Stromboli lava eruptions at night

Stromboli lava eruptions at night
Originally uploaded by Megan Shields.

Just to remind people of what I saw!

Stromboli is erupting...

Was quite excited to read this news item on the BBC site today - considering I've been there, climbed it and lived to tell the tale! Stromboli is starting to kick off again!!

Outrageous Fortune!!

How excited am I? Sitting down for my weekly dose of America's Next Top Model (oh yes - I am sad, I love my trash tv...) up pops an ad for Outrageous Fortune! Cue immediate text to Mhairi, who doesn't really know it but shall no doubt have it inflicted upon her as I shall tape it and pass it down the line.

Very excited as I really enjoyed what I saw when back in NZ in November - and as I'm about to lose Sky 1 (no Lost, no Battlestar Galactica, no 24...) I'm thinking OF will be an enjoyable replacement!!

The lady goes to Glasgow....

I've just got back from a great weekend up in Glasgow visiting Lindsey, Ricky, Chloe and Jamie. Jamie spent the whole weekend calling me 'the lady', and then after I left, asked where Megan was!

I flew up on Friday which was majorly stressful as I almost missed my flight - the only other flight I've ever missed was one up to Glasgow so it must be something about that destination! I did leave a wee bit later than I should have but then the security queue was just completely horrendous - I literally did only make the flight cos I pushed to the front of the queue (and it was a long queue), and then ran to the gate. They were calling my name (plus a couple of others) as the final boarding call. It was very very stressful - and most unlike me!

But having got to Glasgow it was great. Saturday was a bit of a slow day (Lindsey and I put the world to rights the night before so it took us a while to get going...), but on Sunday we took the kids to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum which was pretty good. More of an art gallery than a museum, so not that good for the kids, but we saw a great exhibition of the MacIntosh and how Glasgow design was used in the Glasgow tearooms and Chloe enjoyed looking at the animal exhibits and the Egyptian mummys!

Needless to say I got to airport in loads of time for my flight back today!

I've loaded more photos on Flickr as well.

Advertising NZ, 18th century style...

Advertising NZ, 18th century style...
Originally uploaded by Megan Shields.

Lindsey, Jamie & Chloe, Museum 2

Lindsey, Jamie & Chloe, Museum 2
Originally uploaded by Megan Shields.

Chloe and Jamie, Monday morning

Monday morning breakfast & story writing 2
Originally uploaded by Megan Shields.

Blogger 2

For a while now I've been getting prompted to upgrade my blog to 'Blogger 2', which involved having to have a Google account, so I've been resisting. But it seems I no longer have a choice and the deed has been done (although readers won't notice any difference).

So I now have a Google account which I don't really need, but I have noticed the return of the blogging formatting tools which is good :-). And I have no doubt that Blogger probably can now do loads more interesting things - which it will take me ages to get around to looking at!

Underneath The Lintel

So tonight Kevin and I carried on our tradition of going to see West Wing stars on the stage in the West End and went to see Richard Schiff in Underneath The Lintel.

Fab play - about a librarian who researches a book that is returned 113 years late. I won't say much more about the story for any UK readers who go to see it, but its a very good story. And the library stuff is brilliant! Anyone who has ever worked in a library would enjoy this - after all, haven't we all had that urge to punish that bad borrower...

More snow - lots more this time!

More snow - lots more this time!
Originally uploaded by Megan Shields.

So here are the results of last night's snowfall... definitely more than last time, but amazingly my trip in to work was pretty painless. And I didn't even have to fight for a seat as loads of people had elected to work from home due to the weather!

It was pretty much all gone by the time I got home tho. I'm off up to Glasgow tomorrow so am hoping for enough snow for it to be fun but not enough for me to either get stuck there or here.

A very cool website...

I went to a CILIP seminar last week and they had a very cool display of Carnegie Medal winners, and I was sent the link to a website about it today - very cool! Check it out here.

I've only read 7 of them...

Red alert!!!

Oh no - a "heavy" snowfall of 4 inches is expected tonight/early tomorrow morning so the country will grind to a complete halt. On my home from work Surbiton station had a notice up saying 'Due to heavy snowfalls forecast please check with National Rail before travelling'...

It never fails to amaze me that in this country ANY weather can disrupt the transport system - if it gets too hot the tracks buckle, if it snows the whole system just collapses, in autumn the leaves cause problem (both leaves on the line or even worse - the wrong sort of leaves on the line...).

So the big question is - will I get to work tomorrow??

Barkus or Bacchus (yet to be confirmed...)

Barkus
Originally uploaded by Megan Shields.

The newest member of the family looking exceedingly cute on the deck at home in Taupo.. Soooo cute!!

And more on the animal front...

Nicola and I went to the Imperial War Museum today to see The Animals War, which was a very interesting but very sad exhibition about the use (or misuse to be more correct) of animals in wars across time.

Two things that stood out for me were the stories about the use of cats for bombs. They came up with the idea of attaching bombs to cats, parachuting the cat to ships, landing them in the water by the ships. The idea being that cats hate water so they would do anything to get on to the ships, then the bombs would go off on the ships... Unfortunately the cats became unconscious during the drop so they realised that wouldn't work... To be fair it wasn't just cats that suffered this way, but I (of course) focused on the cats.

Then there was the cat 'The Unsinkable Sam' with the incredible luck. It was on the Bismarck when it was bombed, was picked up and then was put on the HMS Cossack, which was then sunk, was picked up again and ended up on the HMS Ark Royal, which was then bombed and sunk again... and was picked up again, and lived out its life on dry land!

And how could I forget...

On Sunday as Maya and I were wandering back towards Southbank we walked past The Clink museum and on a whim decided to go in... Funnily enough the website is under construction - perhaps they should focus on the museum itself rather than the website!

Fortunately it was only £5 as it certainly wasn't worth more than that! It was a very strange museum - lots of very detailed historical stuff to read, a few rather tatty displays and that was it!

Although we did learn that in York it is still legal to kill a Scottish person with a bow and arrow as long as it isn't on a Sunday between 11-4. (Or something like that anyhow!)

'Pan'-tastic...

OK - sorry. I couldn't resist that cheesy tabloid heading!

I went to see Pan's Labyrinth today and it was fantastic. I just loved it. Some very disturbing scenes, but the imagery was wonderful. Its up for an Oscar for best foreign language film, and I hope it gets it. I really enjoyed it.

Too much torture in my life tho - quite a lot in the first 2 episodes of 24 and a bit some in this film as well. I'll be quite happy to not see any for a while.

Saturday shopping

Had a lovely time with Maya on Saturday afternoon wandering around Borough Market. It felt a bit like going to work as Borough Market is just by my office but once we got there it was fine! We started off with a sumptious falafel and then just ambled around tasting and buying. Maya was more spendier than me - I succumbed to a pot of jam and a chocolate brownie, but she went for tea, chutney and jam, and a re-stocking of wasabi peanuts... The peanuts may sound odd, but trust me they are pretty delish!

Spent Saturday night watching Sideways, a great film about drinking wine (amongst other things). I felt like I was drinking the wine as I watched it!

PS: Normal service has almost been resumed - I'm now using Firefox as my internet browser which allows me to do the links the normal way!

View of snowy road from bedroom 24 Jan 2007

View of snowy road from bedroom 24 Jan 2007 (2)
Originally uploaded by Megan Shields.

And the view over the road from my bedroom window!

Snowy back lawn 24 Jan 2007

Snowy back lawn 24 Jan 2007 (2)
Originally uploaded by Megan Shields.

Wow - woke up to this view from my lounge this morning - fantastic!! Until I got to the trains and cos there was 1 inch of snow the trains weren't working... Sigh!

Lovely weekend afternoons

Saturday was spent catching up with my friend Kristie, who has just moved back to the UK from the USA. So we had a lovely time wandering around Greenwich Market (a particular fave of mine), then I walked back to Lewisham with her to check out her lovely new pad. Via a pub called The Union which is a microbrewery - had a very lovely ale there (the benefits of not being on the wagon anymore...). Check out the review here...

Sunday Julia and I went to see the movie 'The Queen' which was great. All about how the Queen dealt with the aftermath of the death of Diana. Really odd to watch the scenes and be able to remember it all happening. As Julia said when we came out we felt like we had been in a time warp and we were now back in 1996. I think Helen Mirren is expected to get an Oscar nomination for it, and she was superb. You really felt like you were watching the Queen. One thing I thought was particularly interesting was the scene where the royals are first got up following the accident, and they are told that Diana had a broken arm and concussion. I remember one of my flatmates saying that he had got in about 3am and that was the story on the radio. He couldn't believe it when he woke up and heard she was dead.

And now I'm just starting to watch Day 6 of '24'. Jack Bauer is back and I'm facing another 6 months of tv watching...