It was foggy this morning as we drove to the hamster show. Along the M6, we knew Birmingham was out there but couldn't see any sign of it.

The Christmas hamster shows are always a bit special compared to the normal meetings. The hamster club puts on a buffet which always goes down well. There is usually a good turn-out which means more competition which usually means our hamsters don't do as well as normal. We only won the one trophy, for our Winter White hamsters.

We were on the train to Birmingham International and we got talking to an elderly couple. They claimed that last year you had to pay for a lot of the food and drink samples. Mercifully that wasn't the case today.

Most of the food and drink producers were giving away small free samples. If we bought some of everything we liked, it would cost a fortune and we wouldn't be able to carry it home. We had to be fairly selective but still came away with a heavy load of wine, cider and spirits.

On the food side, the most impressive free sample was something called Chipstix. These were spiral cut potatoes which were deep fried then sprinkled with seasoning. The stall was promoting the franchise rather than trying to sell the food directly to the public. It made good novelty food and would be a fun alternative to chips, possibly as a side-dish in a pub or cafe.

I recently received an email from somebody called Ben, telling me about his new website about Coventry. It's called It's All About Coventry and aims to be an honest, realistic and useful guide to the city.

There are "What's On" listings as well as reviews of shops, bars and restaurants. You can also add comments to any of the articles and reviews. It looks like it is going to be a useful site for both visitors and residents.

Here are some more squirrel photos from the town centre. A lot of the squirrels have become quite fat - it looks like people have been feeding them a lot recently.

A Messy Eater

Squirrel busy hunting for peanuts.

I don't know whether the tomato harvest has been poor this year or whether there has been a shortage, but I have noticed the price of tinned tomatoes has gone up recently. It is most noticeable at the 'bargain/value' end of the market, where the cheaper tins have doubled in price. Strangely the price of tomato puree has stayed the same.

We've had quite a tiring weekend. We were down in South Wales for a friend's wedding. The welsh weather didn't disappoint - it rained most of the time. The wedding was indoors so that didn't matter much. Apart from the bit in the conservatory where the roof leaked so there were buckets placed to catch drips.

It was a long drive down to Wales and back and I'm still feeling a bit tired so this will be a short post.

(Entry backdated to when the photo was taken)

A photo of the newlyweds having their first dance. I don't know about you, but I always think newlywed looks like it should be a welsh word or place name.

Lidl seemed to have a lot of cheap veg today so we decided to have a roast veg to accompany our tea.

I always underestimate how long roast veg takes to cook but this time I decided to give it over an hour in the oven just to make sure all the veg cooked ok. The carrots and celeriac went in first along with a sprinkle of salt and some chilli pepper. After about a quarter of an hour I added the fennel and then another half hour later added the peppers and onions. I then left it to cook (at gas mark 7) for yet another half an hour.

I'd got the timing almost perfect this time. Some of the bits of celeriac were a bit hard but if I'd chopped them a bit smaller they would have been ok.

Some photos from the firework display in Longford Park tonight.

Click on the thumbnail to view the image

I've been hearing Stephen Fry's voice a lot recently. We've been watching his TV programme where he's visiting all 50 American states, but we've also been hearing him on the radio. There is a set of adverts which gets a lot of airplay where he encourages people to get the flu jab. The adverts all follow the same pattern:

Having the flu is compared to an annoying situation, then having the flu when you suffer from a particular complaint is likened to 2 annoying situations. One such advert compares having the flu to having a neighbour's dog bark constantly. Then having the flu while suffering from heart disease is compared to: the neighbour's dog barking while he plays the saxophone.

My first thought was 'how does the dog play the saxophone while barking?'. The second time I heard the advert I realised he probably meant the dog barking while the neighbour plays the saxophone. I would have thought that Stephen Fry of all people would have been concerned by the disconnected pronoun in the sentence. Either that or I'm just easily confused.

I spotted this on the BBC News site. From the page:

When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed. Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated".

One of the pepper plants in the garden had some very small peppers on it, which were increasing in size very slowly. The recent cold spell has put an end to that. The plants are on their last legs. The leaves have gone all limp. The plants might have survived if I had somewhere warm to put them but we don't have a greenhouse.

On a happier note, I've moved the leeks from the tub they were in, and planted them in the space where the gladioli were growing. This means the garden is finally set up with vegetables on one side, and quail and flowerbeds on the other.

This afternoon I looked out of my office window and realised it was snowing. Apparently it had been snowing for a while but I hadn't noticed. The flakes are quite large now and it looks like it's starting to stick to the ground rather than immediately melt.

Update
It was snowing when we left this evening, to drive home. By the time we got home (about 5 miles away) the snow had stopped. There was no snow on the ground so either it melted quickly, or it hadn't snowed as much here.

Some photos from our day out to Legoland Windsor. There were a lot of fairly impressive Lego statues and animals scattered around the theme park.

Click on the thumbnail to view the image

The food was pretty good. I liked the cubic Steak and Merlot Pie.

The bar service was slow and piss poor though. It took them about 10 minutes to make each cocktail and at one point I waited 20 minutes to be served wine because they couldn't find the corkscrew.