We have often thought that baby roborovski hamsters look a bit like monkey nuts.

One of these things is not like the others...

We drove north to visit my parents yesterday. We took some pizza dough, a few toppings and a selection of the flavoured cheeses. My parents provided the rest of the toppings and a couple of bottles of wine.

This morning we drove over to Lymm for the hamster show. Anita had a balloon animal kit and was making balloon hamsters for people. I think ours must have been a Winter White Sapphire.

In one of the falconry tents.

A demonstration of using 'Heavy Horses' for logging.

A tiny Shetland Pony.

Setting up the Hamster Show.

The weather was ok in the morning but the sky got darker and it started to rain in the afternoon. The showground became gradually quieter during the day as the morning visitors left but nobody came to replace them so by late afternoon, the place was practically deserted.

Happy Birthday to 3 of our hamsters: Benny, Bjorn and 'Big Bit', from Orna and Mysterons first litter. They are all 2 years old today.

Bjorn (on the right) with his son, Brennan.

Benny (on the left) with his half-brother Benylin.

The two remaining 'Orn Girls', 'Big Bit' and her younger sister.

Some photos of our recent hamster babies.

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Two of our Roborovski hamsters, Bryn and Darlene, have had babies. When they were between 1 and 2 weeks old, they looked a bit like small furry peanuts. With their over-large heads, they are the same shape as monkey-nuts.

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Today, we went to the Lymm hamster show.

• Mid-morning, I went for a walk around the village. I recently got a new phone (a Nokia 5800) and installed Google Maps on it. I used the phone's built-in GPS to keep an eye on where I was during the walk. Most of the time it managed to locate my position fairly accurately.

• In the afternoon, there was the Hamster Racing. We entered Bjorn, who is usually fairly hyperactive so we thought he would do well. He kept winning the races, most of the time he finished before the other hamster had gone halfway around the track. He came 2nd overall - he got through to the final but halfway along the track he stopped to clean himself, then turned around and ran back towards the start.

• On the drive home we found ourselves listening to the Top 40 countdown on Radio 1. I haven't listened to the charts for years. Most of the time I listen to either Kerrang or Radio 2. These stations usually ignore the charts and play music aimed at their respective audiences*. I think it will be a while before we listen to the charts again - most of the music was awful.

* Kerrang mostly plays guitar-based rock music. On Radio 2 I listen to Terry Wogan (target audience: the insane) and Radcliffe & Macone (target audience: the more mature rock music fan).

Emma bought some Halloween themed animal beds - a large pumpkin shaped one for the Degus, and a smaller one for the hamsters or mice.

Remy and Emile in the pumpkin bed.

Brennan and Fruitcake in the smaller bed. We tried several different hamsters in this bed before we eventually gave it to the boy-mice.

We have been going to a lot of country shows recently. We had entered the Hamster Show on Saturday so I had some time to explore and watch some of the shows and demonstrations. The glass blowers were the same people I saw at Wiltshire Country Show but this time they were demonstrating how old-fashioned window glass was made.

The cookery demonstration was also by the same person from the Wiltshire show. He made a tasty looking savoury Chelsea Bun containing cheese, pesto and various other ingredients.

A lot of different foods were available in the two food tents. We tried various free samples before buying a selection of flavoured cheeses (mature cheddar, garlic, garlic and herbs, horseradish, curry, chilli) and a 1½ litre jug of cider.

We used some of the cheese on our regular Saturday night pizzas. We put a different cheese on each half, and cut the pizzas at right angles to the cheese divide, so we each had 2 half-pizzas with 4 different cheeses (We liked them so much we had pizza again on Sunday).

There was no hamster show on Sunday but there was a display. We were kept busy all day dealing with the public, answering questions about keeping hamsters and explaining the differences between the various breeds of hamster.

Some photos from the Wiltshire Country Show, at Bowood House. We were there with the Hamster Show but there was time to take a look at the rest of the showground. The show seemed to be bigger than previous years but a lot of the events were repeated so if you weren't careful you could end up watching the same thing several times.

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We buy these parsley biscuits, and the Degus really love them. They run up to the side of the cage and beg for them. They don't eat them straight away but usually run around carrying them in their mouths for a few minutes first.

One of Fadle's babies - currently un-named but we refer to her as 'Big Blue' She has a slightly smaller sister called 'Little Blue'.

Chocolate Mousse hiding in the igloo.

All of our female mice. Clockwise, starting from the top:
Chocolate Mousse, Ikea, Shiny Black, Tricolour, Fake Cow, Momma Mousse and Pinky.

Here are some more photos of Fadle and her babies. We have been buying jars of (human) baby food for them since it contains a good range of nutrients and no additives. It should help them grow.

There are 2 'Sapphire' babies and 1 'normal' coloured baby. We were hoping for some sapphires - it is possibly our favourite colour of Winter White.

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Fadle (aka Greypup) gave birth on thursday night. It took her a while to get used to being a mother but she now spends most of her time sitting on the babies, feeding them and keeping them warm. Mithletoe sometimes sits with her to keep her company.

A selection of recent photos of some of our animals.

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The weather wasn't terribly good this year but at least it was only a bit damp, unlike last year when there were hailstorms.

This year's show felt like it had been scaled down a bit - there seemed to be less variety of events in the main arena. There wasn't a dedicated food tent but most of the same food vendors were there, just not concentrated in one area.

We were there for the Hamster show but we had some free time to walk around the site and see some of the events.

There were a lot of horse-related events in the main arena. This one involved riders having to pick up litter using spiked sticks. You can tell it was cold from the steam coming out of the horse's nostrils.

Ferret Racing. This was the winning ferret at the 2 o'clock race. Luckily it was also the one we bet on.

I was watching one of the falconry events and the bird landed on one of the loudspeakers near where I was standing.

All of these photos were taken using an old telephoto zoom lens on my Nikon D40. The new cameras can't focus through the old lens but it still works if I'm prepared to focus manually. I thought it wouldn't be a problem but it turned out to be surprisingly difficult to focus accurately. My old manual focus cameras had features such as the split screen rangefinder and fresnel screen. These made it very easy to see when something was in focus. The modern autofocus cameras have a plain screen which isn't as useful. The 'electronic rangefinder' has a dot which appears when focus is achieved but it isn't as easy to use as the old fashioned manual focus system.

I should probably start looking out for a newer lens but I shouldn't complain really. At least the old Nikon lenses still work on the newer cameras, even if they don't have 100% functionality. It's better than nothing.