Dude

I went to a pub in Islington for a friend's birthday, then caught a late train home.
Cycling through the village, three dogs slunk onto the road in front of me, causing me to slow down. One looked at me. "Dude", I said, and they all ran away.
So I rode the rest of the way. When I walked into the house I said "dude" again. But everyone was asleep.

Too much stilton

stilton
Originally uploaded by nakku.

I do like Stilton. But given that no-one else in my family will touch it, two large mouldy cheeses just for me seems a bit excessive.
The first was bought for Christmas with my cousin, but wasn't eaten so I took it home. Sonia bought the second for me because it was on special. A thoughtful act, or an attempt at slow assassination by cheese? You decide.

Lack of activity

My observant non-readers will have noticed I don't write much. This is because I usually think that if I am sitting at the computer I should be working. Which is not to say that I always end up doing that, because I do tend to read the entire internet before getting down to work. This is largely because at the moment I find checking Toratán transcriptions and translations (which is what I need to be doing) a mind-numbingly tedious activity, interspersed with lengthy patches of pure bafflement.

But now I'm starting to think I should write more, on the rationale that writing (even on a blog) bears a resemblance to work — at least it does rather more than reading other people's blogs, not to mention generally looking stuff up on the internet (with the aim of finding stuff out, which might turn out to be useful).

Who knows, maybe if I get into the habit of writing, I'll write some papers.

A day in London

Wednesday was an absolutely freezing day, fost and frog everywhere. Seeing as school is now on Christmas break we thought we might as well all head off to London for the day.
We took the train from Whittlesford to Liverpool St and walked down to see the Monument.

Thomas has been learning about the Great Fire of London so was very excited and was not disappointed. Uncharacteristically both kids walked the whole way up without complaining. Thomas was also very interested in Samuel Pepys, though wasn't really too sure how he fit into the story (did he live in the Monument?)
We looked at other London stuff, like the Tower (not as interesting for kids as one might think), walked over Tower Bridge, took lots of buses. The real highlight for Thomas was going down Carsten Holler's slides at the Tate Modern, even though he only got to go down one of the smallest ones.

Natalie went down too. She loved it the first time, cried the second time.
After a detour to Russell Square to pick up stuff from work we went to a friend's house for potato latkes and a fine time was had by all. Not too many things were destroyed by our children (though Natalie did yell right in the face of an old long-suffering cat a few times).

When we got to Liverpool St it turned out that the trains were running late for a change. It was almost 11 by the time we got home.

Ready for winter

DSCF0224.JPG
Originally uploaded by nakku.

It got quite cold, quite quickly. Here are the kids in their winter clothes.

No-one doesn't say it

This is one of my favourite Makassarese idioms: tena tau tampaui “no-one doesn’t say it” (ie. everyone says it). They are big fans of the double negatives.

So, a new place.

I found iWeb too unstable and somewhat annoying, so I'm moving here.