catching up........

After last week's post of busy, I appear to be getting ahead of things - somehow!  We managed to get a lot done over the weekend, making it feel a lot longer than just two days. :-)

Had a fun night on Friday at Inferno.  Somehow it wasn't as chavvy as recent visits, almost felt like a goth club again ;-) and a fun range of music was played to bounce round on the dancefloor. 
Still somehow managed to get up fairly early on Saturday, so I got on with sewing my faery ball skirt whilst waiting for Rob to get up.  We were heading into London for Paul Sticks' birthday meal later in the afternoon but part of me wanted to go out earlier and hunt for eggs, despite the fact that I has so much to do for my outfit at home. 

The sun came out and decision made - I needed some fresh air!  It was a lovely springlike day and we managed to get into town with a couple of hours free to hunt for eggs.  Started off in Trafalgar square, following the map and crossing off eggs as we found them, making our way to Covent Garden area.  Here we bumped into stevek , who wasn't on an egg hunt but decided to come along with us anyway, leading us to some he'd found during the week.
After covering as much ground as we could, we headed to Bar Soho to meet with the others, somehow being the first to arrive.  Had a lovely meal at Prix Fixe Brasserie, where the staff did an admirable job in coping with 27 lively goths (in a space booked for 22!).  The plan was to head to the Comedy Store (or similar) after the meal, however Rob wasn't too enthusiastic due to the amount I've been making him spend on going out recently :-)  So instead, we said our farewells and headed down towards Piccadilly/Green Park to get home. 
Realised en-route that we could still hunt eggs, even at night! :-)  Remembering also that the clue for Where's Wally Egg that day was "Europe's largest bookstore", just as we were passing Waterstones Piccadilly.  so we found Wally, then a few more in the area (chatting to some lovely friendly egg hunters on the way) and then headed home.

Somehow it was still early, so we settled down to watch a bad film on telly - Adrift - and I got on with my sewing.  By some further miracle, I finished the overskirt that evening. :-)

Sunday, we had to get up fairly early to head across London to Rob's brothers' house for his birthday.  The weather was awful but they'd decided to make a Sunday lunch in the house instead of going out. 
In addition to us handing over presents, Gary had a surprise for us too - a copy of the Sutton Guardian, with us on the front page!


Gary happens to be Editor of their local newspaper and when he found out that they were covering the Steampunk Convivial last week, and that his brother was attending, he used his "editorial influence" to ensure a big front page pic.
quite bizarre to think that our faces are beaming out of newstands all over a South London borough this week. ;-)

Yesterday, with sewing all done for the ball, I finally had a chance to try on my outfit all together.  I had planned to add extra ivy and flowers etc as adornments, however its still not in my nature to do that (once something is completed, I am always at pains to add anything else to it!), so we decided it looked suitably faery-like as it is.  Besides, the heavy horned headress and falls definatly finished off the look and makes it faery rather than neo-victorian. :-)

So that's work done for this week!  Other than millions of egg photos to sort through (and another 150 to find!)

Curse of the holiday strikes again!!!

and in other news - can I ever organise a holiday and have NOTHING to worry about?

Two months to go until our big road trip round Scotland and we've come up with what could be a massive hurdle - part of the route we need to take is closed due to landslide with an 140 mile detour!
I originally heard about this at Christmas, landslide on the A890 at Stromeferry, road closed due to reopen end of Feb.  With some slight anxiety, I've been keeping track of any updates and its starting to look more ominous.
Reopening date keeps getting put back, lots of politics about the dangers of the road in question and a potential £80 million bill to rectify it properly - how would Scotland pay for that, if they had the independance they long for, i wonder! - and now the latest news is that the road is closed "indefinately"

In an added touch of irony, they are using the Glenelg ferry as an emergency measure for local residents, which is what we were thinking of taking to go across to Skye and that has run aground too!

If this road doesn't re-open, it is a major blow to our trip, as the detour not only retraces our steps and adds an extra 140 miles to a day which was supposed to be more restful, after the long journey to Scotland; it also cuts out a large chunk of the coastal route - the reason why we're doing this trip. :-(

We booked all our accommodation early for good reason, to get the best quality at the lowest possible budget but now I'm going to have to wonder about a contingency plan.  If we leave it too close to the date, it might be tricky to get affordable, decent accommodation and I really don't want to cancel any I've booked, as I'm so happy with all my choices.
Even considered getting a ferry from Skye over to the Isle of Lewis and then another to Ullapool, but that adds at least another £100 to our budget and to be honest, Lewis doesn't really appeal (other than the Callanish standing stones, the island itself just looks a bit flat and windswept) AND we'd still miss the coastal route we wanted to take.

This seems to be part of a pattern - petrol strikes, foot + mouth disease, ash clouds, train crashes and now landslides - all things that seem to occur in the run up (or during!) any holiday I try to arrange!