Being a list in no particular order of stuff that we already know but that this weekend has confirmed.

• Jenny cannot drink more than one glass of Kir Royale without becoming utterly and amusingly drunk. No other drink has this effect on her.
• It’s not a weekend unless you visit Sainsbury’s at least once for every day of the weekend. Bank Holiday Mondays are included in this.
• There are only three basic plots for Sex and the City. (In this it’s very similar to Scot-wean-toon Oor Wullie, but with more, um, willies.) A Men are bastards/unnecessary B Women are sassy C Maxing out your credit card every episode is consequence-free.
• It’s impossible to buy a REDACTED in Bath, no matter now often you visit the REDACTED shop, largely because it’s never fucking open.*
• We could eat kedgeree for breakfast and dinner. In fact on Monday we did just that. We ♥ kedge. Bonus fact: when I first knew her, Jenny hated fish, rice and curry. Getting her to eat all three in the same dish for breakfast is proof, were any needed, that you can change someone.

* Censored so that D&L don’t have any inkling of the amazing† costume that I’ll be wearing to their 70s party on Saturday.
† Lame and overworked

Utterly sick of seeing dogs on this site? I don’t blame you. So why not hop on over to Mrs Phin’s site and watch her very fabulous guide to making felt. It’s much easier than you might think and we’re hoping that she might be able to pick up a decent little side income from the contextual ads as she adds more tutorials. Please do Digg it up – clicking on the Digg badge here is the same as clicking the one on her site; they point to the same article – and pass it around!

What do you do with £500-worth of high-spec digital camera goodness? Why, take slow-mo shots of an aging Staffie eating grass, of course.

Well that was fun, wasn’t it? This is my ninth day off in a row – a record, I think, since starting at Future – and it has been all kinds of fun. What was originally planned as a week of Cornwall camping was cut short a little by the weather; though we were actually very lucky – the evenings were calm and dry – we did get caught in the car in some torrential downpours, and spent the second night in the tent fearing that we were about to end up in Kansas as the wind whipped around us. The campsite we stayed at, however, was rather lovely; it had a river running through the middle of it, and campfires were allowed. We were quite tentative on the first night (picture below) but on the second we got a real crackler going. It was all very ‘man make shelter; man make fire’. Props to wife for not being too grunky throughout the whole affair.

But we’ve had all sorts of fun back in Bath, too. There have been DVDs (hey, Cloverfield is good, isn’t it?), cinema visits (hey, The Dark Knight is good, isn’t it?) fancy meals out and trips to Westonbirt Arboretum where I played about with my cheap-but-rather-rewarding new Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens. Since I took some photos for Mrs P’s Arts Week at the end of term, a couple of her colleagues have asked if I would take some portrait shots of them and their families, and I wanted a lens with a nice wide aperture to let me work in low light and to get some nice bokeh going on. (I’m never sure how to pronounce ‘bokeh’, which I know is an anglicised spelling specifically designed to make it obvious how to pronounce the Japanese; how should a gaijin pronounce ボケ味 so as not to appear like a twat, oh Japanese-speaking-brother-in-law?)

Despite having lived here for well over a year now, it was only this week that we went to the baths for the first time. We’d been to the Roman ruins a couple of times before, but this was out first visit to the new Thermae Bath Spa. It. Was. Idyllic. The rooftop pool is paradisal, and by lying on your back with your ankles tucked over the side and one of the big floaty foam tubes wrapped around you, you can soak up the sun in near-silent bliss.
No dog walking today as some manner of sporting event prevented us from find anywhere to park up at the university. Never fear: the relentless, pitiless and pointless stream of pictures-of-dogs-you-don’t-know-taken-by-someone-you-probably-only-know-a-little will resume next week. Stay tuned!

Finally we got a tent that was easy to put up. So easy, in fact, that our conviction that the first one we bought was actually faulty has only been strengthened. Having given it a dry run in the back garden this afternoon, we’ll pack up the car and head for deepest Cornwall on Monday. I’d like to get as far down as Land’s End – having been to John o’ Groats as a child – but given that the forecast for next week is a little rocky this may be a vain hope. We may be ‘forced’ to ‘endure’ the ‘lack of adventure’ to be found in a cosy, family-run B&B.

I’d like to take this opportunity, too, to make it clear that my technique for folding up a tent – doing a roly-poly along its length to get all the air out so it rolls up tight – is perfectly legitimate and not at all embarrassing. To me.

I will have my laptop with me next week – I have some freelance to polish off; it’s not that I can’t live without it* – but we’ll probably both be offline by choice until 2 August. Keep an eye on my main Flickr account and the photoblog account as we might throw some photos up there.


* No, really. I’d have my iPhone anyway.

The line between genius and insanity is very fine.

Yes, she's wearing slippers inside my sandals. Also, have we told you about our poringe* carpet? We should really tell Pantone about it in any case; I don't believe anyone has ever isolated this colour outside the lab.

* purple + orange = poringe

Yeah, so I'm writing a piece for one of our sister titles (it's all a bit incestuous) and asked Mrs P to cast her deliberately untechnical eye over it to make sure it read OK to the n00b. I showed her how to use Track Changes, which is just as well as I discovered when I opened her draft that she had – in an act of undeserved subversion – changed defragging to defraggling.

Funny.

Sooo, yeah. If you're anything like me, every day when you pick up your mail at home or work, you think how nice it would be if somebody just decided that day to send you a really nice, big-ticket gift. A couple of days ago, that actually happened to me: a satisfyingly chunky box turned out, upon opening, to contain my dream camera, a Canon EOS 400D. It was a present from my mum to mark her retirement from teaching* and it has totally reawakened my passion for photography. I'm tingling at thought of all the stuff I have to learn, opportunities I can take and accessories I have to know about.

I started looking through my late papa's film SLR bag, and found that although the lenses are the wrong mount system (FD rather than EF; apparently non-optical adapters are available for about £27 on eBay – any experience, folks?) the flash (semi-)works in the hotshoe, so the missus and I had fun taking big washed out stylised portraits. I might get one of the adapters after payday partly because I like the idea of using my papa's stuff from his AE-1, and partly just because one of his lenses is a sweet-looking 200mm telephoto. The 400D means that I'm shooting in RAW really for the first time, and, um, it's quite good, isn't it? I'm loving the flexibility, but hating the disappearing gigabytes. I think the time may be ripe to migrate to Aperture or Lightroom, but I need to talk to people who know more about the two before deciding which one to go for.

So, yeah. I know that this sort of stuff is neither big, clever, nor particularly difficult to achieve, but I'm still really loving it.

A reminder: I have two Flickr accounts. My cameraphone account is out-and-about snaps, while my main account will hold all my 400D shots.

* Yeah, I don't know why her retirement was a reason to buy me a beautiful DSLR, but don't draw attention to this, mmm-kay? Particularly since she very sweetly also bought Jenny a 32GB iPod touch as well. Yay, my mum!

Mrs P is off visiting her folks in the motherland. This is both a good and a bad thing from my point of view.

On the one hand…
Get to watch as much Time Team as any one man can stand
Can configure the bedclothes to suit [1]
Can listen to The Arguing Programme [2]

But on the other…
Nobody – literally – to snuggle up to at night
No impressions of the Polo Confidence ad
No nose wrinkles [3]
If I want to ’member things, I have to do it alone [4]
No insane nocturnal mutterings [5]
No rockin’ out to SingStar [6]

And worst of all, nobody to talk to; nobody to turn to to share a joke; nobody whose politics and world view chime so readily with my own that we can profitably spend half an hour discussing a topic while both violently agreeing with each other. And nobody with whom I can share our odd little system of catchphrases and distorted grammar that makes up the surprisingly rich private language that has sprung up from seven years of living together.

1. Technically, the configuration I favour is 'tuppling' – a sort of self-mummification technique that involves tucking the duvet tight around my body. This does not, contrary to current thinking, take up more than my fair share of the duvet.
2. This isn't any particular programme; it's just any radio show during which the interviewee filibusters frantically while the interviewer doggedly repeats "If I can just ask... If I can just ask... If I can just ask...". The Today Programme – AKA "The John Humphrys Show" in Jenny's mind – is an active proponent of this style of robust debate (as I like to think of it) and it drives Jenny nuts.
3. A few weeks ago, I was stressed and frustrated by technology. Jenny could do nothing to help. Nothing, that is, until she diffused the situation by doing a nose wrinkle for me; nothing is cuter.
4. It's easy to forget, when you're a couple, that stuff you do is weird. Jenny and I 'remember' things, such as "Hey, 'member when you fed a deer?" Nothing too odd there, you might think. But we do it all the time, and often – indeed, usually – immediately after the event we're 'membering, viz "Hey, 'member that good tea?" upon laying down the cutlery.
5. Already recorded on this blog: "It's a shame we have to lean against the hurty pain of the doormat" and "Remember when you kept pretending to be the smallest man in Australia all the time?". I've started collecting these weird noctural rantings and will do a big post of them when I have enough.
6. Mrs P has a phenomenal singing voice. With training and a marketing budget, she could be a credible indy music star. I don't say this because I love her; I love her, in part, because she's so fucking talented. I wish she'd realise this.

Having taken a sneaky day off work, Mrs P and I decided to slope off to Longleat Safari Park; all manner of safari-themed japes and scrapes ensued, and the day was proclaimed a success by all concerned. The highlight of the day (apart from the rhinos, which were fucking cool, by the way – I totally want to come back as a rhino) was a terrified-but-excited Jeff feeding a deer some of the special Longleat deer food. The stoopid deer didn't seem to understand that it was supposed to wait while I put some of the little pellets into my wife's hand before she moved her hand out of the car to feed it, and so kept thrusting its very fuzzy and adorable head inside the car to get at the cup of pellety goodness. Amid much excited shrieking, the task was eventually accomplished: one fed deer, one wife-hand covered in deer-spit. Witness the tongue-lashing she's getting below. More animal magic chez Flickr.

So a while back we got a letter from our friendly neighbourhood council informing us that we had strayed into a bus lane in our car.

They're right; we had, though Bath is a bastard of a city to navigate round, and it's all too easy to do this by mistake. We know, we did it; so of course I paid up. A small, spiteful but ultimately tit-numbingly stupid part of my brain, though, wanted to force the council to rescind the fine, because if you look closely at the bottom right of the frame showing us pootling along in our car, you see the legend Evaluation period has expired. Please buy the Elecard MPEG2 Video Deco[der]. Thieves and brigands the lot of them.

To add insult to injury, we'd been snapped on Mrs P's birthday, a day that even before this letter arrived we had agreed had been something of a birthday-tastrophe. Ah well.

Hey, have you met my wife? Not only does she write the back-page column for the mighty ’User, but she teaches, embroiders and can act as an impromptu nursemaid when you're struck down with some mucus-centric lurgy. This much we know. But to coincide with the soft-relaunch of her own website, recedinghairline.co.uk is delighted to be able to share with you its Top 5 Secret Jenny Facts!

She's writing two novels
Oh yes. Not just one, not just one and half, but two. Two, two novels! A-a-aaaa! They're each at only about 15,000 words long at the moment but they're both phenomenal. It came as something of a pride-pricking surprise – I'm the professional writer, dammit, etc – to learn that she is an incredibly talented author; far, far better than me at non-technical writing. I know writing can be hard work for her, but when you read her fiction, it seems so effortless. I had no idea she had this talent, and in fairness I don't think she realised it either. These two novels are my pension. And I'm only half joking.

She worked in a coathanger factory
Oh yes. For en entire summer, she worked three days on–three days off–three nights on–three nights off at a Mainetti coathanger factory, working amongst noisy heavy machinery that fired red-hot needles. I'm sure there was a reason for the red-hot needles other than simply to motivate the workforce – “Ah, the old carrot-and-red-hot-needles approach” – but it has temporarily slipped from my recollection. Incidentally, I recommend against clicking on the above link for Mainetti; it will simply raise more questions than it answers, such as “How, for fuck sake, is it more than just a hanger? Surely ‘a hanger’ is precisely what it is, no more, no less?” and “What qualifies a hanger as a randy hanger, and for what might such objects be used?”

The 6pm brewski
We had to go to the recycling centre recently as the kitchen surface would no longer support the weight of all the empty Grolsch bottles. I had drunk maybe four of them. That said, it certainly does take the edge off. Oh yes.

She lived in Skye
Oh yes. While I spent my entire conscious life in one little village, Mrs RH, having been born into the Silver City with the Golden Sands – Aberdeen, but don't let on; its nickname is so much prettier – moved about a fair bit, and spent a few years living on the quite astonishingly pretty Isle of Mists. She can count from one to ten in Gaelic and sing songs. In Gaelic, like. I'm not just pointing out that she can sing. Though she does have a beautiful singing voice, it must be said, and plays guitar and violin. And writes songs. Can you blame me for loving this woman?

She once sat on some cakes
Now, you might not think this is worthy of an entry all to itself – and indeed I've had to leave out so many other fascinating facts just so this one can be here – but it is worth it. Y'see, it wasn't just that she sat on some cakes – it was a box of six Waitrose mini Victoria sponges, since you ask – but rather that she was sitting on the sofa already, then sort of jumped up, moved sideways and bounced back down onto the box with a distinct crrrrump sound. We spent the next ten minutes hyperventilating with laughter. Quite what precipitated this quasi-Tourettes leap is now forgotten, but if you ever bring cakes near her, bear in mind that there is the danger of crumpage.

BONUS FACT!
While working in the classical section of HMV Oxford Street, she served Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and, unfortunately, the credit card system decided to do a random check at that point. Asking a moderately major Hollywood star to prove their identity must be a sobering experience, but apparently Mastrantonio took it in good spirits.

So there you have it, folks. For more Jenny-related paraphernalia, go and visit her site. It's at www.ribbledoot.com* and has just been completely redesigned. Over the coming months, creative tutorials, videos and more will be being added, so be sure to bookmark it and visit again soon. As an added incentive, her blog is now password-free and damned funny. See for yourself why people as varied as Dave Stevenson† describe her as “irritatingly gifted”!


* A chewy cookie to the first person who can explain the etymology of this rather odd URL. Jenny, you're not allowed to enter.
† And they don't come much more varied than Dave, as he'd be the first to admit.