Pastry Porn

It's Bake-off Day!

Tonight the 2nd episode in the 4th (?) series of The Great British Bake-off will air on BBC 2.*

Pirate and I are properly addicted.  I even applied to be on the 2nd season, and very nearly made it.  They phoned me up the very day I submitted my application and spent almost an hour asking me questions.  (Now whenever I watch it I think, I coulda been... a contender.)

Did you read yesterday's post, about Pirate baking sourdough bread?  Well, in honor of Bake-off day, here is a photo of the bread.

 

Eat yer heart out, Mary Berry.

*I think it's on BBC2, I'm not really sure.  I watch it on iPlayer.

Introducing...

Oona Mary Elizabeth Pirate!

Born on the day I saw the very first daffodils of spring (while walking to McDonald's for lunch while I was in labor!), and Pirate saw the first cherry blossoms (while walking home from work to take me to the birthing center).

And yes, that is a Star Wars T-shirt I'm wearing. I used the Force. It helped.


She weighed 8 lbs, 7.5 oz. Don't ask me how long she was, they don't do that measurement here so I have no idea.

We didn't go to a hospital, we we went to a midwife-led birthing centre. It was marvelous and peaceful. I was the only mother there, and I was waited on hand and foot by two fantastic midwives who had been working as a team for 30 years, knew each other inside and out, and had great humor and bantor, and by a materinity assistant, who did all the non-medical stuff like make me tea and draw me a bath after. I couldn't have received better care if I'd been the queen.

I stayed overnight with Oona in bed with me. They offered to let Pirate stay as well, since he was falling asleep on the tile floor of the delivery room. Poor wee Pirate; he was all pooped out after 11 hours of labor! *snort*

I'll post the whole story with the gorey details later, if any of you maternal vultures are interested. Right now I have to put the bed together for my maternal pirate-in-law, who is coming to stay for a few days to lend a hand so Pirate can go back to swashbuckling.

And the beat goes on

I've finally done it. I've finally pursuaded the Pirate to let me lose the patch and allow nature to take it's course.

Damnit, I'm going to be 31 in just a couple days! fuck me that sounds OLD.

Part of me is rejoicing, but part of me is still really worried. He doesn't seem happy with the idea, just resigned to it. I don't want it to be like that. I want it to be a happy occurance (when it eventually occurs). Having a baby should be full of joy, not resignation to your wife's biological clock.

I want him to want what I want, but life just doesn't work that way.

So I finally got what I want, but I can't bring myself to be happy about it. Fuck.

And I'm about to turn 31.

(Jesus, have I ever sounded more like Herebe? Now there's a frightening thought.)

Pet Names

Pirate and I finally came up with good pet names for each other. The usual "honey" and "darling" just wasn't working for us. We drew upon the native American tradition for inspiration (and utterly insulted it in the process). We are:

Bear Who Waits For Blowjob

and

Little Cooking Flower

The Life Domestique

Ah, the pleasantries of matrimonial banality. Everything, no matter how lovely or how miserable, is just that little bit nicer or more bearable. This weekend we:

Got Pirate new glasses, went to the pest store and bought 7 fish (6 guppies and an algae eater, if you must know), and visited The Gables Farm to pick a cat to adopt (we chose 2 kittens, but they're not available yet. Watch this space).

Sunday we baked loads of muffins, spilled 4 gallons of hot soapy water on the kitchen floor and cleaned it up, made a pot of chili, scooped a dead guppy out of the aquarium, and tried to have a super-bowl party but failed to have any friends cool enough to come.

Pirate ordered me a calendar online that he made with my own photographs, I refilled the bird feeders and cleaned the hamster cage. (It was a big weekend for animals, apparently.)

Nothing was monumentous; it was just nice to have a companion. Even cleaning 4 gallons of water off the kitchen floor became a laughable offense rather than a swearing, cursing, day-ruining event. God it's good to be home.

I'll try to have something bad happen to me in the next week or two so I can write something interesting instead of all this mushy drivel.

HONEY, I'M HOOOOOOOOOME!!!!

Well thank fuck for that. I got on a plane in Detroit, Michigan on Saturday and Pirate met me at the airport in Bristol on Sunday morning. He was 45 minutes late, mind you, so there was none of that walking out of baggage collection and into his waiting arms. Instead there was a lot of sitting around and looking at my watch, but he got there in the end and that's what matters.

The flights over weren't too bad, either. I managed to score exit-row seats on both planes. AND wound up sitting next to the male lead of Riverdance, who are beginning a new UK tour. He offered to get me comps to the show when they're in Plymouth. So all in all not a bad trip.

God it's good to be home. I missed my Pirate. I missed his voice and his laugh, his smell, the smell of the house, the feel of the sheets, my own kitchen with all my stuff exactly where it should be, Pirate's ginaggerous shlong, the birds in the garden, the fishies in the tank (Counselor Paul, our algae-eater, has gotten HUGE, as has Garlic, the snail), my cacti collection and african violets, and all the little things that make the house our home (mostly each other).

*inhales deeply*

Ahhhh. Life is good.

Dances with Worms

I saw the most amazing thing yesterday. It was a seagull.

No, that in itself is not amazing. I moved away from Bristol to escape the fucking seagulls. (Don't tell Pirate; I'm just using him for his low-seagull lifestyle.)

The amazing bit is what the seagull was doing. It was dancing.



Pirate explained that it was creating vibrations in the ground which the worms perceive as rain, which inspires them to come to the surface. (You wouldn't think this would be necessary in a country where it rains every fucking day anyway, but there you go.)

I love this. I love this on several levels.
1. It's cute. No doubt about it. Seagulls suck. Dancing seagulls are cute.
2. It's seagulls doing what seagulls were meant to do, ie, act like birds. In nature. Not tear apart my garbage bags and squawk and shit all over me.
3. It's industrious. They're earning their lunch. I'm down with that.

But mostly, I love it because I love the idea of a universe where you can do a little dance and you lunch magically appears at your feet. How brilliant is that!!! I want to live in that universe! I want to, whenever I'm hungry, do a little dance, and look down, and *poof!* LUNCH!

*sings* Do a little dance... Make a little worm... Get lunch tonight! Get lunch tonight!

Now every night when I fix dinner I make Pirate stand in front of the serving hatch and do a little dance. Then I give him his dinner.

High Dorkness

Guess what we did tonight?

I don't think you lot have a clear understanding of just how dorky me and the Pirate are. We are exceptionally dorky.

As Pirate has just said to me (while watching what I type over my shoulder), "The word 'pedant' sums up our relationship quite nicely."

Yes, we listen to Radio 4.
Yes, we watch University Challenge and Mastermind.
Yes, we iron our clothes, eat our vegetables, wash between our toes, and go to bed early. But that is just the beginning.

Tonight we settled a long-standing argument. (Mostly so that one of us would have the opportunity to be smug.) We have been arguing for a while about the plural of the Toyota Prius. But tonight we settled it.

We have this argument because my parents have two of the marvelous little hybrid cars, to which we refer as the family Prii. (Pronounced pree-eye).

Pirate insisted the plural of Prius was Priuses. (I know.)

Since Prius isn't a Latin word, we agreed that the closest equivalent was "focus," and tonight, well, tonight we finally went up to my office, pulled out my Latin grammar and looked up the declension of "focus."

For the record, it IS a second declension noun and therefore the plural is "foci" (something I already knew from high school math class, but that argument didn't fly with Pirate). The only way, in Latin, to pluralize a noun ending in -us is with -i.

So I win. Thanks to Kennedy's Revised Latin Grammar, c. 1962 Longman Group Ltd.

It turns out that Pirates wear underwear

Who knew?

It also turns out that they will wear their underwear until it is so riddled with holes it can double as a fishing net. At which point they keep wearing it.

So I had a very Middle Class moment the other week. No, not quite that middle class. Or even that. But middle class enough for me.

I went to Mark's & Spencer's to buy underwear for my man.* And then stood around in the men's underwear department with a bunch of other middle-aged housewives complaining that our men refuse to buy their own underwear, but complain about the stuff we buy for them.

It was all terribly middle class, dahlink.

* I eventually got him these.

ps. The bestest part was looking around at the packaging and realizing that my Pirate is more fit and better hung than all the professional underwear models. Yee-haw baby!

Sleeping the Plank

The plywood did the trick.

I went down to the lumber yard (1/2 mile walk), picked out a sheet of plywood, got them to trim it to the right dimensions for me and deliver it that afternoon. Whacked it on the bed with the help of the Pirate when he got home from swashbuckling, and lo! A (mostly) firm bed!

It's still a bit spongy, but eliminating the give from the box spring has done a lot to firm it up. The big change is that now I can turn over at night, which I couldn't before. That helps a LOT.

So this will get us through at least until the New Year. Pirate has finally been persuaded that we need a new bed anyway, if only to upgrade in size. After I spent three nights on the floor* and he had room to stretch out, I climbed back in and he declared the bed too small.**




*In my nest. I slept on my camping bedroll between the bed and the wall, a space about 2 feet wide and 8 feet long. I had 3 pillows (two for under my head and one for hugging***) and burried myself under 2 down duvets (one of which was king size and folded in half). It was a proper little nest. I quite enjoyed it.

** Which I told him when we registered for the duvet on the wedding list. I insisted on getting a king size because I knew we'd need a king-sized**** bed as soon as we could afford it. He scoffed. Ha!

*** this is critical

**** A king size bed in the UK is equivalent to a queen size in the USA*****

***** I'm trying to beat GSE for the Most Footnotes In The Footnotes Prize

Insomniac

It's 6 am. I've been awake for 2 hours. I don't think I'll go back to bed this morning.

The bed is horrible. It's too small and too soft. With Pirate in it I've got no room to move. My half of the bed is smaller than my mummy sleeping bag. And the mattress is awful. It's really old and completely soft. When you sit on the bed your butt goes all the way down to the box spring. It's doing my back in. I can't turn over in it, and if I'm in one position too long my back hurts. I wake up 6 times a night just to roll over, which I have to sit up to do.

But despite all this I've been able to sleep. It's taken 9 or 10 hours a night to get the equivalent rest of 7 or 8 good hours, but that's ok. Tonight it was the temperature issue again.

I'm cold. I'm always cold. It's a fact of life.

Pirate is hot. (My god is he hot!) He generates heat like a little sea-faring blast furnace. So I want loads of covers and he wants none. USUALLY.

Except the last few nights. It finally got cold here, and he's been complaining that his shoulders are getting cold, because I like to have an arm on top of the blankets and he likes them all the way up to his chin, but when I put an arm out it pushes them all down to the level of his armpit and his shoulders get cold.

So all night tonight as the covers have been sliding all over with their usual independent-mindedness (why the hell do blankets not stay where you put them????), I've been adjusting them to keep Pirate tucked in the way he likes.

When I woke up to move or pee (it's hard to tell sometimes what wakes me) I discovered ALL the blankets and duvets piled on top of me like a 4-foot-deep dollop of wool whipped cream. I couldn't move. I woke Pirate and said "AREN'T YOUR SHOULDERS COLD!??!?!".

"No," he replied. "I'm baking. You can have the covers."

Aaaaaaaaaagggg!

I dumped them all on top of him and got up to blog and eat chocolate chip cookies.

The Point At Which I Thew Up. The First Time.

Thursday was Traf Night on the base. Yes, I know that Tuesday was actually the anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar, but they didn't celebrate until Thursday. It was a personnel-only night, so I couldn't go and join in the reindeer games. Instead I had a neighbor 'round for tea. (How very English of me.)

Pirate came back at quarter past one in the morning and announced that we were spending the weekend on a yacht with a bloke from work, his bird, and some other people he'd not met.

I have never been on a yacht. My most recent memory of being on a boat that was powered by something other people was a fishing trip my parents took me on when I was 10 out on to Lake Michigan. My dad and I spent the whole time trowing up, and we didn't catch a single fish.

I agreed to go on the grounds that I'd never done it before, and as a rule I like to try new things. I was apprehensive, however, as this seemed to me the kind of activity that was highly dependent upon 2 things:

The quality of the company, and
The quality of the weather.

If the company was lively and the weather calm, it was sure to be a good time.
If the company was dull and the weather lively, it had disaster written all over it.

It started out well enough. The dawn broke radiantly over Rame Penninsula.

Red sky in the morning; Sailor, take warning!

(That was the actual view out our bedroom window on the morning of the excursion.)

We tootled in to Plymouth where we met the crew at the marina and went aboard.

All aboard the HMS Upchuck!

Our skipper had recently passed his Master Yachtsman qualifications, so we were in good hands. All seemed to be going well, and I started to get excited. (Not that way, you filthy sots.)

We got through the lock and out of the marina with no trouble, and set a course to take us around Plymouth breakwater on the west side, then head east for Shag Rock and up the River Yealm, where we moor in the harbor, have dinner in a charming pub in the charming village of Newton Ferrers, sleep on the boat, and return home Sunday morning. It seemed like a good plan. Essentially camping, but on the water. This sounded good to me.

Initially, it was all going very well.

Pirate, relaxing.

Then it all started to go horribly, horribly wrong.

As soon as we got past the breakwater the water got really, really rough, and so did the rest of us. Pirate, despite being an experienced sea-farer, has no sea legs. He was the first to go green. He went below deck to lie down, but that was a mistake. As soon as he got down the steps he lost his stomach, but managed (rather heroically) to hold it in his mouth until he could get back up to the cockpit and spit it over the side.

(Is this all getting a bit too disgusting? Deal. Reading this isn't a fraction as bad as living it, and I survived. You will, too.)

For a while I was doing OK. I stayed up in the cockpit, keeping in the fresh air and my eyes on the horizon. It worked, too, for about 20 minutes. And then I committed a fatal error. Getting bored with looking at nothing but an empty horizon, I just happened to glance down at the water at the side of the boat. The waves were swelling and undulating seductively beneath me. I instantly threw up.

I had no warning. One second I was fine, and the next I was spewing that morning's sausage and spetzle into the wind, spraying the two women who were sitting aft of me.

And then I did it again. And again. And again.

I spent the next 10 minutes heaving over the side of the boat in rapid succession. It was too winding for much of it to actually reach the water. Mostly it just blew all over the place.

I didn't know it at the time, but one of the other guys was on the opposite side of the boat, doing the same thing. The remaining few were standing in the cockpit between us, desperately trying to dodge flying chunks.

Having offered the entire contents of my stomach to the fish, I got a bucket and doused down the deck, then settled in to endure the rest of journey. As we reached the mouth of the River Yealm I saw the calm water on the leeward side of the land and began counting down the seconds until we reached it.

We finally got ourselves bouyed in what might well be the prettiest little harbor village in the British Isles.


I'd really like to go back and spend some more time in the village. It was a really lovely place to be. But next time, I'll take a FUCKING BUS.

After we were securely moored they let me play around in the dinghy, and that was the best part of the whole trip. I really like that bit.

Conclusion: the only boats worth being in are the ones you power yourself.

After a long walk along the coast and dinner in the Pub, Pirate and I couldn't face going back to Plymouth the same way we'd come, so we phoned a cab and went home by car. Last night we got a peaceful night's sleep in our own beds. Today the weather is shit. I can't imagine what the rest of the crew are going through to get home.

And people do this for fun????


Update: The skipper and his gf came by today to drop off our bags. Apparently it was a rough night on the boat, with lots of wind blowing it about the harbor, and people got little, if any, sleep. We totally made the right call. Boo-yeah.

A Pirate's Wedding, Part III: Walking the Plank

Walking to the church was almost the best part. I was with my dad and my amazing awesome wonderful friends, who were the best bridesmaids in the universe. (Seriously.) The sky was blue, it was a crisp, early autumn day, the kind that make September your favorite month of the year. Though I never would have admitted it before hand (I would have said that the weather didn't matter so long as, at the end of the day, i was married), it was exactly the kind of day I'd always wanted for my wedding, since I was a little girl.

We crossed the street, I with my dress tucked up around my knees, and headed for the church. We approached the church from the south door, through the garden. If you know St. Mary Redcliffe, you know what a pretty walk it is. Walking down that cobbled path towards the 14th c. gothic church I felt like an absolute queen. It was impossible not to let a few tears slip through. I knew that when I saw my Pirate waiting for me I would either get it under control or lose it completely, but I had no idea which and I was terrified. Not terrified of getting married, you understand, just of totally losing my composure in front of a hundred guests, friends, and family. And video camera.

(Oh, the video arrived today! Hurrah!)

We stopped in the porch of the south door to give everyone a chance to take their places. (Mom insisted on waiting for me at the church door and wouldn't sit down until I'd arrived, and then insisted on being shown to her seat by one of the groomsmen. Nothing like making things more complicated than they need to be, is there?)

The Cake attached my train, which she'd been carrying for me, the groomsman went to give the musicians their cue, and the round and vibrant notes of Holst's 'Jupiter' filled the church from the corner where the brass quintet was sitting next to the giant organ.*

And that's all I remember with much coherence. After that it all becomes a bit of a blur. We sang "Simple Gifts," the old Shaker hymn about love and happiness. Pirate's brother played the violin while we sang "This Is The Day." They sang "Eternal Father Strong To Save" while we signed the register, which is good because it meant I didn't have to sing about "those in peril on the sea," which is the last line of every verse of that song. Ugh. (Pirate really wanted it.)

We had two readings, the one from Corinthians that everyone uses, and one from the Song of Songs about the difference between love and jealousy, which had a neat line about "deep waters cannot quench love," which I thought was quite apt.

Oh, how could I forget the sermon??? Poor Rev. Wendy had no idea what she'd done. She launched into this metaphor of marriage as baking a cake, and needing all the right ingredients etc. Poor woman had absolutely NO CLUE that I'd made our wedding cake, or about the dozens of hours of practice and all the drama that went along with it. I got such a case of the giggles that Pirate at one point even took my hand and squeezed it in that "get control of yourself" gesture. My mom and bridesmaids were absolutely wetting themselves in the front pew. The verger, John, who runs a very tight ship, was utterly scandalized by our behavior until we explained to him afterwards what all the giggling had been about.

And I remember keeling before the altar, barely able to keep myself from sliding off the kneeler, which was too high and made very slippery by all the sating and chiffon between it and my knees. I took Pirate's hand and he held me up so I wouldn't slide off.

I remember spending a lot of time looking at Rev. Wendy's vestments, which were clearly all hand embroidered and centuries old. They depicted scenes from Christ's life, and were very medieval in style.

And I remember listening to Pirate say his vows. Unlike the rehearsal the night before, where we whispered them in practice and didn't look at each other, he looked me straight in the eyes and said in full voice

I, The Pirate, take thee, Chaucer's Bitch, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.

The exchange of rings was even better...

With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.

I love the line "With my body I thee worship." It's so beautiful and so potent. I like the fact that the C of E recognizes and exults the physical, as well as the emotional and intellectual, aspects of marriage.

I did have to restrain myself so that I didn't giggle when it was my turn to say "and with all my worldly goods I thee endow." I was thinking both of all the carloads of crap that the poor man spend so many hours hauling, driving, and unpacking for me. I was also thinking of my huge student debt. Friggin what worldly goods? I'm poorer than a churchmouse. (Except for the dozens of houseplants and suitcases full of rowing apparel.)

And then it was over. Suddenly they were playing the Ode To Joy and we were walking out. I looked up and there were all these smiling faces, all these friends and family that I love so much were beaming at us.

At the back of the church we ducked into a side chapel and hid so the bridesmaids could shoo the guests outside. That was our fist chance to be alone together as husband and wife. I turned to the Pirate to demand a proper kiss (the one during the service being heavily laced with Social Propriety), and saw that he was crying. It was the first and only time I have ever seen a tear roll down his cheek.



That's all for now, but there's more coming. I have lots to tell you about the reception and things, which was great fun. And there are photos coming, I promise!!! xoxoxo


*Hehehe. I said 'giant organ.' Geddit? Organ?? Oh, never mind.

WE'RE MARRIED!!!!!

Hi all! I'm sorry I haven't been able to blog. As you know, I moved out of my flat last Wednesday week. The days leading up to the wedding were manic, despite my best efforts at preparation and organization. (Remind me to tell you about baking the cake.)

The wedding last Friday we beautiful. After 4 months of rain and grey and utterly shit weather, the sun broke through and we we had absolutely spectacular weather. My bridesmaids were fantastic, and as we walked to the church with all our flowers, me on my father's arm, I felt like a queen. (Looked like one, too. Might as well be honest.)

The service was lovely. Even the minister said it was the nicest wedding she'd ever presided. The light was blazing in through the stained glass, and all the church was aglow with autum flowers and amber light. I will post photos as soon as I have some. I, obviously, wasn't taking pictures, so I don't have any off my own camera to upload.

The reception was a blast, and by 11 pm the dancing was getting very silly indeed. I got thrown from person to person during Cotton-eyed Joe until I passed out, and Pirate's sea-faring friends did some very inappropriate things with his mother. Oh, and I have to tell you about the paper airplanes!

During dinner Pirate began writing his speech (nothing like a little preparation, is there?). He had a pad of paper, which promptly got confiscated by his mates for paper airplanes, which were thrown all over the room. There were dozens of them going back and forth, landing in people's food, the candles, hitting people in the head, etc. It was a great laugh. Then when it was time for speeches, when Pirate stood up the entire room threw all their paper airplanes at him, as well as a few napkins and anything else they could lay hands on. It was absolutely hilarious. Despite having the air of complete spontenaity, we found out later that my dad had orchestrated the whole thing during dinner with a particularly effective game of 'telephone'!

Anyway, now that i'm back online I'll have lots more stories to tell, and hopefully some pictures soon.

Married life is great! xoxooxoxox

Fringe Bingo

After last year's storming success, Pirate and I decided to go back to the Fringe this year. It's not a cheap 3 days, but is seriously good fun. There is loads to see, but inevitably there are dead spots during the evening when you are between shows, have already eaten dinner, and need to kill an hour when the museums and galleries are closed. This is where the real Fringe entertainment happens.

The Edinburgh Fringe is, no doubt, one of the best places for people-watching on the planet outside of NYC. There is some serious variety, and some proper weirdos.

But Pirate and I, being competitive by nature, found a way to make people-watching a contest. Enter Fringe Bingo, stage left. Plonk yourselves outside a pub or cafe' on the Royal Mile, pull out your FB cards, and go to town. I have provided a sample card below. (Obviously if you are going to play you need to print out 2 copies, but cut one up and rearrange the squares to make the second copy.)


From the Fringe veterans I would love to hear your suggestions for adding to the card for next year.

Oh sweet Jesus. Whatever we do, we must not, under any circumstances, elect John McCain. He has supported every one of Bush's proposals, and will carry out any legislative or governmental changes enacted by Bush, including this new catastrophe. We cannot allow this to happen.


On a more cheerful note, I am leaving today to visit Pirate and the in-laws for a week, then Pirate and I are going up to the Fringe for a few days. I will still be available on Blogger and email, so I will be in touch with Edinburgh bloggers. Whee! (I don't have time for a vacation, but holy fuck do I need one.)

I officially declare

blackberry season to be... OPEN!


At Pirate's cricket match on Saturday I went down the lane while the guys were warming up and picked a kilo of early blackberries to put out with the tea. Yummers!

Amongst the brambles and nettles were several big buddleja bushes in full bloom

And on one of the bushes was the most beautiful butterfly I have ever seen in England. It was lovely, and so distinctive I knew I had would have no trouble identifying it after I got back and consulted Prof. Google.

And do you know what butterfly it was, sucking happily away at the buddleja bush? It was this one!:
This is a peacock butterfly. (I didn't take these photos, btw. I didn't have my camera, so I borrowed these from t'interwebs.) You can read about it here.

Oh, and the match went well. Pirate didn't take any wickets, but he batted 46 (not out) off 22 balls! Aw yeeeah. Das my man, hunnachile.

Pirate's Awesome Match at Lord's

Pirate played a cricket match at Lord's recently. It was quite the red letter day. (For the Yanks who don't know, Lord's is the most prestigious cricket ground in England.)

He opened the bowling and took 2 wickets, more than anyone else on his side, but not until the opposition had racked up 165 runs with their opening partnership. Ouch.
During lunch the crowd (yes, there was a crowd of about 3,500 people. We were all seated in the Grand Stand, where I took these photos from, so looking across the pitch all you see are empty seats, but that's because all the spectators were behind me) was entertained by a very good band.


At teatime the players were introduced to Princess Anne (that's her in the yellow dress. I was too lazy to paste an arrow in for you). I asked Pirate what he said to her and he told me that she enquired about his job, which he described for her. Then she went on to feign interest in the next player.

Finally Pirate got to bat. When he came on to the pitch it was looking dire for his side, as they had lost a lot of wickets quite quickly and gotten few runs. The team and the crowd were getting despondent. Then he came out and smashed a 4 off the first ball and the crowd cheered. He continued hitting 4s until he had taken the team from a position of almost certain defeat to a likely draw. At one point the crowd was even chanting his name! Pi-rat! Pi-rat! Pi-rat!
When he was eventually bowled they put his photo up on all the big scoreboards. He is even awesomer than I am. The end.

How I pulled my ass cheek

This weekend Pirate and I were going to see Wall-e, but I got the date for the release wrong and it wasn't out yet. Grrrr.

So instead we went to the club and stuck me in the nets to teach me how to bat properly. (Apparently the half-ton I got this weekend for the Bowl Movement CC was a fluke.) It turns out I'm a left-hander.

I started out as a right-hander, which is what would be expected, since I'm right-handed. But i just couldn't get the coordination right. It felt forced and contrived and totally unnatural. So I switched sides. After 10 seconds of feeling slightly weird it all came together and I was blocking shots like a pro.

Pirate is a good coach, if slightly exasperating. In his job he is a pirate trainer, taking kids off the street and instilling in them all the best pirating values. I got a good sense yesterday of how his wee piratettes see him.

Several buckets of tennis balls later (i didn't have any pads, so we used softer balls), Pirate's bat was feeling very heavy indeed, and my back was getting sore, so we called it a day. I woke up today with a pulled ass.

We have a house!11!!

Pirate just phone from the office. He never phones from the office. This was the first time ever.

He wanted to tell me he'd just received the paperwork and we've been allocated a house. He couldn't wait until he got home to tell me. (All together now: "Awwww!")

We'll be living in Torpoint, just on the west side of the river from Plymouth.

View Larger Map
It's close to Pirate's work, a short walk to the ferry, and (and this is the really nice bit) it will be ...

...quiet.

No ambulances every 15 seconds, no screaming drunk people, no stepping over pools of vomit on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings. Few cars, more birds. Lovely.

A house. A home. Our home. My first home with another person. My first home with my Pirate. Yarr. I can't wait.