Ladybugs at the Ladybugs' Picnic

We went to Cambridge this weekend to visit people from Devon. Yet if we want to visit people from Norwich we have to go to Devon and if we want to visit people from Cambridge we have to go to Greenland - it's all a bit odd.

Anyways we went to Ed and Lou's joint birthday bash and also met up with our friend Rachel. There was a brake dancing six year old named Barnaby. We met some very nice people at the party and some not so nice like one journalist who due to her own intoxication misunderstood me and thought I owned my own paper, I said no (she was disappointed) but I am a writer, I said no I'm not published (she was disenchanted) but I was on the UEA Masters course, she hadn’t seemed to known of it (she was dissatisfied) but I am published with some of my short stories, no I was published by university presses (she was displeased), she stopped talking to me – I was dissed. She was one of those people that name dropped and did anything to try and work in to a conversation who she had met. “Speaking of questions I’ve interviewed Jeremy Paxton.” “Speaking of the Scottish I’ve interviewed Lulu.” “Speaking of sausages I’ve interviewed Germaine Greer.” I much prefer people that are interesting because of who they are not who they’ve talked to. And she had big teeth. Other than that the party was a success and Chris and I ate too many sweets and stayed the night.

Next morning was very nice as well; we all just took it easy and read film quizzes and took a wander down to the mall. Then Chris and I boarded a train to Ely where with my new graduation gift from Chris we had the loveliest picnic. We sat by the cathedral looking at the horses (which I got to pet the mummy and the baby Shire horses) and the infamous stiff legged sheep of Ely. We had grape juice and Battenberg and sandwiches and fruit (not in that order). The whole time we were being besieged by bushy barnabees – ladybirds – ladybugs (swimming pools – movie stars – never mind.) Yes ladybugs as I would say in my native tongue, there were tons of them; and before you ask they were of the native red variety. Well it made me remember a song from my childhood about one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, ladybugs came to the ladybugs picnic. You might of hear me rant about the fact that is you wish to purchase ladybugs as a natural deterrent of garden pests they cost 50 pence (roughly one US dollar) each! Well needless to say Chris and I went on the great ladybug hunt of 2005. We did indeed get 12 ladybugs to our ladybug picnic and brought them safely home to our garden in our picnic basket; where they are now happily munching away on our garden pests.






The next exciting issue of blog I should cover such things as mumbling old men of Norwich, lasers, and bread.