Bearing that in mind, I have decided to bring this thing back to life, to create a renaissance of the blog in my life. I’m not sure just yet what exactly I will be using it for – so many sites say everything I think about (I’m such a lemming) but surely there is a purpose for this place.

I’m sure my readers have departed long ago and now share their stories on facebook, twitter or some other social networking platform! But I will write.

Oh yes, I will write.

So it’s been 5 months since i last updated you but not loads to report really.

Russ came back after a really successful sabbatical and he achieved everything he wanted which was great. He is now in the process of doing some more research on his Grandad and planning a trip for all the decendants next year which should be excellent.

* WPG2 Plugin Not Validated *Mum came over and stayed in May while Russ was away and we spend some time just relaxing and driving around the countryside. The weather was pretty good and we got to see a few hostorical places like Penshurst Palace and the house where The Bloomsbury Sect stayed when they left London during the war.

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Six weeks later, Mum came back again and we went to Jersey and we stayed at a great little hotel overlooking the harbour. Russ finally met Mum and vise versa although thanks to Skype is wasn’t like they didn’t know who each other were! Mum and i went out for a couple of extra days and took the boat over to France were we got incredibly lost and missed the boat.. luckily there was another just 30 an hour away… all highly entertaining.

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July and August were fairly quiet except for the Triathlon which was pretty intense. It was 750metre swim in the Thames, 20km cycle and 5 km run. Not easy but i am totally keen to do it next year! 

The summer was NON EXISTANT. September was my birthday and russ treated me to a gorgeous dinner and then we went to a day spa in the Cotswolds for the weekend. Really gorgeous and I felt totally pampered.

Another Caister weekender at the end of September – I feel like a real old hand at it now. People are even recognising me which is hilarious!

Jayno and i met Merle in Amsterdam and we stayed at Marjet’s place right in the centre. The weather was ok but we were all content in getting a bit high but just generally catching up with each other. It was really good seeing Merle after so long!

That brings me to the title – Geronimo moved offices! All very exciting and into some super swish new office called The Qube. It’s all glass and has some cool Paul Smith-esque artworks going on. Very cool!

And that brings us fairly up to date – i’ve uploaded some pics of the last couple of months so you can see what we’ve been up to.

Hope you’re all well

xx

So, life is going well. Russ is on his sabbatical in China and having an amazing time. I’m slightly jealous I’m not doing it with him though. It;s funny when you become part of someone’s life so much that you feel left out when they are doing something so amazing. Everyone he talks to seems to help him a little bit further down the road and he is just meeting the most interesting people. I’m hoping he becomes a bit famous from the travels.. but i guess we’ll see!

Check out his blog at www.russinchina.blogspot.com

But before he went away, Russ and I went to Tenerife for 12 days which was really great. Tenerife is a bit of a package deal holiday destination for the Brits and can be ever so slightly chavtastic so I was a little bit skeptical about it all. I was however, pleasantly surprised.

Yes there were still chavtastic people there. Oh so white brits burnt to a crisp drinnking warm lager in Irish pubs and signing kareoke till the sun went down. And yes, there were even restaurants claiming ” No Spanish Food Served Here” on boards out the front as if that was there USP! I mean seriously! It was a bit wrong.

So we gave ourselves two days for some relaxing on the beach and then decided that we needed to actually see this island. So we hired a little car for a week and literally drove ALL over the island. And it’s pretty spectacular. The island is volcanic so while there was crystal clear blue skies down on beach level, we got to a certain point towards the volcano and began to notice the mini climates that the island had. One minute we were basking in delightful sunshine and the next it was greezing cold and cloudly to the point were you could barely see your hand in front of your face!

We found some amazing little fishing villages and ate at some pretty wonderful places too. One in particular was a gorgeous little place run by two brits at Los Gigantes. Russ and i sat on the terrace watching the sun go down. It was lovely.

But the holiday seems so long ago now. Work is manic but I’m still enjoying it. I’ve had hint of a new business project that i’m interested in but it’s all very early days at the moment.

Anyway, just an update from my end.

Hope you are all going well.

I have put some new pics up too.

xxx

So what’s happened since then?

Home was amazing, it was by far the hardest time to come back to London, especially as it got colder and colder. Work was mental busy and we also had Russ’s 30th. His party was a superhero party in town and was a good night. I did have to remain partially sober to ensure the birthday boy got home safely, but as i am still leanring the directions to our place it was a pretty interesting (and expensive) taxi ride home!

For his birthday I took Russ to Rome for a long weekend which was great. Rome was amazing albeit a bit cold. The skies were blue and clear except on the last day so we couldn’t have asked for anything more really. Russ got a bit ill with a cold which was a tad bit disappointing but we still mananged to go and see all the sites.

As i said, the lead up to christmas was very hectic at work, we actually had to get 2 freelancers in as well as a new appointment for an event manager (which, just  between us, put my noise out a little bit).

Christmas was lovelyl, we had an easy morning and then round to Russ’s parents for lunch with his brother and Nan. Kayno came round after she finished work and on Boxing Day we hit the sales which were surprisingly not too bad.

New Years Eve was incredibly low key with a home cooked dinner and watching Take That on the tellie. A good bottle of champagne later and we were off to bed! LAME!!

I spent the first week of January up in Birmingham for a couple of conferences we organised for the NHS which were pretty good. I had to work with a horrendous freelancer who has permentantly scared me but i will not subject you to the horrors. 

So that’s kind of it.. I have given myself a ridiculous target and entered myself in the London Triathlon in August… 2 months to actually get fit and 3 and a bit months to train.. shivvers!!

OK, so i am going to try and be much much better at this now that facebook has died down a bit!

Hope you’re all still out there reading.

xox

So, as I am sure you have noticed, its been 2 months since my last post. I guess a little part of me thinks that with facebook and stuff, this site is becoming a bit redundant. But I will continue to post, if for my sake only!!

I have been here in Sydney for a week and a bit now. Heading back to London on Friday. I have had Dave Lyon’s wedding which was amazing and beautiful. The fourteen year old ash was a little heart broken, but he’s chosen a great girl and as we all know, Joey was far better off without Dawson anyway!!

Last week was pretty busy with catch ups and now that Mum is living in Collaroy it’s a bit tricky to get to the city. However, I have managed and think i had a good week. The weekend just been was Caryn and Max’s wedding which was fabulous. Ceremony was at The Garrison church in the Rocks. Followed by reception at The Quay which was pretty damn stunning. An after party in the intercontinental had us all singing away and the luckily for us, we were actually staying there, so a lift ride away to bed. Needless to say, yesterday I was a bit hazy but took myself down to Jodi Walkoms for some great grub and a swim. Then all the girls came down and we went to Northies like old times and while the area we were in was great, i don’t really miss the Sunday night at Northies any more!!

So this week is a bit more low key. A few days on the beach and reading the book which is just what the doctor ordered. The time always goes so fast so obviously i haven’t been able to catch up with everyone which is always a shame.. I don’t think i will be back until next year!

What else is news? Work was so hectic in the lead up to the holiday, and I have left Russ in the lurch a bit as he has had to look after the 10 events we have had over these two weeks – oops!! But apparently they are all going well and i have no doubt tat he is coping without me!

It’s Russ’s birthday soon, so we are planning a fancy dress themed party which i think will be really good. And then i have a mystery trip booked for him as his present! Can not wait.
And then Christmas is just around the corner. Coming up to my three years in London! Can you believe it… I sure as hell can’t.

Anyway, I will put some pics up shortly.

Hope you are all out there well and happy.

Over and out
x

I moved into Russ’s flat on the weekend and it’s weird.. weird because a) i don’t live with jayno any more and after 2 and a half years this is a massive readjustment. Jayno and I know how each other lives so well now and so it’s going to a bit strange for both of us i think. And b) I’m not as close to central London that i am used to also.

HOWEVER, it’s kinda fun. I feel a bit displaced at the moment, mainly because my stuff is still in boxes in the spare room . Hopefully the trip to IKEA this weekend will rectify this! We need lots more storage as i have accumulated a whole heap of stuff since moving here. I had to be a bit ruthless and chuck out a few things and some clothes, but the thing about that is that I now feel the need to go shopping and replace the things i chucked out! Oops!

Also, Dad was in town last week which was great. He was here for four days and it coincided nicely with Tom and Carolyn being in town too so there was a bit of a family gathering on Wednesday night at Max and Caryn’s. Russ passed the Dad test with flying colours and they got on almost a little too much for my liking!!

Jayne and I went to Barcelona the weekend after my birthday which was awesome. Pics to come shortly. As we had both been to Barcelona we really just wanted to see the things we missed and chill out. So Saturday we sat on the beach – it was 32 degrees! – and went swimming in the surprisingly warm waters. We got massages byu these crazy Filipino people, who clearly it was illegal because they kept dropping to the floor under the beach chairs when cops drove passed. Hilarious!!

So we ate and slept and drank. Went to a great place for dinner. The line for it was 1 hour long but worth it. Met a nice couple to chat to so it made the time go much more quickly. As did the little man that sold us cheap beers….

Sunday we went to the Park Guell which was absolutly stunning and potentially one of my favourite places so far. A nice stroll through the park atp the piazza to find a man playing the trumpet and old songs like Ke- Sera and that song from Breakfast at Tiffany’s eschoed across the park. It was beautiful.

Then onto Sagrada Familia which was amazing. The church is still no where near finished but it looks pretty cool!!

Then we found an amazing tapas bar and sat there for quite some time ordering everything we could. I think we ate about 9 or 10 dishes and beer and it came to a grand total of about £24!!! Hah! I love the pound!

Anyways, that’s me for the moment!!

I will put pictures up today or tomorrow

xoxoxo

I guess the ony big news would be that i am moving out from Vauxhall and Jayno will have a new flat mate which is all very scary and exciting all at the same time. I’m moving in with Russ which will no doubt be an interesting new challenge for us but i think we are ready!

So Jayno and I have two weeks left of flatmatage which, after almost 3 years, is going to be a massive readjustment. Hopefully it will mean more holidays together which we are both excitied about.

Work is going well, not much new to report there.

It’s my 25th on Sunday which is nice. I’ll be up in Birmingham for Caryn and Max’s engagement party and it will be lovely to be around family as I have’t had a family birthday in three years!!!

So, Emma and Dew have left the city and it is really noticable. Thank goodness for internet and email as it does make the world smaller. Especially with the facebook phenonmenon! I feel like i am catching up on years of peoples lives!!

And that’s about it reall. I will have pics from drinks on friday for my birthday on next week. Hope you are staying slightly tuned in to this!

xoxoxo

This weekend just been saw the amazing feat taken on by 12 Geronomites, to climb the three highest mountains in the Uk in 24 hours. We succeeded and every muscle in my body is reminding me of that!

We drove up on Friday afternoon to just south of the Scottish boarder and then first thing on Sat morning we headed up to Fort William. At 4:30pm we started the first mountain was Ben Nevis – a steep and nasty mountain that just kept going on and on into the sky. The clouds weren’t too low but by the time we got to the top, we were all pretty much wearing snow gear. And with every reason for it – there was snow up there. The rain was icy and cold but we had made it.

It was then 5am when we got to The Lakes District and scaled the face of Scafell Pyke. The weather was amazing and the views were unbelievable. Never before have I seen such spectacular scenery and vistas. Photos wouldn’t do them justice and words just don’t suffice…

Another 5-6 hours in the hideous excuse for a mini van and we got to Snowdon. The last but not at all the least. We trekked up there and again, with spectacular weather we could see for miles and miles. Russ, who has been up Snowdon a few times, said that he had never seen it like that ever. So I think we were pretty lucky.

We didn’t get home until 3am this morning so needless to say I’m tired. I think in the last 48 hours I have had about 6 hours sleep and walked about 18 hours. It was incredibly hard but incredibly worth it.

I’ve never really been one for these kids of things but it was well worth it. Something I will look back on for a very long time.

So if you are thinking about it, please do it!!

This is rather short but I’m too tired to go into too much detail – I’ll put picks up soon so you can see for yourselves how amazing it is.

xxx

Two and half hours later they arrived into the heady heat of Spains capital city. Almost instantly they travellers awoke from their plane induced cloud of lethary and realised that they were, in fact, officially ON HOLIDAY!!!! The first taste of Spain was going through passport control when the devillishly handsome posspot controller man tooka sidelong glance at Jayne, then her passport and said “Welcome to Spain Jay-nee”, she giggled, not quite sure what he was saying in his rustic accent, and moved on. I then walked up and granted, he took a double take on the passport photo* but then smiled and said “Athalee, welcome to Spain”, I blushed, giggled and spluttered some kind of Thank-gracias-si! combination back. And thus the adventures of Jaynee and Athalee began.

We had four nights in Madrid, the clubbing capital apparently. Jaynee and I were really on a quest to eat tapas and drink wine and just RELAX. Which is exactly what we did. From shoe shopping to meandering up little streets to find cafes serving the richest of hot chocolates with deep fried donuts, Madrid was a good city. We embraced the spanish lifestyle and had our siestas back at the youth hostel from about 3-4pm onwards. Waking up about 9pm to get ready and go out for dinner and a few drinks. The food was great where ever we went and while some reds were a little dodgy, we weren’t exactly hard to please!

Thanks to the lonely planet guide we managed to complete a few walking tours and see most of the sites in Madrid. We found it ever so slightly odd that where ever we went there seemed to be groups of people in either red footbal shirts or blue football shirts yelling and blowing horns.. we then realised that this weekend was also the final for Seville Vs Madrid. A HUGELY important game!! As soon as it dawned on us that this would mean half the Sevillian population would be heading back to Seville on Sunday we haul arsed to the train station to book our train tickets.. to no avail. There were no free seats except for first class at 180€ which just wasn’t going to happen. So we went to the bus stop and managed to get tickets! Thank god!!

So Sunday we got to the bus station and sat amidst the smelly, dirty and drunk fans of seville. We weren’t even able to sit together!! So some much needed catch up on sleep was had and even a movie on board which was nice!

We got to Seville and found our way to another bus station where we could get another bus to Cadiz on the coast. We finally got there and managed to befried some american girls who fortunatly knew how to speak spanish, so with a little help we managed to find a hostel to stay in for the next couple of nights. We realised that its far more convenient to just get a double room at a small hotel rather than hike all the way to the hostel on the other side of town. So we made our home in Fantoni Hostal which was right in the heart of the town.

Cadiz is a port town but has this amazing other side to it that is golden sandy beaches. It’s a bit surfers paradise with tall apartment blocks right on the beach but in the old town where we stayed it was typical winding streets and cobblestoned streets. The old town surrounds a massive church – third biggest in the world – which we had breakfast in front of every day!

Then we hit the beach, and like typical Brits Abroad, I got a little bit more sun than anticipated! The worst of it was that I had said to Jaynee that I was going to smart about it this time and lathered up before we even went out for breakfast. But due to the wind that is ever constant in the south, I was unaware of just how hot my englishified skin was getting!!

Anyway, Cadiz was nice. We read, ate, slept, ate, shopped, ate, drank, drank, slept, ate.. well you get the idea. After a couple of days we moved on to Los Canos De Mecca which is a tiny town a couple of hours eats of Cadiz. It’s one street and thats about it.

We found another great Hostal with a backyard and a swimming pool. We spent the next two days sitting down on the beach and reading. The view was spectacular and the atmosphere was relaxing. We noticed that this area seemed to be a popular holiday destination for Spanish people rather than English tourists which was great – I stuck out like a slightly sore thumb being the only other pale skinned person around, but it didn’t bother me too much!

The seafood was pretty good, but they do like their oil in Spain, that’s for sure!!

After two days here we moved back up to Seville. It’s so damn hot there that we almost couldn’t be bothered to find a place to stay and fortunatly there was a dodgy lokking gentleman at the station that offered us a room with a couple of beds for 12€ a night – hard to beat that! So we found our new residence which while not ideal, was very well located near the bar and restaurant area of Seville!

Like I said, Sevillis is boiling. It got up to 48 degrees at one stage. So it was early-ish starts at about 9:30-10am to do some sight seeing at the Alcaza which was really really interesting. Because of the different religious followings in Spain there Palace had a real muslim influence on it. The architecture was great but the main highlight was the massive garden that went on for ever! We also managed to fit in some shopping. We also bought tickets to a tour bus which was quite good. Seville is a bit of an odd city – it’s the city of Expo’s and basically one side of the rive that runs through it is old and new exhibition centres. But the old ones have yet to be fully removed and just are there slowly falling apart.. odd.

We booked tickets to go and see a flamenco show which was recommended to us. It was a smallish venue but wine and tapas brought to you at the table and a short and sweet show which was all we needed really.

We then managed to stumble on a foods and jewellry fair, which proved to be rather good! We bought som things and then found the food stalls – food from everywhere! We had a Carona from the Mexico stand, a mini Yeeros from the Greece stand and a photo taken outside the Australia stand!! Highly entertaining!

Sunday we were leaving but we went and had a look at the Cathedral which was really really boring and then it was a rather extravagant lunch and then back to the train station top ick up our bags which we had left there for the day and to the airport.

So that was the adventures of Athalee and Jaynee in Spain!!

Over here, one day will be pouring with rain and the next will be so damn hot you don’t know what to do with yourself. It’s too nice to stay in doors but there is no where to cool off when the sun reaches it’s highest point.

This weekend just been however was great, GREAT summer days. Russ and i planted ourselves on Clapham Common on Saturday with the papers and just chilled out while the sun shone down. It was an idyllic day. We then went to the movies and saw Pirates of the Carribean (which is really not that good). On Sunday Jayno and i walked into town and planted ourselves firmly in St James park for some more sun worshipping. I “caught” the sun, to say the least but it’s all in preparation for Spain!!

The weekend before last was the Bank Holiday weekend and I went to Hamburg to see Merle. It was the first time in 18 months! It was so good to catch up. Unfortunatly we were both ill but we managed to eat and drink our way through that and just chilled out. We went to her home town ( a term i use very loosly as it is one street long and 1000 people in it, most of them being related to Merle!). Her mum made us goulash and dumplings and all sorts of other yumminess.

We shopped til we dropped and ate til we couldn’t eat any more. It was a great long weekend. I came home on the Sunday night and then on Monday the weather was horrible so Jayno and I bunked in for the day after a hardcore gym sesh and watched something like 9 episodes of Grey’s Anatomy!! Hahahaha We are totally addicted!

Not much else to report except, Jayne and I went to Beyonce on Sunday night! It was awesome. She is so hot and totally amazing. New role model!!!

 Anyway, hope you are all well..

xxxx