The world from my window

Thanks to my mother, I have a pretty good idea who's sitting up there in the branches of my family tree. Up until now, there's been nobody famous, although she discovered I am directly descended from a man who fought in the last battle on English soil, the Monmouth Rebellion, in 1685.  I'm rather proud of that, and the fact that he was on the ill-fated Rebel side. It's something I plan to explore further when I have more time. Mr Grigg thinks he has a link to Archie Leach, better known as that suave and most debonair of English-born actors, Cary Grant . He knows this because he found a Leach in his family tree who lived in Bristol, which was where Archie was born. I got very excited and suggested it could be the same family as Archie's. When Mr Grigg has more time, he's going to look into it further. In the meantime, I had nobody famous in my tree and always felt a little bit of a Billy No-Mates. And then, this week, I had a message via my Maddie Gri...

It's been raining hard here today.  But not in my picture library, from which I've pulled these shots of blue skies. Colleton Crescent, Exeter.  Terrier racing, Yarcombe, Devon.   The field above The Enchanted Village. The Wills Building, Bristol University. That's about it. Love Maddie x

You know your day is not going well when halfway through the morning, you're at work and you discover your knickers are inside out. What makes it worse is they're the Bridget Jones big kind and the waistband is higher than the one on your trousers. So the world and his wife knows officially how big your arse is. My day at the Death Star started like this yesterday and then got worse. I broke my mug when someone walked through a door in front of me. I was startled, the mug I was carrying became like a juggling ball with an in-built electric shock system and it flew out of my hands. The handle smashed all over the floor. Then, as I filled up my excuse for a mug with hot water from the dispenser, I turned away to get milk out of the fridge. I know how long I usually have to do this because the pipe is furred up and the water takes ages to come through. However, some bastard had fixed it, hadn't they? Scalding hot water went everywhere. So I was looking forward to an evening la...