Beware of multi-buy bargains at Tesco.

We still haven't decided on a name for our new hamster. Our original Winter Whites were called Theobold, Archibald and Reginald, so we may go for another '-old' or 'ald' name, but there aren't many girls names like that. There are Emerald and Marigold but we're not sure whether we like those.

She's not easy to photograph. She doesn't sit still for long, so it takes several goes to get a clear photo of her. Even though she's easy to handle and she'll readily climb onto your hand, most photos show her either blurred or scampering away.

Emma's been taking the hamster to University, and putting the cage in her office so she can keep an eye on her during the day. Most of the people in the department have stopped by to have a look.
In the photo above, she's trying some scrambled eggs, made using one of our quail eggs. We bought some 'puppy milk' because it's designed for growing animals (it has a fairly high fat content, and extra minerals etc). We used that for the scrambled egg. We gave some to our other hamsters too, and they enjoyed it.

We didn't do as well in the Hamster Racing this year. Last year, Theo won. This year, Red Rum didn't emulate his namesake. Sadly he lost in the first round.

We bought a new hamster while we were there. There weren't many hamsters for sale but we saw a tub with 3 baby winter whites in it. They were only about 3 weeks old and were tiny. We ended up buying one of them.

We drove up north this afternoon to visit my parents. We kept to our traditional pizza night, but this time we were cooking for 5. My mum doesn't like anchovies so we only put them on one half of each pizza.

We did 2 pizzas with a tomato base, using a bought bolognese sauce instead of making our own. The other 2 had a pesto sauce base. Each pizza was slightly different, with scallops, crab meat and crispy chicken toppings. It was good to have a variety of pizzas. Normally when we cook for ourselves, we do 2 identical pizzas. I think we'll start doing 2 different ones so we can have half each.

Our quail have started earning their keep now. The 3 hens are giving us an egg each nearly every day. If we want to use the eggs for cooking, we need to save up for a while. It takes 5 quail eggs to replace 1 chicken's egg in a recipe.

We were in Tesco and were going down one of the aisles which specialised in foreign food. They had some Polish chocolate on a 'buy one get one free' offer so we bought a couple of bars.

The first bar we tried was described as Milk Chocolate bar with creamy filling. It was quite tasty and had a sort of Baileys Irish Cream sort of flavour. I had a quick look at the ingredients and noticed that it contained alcohol. I thought it was a bit unusual that it wasn't described as a chocolate liqueur, but alcohol and 'Baileys flavoured' didn't seem too strange.

They were only small bars (45g each) and we were sharing so we opened the 2nd one. This was toffee flavour. We were surprised to see that it also contained alcohol. I think I'll buy all my chocolate from Poland from now on...

The last of our Winter White brothers from June 2005 died this morning. Old Man Reggie out-lived his brothers Archie and Theo, despite having looked old and poorly for most of his life.

Somehow, deep down, we knew that he'd out-live them. He was often ill and needed numerous trips to the vets, whereas his brothers had been fitter and healthier.

The photo above is the last photo we took of Reggie. It was taken on the 4th November and shows him trying to burrow into our duvet. Whenever we took him out for a run about, that's what he'd spend most of his time doing. He'd either try to hide himself in the folds of the duvet, or try to tunnel through people's elbows.

We found out earlier today that a friend of ours was in a band. They were playing live at the Beer Engine pub. As that is only on Far Gosford Street, not far from here, we decided to go along and see what they were like.

Their opening song was a solo piece featuring their vocalist/guitarist, and reminded me of a Badly Drawn Boy song, which isn't a bad thing. The band is a 5-piece: vocalist/lead guitar, keyboards, saxophone, bass guitar, drums.

They were pretty good. Worth going to see if they're playing nearby. They'll be performing at a local Battle of the Bands and I wish them the best of luck.

They have a page on myspace but there doesn't seem to be much there at the moment.

We were watching the BBC Breakfast News this morning and there was a story about Tesco opening a supermarket in the USA. We had the subtitles on because it wasn't easy to hear the reporter over the crunch of cereal.

The story was about Tesco trying to break into the American market by offering a range of affordable and healthy foods. We saw a customer carrying a punnet of fruit. The subtitles referred to the Man with the neck tureens. I suppose they'd be handy for carrying soup around...

We bought a cheap box of fireworks on saturday morning and decided to throw a fireworks party. It was last minute and friends from Uni had exams and write-ups to do so we didn't expect a very big turn out. In the end there were only 5 of us, which wasn't too bad because our garden is only small.

Some of the fireworks recommended a minimum distance of 25m. Our garden is only 8m long so we were a bit close. Things started to get a bit worrying when we almost had glowing embers raining down on us from one of the larger fireworks.