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Ola!

Its Friday and a lot has been happening lately.
The sad news: Our beautiful Charlie Dog has moved on to heavenly pastures new. We miss him lots but know it was for the best.

The bad news: My fast faffless and fearless rowing four failed to overcome at our first race. However we are cheering ourselves up with the thought that it may well be the last race we ever lose!

The glad news: I passed my bike test. I am now licenced to ride any motorbike I fancy leaping on! Provided I have the correct protective clothing and insurance that is! :-)

We are now in countdown mode for our brief trip home to NZ. We are not making lots of plans because this could well be our only holiday this year and I want to do vegetable impressions (lots of sitting around!) for a bit of it but so far we are aiming to go to the hot pools (a must do - if you have never been to one then next time your in Sweden or NZ get yourself along to the hotpools!), Anton wants to go diving (I suspect I will have to do that with him), I am seeing an old friend for her hens weekend and we are celebrating my grandparents 25 years of marriage! Oh and of course we will be spending time with Little Miss Emma - my niece.

Other than that things here in Cambridge are cooling down. The weather has become autumnal (though the sun is currently shining) and the evenings are drawing in. Already we are dreaming of next summer (well - of christmas too but I have too say we are also looking further ahead at the same time!).

Roll on October...

I passed my motorcycle theory test this morning!

Watch out England! Watch out Europe! Watch out world.... Well - I still have to pass (or at least book) my practical lessons and test but thats just details.

For someone who's been on the road for 12 years you would not believe how stressful it was sitting there doing the test. First theres 35 multi-choice questions (of which I got 35 right - gloat gloat!) then they make you do a 'hazard perception test'. They show you 14 clips and you have to click the mouse when you see a potential hazard, then click again as you see it develop. Sounds easy? Riiiiiiiiiiight!

(I preferred it when they gave you a scratch card and then asked you 5 oral questions!)

I have just opened up a whole range of potential jobs for myself - filthy few member, Mongrel Mobette, motorbike courier, daredevil... the list just goes on. I can tell my mums going to be really pleased about this! (Sorry mum!)

The adventures just keep coming!

We know the people who run Shepreth Wildlife Park - just down the road. Its a super little park that has loads of rescued wildlife including 2 wolves called Ishka and Odin

two tigers, Rana and Amba (this one's Rana)

as well as spider monkeys, Turtles, a Buzzard, prairie dogs, Wallabies and so on - there are just hundreds of creatures at this park!

We took my cousin, Bodhi, to visit the park and were lucky enough to hold a fox cub and the buzzard and then we got to play with the wolves who were so excited to have people visiting them they were just running around like crazy! Ishka, the female, was seriously molting and, when she wasn't running about she'd fall flat on her back for her tummy to be rubbed. Odin was calmer and jsut in heaven when you patted him. (As a bit of background Anton used to volunteer at the park and played with the wolves quite a lot so they are super good around him. The wolves were caught being brought into the country by a film company, from eastern Europe. They have been highly socialised and well trained for their film work so they are incredibly good with people. The authorities rehomed Ishka and Odin at Shepreth because the park has a lot of experience with wolves!)

I took my camera and my new zoom lens with me and caught some fantastic photos of the spider monkeys and the prairie dogs but by far the best were of the tigers being fed. For the carnivorous animals the keepers hide their food around their enclosures so they have to hunt around to find it as a bit of stimulus. There is a massive big pole to one end of the Tigers area with a tyre hung on it. As you can see from the photos above Rana found the lump of meat in the tyre and had a good time jumping up to retrieve it! I managed to get half a dozen photos of Amba and Rana making the most of their meals before we went off to see the otters and look for ice cream.

After making sure we had seen everything including the chipmunks, the lizard and snake room and the rest of the monkeys it was time to head off! Good times!

If you are ever in the area looking for something ot do get down to Shepreth. Darned fine wildlife park!

We have been awfully cultured of late. I have dragged various friends to Noel Cowards Hayfever and William Shakespeares Midsummer Nights Dream and have enjoyed the thrills of the Comedy of Errors and there is still a month of fun yet!

As a budding member of Bawds Am-Dram soc here in Cambs I have been lucky enough to be in a couple of plays but I haven't made much time to go and see any so I decided it was high time I did. Hayfever had a lot of people I have performed with in it so that seemed like a good choice. Its a typically odd Noel Coward comedy and was performed brilliantly. I was a bit confused as the what the heck was going on at first but it all came together and was very funny. Still odd but very funny.

After that I got the opportunity, through my wonderful cousin Jenny, to see Shakespeares Comedy of Errors at the Rougemont Gardens in Exeter which was (after a slow start) BRILLIANT! The performance was hilarious and the setting was perfect. Its not a play I know so it was intriguing to see it for the first time and try and keep up with all the action but the performers were so convincing and their timing was immaculate (so important in comedy and in Shakesp) that I was completely captivated!

Because it is Summer at the moment (not htat you'd know it from the weather) every town seems to have be having a variety of outdoor performances and Cambridge is no different. For July and August there are 8 different Shakespeare plays being performed in various college gardens. How can you pass up an opportunity like that? Exactly! So this week I took Anton and Mark to A Midsummer Nights Dream in the gardens of Trinity College. Bearing in mind Anton is a total Shakespeare virgin I was hoping the light touch of a comedy would maintain his interest so he would at least come to another one with me. I was on tenterhooks when the play started and it started pretty weakly! ARGH! The tension! Antons face said 'oh my god - what the...?!' - I was very worried that all was lost!

And then, right when I thought I'm going to spend the rest of my days traipsing like a lonely freak to these shows, the action kicked in and the show got really funny! The actors were really good and the director wasn't afraid to have a lot of physical comedy and it was no holds barred. If a bloke was out of line chances are his treasury would feel the sqeeze (if you know what I mean!) and ladies were being smooched or spurned at every turn! Stirling stuff.

The closer - the play within the play - was what really topped it all off though. The rude mechanicals did a superb job and by the time Puck (an attractive leggy blonde - the boys were happy) begged our forgiveness and bade us good night we were wiping tears of laughter off our cheeks and Anton was declaring he'd come to another one! SUCCESS!!

The next one we will see is Taming of the Shrew which Mark and I have both been in so we will watch it with interest! Its one of those comedies that doesn't seem so funny until you add the physical humour so it will be really interesting to see how it all goes.

I'll keep you posted!

I travel everywhere with a travel companion called Edwin T. Bear. He has been with me since the start. The only place he hasn't been with me was Brussels. He knows travelling.

For those of you who know me, and have heard about Edwin, here he is - the big man himself!

Travelling Mc