started to carry George around for cuddles - he's very patient with her!

Well that's about it for now! Catch up in a few months.. or hopefully sooner!