Well daisy is now officially funnier than me; both in the funny ha-ha and funny peculiar ways. Most of the time it’s unattended humor. When she tells me to go away, or says No to the wrong question.

Today she was singing the tune of twinkle twinkle with the words “Mummy daddy, mummy, dad…” Which was very cute, when she interrupted her self to go ‘Dink’ (which means drink), it turns out she was holding a drink and had been for around half an hour, still. It was a shock to find it there.

Daisy’s word count is massive, we stopped counting ages a go, and new words are coming all the time, some times she picks up words seemingly first time. A while back when we went to stay at Ruth’s mum’s daisy wasn’t took keen on sleeping in a strange place, so Ruth told here the story of Noah; she only got the story once, that night, but ever since, heavy rain out side gets a cry of noie.

Sentences are her new trick, most of them involve where daddy has gone, “Daddy away in work”, and as she delighted in telling the man in Tesco, “Daddy away in car”.

Oh and she’s dead cute too. But I would say that wouldn’t I. Here are some pictures to prove it.

see I told you so.

Just to give you a flavor of todays weather…

We drove into this Today; As we weaved around the edge of wales and Cheshire the clouds just sat on the horizon, looking dark and nasty, Until we got to this point. Then all the water just fell out of them. Not a day for a convertible car, I would much rather have our trusty skoda in a rain cloud like this. The bloke we saw on the motorbike looked very wet.

Today we went for a little day trip to Shrewsbury; mainly because it is south of Liverpool, and we’re rapidly approaching north of Liverpool saturation, So we decided to go south.

Initially Wales was in the running, but the weather forecast was funny and I didn’t fancy walking down the pier at llandudno in a fierce rain storm, so we looked in land. Llandudno is nice but again we’ve been quite a bit, and besides we would have just spent all day in that bookshop.

Baby swans

Shrewsbury was nice; it did rain quite a bit, but it was nice. Down by the river we saw some baby swans, something I having lived such a sheltered life had never seen before. Then we did the regimental museum in the castle, which our copy of the rough guide to England describes as dull. I would alter that a bit, to dull, dry and warm, which can be quite important when it really starts to rain.

On the way home we took a slight detour to Cockshutt, the ancestral ’seat’ for some of Ruth’s family. The family rumour mill (now confirmed as speculation) has it that

the old Vicarage in cockshutt

there where some goings on between a ’son of the manor’ and one of Ruth’s great great somethings, which resulted in them being sent away to Liverpool to have the illegitimate child. More likely is they moved from rural poverty to industrial poverty around the time everybody else did.

Cockshutt seems like a pleasant little village, with a church, pub and post office. So we took some pictures Ruth did some random stranger talking, and discovered that Dean is the man to talk to about the history of Cockshutt; we didn’t but at least we know.

Ruth is now scouring the internet to see if we can get anything else about Cockshutt. So far we know that some people have a grant to write the history of the village. So we’re writing them a letter.

Well this Monday was definitely better than last.

It takes time to adjust to new surroundings, and last week was just a bit of a shock really. I have to admit I was worried about today, what with a whole weekend having gone by and me not really having settled in, but in the end I think it went ok.

The whole thing was helped on by a morning of meetings, which actually is quite a good way to start a Monday morning, especially when you are new; and now I have some work to get stuck into and a PC that actually works at what I need to do, the day went quite well.

Having work is the most important part I think (after knowing where the toilets are!) It gives your mind something to focus on, as opposed to just worrying about strange surroundings. Also actually doing starts to remove the anxiety about whether or not you can do, which is something I always get hung up about. If any one ever asks me that question about what are your weaknesses again, I will have to say self doubt.

So I’m happier this week. yippie! mind you it could be the chocolate high

I had a birthday surprise, a trip to Cadbury World! And dispute there being no chocolate river, or any (visible) umpalumpas, we had a loads of fun.

It’s a hard thing to live upto a chocolate factory tour, after all everybody loves chocolate and everybody’s seen at least one of the Charlie and Chocolate Factory Films. The tour is basically an attempt to tell you how Cadbury’s came about, and how chocolate is made, and it does both of them.

When you look back you don’t get an awful lot of chocolate, but the factory smells so chocolaty, I think you absorb some through your skin, so by the end when you emerge into the shop (all good tours end in the shop) you don’t go (to) mad buying chocolate, I got myself a new mug for work.

the best bit for me was the advert room, with all the old adverts on, and the children’s discovery room which is quite cool too (probably more so if you’re a child). Oh and the cafe does the worlds best hot chocolate, and they have the worlds biggest Cadbury’s shop (not however selling the world’s biggest Cadbury’s chocolate bar)