Baby Monitor Talk

This video was posted by Judy of http://itsjudytime.com on her facebook page https://www.facebook.com/itsjudytime on August 21st, 2015. The little girls are identical twins, born on March 7th 2014.

Baby Monitor talk
I rarely talk with the girls through the baby monitor. But when I do, this usually happens.
Posted by Itsjudytime on Friday, 21 August 2015

All The Good Times

I was pretty excited to finish my latest job (a Discovery series called 'How Do They Do It?') - and kept telling people 'I have next week off!'. Phil helpfully pointed out that I wasn't so much 'off' as 'unemployed'. Thanks Phil. I'm going to start calling it 'annual leave' as this apparently sounds better.

The week off was indeed pretty awesome. I spent five hours on a Monday afternoon in the piano rooms with Ben and Emily (check out my latest song that they kindly agreed to sing for me - with only slightly dodgy sound quality) during which we learnt all the harmonies to the Songs For A New World Opening, failed to do the revue version justice and Phil flat out refused to sing Nigel's part for some reason!

Later in the week there was a lovely afternoon with Sonya and also running round Regents' Park with Fiona and her aunt. On Friday there was an interlude during which Tristan and Rosie and I went for a nice afternoon at the Science Museum and ended up rummaging through bags of cafeteria rubbish with Chads Chadwick. I think it was supposed to be art. Mostly it was coffee cups, paper towels and bits of slimy food. The rubbish sorting team had previously found exciting bits of thrown out stuff such as some large red and white blood cells and two small plastic dragons. We failed to find anything exciting, although yelling 'where are my dragons?' did give the whole thing a dramatic Game of Thrones vibe so there's that.

On Saturday I went to the magical but slightly surreal wedding of 'Anna and Josh' - who had been the lead characters in 'The Dark Side' back in 2010 when she was in her first term at Imperial. I had been quite confused at the time when the actors playing the romantic leads actually got together (a fact I think I denied for some time in the face of the obvious) and the wedding and reception in Nottinghamshire was a continuation of this. I'm still not entirely sure what is real. There were flowers in her hair and huge piles of structurally unstable chocolate cake and the vicar in the church started the sermon by asking them the difference between a mixture and a compound. Did that really happen? I hope so because it was brilliant. There was some confusion between the bride and groom before the bride managed to produce a text-book answer and the vicar (an endearingly awkward young lady) then went on to liken marriage to turning from a mixture to a compound, bound "not by covalent or ionic bonds, but by the bond of love". She also explained that in any relationship it is important to give, "much like sodium gives up its outer electrons to chlorine" and ended with "Love, like the nucleus, is at the centre of all things". I was in tears in the back row - though that may also have been due to the coughing fit during the vows. Oops.

I'm currently in Mumbai airport with my mum and brother - all three of us sitting in a row with our laptops out like the cool kids we are. They overbooked our flight to Hyderabad so we have a three hour wait until the next one which my mum wasn't very impressed by but hey, free wifi!

It has been SO nice lounging around in Mumbai. And eating. There was a lot of eating. Many and various curries mainly - mmmmm. And we went shopping in Westside (*throws 'W' gang side*) which is lucky as I didn't pack that many clothes - I mainly plan to buy them all! We have three second-cousins who we've never met before (twin boys aged 8 and their older brother Steven who's 11) so that was really nice too - if somewhat exhausting. The twins can make even doing a puzzle seem like chaos with pieces flying everywhere and far more shouting than seems necessary!

We also went for a buffet at 'Mainland China' which was awesomely swanky. The starters were mostly just delicious dimsum and there was an entire buffet of dessert which I didn't notice until the end or I'd have left more room! I managed to fit in some honey noodles with butterscotch and chocolate ice-cream and chocolate sauce though. It's a hard life.

My great aunt, Aruna-nayanamma, had booked the table for us and managed to lie to the restaurant while doing so. "They asked if it was anyone's birthday, so I said yes, I don't know why!". We figured someone would have to pretend it was their birthday but no-one was very keen. Especially not after a birthday on a nearby table turned out to involve a man with a guitar and lots of singing and clapping. My aunt tried to target the youngest person at the table, her grandson Steven, who had been sitting quietly minding his own noodles. "Why don't you just say it's your birthday, ok? You don't need to be embarassed." Steven was unimpressed - "No! Why don't you say it's yours!".

Aruna-nayanamma relented with "Fine, I'll just say the person who's birthday it is didn't come." Soon enough the chap came over to check and asked who's birthday it was. My aunt was barely halfway through her explanation of the birthday-boy's no-show before Steven piped up out of nowhere "It's her birthday, she's just embarrassed!". There wasn't much Aruna-nayanamma could say to that - and though she tried to plead with them - "Do you really have to sing??" there was indeed guitaring and singing and clapping and a slice of cake with a candle. The real bonus however, was when they inexplicably presented us with a free bottle of champagne at the end of the meal! It was quite nice too. And the moral of the story is... 'lying will get you free champagne'. Or is it 'Don't try to mess with your grandson or it could backfire'? Or maybe 'Don't pretend it's your birthday unless you're happy to sit through embarrassing singing".

Right, that's the gist of the last week and a half. There was also the three year gap in blog posts before this but I'm just going to ignore that.

My New Bohemian Pad

So in case you didn't guess (or are Ravi) I went for Option B and last night finally moved in properly. I lugged a ridiculous amount of stuff from London and my back did not thank me for it. However once I got here it was wonderful - I've completely failed to unpack anything except the bed clothes and a toothbrush!

I arrived late on Sunday and pestered the lovely Craig until he told me how to make the internet work, how to walk to the BBC offices and lent me a dust cloth since the landlord had not unexpectedly failed to clean the room. He also gave me chocolate which contributed significantly to the happiness.

This morning I woke up, discovered that we have a cat (It's very beautiful. I like cats. Just not in a look-at-this-cute-youtube-clip-of-a-kitten-!-! way), checked out the kitchen facilities and set off for work! This mostly involves walking right through Moss Side but, er, don't tell Angie. ¬_¬

This house is amazing. It's got wooden floors, except for on the stairs where the worn edges of the carpet are covered over with gaffa tape, the hall is impractically thin but adorned with various bits of art, postcards and letters, the desk lamp in my room is broken and the bedroom lamp is hanging by the wires from the wall, the curtains are thin so I've hung a spare duvet I found across them, the blind for the skylight above the bed is sellotaped to the wall, there're no drawers in my room, I'm sleeping under the eaves with an old TV and there's a note written directly onto the wall in the kitchen that says "Select object. Look for use for object. If no use can be found, object is art."

In short, I love this house!

Please choose one of the following options...

Option A

So my room hunt started with a house in Rusholme. Except it turned out not to really be in Rusholme but in Moss Side. Not knowing much about Manchester, I asked various people for advice. The general reply? 'Stay out of Moss Side, you will die'. So off I went to see the room in Moss Side (hey, it was cheap!) with a rather nervous Pete (my dad's helpful friend) in tow. My first thought was that Angie would not approve of the road I had to go down as it was next to a park and looked like it would probably be dark and scary. What Angie would think is playing a large part in my room-hunting.

The house was narrow and dingy. The smaller single bedroom turned out to be larger than my London room and (again similar to my London room) filled with such a large bed that half of the room was inaccessible. The guy who was living there already said it wasn't a very bad area and that he'd never had any trouble. Then again he was big and bald and tough looking. :S

Option B

The second house wass 15 minutes away just outside of the official boundary of 'Moss Side'. Despite Sarah Ryan's sister's description of Rusholme ("Rusholme is curry mile...so it's generally student halls or cheap quite run down terraces. Lots of muggings etc. It's prob not horrific but i wouldn't pick it unless i was skint") it looked really nice. Plus curry, that's good right? And I am totally skint. So er, yeah, lovely tree lined road and it was all looking suburban and nice.

I was shown around the house by current flatmate Abby. The first room I passed in the narrow hall had a bunk bed in it. Awesome. Well, not so much a bed that was a bunk but a bed that was on a raised platform filling half the room with a desk underneath. It turns out the landlord is some crazy DIY guy who occasionally knocks down walls unexpectedly and things like that. I'm assuming this is why all the bedrooms are split level with a smaller lower desk area and a higher platform with a mattress, accessible by some steep steps. The sleeping area in the room I was viewing was right up under the eaves with a little sky light directly above and a broken TV in the corner. It's basically like a crazy tree house bedroom.

Downstairs was a little kitchen-dining space and a dark sitting room with an extra mattress in. Dave (the guy with the bunkbed) is apparently an artist so there are various pictures around. Final flatmate Craig turned up smoking a cigarette (Angie would disapprove!) and advised on the easiest ways to get anywhere, the consensus being biking or walking are both quicker than buses! So to summarise, it was crazy, filled with bohemians, super cheap and within walking distance of work.

Option C

We wandered through Manchester for half an hour looking for the third place, a double bedroom in a studenty house in Fallowfield. The girls living there were very friendly and looking for someone to fill the place of a student who had gone home for the summer. They had two adorable young cats and it was a spacious and clean house on three levels, the sort that would make a good family home. Angie would approve! It was miles cheaper than London but still out of my price range.




I know I shoulda looked at more than three places, but I was kinda in love already. Guess which one I took? :)

Onwards and Northwards

The North, Day 1.

Explorers log, Northern outpost. Yesterday I ventured beyond the known bounds of civilisation into a land known only as 'The North'. I boarded a train at Euston station and a few minutes' travel later it was grey and raining. Just as reports had suggested, the North is a cold cold place.

My destination was Manchester, my mission to find somewhere to live before starting a new job in two days time. My main objectives were to find somewhere in Manchester that I could live without getting mugged and to subsequently learn to live without Angie's amazing cooking. Also, if I got mugged, Angie would be really cross and also Phil would force me to stay in London forever after.

Fortunately it turns out Manchester is made of lollipops and rainbows. I was met at the station by my dad's friend Pete with whom I am staying for the week. He handed me a bus pass for the week, showed me how to get the bus from my new office back to his sister's house where I have a lovely bed in the spare room and his sister Pat cooked us dinner!

Not only that but he even took me all around Manchester (mostly by foot, partly by bus) to view various rooms that I'd found on spareroom.co.uk. We also managed not to get mugged which was a total bonus.

In the next post, look forward to the excitement of reading about the three fantabulous properties I viewed yesterday!

Over and out.

Exhaustion and Elation

I can't believe it's over.

Now what?!?

These pictures are gorgeous though...

I'll just gaze at them for a while...

My cast are so pretty!

Shiny shiny goodness :D

One month to go...

So everything has settled down. We've lost several cast members (some minions and also sadly some quite good people who I couldn't give good enough parts to) but have been left with a good number of lovely 'tekkors' whose job it is to wander round the set building things of which they do a pretty convincing job. We've rehearsed most of the first act and some of the second and have had our first production meeting!

Having two directors is proving invaluable in rehearsals, especially when I occasionally turn up having not been home the previous night. Ahem. I have learnt my lesson and will endavour to be on top form for all future rehearsals! Nigel is providing some great improv games and scenarios, helping the actors really work out what their characters are beyond just the written lines. I'm busy being picky about lines and blocking and the cast are busy being generally awesome. I'm looking forward to getting everyone off book though and so have set a deadline for line-learning of a week today!

Adam, the producer, organised the first production meeting and seems to have found almost all the actual minions and heads-of-department needed to actually run the show. Christine is doing costumes which is lovely, Simon got roped back in to do publicity as well as act and die horribly on stage, and apparently there are several freshers who we're keen to get involved as well. We need to draw as many new people as we can into our DramSoc web of doom! Come to the dark side, we've got cookies, etc.

On your right you will see a preliminary set design Henry has just sent me and which I hope he won't mind me posting here. Ah well, he'll probably never find out. ¬_¬ It's all very pretty anyway. Apart from it will also have set dressing. And stairs I hope, otherwise that could be tricky. And it won't be green and brick coloured. But apart from that - ooh look isn't it pretty! :) Am very excited. Not as excited as Henry though, he's going a bit crazy trying to work out how much crazy stuff he can fit into the set. Is quite alarming! I shall have to meet up with him soon and find out more of his crazy crazy plans...