Mat & Kat

Food budget

2008-07-04T12:28:00.009Z

Kat: A while ago I kept a record of what we spent on food and drink for just over a month, mainly because I really had no idea. We didn't change our eating habits but we did go to Amsterdam, so that skewed the figures. Our holiday food and drink for a week cost £267 - the same as basics for the other 24 days!

I separated the costs of eating out. Apart from the holiday we ate at one restaurant, one pub and one café in 3.5 weeks. In a normal week this is what we average:

Basics per week	£78
Eating out per week	£35
Milk	£2.58 (3% of basics)
Pasties	£7.50 (10% of basics)
Drinks at the pub	£6.78 (9% of basics)

Recently I've read about people switching to budget supermarkets to save money. In our case we could save more money by not eating out, whether it's at a restaurant, grabbing a pasty in town or drinks while we're out and about. That doesn't sound much fun, but planning ahead instead of getting caught out hungry or thirsty would let us have more treats like our anniversary meal at Trewithen Restaurant last week. (Nice website! I wonder who designed that...)

Lost in Film

2008-07-02T09:38:00.004Z

Kat: Possibly the most exciting thing to happen in Lostwithiel since we moved here (apart from us moving here) was Monday night's test screening of Lost in Film. Mat and I helped organise the event along with a handful of other people. We showed No Country For Old Men to a full house. One hundred tickets had sold out weeks before and everyone was buzzing with excitement about the possibility of having our own film club.

The film ruffled a few feathers as the older folk aren't used to seeing such challenging and violent movies, but our plan is to show a variety of films in future which should please a wide audience. My initial impression of the film was shellshock, but after chewing it over for a couple of days it's grown on me and I can now see why it swept the boards at the Oscars. Big Lebowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou? are great fun but No Country For Old Men is epic and awesome.

Next step for Lost in Film - plan our first season of films for Autumn!

Raconteurs

2008-06-30T10:14:00.005Z

Kat: Last night was the start of our summer of gigs and our first Eden Session. It's a great venue - you can wander around the Biomes, eat and drink at the cafes and restaurants and then watch an intimate gig (up to 6000 people) in beautiful surroundings. Headline act were the Raconteurs and supporting were Vampire Weekend, both fresh and relatively mud-free from Glastonbury. Both bands were absolutely brilliant. Organisation at Eden is top notch so there were no queues, and the gig finished promptly because neighbours often complain about the noise. In the words of Spinal Tap's Marty DiBergi's "I remember being knocked out by their exuberance, their raw power - and their punctuality."

Reunion party

2008-06-16T12:01:00.003Z

Mat: On Saturday we hosted a reunion party for our friends from Amersham at a lovely country pub in Chenies. About forty people came, some of whom hadn't seen each other in five years or more.

The star of the show was little Rowan Miller, Ben & Vickie's ten-week-old son, who made the trip from New Zealand with the casual jet-setting attitude that his parents have about long-haul flights. The prize for unexpected attendee went to Nico, who is back in Blighty to use the NHS to fix his knee from a running injury - healthcare in the US is too expensive.

A wonderful time was had by all, and we're looking forward to the next one!

The 'Dam

2008-05-31T07:22:00.005Z

Kat: Our Kiwi friends Mark and Claire have left Melbourne for Amsterdam, and we spent last week with them exploring the city. I haven't been there since I was 16 and Mat's last visit was on his stag night, so both of us had hazy memories of the place.

It's amazing that such a tiny city (750,000 people) can be so varied. Of course there are smoky coffeeshops which don't sell coffee and the Red Light district, but there are also the grand old houses along Herensgracht and Princesgracht canals, the trendy and upmarket Jordan, the bohemian and ethnically diverse De Pijp and Oosterdock with its stark modern buildings.

We visited the high-brow (Van Gogh museum, Rijksmuseum) and low-brow (Cannabis college, Sex museum) tourist attractions. The weather was warm but showery, so much time was spent in cafes sampling local beer, pancakes and poffertjes (mini pancake balls covered in icing sugar) as well as international food. Much as we love Cornwall, it's great to be in a multicultural city.

One day we took a trip in a small open-topped boat which is funded by donations. Our captain Diego told us that there are 2500 houseboats on the canals, a housing solution after WWII but now their number is strictly limited. Their waste goes directly into the canal water but the canals are flushed daily so the water doesn't smell. 50 bodies a year are pulled from the waters, mostly drunk men taking a pee (they're found with unzipped trousers) who trip over the metal mooring bar at the canal's edge and don't last long in the icy winter water.

The Red Light district is a defining feature of Amsterdam, but the authorities are trying to clean up the city by closing brothels and converting them to designer fashion shops. Cannabis is even more closely associated, but a smoking ban in pubs and restaurant is due to start on 1st July. It's hard to imagine Amsterdam without these and it'll be interesting to visit Mark and Claire in future to see how the city changes.

We can, canoe?

2008-05-14T07:29:00.004Z

Mat: Last weekend we put our money where our mouths have been for the last year, and splashed out on kayaks . We went for Easky 15s which were on special from Kayaks and Paddles in Plymouth. They're suitable for the sea as well as in rivers, with skegs for stability and big hatches to store bags in. K&P fitted us out with paddles, buoyancy aids, a dry bag and a roof rack so that we were all set to get straight in the water when we got back to Lostwithiel.

We've found out that even at low tide we can get in here, the kayaks only need about six inches of water, although there were parts on the way back up that we had to get out and pull, the water was so shallow.

It was an idyllic weekend - hot and sunny, larking about on the river. We've explored down as far as St Winnow, but at low tide it's a wide mud flat down there, which almost claimed my shoes when I tried to stand on it!

We need to learn a bit more about kayaking before we embark on multi-day trips around the coast, but we're really excited about the possibilities...

Obby Oss

2008-05-01T18:06:00.009Z

Kat: May Day, and the first day of summer is heralded by the Obby Oss festival in Padstow. We decided to chance the showers and crowds to see this very popular and very Cornish celebration. Apparently it started at midnight (we weren't around for that part) and then carries on for the rest of the day with singing, drinking, music, drinking, dancing and even more drinks.

There are two Obby Osses: the red original Old Obby Oss and the new-fangled Blue Ribbon or Peace Obby Oss. The blue Obby Oss was originally started as a Temperance alternative to the beer swilling red Obby Oss gang, but I don't know if there's any less drinking now for either group now. If you're hoping to have a child then it's good luck to get caught under the skirt of the Obby Oss.

The whole town is decked out with spring flowers, bunting and tree boughs, and the rival Obby Osses plus their supporters parade around the streets dancing, cavorting and singing a repetitive and hypnotic folk song. It felt a bit like the Wicker Man but with less nudity and violence - the only time it got a bit hairy was when Mat's pasty was stolen from his hand by a seagull.

Next year we'll have to wear white and the Obby Oss colours of whoever we decide to support...

My daily blog

2008-04-19T08:09:00.009Z

Mat: Sorry I haven't written in a while, but I feel like I've been doing a daily blog in the form of my project 365. After just 84 days I feel that my photography has already come on leaps and bounds, although some days I'm just not inspired (you can probably work out which days they are).

Last month I did a photoshoot for a friend's band, and last weekend Kat and I went up to London for a photoshoot for another friend's company. This one involved wandering around Oxford Circus at 6am with a camera, looking dodgy. Luckily we managed to avoid any police attention!

Some of the strangest pictures seem to be the most popular on Flickr, which calculates an interestingness score based on how many people look at the photo, comment on it or mark it as a favourite. Of my project 365 pics, Wool and Ducky are my 2nd and 3rd most popular pictures overall - I quite like them, but I wouldn't rate them that highly...

It's going to be hard to produce 365 different photos (I've already got three featuring rubber ducks, and two flowers-with-water-drops) so expect to see more themes like colours of the rainbow from a week ago. My latest plan is to do a series based on the poem Monday's Child, and I'm looking for volunteers - if you're interested in being a day let me know which day of the week you were born. I'm especially looking for someone born on a Wednesday who's full of woe, and someone born on a Sunday who's gay.

Pub quiz and piglets

2008-03-25T11:23:00.007Z

Kat: We've been attending the Globe pub quiz regularly since we moved to Lostwithiel 10 months ago and it's compulsory for visitors staying with us on Sunday night, whatever their general knowledge is like. For that reason there's been an increasing amount of up-country interest in the quiz so I've built a dedicated pub quiz page. You can view the latest quiz and record your score, or try previous quizzes. No cheating now! If you're signed up to automatic blog and gallery notifications, you can choose to be notified when the new quiz is available in your preferences.

On an entirely different subject, we visited the new pig club additions yesterday. A local lad, Scott, keeps his own pigs a couple of fields away from the pig club field, and one of his gilts farrowed a couple of weeks ago. We went to see the new piglets and arrived to find another had farrowed just an hour or two earlier. Unfortunately she wasn't due for a week so she was still in her pen when she gave birth, rather than in a farrowing box, and as a result she'd crushed 4 of her 9 piglets to death. Apparently this is common for a first litter - the mother will get up each time she gives birth then lie down on top of the newborn to give birth again; next time she'll be more careful. You can see the newborn in the picture has quite a few cuts on his face from errant trotters, poor thing.

Wasted energy

2008-03-20T20:34:00.015Z

Kat: Following an Energy event held by Transition Lostwithiel earlier this month, we treated ourselves to a household energy meter to measure how much our appliances are using. You're right, it's nothing to do with the environment - it's just an excuse for another gadget. You can see the workshop run by Matt Trevaskis that inspired us to get the gadgets, and read his calculations for how much energy is wasted by an average home.

Our appliances don't match his exactly. Our telly and microwave are a lot less powerful and they use proportionally less energy on standby - although it's still a lot of energy (and money) considering the amount of time they're not in use. The most notable (assuming we left them on standby all the time which we don't, and 13p per kWh) are:

Appliance	Watts on standby	Watts in use	Time in use per day	Annual cost of standby	Annual cost of use
TV	7w	43w	1hr	£7.64	£2.04
Stereo	4w	10w	6hrs	£3.42	£2.85
Speakers	3w	4w	30mins	£3.35	£0.09
Microwave	4w	1500w	3mins	£4.55	£3.56

We thought our biggest energy use would be computers, but they're peanuts compared to one standard lamp which is more mood than illuminating - it uses a massive 95w because we haven't got round to finding a low energy bulb to fit it.

Interestingly, our 800w microwave gobbles up nearly twice that - what's it doing with the rest? The meter also gave us conclusive proof that some "energy saving" ideas are a waste of time: a TFT screen uses exactly the same energy as normal when the screen is on "energy saving" black mode or using Blackle compared to regular Google.

As part of our energy saving strategy we've bought a battery powered magnetic clock to stick on the fridge so we can turn the microwave off (we only used it for the clock), and remote plugs so we can switch everything off at the socket at the touch of a button. Hooray, more gadgets!

Got a new motor

2008-03-06T09:15:00.008Z

Kat: From the time that we returned to the UK last March until the weekend before last, we were borrowing a car. Even with a mainline station in Lostwithiel, we'd have found it quite difficult without a car. The car loan was a complicated situation based on my parents' plan to buy one car to replace two others, and then not having anywhere to store it in the interim. In fact it was more like a set-up so that they could lend us a car without seeming to do us a favour, for which we're extremely grateful. The outcome was that last March we (very tentatively) drove a brand new Corsa away from the garage and enjoyed nearly a year of driving it. It was a great little car - really fuel efficient and compact - but when my parents were finally ready to take it back we were keen get something a bit bigger.

We hadn't quite anticipated how big the car we'd end up with would be! Being entirely ignorant about cars, we enlisted my dad in a search for a second-hand car and he found us this palatial Peugot 406 estate. Through further stealth-favours he engineered it to be within our budget and went over it with a fine tooth comb to check for problems - what a star! Thanks pa :) It's great because:

it's really spacious and comfy - even the driver's chair has arm rests
it's got two fold away seats in the boot which makes it a 7-seater
there's enough room in the back for us both to sleep - car-camping!
it's much bigger than the Corsa but about as efficient to run
it has LOADS of gadgets - auto everything (including windscreen wipers that turn on when they sense water), retro 2002 satnav, a computer that works out your mpg and best of all, cruise control

The long journeys just fly by now as we experiment with cruise control at different speeds and see how many mpg we can get. Our record (and possibly the highest it can record) is 942mpg, down a steep hill. On the flat it's surprising to see the fuel consumption jump up between 70, 75 and 80mph. It also makes driving much easier - it makes you realise how much more tiring it is to concentrate on speed as well as steering and other road users. If only it steered and braked as well...

Want to buy a flat?

2008-02-16T16:21:00.005Z

Kat: For the bargain price of £249,950 you could be the owner of a spacious flat in Brighton with spectacular views across the city. As of this morning, our flat is officially on the market. If you're interested in buying it, contact Halls estate agents (or just slip us the dosh).

In the photos you can see the spangly new bathroom and recently repainted living room, which we didn't know the tenants had redecorated. Apparently they've done a good job - shame they won't get the chance to enjoy it! Luckily they're being very understanding about the sale and have kept the place in good nick.

It's a bit sad to see the old place up for sale, but it's also exciting to set the wheels in motion towards getting our own place in Lostwithiel. The housing market has slowed down a bit recently but Brighton is always ahead of the rest of the country, and Halls reckon it should only take about 6 weeks to get an offer.

With the boot on the other foot, we've been having problems of our own as tenants. The boiler started dripping at the start of January so a chap came to fix that, then it started dripping in a new place so another chap came to fix what the last chap did wrong. Then it started making ominous clanking and groaning noises, so a third chap came and pronounced it kaput. What with plumbers talking to managing agents talking to landlords talking to us, we've been without hot water and heating for the last 5 days - just as the weather has turned particularly frosty. The landlords brought round some electric heaters yesterday so we're a bit more cosy now, but I'm looking forward to a bath.

Scrabulous!

2008-02-12T09:33:00.000Z

Kat: Not a reference to the highly addictive and potentially copyright-infringing FB game, I'm talking about what was possibly my highest score ever in a Scrabble game. Last night I earned 104 points for MARCHERS (the triple word tile and 50 bonus for using all my letters). It doesn't come close to Karl Khoshnaw's gargantuan 392 points for CAZIQUES in 1982 but was immensely satisfying on a personal level. Despite this, it didn't clinch the game - I just scraped a victory with 394 to Mat's 381.

Project 365

2008-02-03T18:45:00.000Z

Mat: Ten days ago Debs dared me to take a photo every day for a year, and ten days later I'm still taking them. I'm not sure if I'll last a year, but I'm really enjoying it at the moment so we'll see how it goes. My usual threshold for getting bored of projects is about a month...

I'm uploading them to two places, the gallery here on matnkat.com and also my Flickr account. There's more detail about the picture on Flickr, and you can leave comments too, so if you're interested in seeing my daily highlight I'd recommend checking there. I'm not the only person doing this either - there's a Flickr group dedicated to it called Project 365. Why not join the fun?

Only 356 days to go.

In the news again!

2008-01-24T17:31:00.000Z

Mat: You know you're integrating into the community when you appear in the local paper twice in the same week! This article in the West Briton is the result of a telephone interview I did a few weeks ago about new businesses in the West Country. As is the case with all articles I've ever read about me the quotes are made up, which seems to defy the whole point of a quote in the first place. But what do I know about journalism?

Western Morning News

2008-01-23T11:59:00.000Z

Kat: We only really feel at home once we've been in the local press, and through Transition Lostwithiel we've managed to get into the Western Morning News. If you think I look a bit uncomfortable, you'd be right - the photographer posed us as if he was doing a photo-shoot for a band.

Lostwithiel became a Transition Town last year and has only really just started the first steps towards Transition: raising awareness of the challenges faced by the community from climate change and peak oil. We found out about TL during their film festival at the end of last year and since then have been helping the group plan what to do next.

This month's event will be Excess Baggage - Can Lostwithiel go plastic bag free?, following the example of Modbury in Devon last year. Now there are lots of towns working towards the same goal, even Chesham! It's a long process and needs to have the approval and co-operation of as many people in town as possible, especially the traders, before we can even think about setting a date. To kick the idea off, this Friday we're showing Rebecca Hosking's film, Message in the Waves, which helped inspire her home-town of Modbury to become plastic bag free, followed by a talk by local recycling pioneer Richard Bower MBE. Mat has designed a very natty poster which is now adorning every telegraph pole in town.

Amazing photographs

2008-01-15T09:04:00.000Z

Mat: I don't usually advertise other people's work, but yesterday Bryan sent me a link that he found on the BBC News site, and I discovered some amazing photographs by Carl Warner. He has created what he calls Foodscapes, photomontages created entirely out of food. My favourite is a rural Italian scene constructed entirely out of Italian ingredients.

His website demonstrates everything I hate about Flash, so I feel I'll have to give instructions about how to see the pictures I love. Go to his site, then click the large orange box, then click the second little suitcase on the next page.

Great photographs Carl, shame about the site.

Train your brain

2008-01-05T18:55:00.000Z

Mat: Since I didn't get many Christmas presents, I have to get excited about other people's. While we were staying with Mel and Joel, she let me play with her new toy - a Nintendo DS Lite. She has a great game called Dr Kawashima's Brain Training. One of the parts was having to solve a hundred simple calculations in as little time as possible, which I loved so much I've had to recreate so I can play it endlessly. To begin with I was rubbish, but the more I've practiced the better I've become (which is the whole idea). Now you can have a go too; I present Calcul8.

Xmas and NYE

2008-01-03T21:07:00.000Z

Kat: As it was our first Christmas in the UK for three years it seemed only right and proper that we should return to our familial homes and celebrate with our folks. On the way back we stopped over in Bristol and I went to a carol service with Vicky, John and Katie at their gorgeous church in Redland on the Sunday evening. We arrived back in Amersham on Christmas Eve for the first in a series of spectacular culinary creations by Lesley. Christmas day was spent in Little Chalfont with Mat's grandparents and auntie, where the meat eaters (and on subsequent days the cats) enjoyed a 2kg slab of roast beef cooked according to Hugh F-W's strict instructions from an organic beef farm in nearby Great Missenden. The new policy of sandwiches at teatime instead of a big spread, plus a walk back to Amersham, meant that we weren't stuffed to bursting point (sorry Lesley!) and had enough room for a meal in Henley with my folks on Boxing day.

We caught up with several other relatives and old friends over the the next few days, then on New Year's Eve Mel and Joel threw a Star Trek vs Star Wars party at their pad. As you'll see from the pics, it was a small but very well dressed gathering with Star Wars (especially Princess Leia) in the majority. Mat and I stayed on to celebrate Mel's birthday on the 2nd and have been busily training our brains on her new DS Lite which is just like Bishi Bashi but less pointless and inane. My brain is currently just a couple of years older than me but Mat's is already 5 years younger!

Gambia photos

2007-12-17T16:33:00.000Z

Mat: I'm back from the Gambia now, with around 1,400 photos of blind children, adults and rug-making in action; the best 200 are in our gallery, but don't feel you have to look at all of them!

It was an amazing trip, a real eye-opener, but also very hard work. I'm not sure why anyone would visit the Gambia for a holiday - the poverty is extreme and very visible, but I guess most people there don't leave the resorts so they won't see it.

I made some good friends, who will hopefully keep in touch - everyone there is very keen to make foreign friends, partly because there are many stories of foreigners supporting Gambians, inviting them to their countries, and marrying them. I met at least a dozen 50-something women who had younger Gambian husbands - it takes all sorts!

Hopefully my photos will help bring in donations from Rug Aid supporters around the world; if you want to donate you can do it through the Rug Aid website.

32 And Sunny

2007-12-09T17:59:00.000Z

Mat: I'm in the Gambia for a week, taking photos for a friend's charity called Rug Aid. Heather who runs it has come out to teach blind Gambian kids to make rag rugs, so that they can play a useful role in their families, as most blind (and other disabled) children are shut away by their families and can never contribute. The poverty here is striking; the average wage is around 50p per day, and even school principals only earn around 40 pounds per month. Despite that Gambia is known as the Smiling Coast of Africa, and although we get hassled constantly as soon as we step out of the hotel, no-one is aggressive and we never feel threatened. I think it must be the weather - like me it's 32 and sunny!

I was terribly homesick to begin with (I always am) but have now got over it thanks to Heather, her daughter Chrissie and their friend Hilary, who have been really nice to me - and Kat, who is tucking me into bed every night via text message :) The hotel here is very basic, and I'm not entirely sure why all these tourists chose it for a holiday! I brought out two dSLR cameras, hoping I could store one in the room safe - but of course there isn't one, and the hotel safes in reception are too small to fit a camera! So I'm carrying them both round with me all the time...

Tomorrow is my first day at the blind school (they don't go at weekends), run by GOVI - the Gambian Organisation for the Visually Impaired. I'll have four days at the school, and we're hoping to visit the market and the deaf school as well to get some more publicity photos. I'm really honoured that they chose me to come out, and I hope that my photos come out okay!

Happy Porkday

2007-11-29T17:44:00.000Z

Mat: It's been a day full of piggy goodness. I got up at 6am to help pick up two of our pigs from the abattoir and deliver them to the butchers in town. The male weighed 90kg (170lb) dead, and the female a little lighter at 72kg (160lb). I don't know if you've ever tried picking up a 90kg dead pig (I'd say you probably haven't), but it's rather tricky, and took four of us - but it only took one large slaughterman to put it in the car!

After a slap-up birthday breakfast at Bryan & Debs' I opened all my wonderful presents. Thanks very much for everything, I'm sorted for t-shirts, DVDs, books and toasted sandwiches for a long while.

Later on I went back to the butchers to collect my birthday treat - a whole pork leg (not from our piggies). I spent the afternoon constructing a wooden box to hold it, and Bryan and I began the process of making prosciutto. The first phase is to place the leg in a box and cover it completely in salt (it took 21kg to cover our giant leg). Now we leave it for 21 days with a heavy weight on top to cure the meat and drive out the moisture. After that we'll hang it outside for around six months, and then tuck in!

This little piggy went to Market

2007-11-26T15:26:00.000Z

Mat: This morning two of our pigs went off to their 'holiday camp' at Lobbs Farm in Bodmin. An experienced pig-keeping friend of Rupert's came up to help us get them into the van, and his expertise meant we got them loaded with the minimum of stress and fuss. When we arrived at the abattoir the pigs were lying down very calmly in the back of the van, and were placid when we moved them into the pens at the farm before their slaughter tomorrow.

The two remaining porkers seem happy that the dominant male has been removed, as he was starting to bully them in the last few weeks, and now they've got the whole run to themselves now. He was getting more aggressive by the day, and his tusks were just starting to poke through his gums.

I've got mixed feelings about the whole experience - I'm obviously excited to be picking up the meat on Thursday (what a birthday treat, getting up at 6am to collect 100kg of pork) and looking forward to cooking and eating it, but at the same time I'm sad to see them go. The male, Obiwan, had a real personality as the leader of the gang, and I hope we'll do him proud by making good use of every part of him.

Transition Lostwithiel

2007-11-21T08:53:00.000Z

Kat: Last night we saw the second film shown by the fledgling Transition Lostwithiel group. Energy Crossroads was along broadly similar lines to last week's film - Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth - but with more emphasis on Peak Oil.

Peak Oil was a theory developed by M. King Hubbert who worked at Shell in the 1950s. He saw that oil discovery in the US had peaked and predicted that in 20-40 years, oil production would peak then start to decline. This came true in 1970. The same principle applies worldwide - discoveries of new oil fields has peaked in many of the oil producing countries so global oil supplies are likely to peak soon, if they haven't already done so. Oil isn't going to run out but it's going to get much harder and more expensive to extract. Nearly every aspect of modern life involves oil at some point for transport, energy and raw materials, so that's going to have a big impact unless we make some changes. Next week's film is about how Cuba's economy collapsed then recovered from a peak oil crisis, following the collapse of the USSR.

The Transition Towns movement is one way that a community can respond to the problems of peak oil. It's about recognising our dependence on oil and coming up with ways to reduce it by meeting our needs locally, finding alternatives where possible and using resources efficiently. It's not all doom and gloom - it's about taking the initiative and not getting caught out. Towns such as Totnes and Lewes are quite far along the Transition road, but Lostwithiel is just starting out in the "awareness raising" phase.

Another exciting thing that came out of last night's screening is that we may soon have our own film club! The director of the Plymouth Arts Centre lives in Lostwithiel, and he's got the know-how to apply for grants and get the right equipment. Mat and I were first to put our names down as volunteers. Woohoo!

Going up-country

2007-11-10T17:34:00.000Z

Kat: Rather than spend 12 hours driving for a two day visit then repeating the whole thing the following weekend, we drove up to the South East a couple of weeks ago and stayed for 10 days, working from whoever's house we were staying at. The occasions for our visit were: Mel and Joel's palatial new house, Lesley's birthday and Emilie's christening.

Mel and Joel's new pad is a generous size before you take account of the granny annex, so much so that they're having difficulty deciding what to use all the rooms for. Even though it's not a doer-uper, they've worked very hard to get it into a good state of repair and it already looks very smart.

For Lesley's birthday we had a pleasant meal at Lemoncello Italian restaurant, which is on the site of the former Iron Horse pub. The pub wasn't a place that I or Mat frequented as teenagers but we had a certain fondness for its dingy atmosphere, rocker clientele and the dubious entertainment from Cosmic Ken - probably because we didn't have the choice of going to nice restaurants like this one.

Emilie's christening took place in Chelsea with an 'after show party' in a nearby hall. The christening was part of a regular Sunday service and I'd forgotten just how much they drag! It's only weddings and carol services that find me in churches these days, which are generally more fun. However it was good to catch up with so many friends and Juliana had done a huge amount of catering and organisation for the do afterwards. The theme was Snow White for which Emilie wore a very cute costume.

We drove back to Cornwall on Monday to find everything pretty much as we left it, and the pigs bigger than ever.

Last night we saw Tim Supple's innovative production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Plymouth, with Will and Pili. The cast are Indian and performed in a mixture of six Indian and Sri Lankan languages and English. The set was an earth floor, scaffolding covered in paper which the actors burst through and clambered around, and ropes and sashes suspended from the ceiling which they shimmied up and used as hammocks. It was amazing to watch: exotic, athletic and bursting with energy.