A weekend to remeber

So this weekend was spent catching up with my old Friend Nichy from university. I went to pick her up from the station on Saturday morning and we had lunch in the cafe behind the church in Oxford (we were going to go to the vault and the walled gardens but they were serving large meals & we only wanted a sandwich, but I will def keep this in mind for another time as it looked lovely). We then went to the Alice in Wonderland shop, around the 3 floors of Blackwells (where Nichy bought my birthday present, the complete translations of the grim fairy tales, wicked) and then some tea and cake before finishing up with a tour of the Bodian Library, which was truely wonderful (Nichy incidentally has access there as she is currently studying for her PhD at Manchester). Yesterday after a very small lie in (9.00 am, that usual bee getting up time) we headed to the farm (where my bees live) and picked our own raspberry's (I also acquired a massive wicker basket that is lovely and will definitely fit all my farm produce in). We spent the rest of the afternoon in the garden eating the raspberries and doing a bit of light weeding until it was time to put Nichy on a bus and let her go home. I got a text last night saying that she had got home safely and her parents were intrigued by the prospect of seaside pasta (its something I cooked, basically pasta bake with seafood and crushed crisps on top, its quite tasty despite what you might think!).

So this morning it was back to the 6.30 starts (too early for natural getting up time not early enough to catch farming today) and back to work with a capital W. There are two senior positions going so I have to sort out my CV and make sure I brush up on my interviewing technique. I don't really want either of these two as they are in different departments and I quite like where I am now, but I have to show an interest just in case a promotion comes up in my dept.

It is now quite certain that my mum and Kip are coming down for my birthday, I think we have decided that we will visit the red house on the Sunday (my birthday is on the Monday) although the Bee society are holding a skep making class on this day also, but my mum thought her & Kip would get a bit bored with this not being incredibly be-ee themselves. Finally I think I might have finally settled on names for the chickens Mildred, Hermione and Isobel/Agatha (can't decide on the last one).