Another year

So today was my birthday. A pleasant - mostly idle - time was had playing with my new toys. As has pretty much always been the way. So amongst the fun stuff the major gift - which wasn't a complete surprise - was a new camera, the Canon IXUS 500. Now what exactly I'm going to do with 5M pixels I don't know but besides that the rest of the camera is very cool. It's small and fast the picture quality seems good - the main thing after all. I'll post some pictures when I've got something interesting to show.

For lunch we went out to The Three Blackbirds in Woodditton. Despite the review they were only serving bar meals. I got the impression they would have opened the restaurant if there had been more people there - but with just the two of us they weren't keen. However the meal I had was definitely a cut above most bar meals (filo pastry with mushroom stroganoff) so it was worth the trip.

We hoped to walk off lunch along the Devil's Dyke - but we couldn't find it. We followed a path  but it stopped at the edge of a plowed field and Joe didn't wan to risk being chased off it by an angry local with a shotgun shouting "Gerrof my laaand!"

Amongst other gifts I got a copy of the increasingly ubiquitous Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - which got a rather mixed review in The Guardian Weekend. The backlash starts here I guess.