getting down to some hard graft.
getting to know each other.
getting out n about.

a much needed afternoon off with no agenda. got some quality horizontal time. suksama.

Thoughts, reflections, food, frogs.

One week of living in paradise and learning about nirvana.

All while sitting in lotus position. Ok, half lotus position. Ok, mostly sprawled out.

Not a pun about the bike riding kit the other girls are wearing but, in fact, proper green birds flying around in Richmond Park. I’ve mentioned them before but this time they sat still long enough. Sorry the picture’s not better, I still panicked a bit. Are they cockatoos d’you reckon?

Saw these very orderly young looking deer when I was bike riding. They’re so pretty with their light coloured fur. Sadly as I’d come into the Park I saw a sign explaining there would be ‘deer culling’ over the coming months. Makes me sad but presume somewhere someone knows what they’re doing…

Michelle just got back from 12 days touring beautiful New Zealand with her Mum and the blog, “travelswiththemothership” is a brilliant diary of their time together. Brought back a lot of memories of roadtripping with my own Mum last year.
travelswiththemothership has some mouth-watering food refs, highly amusing anecdotes (nice one on the hire car..) and some beautiful photos. Have a read

update
Hovering between 1 and 2 degrees this morning and a thick frost sitting on EVerything so oh-wise-one here went for a bike ride…
Well, I’d just got my little mitts on a road bike (thank you, thank you, thank you) and I’d just got my mitts back on it post-service so I was keen to give it a spin. Ah, I thought, how cold can it be… I won’t bang on; talking about the weather is dull. I’ll just say it was freezing, and that when I stopped …

I’ve stretched my legs a few times around the Merstham Lakes now. Each time I’ve found new parts to explore and there are still more intriguing footpaths and options that I haven’t taken. I’m really pleased that this area has been paid attention – the conservation and the accessibility – because it’s really pretty and valued a lot by the locals.

I’m very grateful to this week’s Indian summer because it’s put lots of people in good moods. I’m also grateful because it meant that when I picked up my new bike I could go straight out for a spin, yay.
Birdie Bikes supplied me with my new wheels – nice team they’ve got in there, really friendly, helpful & enthusiastic. They’re in Hampton so the route was a fairly easy choice once I’d decided to can the rest of my plans for the day… I won’t pretend to …

Dad joined me for ten wicked days in Thailand. We stuck to the South, exploring the islands & bays, in fact Dad didn’t spend one night on the mainland!

We travelled light and along the way took creeky mopeds around town (all three of us on that, really…?), ultra-slick speedboats to the Full Moon party and hitch-hiked to the airport.

Although it was out-of-season we met a lot of brilliant people: locals who wanted to share their regional dishes; little’uns who wanted to share our wallets; backpackers who wanted to drink; honeymooners who wanted to chat; walkers who, er didn’t want to walk; hosts and guides who wanted to help, laugh & hang.