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.

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)

My sleep patterns are certainly in holiday mode anyway, even if Daisy’s aren’t, Ruth and I are currently taking turns to sleep in while the other does the morning with Daisy, who is still getting up at 6:30 every morning.

Yesterday was a bit changeable, with some very light drizzle, in the day, that turned into lovely sunshine once we’d writing the day tripping off and gone to Newport to do some shopping. Last night we got the moon shining across the water which is always a lovely sight to see.

Today we are planning a trip around Yarmouth, which is a bit of the island we tend not to visit much, but with another mixed day of weather ahead it does have quite a few possible indoor activities all within close vicinity of each other.

So I’ve applied for the job. I weighed it up, and in the end I’ve decided that it would be enjoyable, and would be challenging, and if there is something my current job, sometimes lacks is enjoyment and a challenge.

The only problem I had then was getting the application form back to the university, given I am currently encamped in a place that doesn’t even offer a gas supply or a decent mobile phone signal, never mind a internet connection. Last time we came John had this problem, which we solved by going to the nearest UKOnline centre which at was in Shanklin, because the Ventnor one had closed.

This morning I packed the laptop in the car, and popped down to Shanklin, only to find the UKOnline centre was now a sweet shop, bit of a problem their, so I went to the tourist information centre, to see where it had got too, it turns out it has gone to Sandown, but it was OK because as the woman at the tourist information centre said, “Zak’s got internet access”, I thought this was a bit ominous, that we knew that zak was the man to ask, what he was probably the first person with that elastic-trickery too.

I trudged off to the location of Zak’s which on closer inspection turned out to be the shop of the island nerd, filled to the gills with bits of radios, TV’s mobile phones, and 4 computers offering (shared) 1Mb internet Access! (context: we’ve got 4mb at home, and you can get 10mb now), so I asked Zak, if I could use some of his precious band width, and he kindly agreed, so after burning my application form to a CD on the laptop. Then I “logged” on to his internet PC’s which we’re obviously cutting edge for the island, and were running Windows 95, I mean it’s only just 10 years old.

It was good to see that Zak’s had its resident geek, who was sitting next to me, playing some sort of online geeky dungeons and dragons game, who then turned to Zak to tell him this piece of life changing information:
“Zak, I’ve worked out another use for the mordurp ring you found”,
“What”
“You need to be wearing it when you kill, fadarp the goonly”

I quickly finished my email to personnel, gathered my things and left the shop, I feel a bit dirty now, I’ll go and get a shower.

Today has been a long day; its 9:30 and we are scuttling off to bed. Daisy’s room, is a bit like a lean too, attached to the end of our room, and as such has windows on every side, so it would be an impossible task to black it out, so we haven’t tried. This does mean however that daisy is waking up as it goes light, which is around 6:15-6:30, which makes for a very long day, especially when you are planning to fill the day with stuff.

Today we went to Osborne house, the favourite home of Queen Victoria. It’s a bit of a peculiar place, with lots of little (on the royal scale) rooms, and some quite strange architecture, apparently Albert and Vicky liked cosy, so they built themselves a cosy house in a few hundred acres of land, overlooking the Solent, presumably so they could look out at all they owned, and watch the navy come in and out from all the pink bits of the map they also had control over.

I crashed today, which given how it’s only Sunday is a bit woeful (usually it takes to the middle of the week for me to lose all energy). I’m taking it as a sign of how I needed the holiday. So after a nice morning in Ventnor, I spent the afternoon flaked out on the couch and asleep in bed while Ruth and her mum went to Sandown for a walk.

I’m currently taking a brake from the job application, it’s ever so difficult talking your self up. The more is sit and stare at the person spec the more I have to resist the temptation to write incredibly sarky rebuttals to the points.