Something old, something new – Saturday – 21 February 2015

Sorry nothing borrowed and nothing blue, but my something new and my something old were fab 🙂

Starting from the something new, as you will remember I talked last week about trying different foods to cook, my eventual plan was to make Gnocchi.  Now while I have had gnocchi previously I have never actually made it.  So Monday my plan was to finish work early and get onto the gnocchi making.  This did not happen, at 6:30pm I was still in front of my computer working hard so I decided that the gnocchi wouldn’t get made I’ll just have pasta out of the bag.  A short while later Pat asked if I would like him to make dinner as I was obviously just too busy (I think Pat was hungry).  To which, of course, I replied yes and told him, that since the time was getting away from me I had put the gnocchi on hold and that we could have our pasta sauce (home made) with pasta.  An hour later I get the call for dinner, and surprise, surprise, Pat had made the gnocchi (and some extra to freeze).  I was amazed and ever so thankful and it was lovely.  So while I didn’t make something new, Pat did and we ate something that we don’t eat often (or at all as I’ve never seen gnocchi in the shops here).

Onto my something old, Thursday night I flew back to Leicester.  Yep that old haunt of mine, it is amazing how much the place has changed!  I did however have the mild panic of disovering, just as we were leaving for the airport, that I had left my coat at my art class, so side trip to go back to my class, getting my coat and then driving to the airport.  We did arrive 20 minutes before the gate was due to close so it was fine.  Also ran into the estate agent who sold us our house.

Nails

My trip to Leicester was to visit a friend as it is her birthday this weekend.  T had taken the day off work on Friday so we spent Friday together doing girly things.  We started the day getting our nails done.  A lovely experience and such a nice way to start the day, I even decided to have a change of colour on my nails.  Typically I go for quite subtle colours, pale pink or a soft grey.  Friday I went for a bright sparkly copper red!  I love the colour, and as someone else was doing the painting it looks absolutely fab!  Then T and I headed off to do a little bit of shopping, a trip to John Lewis so that I could look at investing in some cleanser and moisturiser that was cruelty free and had a web page and would ship to France.  I found all that remarkably easily as T recommended the cleanser that she uses and all the rest just fell into place.  Then we had a trip down to M&S, Clarks and other shoe stores, I didn’t find any jeans that I wanted, but T found some boots that she wanted.  We passed a rather interesting lingerie shop that we decided to go to after lunch.  Lunch was at Café Bruxelles, an incredible building, it had been an old bank and has the most amazing chandelier and painted ceiling.  Café Bruxelles was also the place that I first met Pat, back at the beginning of 2005.  We both remember the meeting and after the build up from our friends were both suitably unimpressed.  Our friends obviously knew better than us!

Cafe Bruxelles ceiling

So after lunch and a bottle of rather nice Pinot, T and I visited the rather lovely lingerie shop and both bought some bits and pieces (I was looking as some of my underwear is getting a little old).  I was also impressed with the pricing at the shop as it was quite reasonable.  So, for the ladies, if you are interested, I would recommend Al Millards (Carts Lane) (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/a.hambleton/millard/news.html) in Leicester and the exceptionally helpful shop assistant.  After that we went and found the Richard III Visitor Centre.

For those of you who don’t know, the skeleton of Richard III was located in Leicester recently.  The exhibition is interesting, small enough to do in a couple of hours, but there is a large amount of information to take in.  The most interesting thing I found out, that I didn’t know, was that it actually had been known for quite a long time exactly where Richard III was buried, even to having a memorial stone over the plot, and the information was actually lost in recent memory (I think – and don’t quote me on this time frame) it was lost over the past 200-300 years).  The other thing that I found out is that they are interring the bones of Richard III in Leicester Cathedral (about 100m from where they found the body) in March of this year.  The other thing was that they found around 100 other bodies when excavating the bones as Richard III was buried in the graveyard of Blackfriars.  They also found a skeleton of a woman who was buried near the altar in a lead lined ‘coffin’, they know she was important because of where and how she was buried but don’t know who she was, so they are hoping to find that out.

After our exploration of the Visitors centre we decided that it was time for tea and cake, which was great and also we caught up with a couple of other friends which while short was lovely.  I really did enjoy being out and about in a place I know (despite the changes).  Having cups of coffee and chatting.  Especially in a way that only face to face conversation can do.  I think one of the hardest things to do, especially with all the moving around I have done, is to make good new friends.  Ones that you can go out for coffee with, go shopping and just enjoy being around.  I’ve found that aspect of moving to France hard, it has been harder there than most places I’ve been.  But these things do take time and I know that eventually I will have some good friends in France.

Until next week…