Tea for two

You'll notice that most of these posts will involve mention of food or eating. This always happens where two or more Brabys and former Brabys are gathered.

I took Carolyn for afternoon tea on the Sunday to afternoon tea at the Fairmont MacDonald Hotel in Edmonton. Nice.

No breakfast, Markets and Jazz

Carolyn's first day here was a Saturday, so in time honoured tradition, we decided to take her for a slap up Canadian breakfast of eggs, bacon and pancakes at Socrates, our local diner. There's always a bit of a queue, but we were finally next in line to sit down, when the lights all went out. Huge power cut, also taking out some of the traffic lights on the adjacent road. So we got seated, and had a cup of coffee, but electricity was not forthcoming. So we decided to save it for another day and instead were forced to have large danish pastries from our local bakery instead.

We spent the morning wandering round St Albert Farmer's Market, buying up lots of goodies there, and then had a relaxing afternoon at home. In the evening, we went to a jazz concert in Edmonton. It was the start of the anual Jazz Festival and for the first time this year, they put on a free open air concert in one of the parks. We got there in time for the last set which was a guy called Alfie Zapacosta and the Edmonton Jazz Orchestra. They were excellent, playing big band type stuff, and we had a wonderful time sitting in our deck chairs, eating smoked salmon sandwiches and raspberries, listening to the great music. I hope they do it again next year.

















After all that we had drinks over the road with John and Sonja. A great day.

First Visitor of 2009

My sister Carolyn came over at the end of June to stay with me for a week before going on to the Rockies, Vancouver and Seattle, with her boyfriend Alun (who drove over from Seattle and met us in the mountains). It was great to see her, not least because she came bearing gifts of Walkers cheese and onion crisps and Cadburys double deckers. It also gave me the chance to take the week off work and do loads of lovely stuff around Edmonton and St Albert, followed by a weekend in the mountains. Here's a bit of what we got up to...

Tum te Tum....taps fingers on tabletop

Just waiting for Jacqui to post the pics from the rugby to the site, she needs encouragement sometimes.......poking with a sharp stick at others.

To tide you over:

Rugby=good
Friends coming over=good
Jacqui's ability to organise a trip to see Shakespeare in the park=poor-awful

Coming up next Jacqui has another attempt to go see Mr S in the park, and I'm off to see MMA (mixed martial arts) round John's.

Addendum

Lo and behold we have even more stuff on! After man's rugby on Saturday we have friends coming over and I even had the option of watching some man's fisty cuffs too.

Fisty cuffs will have to wait until Sunday when I'm wandering over to John's to watched the edited highlights on his slightly larger but still inferior TV :)

Social Things and Stuff

This weekend we are off to support our adopted country in the mans game of rugby. They are facing the evil that is the US of A in high competition for a spot in the Rugby World Cup 2011. This should be fun.

Weekend after we're going to the horses and a meal and then the week after we're watching Everton v River Plate at the Commonwealth stadium. We are suddenly busy, go us! In there somewhere we have Jacqui's friend Ann over with Gordon and there will no doubt be more mountain related fun. I shall write again when the moons are advantageous.

Weekend Trip and O Canada

This weekend we're off to the mountains with ex-Braby Jacqueline and ex-Braby in waiting Carolyn. There we shall meet the valiant explorer Alan and there will be much rejoicing.

We're quite looking forward to it, it's been a while and it will be good to get away and see the natural history.

Lastly, we are all recovering from late night fireyworks, on Canada day (July 1st) all the cities do something involving gunpowder for the populace to enjoy. BUT!!! .... drama ... not really.. due to our position on the earth it get's dark very late here so the fireworks began at 11:ish and obviously finished later than that. They were impressive in St. Albert where I was stationed and Edmonton where the girls were out gallavanting having failed to see William Shakespeare.

Well pip pip and toodles.