Well, I found the camera, and tried to upload the photos, then the battery was flat! So after charging here we are. A few pics of the move attached and one of the dogs making themselves at home on the sofa.

A busy weekend, with appalling weather on Sunday, including torrential rain and an impressive thunderstorm. Saturday was our 11th wedding anniversary. We exchanged cards, and Andrew bought me a cyclamen and a garden gnome with an illuminated lantern. He's now sitting very proudly under the bird table in the back garden.

On Saturday evening, we visited our nearest cinema at Wyeside Arts Centre to see the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace. It's a tiny, friendly little place, with the civilised habit of allowing customers to take drinks from the bar into the screening, so Andrew enjoyed a pint of Guinness while watching the film. Because it's so small, nearly everyone in the audience seemed to know each other - they even had the old custom of selling icecream at the front during the interval before the big film. What to say about the film? Clearly the influence of the Bourne films has been felt - there's a rather frenetic quality about it. Daniel Craig is excellent, and very fit in both senses of the word. Judi Dench is glorious as M, and their dialogue really crackles - much more sparky and engaging than his dialogue with the rather wooden female eyecandy who appears on the posters. A smaller role for another British actress is a little better - not only does she get to shag Daniel Craig (well, it'd be rude not to) but he then supplies her with a party dress - my kind of guy. I'd read about the Prada dress in question and although it was attractive, it didn't have the "Wow" factor i'd hoped for.

Afterwards, we came home for an Indian takeaway . On Sunday, we decided to do a supermarket run over to Hereford. The Tesco there is awful - one of the most soul destroying shops I can remember. It was freezing cold, dark and gloomy and crowded with other miserable shoppers. Although we can buy our fresh meat, fish, veg, eggs and cheese here, we'll still need to do some sort of supermarket sweep for stuff like baked beans. We may need to think about either Merthyr or Brecon.

We've put up the bird food in the back garden, and we have a great range of birds here. There are masses of long tailed tits, blue tits and coal tits, as well as our friendly resident robin. We've seen a heron on the river, heard an owl this morning when we took the dogs out in the dark and yesterday I saw a bullfinch in the trees at the end of the garden. As I'm writing this, one of the local squirrels is hurtling around the garden. Attempted photo attached - I need to think about and practice taking shots of birds through glass.