Karen & Robert Killington

Snow in Crawley

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:57:45 -0800

Some photos I took on Wednesday while I was out walking in the snow.

Smudge

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:04:00 -0700

The last picture of Smudge is the one with the black border. She died on Wednesday 7 October 2009 aged 18 years 6 months.

The second photo was taken some time ago when she was enjoying licking out a yoghurt pot - shows doesn't it?

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Studio Theatre: Preparing for Oh, What a Lovely War!

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 05:56:19 -0700

Here's an interesting invite for you if you live in the right part of Devon:

Oh, What a Lovely War!

This is our major production for the winter and we now need to sell as many tickets as possible for three performances at the Landmark Theatre on:

The photos are up in the theatre and going up in shops and libraries; the banners are up at the Wheel, outside Somerfield and in Barnstaple; a mailshot is going out to theatre-goers; the dates are in a number of online diaries on various web sites; posters and flyers are going into schools; publicity material has been sent to the local press . . .

. . . but we need to do more to fill the theatre.

Please tell your family, friends, colleagues, clubs and societies . . . you can send refer them to studiotheatreonline.org.uk or we have supplies of posers and flyers available to put up on noticeboards and in windows.

We'd be grateful for any help you can give.

If you can distribute posters and flyers, please email info@studiotheatreonline.org.uk or call Robert Zarywacz on 07971 176044.

For the latest Studio Theatre news visit www.studiotheatreonline.org.uk.

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Smudge Hiding under my chair

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 08:19:00 -0700

I've been playing with the camera in my iPhone and an app called Best Camera to manipulate the pictures I take.

In this one I've made the image black and white and added a vignette.

What do you think? Let me know by leaving a comment below...

Thanks.

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Learning German (and the Power of Twitter)

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 12:23:37 -0700

I've been slowly learning German over the past few years using all manner of audio courses, getting German magazines to read, etc. Progress has been slowwwwwww. So I thought it would be good to find a German tutor to help. All my searches found no one locally that does German tuition.

I even took to following people that posted in German on Twitter. Sometimes I understood the Tweet, but mostly I didn't

Then, I saw the German Tutor on Twitter and followed them. A little while ago, in a reckless move, or so I thought, I replied in German to one of her tweets. And got a reply!! We had a Twitter chat, and Angelika agreed to ask around to see whether she could find a German tutor in my area. A few days later she reported that she had found not one German tutor that could help. :-(

We had a chat and agreed that we'd have a chat on Skype and if that worked we would try German tuition via Skype! Isn't technology wonderful?

So the day came, Angelika contacted me on Skype and put my meagre German to the test

Angelika obviously thought I had potential so we agreed a schedule of one hour a week on Skype.

Yesterday, Friday 2 October 2009, was the first of these sessions. Was I nervous? Not sure now as we had a couple of technical glitches that we had to address, but after that everything went well and the hour flew by. I think I learned something. I certainly had fun. And Angelika has found a new way of giving German lessons!

So, if you want to learn German and can't find a tutor locally, look out for the German_Tutor on Twitter or visit her website.

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final day of the staycation

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:19:00 -0700

We rounded off the week with another train trip - to Portsmouth this time. This was quicker than getting to Rye. Unfortunately the fine weather deserted us and we arrived to a steady drizzle that got stronger! After what seemed like miles we found the Tourist Office which was right by the Historic Dockyard. The Georgian Tearooms in the Dockyard proved a good choice for lunch (yes food again) and produced the best chocolate cake I can ever remember having (except for my mother's recipe but she never bakes that any more!). The rest of the Dockyard proved a disappointment though - none of the museums were free admission and ticket prices seemed high. Also the Mary Rose Ship hall which I would have loved to see was closed and is not reopening until 2012. So we just looked at the Victory from the outside! Maybe it was the weather or the sense the holiday was coming to an end, but this was definitely the gloomiest day! However the discovery of a Cadbury outlet shop in Gunwharf Quay restored our spirits!

You can see the photos Flickr

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Staycation trip 4

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:07:00 -0700

Our fourth excursion saw us going to Rye, on the train to save Robert having to drive. It is a nice journey - down to Brighton and then along the coast via Hastings but takes a while. Rye is gorgeous but the streets aren't good if you are wearing heels - lots of hills and cobbles. We were surprised to see how many cafes and shops were closed given it is still September, but we were able to find a little cafe for lunch and thought of Sally B (see the day 2 post) as we had a huge and delicious cupcake each for dessert! We then had a wander round some of the old streets, past the Mermaid and under the one surviving city gate and had a look at the old cannons pointing out across the marshes. The Arts Festival was on so many of the houses had pictures and sculptures on display and I bought some old china in a lovely shop. The time just seemed to fly by as we pottered around not doing very much really but just enjoying the time off - after another pit stop for a teacake (all these posts seem to be obsessed with food!) we realised we had been there four hours and needed to get home before our cats thought we had deserted them! Lovely weather, warm sunshine - nice day.

You can view the photos on Flicker

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Tweetie's adventures at Leeds Castle

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:40:08 -0700

Here's the rest of the photos from Tweetie's adventures at Leeds Castle.

See the full gallery on posterous

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Tweetie goes to Leeds Castle

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:17:00 -0700

Audio File attached
Mon Sep 21 18:15:09 BST 2009

(1287 KB)
Listen on posterous

The link for NiftyKnits is www.niftyknits.co.uk

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Alzheimer's Society Walk, Tilgate Park, Crawley

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 08:18:00 -0700

It's been a quiet day for us today. We didn't go far - just a ten minute drive to the Tilgate Park.

Expecting the event to be bigger than it was we parked near the Crawley Amateur Radio Club and walked to the start, which wasn't the easiest thing to find! However, find it we did. We had a pleasant walk taking the longer of the two routes on offer and saw parts of Tilgate Park that we didn't know existed. The photo of Karen was taken on the last part of the walk as we headed for the finish.

The weather was sunny and quite warm. No need for us to wear coats! The group from KPMG that did the walk raised over £100 for the Society. All in all a good day!

We then headed for lunch - of which I will spare you the details - feeling virtuous for all the walking we had done. And then home for a relaxing afternoon sitting in the conservatory listening to the John Le Carré play on Radio 4 and reading.

More tomorrow, perhaps?

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Staycation day 2

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 12:45:00 -0700

I think there's a theme developing here... Can you guess what it is yet?

Anyway, we went to Ashford yesterday, mainly to attend the Twitter Lunch at the Hoodeners Horse in Great Chart just outside Ashford. We included a visit to the Outlet Village to see what we could find at good prices. We weren't disappointed.

Now back to the theme. The Twitter Lunch was organised by Andy who runs the Hoodeners Horse. As a special treat for all those attending Andy had asked Sally to provide some cup cakes. That's what the photo is of - fantastic cupcakes.

Now you know where to go if you want cupcakes.

Now I can't finish without mentioning NiftyKnits who has made a Twitter key ring. I'll do a photo of it and post it later, but for now you can get your own Twitter Key Ring from NiftyKnits website.

We're doing a charity walk tomorrow so I'll try to post some pictures of that tomorrow - make a change from pictures of food.

Hope I haven't made you hungry.

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The first day of our 'staycation'

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:43:48 -0700

Today is the start of our staycation.

We went to London and visited the Tate Modern, walked across the Millenium Bridge, and visited the National Portrait Gallery. Unfortunately the weather was not as bright and sunny as we'd hoped for. So the highlight of the day was probably the lunch we had a the Tate Modern Café - don't dribble on your keyboard!

See the full gallery on posterous

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Shoreham Air Show

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 13:18:00 -0700

See the full gallery on posterous

This was the view from the RAFA control room at Shoreham Air Show.

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Woohoo! Just extended my wireless network...

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:27:15 -0700

Here I am sitting in the conservatory with a fantastic Wifi signal courtesy of an Airport Express that I set up in five minutes earlier this evening.

Normally I'd be struggling to get a signal for my router's wifi while sitting here. I decided that with the warm weather it would be good to sit in the conservatory in the afternoon/evening to work as it will be cooler than in my study. I've now got my printer connected to the network and not to a single computer so I can print from anywhere that I can get onto my network.

Now this might not appear to be a very exciting event but the ease of setting up the Apple Airport Extreme in network extension mode was so brilliant I'm wondering why I waited so long!!

I expect you all got here ages before I did, but at least I got here!! :-)

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Test to see how tags work

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:49:50 -0700

This is just a test to see whether this works and puts in tags for my alternate site on Posterous. Please ignore. Move along now, nothing to see...

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