Tuesday 4th October 2005
Choco Leibniz

While driving to work this morning, I remembered this funny story and it made me smile. Once, a couple of years ago, I bought a box of Choco Leibniz biscuits from the supermarket. I guess I must have opened them as soon as I unpacked the shopping as they looked so yummy! I then put them away and didn't think to mention them to Ian. Some days later, while I was at work, I heard my phone beep to tell me there was a text message. Now, Ian was never one for text messages, in fact, he positively despised them as a method of communication, however, it was a message from Ian. It said only two words: Choco Leibniz, and I thought to myself, "Oh dear... this means he's letting me know he knows I have opened them and that I never told him I had opened them or offered him any!!!!"
(Well, if that doesn't make you laugh, maybe you had to be there!)

Tuesday 4th October 2005
Building the Shed

Today a friend visited me at our home. She noticed Ian's Tardis, in the garden, and I told her the following story, about our other shed.

Ian wanted a bigger shed, and after pricing them up, he decided we could get more shed for our money, if we ordered the wood from Wickes, had it delivered, and made the shed panels and assembled it ourselves. I took some extra days off at Easter in 2004, so including the Bank Holidays, we had seven days to get this shed built. Well, it took us six days, and we rested on the seventh! Due to Ian's condition of course, I did all the lifting, fetching, carrying, general labouring, etc. Ian had designed the shape but left it to me to do the actual measuring. When we started to assemble the panels, I drilled all the holes using an electric drill, and I held the shiplap slats while Ian came along with screws and a cordless drill/screwdriver and screwed them all in place. So it was well-built, this shed, no nails were used, all drilled and screwed. Several days into the project, our friends Tim and Kirsty came down to check on the progress. I innocently said to Kirsty, I have done all the fetching, carrying, lifting, measuring and drilling and Ian has put the screws in. She replied, "Isn't that just like a man, leave everything else to the woman, and just do the screwing!"
 

Friday 7th October 2005
Anna Lee's Hat

Years ago when we were just going out together, there was a T.V. show on, I think it was called "Anna Lee". In it, Anna wore a red hat, with miniature fruit on it and I admired it. I searched for ages for fruit to make a similar hat. I didn't know until some months later, that Ian had actually written to the producers of the show and asked them if they would send him the hat, for me. I think they might have given it to him, too, only they wrote a letter back saying the hat was no more, it had blown into a river and got ruined! How romantic of Ian, to try and get me the original hat!
 

Friday 7th October 2005
Presents through the Post

My sister-in-law Mandy has sent me today a gift through the post. I am reminded of all the many times Ian sent me stuff through the post - from when we were just friends, to going out together and all the while we were married he would send me stuff to work - for no other reason than it is FUN to get unexpected presents through the post - even from someone you LIVE with! They ranged from simple cards and postcards to bags of sweets, little cuddly toys and small gifts, I think the most unusual was a box of cereal - I think they were Coco Pops! He would send stuff addressed to me at work, "To Julie Towle, SUPER PERFUMER!" He would draw his own design stamps on the package/envelope as well as the real ones. He would send a postcard with 28 times 1p stamps on instead of one 28p stamp. He would chuckle at the idea of the postperson having to postmark all of those individually with a hand stamp.
 

Saturday 8th October 2005
BBQ and Picnic at Pitsford

Today I took Meg to one of her favourite places for a walk, Pitsford Reservoir. I remember coming here this summer, with Ian, we had bought a portable barbecue in Sainsbury's and some meat and kebabs and we had brought salad and plates and something to drink from home. It was so COOL! We set it up in the barbecue area and had our tea overlooking the reservoir. A few weeks later, I came home from work and Ian was all ready, waiting to go again, with a cold salad picnic in a bag with drinks, sauces, bread and he had thought of everything. What a treat! We always loved having picnics, wherever and whenever we felt like a picnic, we would drive to the nearest supermarket and get sandwiches and drinks if we hadn't brought a picnic with us.
 

Sunday 9th October 2005
"Non-presents"

Ian did not like receiving any gifts for his Birthday or Christmas which were clothes. "Clothes are non-presents" he would say, much to my amusement.
 

Wednesday 12th October 2005
Frozen Mars Bars

Ian did not like to eat chocolate that was at room temperature, or even out of the fridge. No, he liked it straight out of the FREEZER! I am not talking about Mars Bar ice cream bars, no, Ian liked the proper nougat, caramel and chocolate ones, frozen rock solid after they had been in the freezer for at least two days! Or any other chocolate bars for that matter, we stored them all in the freezer as that was how he liked them! It's a good job his teeth were strong!
 

Wednesday 12th October 2005
Ian on...mobile phones

Ian was not interested in whether a mobile phone could take photographs, or surf the 'net, or receive a radio signal. "I just want it to be a PHONE!" he would say. "I don't want one that takes pictures, or plays music, I just want a PHONE!"
One of Ian's pet hates was when he saw someone walking down the street, with a friend, and they were ignoring the person they were with and talking / texting on their mobile phone. He would say, "If they were my friend I would tell them to get lost as I am obviously not important to them as they are talking to someone else."
One time when we were at Wickes we saw a van painted red and white like Starsky and Hutch's car, and he complained how we never had a camera on us when he wanted to take a photo. I said he could use my phone, as that takes photos, but he replied, "I'd get better resolution if I DREW it!!!!"
 

Friday 14th October 2005
Weighty conversation

Today I have remembered a conversation Ian and I had while shopping in Morrison's, a few months ago. In the fruit and veg section, Ian remarked how lucky we were, to have met each other and because we had found each other, we could "let ourselves go" a little and have the occasional treat here and there and not worry if we put on a bit of weight as we didn't have to impress any other members of the opposite sex. I laughed and said, "You speak for yourself!"
 

Friday 14th October 2005
Autumn Leaves

I don't know if I ever told Ian, but I love to walk through Autumn leaves on the ground at this time of year. I think Meg likes to do that too. Today I took Meg up to the racecourse, and there just seemed to be one tree out of all of them, that had shed a lot of leaves on the ground. I could not resist trampling through them both there and back, and I said to Meg, these look like they have been made to fall, especially for us to find here, today...
 

Friday 14th October 2005
Ian on...salads

Salads were one of our favourite meals. Especially after we came back from our first visit to America. We would have our salads, "American Style" in a big salad bowl, with lots of dressings and all the trimmings - croutons, bacon sprinkles, coleslaw, etc. He would phone me at work and ask me to call in at Morrisons on the way home and pick up a hot chicken and some salad (and usually a "treat" too, such as a banoffee pie or a chocolate muffin!).
When we were on holiday in Berchtesgaden, Germany last year, for our first meal out while we were there we both ordered "Sausage Salad" thinking that would be nice, like lots of salad with some German sausage in it. Imagine our surprise when it turned out to be just sausage! Well, very nearly! It was a large plate, full of sliced sausage and a few slices of onion. No salad! It was literally a salad made of sausage! It was nice though, as we were very hungry, and they did bring some bread with it.
When Ian ordered a kebab, from the local kebab shop, he asked for "all the sauces". Usually people have just one or two, but no, Ian liked it with a bit of everything! Tomato, chilli, garlic, barbecue, mint, mayo and in the end the kebab was literally swimming in sauce. But that was the way Ian liked it.
 

Sunday 16th October 2005
Springwatch

This year Ian had taken to watching the Springwatch show on television. He called it "old fart's T.V." but we actually both got quite interested in it. He even made his own version, by filming the birds in our garden and the fish in our pond, and he called it "Garden Watch". He showed me a 45 minute DVD of it a few weeks ago. Making and editting together home videos was one of Ian's many talents.
 

Sunday 16th October 2005
Meteor-spotting

A few months ago, when the earth was supposed to be going through a "meteor shower", we drove out of Northampton looking for a dark, quiet spot with less light pollution. We turned into Brixworth Country Park, and it was very dark, a freezing cold night, we had on our coats, hats, gloves and scarves. I saw about five meteors, or "shooting stars". Much to Ian's disappointment, he didn't see ANY, because each time I saw one, of course they were only there for a fraction of a second and he was always looking in the other direction when I saw them. We both enjoyed looking at the night sky - but in fact we did not do this very often. About the third thing Ian said to me the night we first met was, "Do you like astronomy?" and we always joked that this was Ian's chat-up line! (Well it worked, didn't it?)
 

Sunday 16th October 2005
Building the Bed

About four years ago, we built, wait for it…a high-level bed! We both decided to do this for a laugh, as we both were disappointed in our childhoods and never had bunk beds! The bed we had before that was cobbled together out of my old futon – Ian had built a frame, a few years earlier, and used all the slats off the futon, and I bought an orthopaedic mattress – so it was actually a very comfortable bed. But Ian said it wasn’t simply a case of sticking longer legs on the one he had built, he said he would have to take it apart and totally start again from scratch, although he was able to again re-use the slats. We followed the design of one in the Argos book, which cost over £200 I think, and we went to Wickes and spent about £60 on timber – so that was quite a saving! Ian then used a router to make the joints, and we assembled the frame based on the four longer posts, and side beams, and what a laugh we had, trying to stick the two sides together! Ian just got all the bits in place one end, with glue dripping off them onto the carpet (sigh!), while I tried to hold it up, and then while he tried to get them in the other end, the first end kept dropping out again!!! After about the third or fourth attempt, and us falling into hysterical laughter, I said we are never going to do it this way, and so we got just one end of the third side glued while I just held them in until Ian put screws in, and then same with the fourth side. I then painted this wooden frame, and then when the paint was dry, Ian put in the slats, and with trepidation, I pushed and shoved the mattress until it was on top of this construction! We intended to use underneath for storage, with wardrobe rails and everything, so the mattress sits between five and six feet in the air! We measured before we started, and this was the minimum height we could comfortably do with as a wardrobe underneath, while not scraping our heads on the ceiling! But still, the first time we both went up there, we were totally unprepared for how high it actually was! I felt like I had vertigo! I felt so high up, and so close to the ceiling – which was by now, only about two feet above my face! I began to think, oh dear, this is going to be another one of those, like the blue ceiling, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time! But after only a few days, we got totally used to it, and then we loved it.
 

Tuesday 18th October 2005
Our "Gordon Ramsay" weekend

When Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares was on T.V. earlier this year, we watched with interest. Ian decided it would be lots of fun to eat only the type of food featured on the programme for the entire weekend. And so, as that week's episode had featured Mama Cheri's American/Deep South Soul Food restaurant in Brighton (which we intended to visit), Ian decided we would eat Caribbean food (yeah, go figure!!!) all weekend (except for breakfast). So on Friday night, I got the ingredients from Tesco's - they actually have some very unusual items in Weston Favell - I got everything I needed except the Corn Syrup for the Pecan Pie. We were ravenous when we got home, and rather than wait for something to be cooked, I stuck some Nachos in the oven - so the American Deep South / Caribbean theme was off to a great start...we followed that by Spicy Baked Chicken Wings. Saturday's dinner was Marinated Roast Pork - the flavour of the meat was just divine, lime juice, chilli, olive oil, yellow pepper marinade with pineapple. Served with baby corn and mange tout and Coconut Rice. Ian even ate the pineapple!!!
Sunday's dinner was Chicken in Hot Pepper Sauce which was really delicious. Unfortunately in the weeks that followed, Ian didn't fancy any of the food that was featured in the programmes, and so we didn't do this again.
 

Thursday 20th October 2005
The "Oracle"

Ian always referred to my boss, Tony, as "the Oracle". This is because Tony does know a lot about a lot of things. I would always ask Tony gardening questions and Tony had enough of this and bought us a gardening book for a wedding present.
 

Thursday 20th October 2005
"Tinned Stew"

We really enjoyed our camping holidays. We discovered that you can make a filling stew easily by using tins of meat in gravy, carrots, peas and potatoes, mixing them all together in a saucepan and warming them through on the camping stove in just a few minutes. We even ate this at home some evenings when we couldn't be bothered to cook!
One year we went for a long weekend with Tim and Kirsty, to the Norfolk Broads and hired a boat. We offered to take the tins needed to make our "tinned stew" but Tim assured us there were plenty of pubs and places to stop along the way, so we didn't take any that time.
 

Friday 21st October 2005
Our First Holiday Together

In the October of 1994 Ian and I went to the island of Rhodes for a week's holiday. It was bright sunshine on the day the plane landed. That afternoon, we mused about how Rhodes must be famous for umbrellas, as we noticed in Rhodes town, there were many umbrella shops (we hoped it WASN'T a prophecy!). The next morning, it was pouring with rain, but we caught a taxi to the shops and the taxi driver assured us that at this time of year, in any one week, you only got ONE day of rain and the rest of the week would be sunny! But for the next three days, it poured and poured with rain! We didn't let it stop us going out sightseeing, we still went to visit Kallithea Spa in the pouring rain (with an umbrella purchased from one of the shops!). But due to the low standard of drainage, eventually the street where our hotel was actually flooded and I can remember wading up the street, knee-deep in water! The hotel was called "Sandy Coast". The Greek government actually declared a "National Disaster" that week.

Friday 21st October 2005
"When I'm 64"

Ian and I always held hands when out walking together. He would often say to me, "Will you still hold my hand when we're 64?!"
 

Saturday 22nd October 2005
"Cromwell Shoes"

I bought a pair of shoes from Hotter Comfort Concept (now in fact I have several pairs, they are great!). Ian said to me they looked like something Oliver Cromwell would have worn. He tried to make that sound better by saying how fashions always come around again and how "retro" is "in"!
 

Sunday 23rd October 2005
Our Paris Weekend

I was remembering a weekend away in Paris, that we spent in July 2003. We had got some vouchers for the Eurostar, "Two for the price of One", and so when I booked it, I booked the weekend of our wedding anniversary, July 12th. I found a hotel on the internet, and booked that for three nights. Well, when we got there, the hotel was not in a very nice area, and when we went into the room, they had put us on the ground floor, and the room was of a very poor standard. We got hardly any sleep that night as there was loud music coming from the reception area all night, we attempted to sleep on top of the covers because the sheets did not look clean. Well, we were lucky if we got two or three hours sleep, and by the morning, Ian was determined he had had enough already and he wanted to go home! He said we were going straight back to the station (he was not even prepared to eat breakfast in this place), and we were getting the next train back. I said we could not get back on the Eurostar as they were booked /timed tickets (I think it was going to be closed for maintenance, anyway), and he insisted we were going back by normal train, to Calais if necessary and back by ferry to England. I was SO downhearted, I could not believe our romantic, anniversary weekend was going to be ruined like this, and that I was going to LEAVE Paris without even getting a look at the Eiffel Tower!

Well we returned to the station, intending to see what trains we could get. However, there was a tourist information kiosk, and we wondered what possibility there would be of finding an alternative hotel for the remaining two nights, and so we asked. We explained we had not been comfortable where we had stayed the night before, and the lady enquired where we had stayed and we pointed in the direction of the area from where we had come, and the look on her face was a study! She said she could get us two nights in a decent hotel, in a much nicer, quieter part of Paris, for not a lot more than what we were paying at the other place. She made a 'phone call, and a few minutes later it was all arranged. She described to us where we had to go, several stops on the Metro, and gave us a map. We heaved a sigh of relief, but we still had to go back to the other place, retrieve our luggage, and make our excuses for leaving two days early, which we did. (We even managed to get a refund, after we got back home!) Later that morning, after finding the new hotel, seeing how much nicer it was, checking in, and then we caught a taxi to Notre Dame, and only then did I actually start to relax and I can remember the feeling as the tension of the last 24 hours drained away.

The rest of the weekend was fantastic, later that day I did get to see the Eiffel Tower, and the feeling of total and utter awe and wonder as I stood underneath it, looking straight up. It truly is a modern day wonder of the world. We went looking for "La Liberte" and later on the bridge above the statue stood looking at the Eiffel Tower from a distance, and just as it was getting dark it all lit up with twinkling lights. It was truly magical. On the Monday, it was Bastille Day (I never knew until then that we shared our wedding anniversary with that day!) and we found a good viewpoint and watched a stunning firework display around the Eiffel Tower.

Sunday 23rd October 2005
Dinner at "The Aviator"

For my birthday, on 20th May 2004, we went for a romantic dinner at "The Aviator", an Art Deco inspired restaurant at Sywell Airport, Northamptonshire. It was a lovely evening. I had always wanted to go there, and Ian knew this and booked us a table. It was very elegant and luxurious, and the food was beautifully presented, and very tasty.

Sunday 23rd October 2005
Our visit to Legoland

For my birthday this year, 2005, we went to Legoland (in Windsor). What a great day out! We are both such big kids! We were seriously the ONLY adults there that did not have children with them, so a couple of times we felt a little bit daft (but not much!). Ian did his usual trick of sending me to get the ice creams, and then taking my photo with a huge ice cream cone in each hand (as if to say, they were ALL for me!). We had to squeeze into the carts for the "Dinosaur Safari", as they were really designed for one adult and one child. They were not quite big enough for TWO adults! We had such a laugh! Ian sent me on the big roller coaster but he couldn't go on it. He was really pleased to go on the kiddies one, however, and that was quite enough for him! We had our photo taken on it, and a young girl who was in the seat in front got in our photo, so when we got back Ian joked to everyone, "have you seen our daughter?!"

Sunday 23rd October 2005
All about the Crayfish

Several months ago, we went to the Aquatics centre on Kettering Road, and Ian saw these two crayfish, in tanks. He asked the man if they could live in a garden pond, and the man said they certainly could, as they live in rivers in the wild, but he advised you could only have one on its own, as they are quite territorial. Ian was quite fascinated by the crayfish, and so he bought one. We put it in the pond, and for the next three weeks at least, we never even saw it, it disappeared into a little grotto somewhere and hid itself away. One day we saw it down the other end of the pond and were quite shocked, it had come out of its grotto and was walking around! Several weeks later, we spotted some white, slimey stuff at the bottom of the pond, and nearby, what looked like the crayfish, upside down, not looking very healthy. Ian started to get quite upset, as he thought the crayfish had died, and I had a sinking feeling, but I remembered reading in a magazine, about how they shed their exoskeleton, and the magazine article described in gory detail, how you would look at it, and it would look so horrible you would think the crayfish had died, and so I told Ian this, hoping this was the case. "We've only had him a few weeks," he said, sadly. "I am sure that must only be its skin that it has shed," I repeated several times. With trepidation, Ian took a long stick and hooked it out. Once it was out of the pond, we could see it was the empty shell, but it was so, well, complete, with legs, antennae and everything! Ian immediately rushed into the house to get the phone and called Tim. "Tim, Tim, it's really cool, you'll never guess what's happened, the crayfish has shed its exoskeleton!!!" Tim said not to touch the crayfish itself with the stick as its new shell would now be quite soft for a few days. Sure enough, a few minutes later, we saw the crayfish walking around at the bottom of the pond. Ian said he was sure it looked bigger! Also, he would often worry that the crayfish would either come out of the pond and onto the garden, or it would dig its way through the pond liner and cause a leak. Even after the man at Kettering told him this was highly unlikely, Ian still worried about it.
 

Monday 24th October 2005
Ian and.......heights

Ian did not like heights. So any tall landmarks, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the London Eye, the Petrinska Rozhledna (tower) in Prague, Prague City Hall, he wouldn't go up them himself, he would send me up there with the camera - and I am not particularly keen on heights either! But I am alright as long as I feel safe, i.e. a railing or barrier of some sort. And as long as it's not moving. We both went to London one day with tickets to go on the London Eye, but Ian declared he was not going on it at the last minute. He said he had thought it would be smaller! So I had to go on the London Eye on my own, and that was very unsettling, due to the fact it is constantly moving very slowly, even as you get on and off! I was also the only person Ian ever went on a plane with (oh, and Vince was with us when we went to America). So I was with him when he flew for the first time (I had flown before so I knew what to expect). So that moment when the plane really accelerates down the runway as it is taking off, Ian held my hand SO tight, he nearly crushed it, and all he kept saying was, "Joooooool, oooooooooh, Joooooool....!
 

Wednesday 26th October 2005
Star Trek Lines

Today I thought of two Star Trek lines which could both apply to Ian and many of his friends.

"I have been, and ever shall be...your friend."

"The word...is no, I am therefore going anyway!"
 

Friday 28th October 2005
Chasing a Balloon

I said to Ian every year, I would really like to go up to the Balloon Festival for the morning's flights. (The reason being, that you cannot beat the atmosphere and the experience of being right up close to that many balloons when they are inflating them and they are taking off, but at six o'clock in the evening, there are always too many crowds, so I had wondered if there were less people in the morning.) This year, they extended the Balloon Festival to include the Thursday, so Ian got up himself early on the Thursday morning, and declared he was going up the festival and was I getting up to go with him? I had work that morning, and I couldn't face it so early, so I drifted off back to sleep and off he went. He was back within half an hour, no balloons had gone up, and he said there was a sign up there saying the flights were not starting on the Thursday morning. I felt so sorry for him, especially as he had got up so early specially to go up there.

On the Sunday, he got up early again. This time I was more awake, and so we both went up to the racecourse, and in fact I drove us up there, as quite a few balloons had gone already as we weren't quite early enough. I parked the car where the Jade restaurant is. We walked to the arenas, but most of the balloons had actually already gone, and just the last few were leaving. Ian said, "Shall we chase them?" At first I was not keen on that idea, but after a couple of minutes, I thought why not? And so we got back in the car and started to drive in the direction of where we could see the balloons were headed, down towards the A45, Nene Valley. When we got down there, I drove a little way down the A428 Bedford Road, before changing my mind as it looked as if the balloons were actually more in the direction of the M1. And so we got back on the A45 and went off on the Newport Pagnell road. We drove around through some villages for quite a while, enjoying the views of the balloons in the early morning sunshine, and eventually we found one very close to the ground and about to land, conveniently right next to an area where we could park. There was us and one other car, with a father with his young child. Ian remarked that guy must be a "really cool" Dad, to take his child chasing a balloon, finding one that close and watching it land. We watched for a while, and Ian took a number of photos.

(This was the same morning Ian found the Police tape he used to tie around Tim and Kirsty's gate - he was so excited when he thought with glee of the practical joke he could play!)
 

Saturday 29th October 2005
Multi-Storey Car Parks

In San Francisco, we had parked the hire car for a few hours in a multi-storey car park, down by Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf. As we were about to leave the car park, suddenly Ian said, "I know where we can get a really brilliant view over the city," and Vince and I both said, "where?" And Ian said, "the top of this car park!" I said, "ooh, yeah, let’s do it!" I turned the car around, and drove back up, all the way to the roof. I said, "wow, this was such a brilliant idea!" because it was true, there was loads of room up on the roof, there was only a few cars up there, and the view was just amazing! We could see right across the bay, and on the other side we could see the whole San Francisco skyline, with all the tower blocks, the TransAmerica Pyramid, the Coit Tower, all the "Financial District" buildings, it was just fantastic! We were so chuffed Ian had thought of it! However, we had to hurry, as we had only a few minutes left on our parking ticket, before we would get charged for another whole hour, so having got all our pictures, we bundled ourselves back in the car, and drove down to the bottom of the car park with just seconds to spare! (This is an extract from the LA Tour Diaries, but I remembered this today). We also went to Hatfield Galleria in 2004 and parked on the roof of the Multi-Storey!
 

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