On the way to the storage unit on Sunday, we heard this playing on the radio.  I sat around in the car waiting to hear to the end of it, although I'd already looked it up on the Blackberry.  Apparently the version we heard was actually the original BBC version read by Penelope Keith and Timothy Bateson.

Adds to my collection of Twelve Days of Christmas variations :)

---

"And yet another partridge in a pear tree"

A Cautionary Tale for Christmas Showing that it is Better to Give than to Receive

by
Brian Sibley

My very dearest Algy,

How can I begin to thank you for your charming Christmas gift? What luxury! My very own pear tree, with that dear little pheasant in it - or is it supposed to be a partridge? You really are a foolish boy! Actually, the birdie isn't wildly attractive, but the pear tree should be lovely - when pears are in season again.

Thank you, my darling.

All my love - forever.

Your ownest affectionate,

Cynthia



My dearest Algy,

You are quite impossible, my love. The turtle doves are adorable! They're already cooing away like anything; and, I must say, their amorous behavior leaves very little to the imagination. But I expect they will settle down in time.

Thank you, my sweeting.

Affectionately yours,

Cynthia

PS: I almost forgot to thank you for the second partridge-in-pear-tree thing: it balances up the other side of the fireplace so nicely.



Dearest Algernon,

You know, poppet, you are simply going too, too far! Your latest gift has just been delivered: what an imaginative boy you are to think of sending me something as unusual as three French hens.

I'm only sorry that I hadn't told you that I am allergic to eggs. Never mind I can always sell some to the neighbours who, incidentally, have been much entertained by the sight of the postman struggling along each morning with the pear trees.

Much love,

Cynthia



Dear Algernon,

I suppose it's silly of me, but I am seriously beginning to wonder whether you aren't trying to get me to start an aviary. Your four 'colly birds' have just arrived and could, more aptly, be described as 'call-y birds', since that is what they seem to do best! Perhaps you could let me know whether colly birds are in the laying business or whether they are intended for human consumption; Mrs Beeton is, I find, surprisingly silent on the matter.

I can honestly say, Algernon, that I'd always thought birds were rather pleasant little creatures,
until you gave me this opportunity of observing them at such close quarters.

Love,

Cynthia

PS: I do hope you got a reasonable discount on all the pear trees.



Algernon,

Thank you for your latest gift of five curtain rings, a somewhat curious present but, nevertheless, a refreshing change from all those very pretty, but somewhat noisy, birds you will keep sending me.

I doubt if I should have bought so large a turkey for Christmas had I known what you had in mind. Could we ease up a bit on the fowl, do you think?

Cordially,

Cynthia



Dear Algernon Fotherington-Smythe,

I see we are back with the birds again! Your six geese a-laying have just arrived, and are happily doing so for all they're worth. I rather thought I'd mentioned to you how it was with me and eggs...

Thank you for putting me right about the curtain rings - I never could tell the difference between brass and gold. Of course, I am very pleased that you should have thought of sending me another five, just so that I have one for every finger. But as I now have more hens, doves and partridges than I rightly know how to cope with, and as they aren't too fussy about personal hygiene, I seldom seem to have my hands out of a bucket of water long enough to try them on! Yours, Cynthia B



Dear Mr Fotherington-Smythe,

I have just succeeded in accommodating your seven swans a-swimming in my bath - which was no mean achievement when one considers the number of pear trees on the landing! Regrettably, the geese got to the rings before I could, so that's probably the last we've seen of them - would I could say the same for the geese! I must now ask you to desist from sending me any more of these well-intentioned but slightly impracticable gifts.

Cynthia Bracegirdle

PS: I hadn't realised just how messy moulting partridges can be, or how badly they seem to get on in captivity with other birds.



Mr Fotherington-Smythe,

Fresh milk is one thing, eight enormous Friesians in the drawing room is something else altogether!

True, the milkmaids have a certain rustic charm, but you wouldn't believe how much they eat. You may also care to note that my bath has only so much room in it for swans with a seemingly insatiable urge to be a-swimming, and it will definitely not hold fourteen of them! Take that from one who has tried!

Please call a halt to this absurd behavior.

Miss Cynthia Bracegirdle



Mr Smythe!

Thanks to your weird sense of humor, my house is now in utter chaos! As if it wasn't bad enough having sixteen cows producing milk by the gallon, we now have nine 'ladies' - as you amusingly call them - dancing here, there and everywhere, one of whom seems to be working out a somewhat extraordinary routine involving several doves and a goose!

The most charitable view I can take of your actions is that you are out of your tiny mind.

Enough's enough!

PACK IT IN!!

Miss C Bracegirdle

PS: Fortunately, one of the partridges has just drowned itself in a bucket of milk.



Unspeakable wretch!

Your misguided generosity has apparently now led you to suppose that I could find some use for ten Lords a-leaping. They might lend a hand with cleaning up all the rancid milk and bird-lime - if they'd only stop leaping around after the dancing girls for five minutes!

I understand the entire neighborhood is now up in arms about it all and the Residents' Association has sent a petition to the local Member of Parliament.

Thumping on the front door at this precise moment are no less that two dozen representatives from various government bodies and from the Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to hens, doves, geese, swans, cows, partridges and, for all I know, pear trees! And the bizarre inter-breeding amongst the birds is to be the subject of an article by a leading ornithologist in the next issue of Bird Monthly!

The recent outbreaks of crop-blight, fowl-pest and foot-and-mouth disease have now reached epidemic proportions; and if the antics I witnessed behind the pear trees this afternoon are anything to go by, several of the milkmaids should soon find themselves in, what polite society calls, an interesting condition.

For your information, I have now reached the end of my tether - which is more than can be said for those damn cows of yours!

C Bracegirdle (Miss)



CRETINOUS TOAD!!

Have you got even the remotest idea what eleven pipers piping sounds like at two o'clock in the morning? Of course, it only adds very slightly to the hideous cacophony of noise that I must now daily endure. I swear there's more mooing, cooing, honking, clucking and calling here than in the zoological gardens. If there were any room left, I might seriously consider opening the place to the public.

Your latest shipment of lords, ladies and livestock is now settled into the furore and by the same post came received a letter advising of a visit which the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries intends to make this afternoon - supposing he can get in the door that is!

One good thing at least is that the latest influx of birds have put the cows off giving milk; I can hear them now - uprooting the pear trees in the orchard I once called a living room!

My landlord has taken out an eviction order against me, as he claims, somewhat surprisingly, that the terms of my lease do not cover utilisation of the premises as a menagerie, dancing school, smallholding or annex of the House of Lords.

C B

PS: Please be advised that all future correspondence between us will be handled by my solicitors, Messrs Grabble, Twister and Fleecem.



Graball, Twister and Fleecem
Chancey Chambers
Suet-under-Writ
(Off the Eastbourne Road)
Sussex

Dear Mr Smith,

Re: Miss Cynthia Bracegirdle, deceased

We are the executors of the estate of the above-named deceased, and are writing to acknowledge receipt of your recent delivery of twelve drummers drumming.

You will no doubt be distressed to learn that, shortly after the arrival of these gentlemen, our client, in what must be described as a somewhat deranged state of mind, travelled to Eastbourne and threw herself off the top of Beachy Head.

Before taking this step, however, she left instructions with ourselves for the adding of a codicil to her Last Will and Testament, under which you become her sole beneficiary and legatee.

I am, therefore, arranging for the following items to be delivered to you later this day:

12 drummers drumming
22 pipers piping
30 lords a-leaping
36 ladies dancing
40 maids a-milking
42 swans a-swimming
42 geese a-laying
40 gold rings
36 colly birds
30 French hens
22 turtle doves
and 11 partridges with 12 accompanying pear trees.

With our sincere congratulations on your inheritance and assuring you of our best attention at all times,

Yours faithfully,

Graball, Twister and Fleecem

---

From Brian Sibley's actual home page!

Well I didn't think I'd do any good but for some weird reason I came third in our first game and first in our second game!! I mean seriously! This is me we're talking about.. someone who can't even find the lounge room door key to go out and turn the Christmas lights on outside.  But me doing semi ok at laser zone???  Inconceivable!!

Then after that everyone came back here for eating and drinking and being merry and it was all very fun, but I still can't find that door key which leads to alcohol crash and I just want to go to bed now and work sucks and I can't make things work and CH made some stuff work but I don't know if the rest of it is working and if it's not I'm going to be very depressed tomorrow because this was supposed to be working yesterday but I'm epic fail and it was so stressful getting home from work so late and then having to clean the house and then go shopping but I think I slept mostly ok certainly better than the night before last but I still don't want to go to work tomorrow and I'll have to copy logs and chase people and it's making me depressed just thinking about it and I'm rather thirsty and the place is a little bit of a mess from having lots of people over but not too much cause we used paper plates etc but even so it's messy and I think I might just go to bed soon...

Had an absolutely crap night sleep last night.  A decent chunk of it stressing about on-call and work, and the rest feeling either too hot or too cold, with horribly itchy skin. 

So this morning I felt like a complete zombie :(

Not helped by working a ten hour, stressful day at work :(

Can I go home now?

My day between 10am and 4pm went something like this:

* drop off boxes at Di's
* drop off electric screwdriver at Damien's
* head for Tuggers to drop off trailer
* organise trailer at storage unit
* get stressed out cause Potty said they were doing something else and unable to help
* get stressed out when they change their plans so they can come help us
* drop off trailer at Libby's
* come back to storage unit and load up car and trailer with boxes, wardrobe and shelves
* stop twice on the Barton Highway because the wardrobe was threating to fall apart and blow bits of wood all over the highway
* get home and unload trailer
* have a nice lunch (but slightly rushed) with Scott and Kerry of veggie hot dogs
* head into work to kick broken proxy servers
* drop trailer back at storage place
* went shopping for beer for bbq tonight and a birthday present
* come home

Yup, we were on the go pretty much nonstop for six hours :(

After we got home I did actually manage to tidy up the spare room downstairs.  I didn't really do any unpacking, just rearranged the boxes and the crap, and stacked everything neatly along the walls instead of haphazardly in the middle of the floor.  The room actually looks like a nice room to be in now which makes me feel good.  Stu was pretty impressed too.  Then I cooled off by scooping crud out of the puddle with the net.

And instead of getting a night off, we went over to Windy's for a birthday bbq.  Noone else from work went tho, so didn't know anyone else, but was still a pleasant evening.  Too many evil nibblies tho, ate far too much methinks ;)

Gosh what a week.

 

I think I blogged briefly about the moving.  It was a lot of hard work and a bit stressful.  Two Men and a Truck were ok, but the younger dude wasn't very professional and didn't take a lot of care with our stuff, and I don't know that I'd want to hire them again.

 

We were due to have an inspection of our old place on Thursday arvo, so both of us trekked out there to meet them.  However they "assumed" that we wanted the inspection on the Friday since that was our last day, and didn't bother to show up.  Pretty pissed off about that.  Anyway, they came back the next morning without us, complained about some of the long grass at the front (prolly fair enough), and a cobweb in the living room (!?)  yet didn't say a thing about the filthy disintegrating curtains.. go figure... Apart from that they said everything was excellent.  So at least that's a bit of a relief.  No more rental inspections ever!!!

 

I've spent evenings here and all day yesterday trying to get this place sorted out.  Kitchen is mostly done now.  We tried the dishwasher for the first time yesterday.  (I've never had a dishwasher, so this is very exciting).  It was a bit fiddly and didn't start working straight away.  Stu fiddled a bit and eventually got it going.  We also setup the amplifier and associated paraphernalia yesterday.  *And* we did a big food shop.  Finally have a fridge full of vegetables, which I've been craving for a week.  Got very sick of fast food for a while there!

 

What's been with the weather this week?  It suddenly got *cold* !  Top of only seventeen yesterday.  Not good pool weather! heh.  I shouldn't complain, it'll get hot soon enough and I'll be wishing it was cooler :)

Pretty much all moved.  House pretty much all cleaned.  Nat and Andrew came to the rescue for a few hours yesterday which was appreciated beyond measure.  Carpets being cleaned this morning.  Inspection tomorrow.  Back at work, but very stressed about it (stoopid deadlines and don't know what I'm doing).  ADSL tech made Stu wait around all Friday afternoon, then didn't bother to show up :(  No idea if/when we'll get internet at home.   *sigh*

Had a bit of a financial "moment" today.  Found out my other mortgage account has been frozen - a couple of weeks earlier than we thought it would.  Had a bit of low level panic cause all my money is tied up in that account.  Had enough change for lunch, then got some money out of my "internet" bank account, but there's not much in there til pay day this week.

So now have to chase down all the automated payments that come out of that old account and stop them.  Then there's a tonne of paperwork to read and sign for the new mortgage.  And we haven't done our tax yet.

It's all a little stressful :(

(oh, and then realised we were meant to be going to Newcastle with friends at the beginning of November (not to mention going away with Scott and Kerry the weekend before), but we're likely to be moving that weekend.  And I'll probably be on call.  It's not shaping up to be a stress-free couple of weeks....)

A function that worked quite happily last night (uploading pictures) is completely broken today.  I get a horrible Apache permission denied when it tries to create the file.

Also, the "Tags" metadata of the blog entry is not loading my previous tags when I put in a keystroke.

Also, the gallery app I have on one of my other sites is broken in a similar way.

*however* the gallery app *can* create images from another web site, but not uploading through my browser.

Tried rebooting, another browser, even another computer, all with no luck.

I haven't done anything to my site that could affect this, and it's the weekend so doubt my hosting provider has done anything (although you never know)..

It's exceedingly distressing :(

UPDATE:  /tmp is full on the host.  This may or may not be related to problems that MySQL had on Friday morning which also broke my blog and gallery.  *sigh*
UPDATE: /tmp has been cleared somewhat, picture upload ability restored!  woot!

1. Where in this place do you all go to the toilet???
I've so far seen *one* public toilet since we've been here - at the main station for 1.10 euro.  Where is everyone meant to go??  Yesterday one of the places we ate had a toilet, but this doesn't seem to be universal.  Most distressing!!

2.  Where do you expect tourists to do their laundry?
Presumably many hotels would have a laundry service, but ours doesn't.  By chance we found a waschsalon so have bookmarked this for when we're in other cities...

So the day of the wedding dawned still and foggy.  Always a great sign.  I had a lazy morning.  Although I did wake up early and not get back to sleep.  So eventually got up and had bacon, eggs and croissants for breakfast.  Very yummy. 

Got myself ready, then went for a drive in Scotty's new car because we had nothing better to do :)

Josie came around 10am and then the process of curling my hair began.

An hour and a half or so later....

Then my head became a pincushion for all the pins to hold up my hair.  hrmm.. heh.  Josie also did up all my makeup. 

So Kerry cooked us up some lunch while we waited for my parents to turn up (with the bouquet and flowers).  They eventually did but very late.  They ate their lunch then rushed off to get Stu's bag to take to the reception venue/hotel.  While I sat there at about 1:30 thinking it's really time to be getting dressed now, but George and Kerry were all "no you'll have to sit around for too long in it" .. hrmm.  At 1:45 I said no really, let's get dressed, so we did.  And a good thing too, as it still ended up being rushed at the end :/  Because they all had to get ready too, then people were coming and going and my parents still hadn't returned and it was starting to get stressful.  Eventually the parents got back, but then they had to get ready too.  So the whole last half hour was very rushed, and didn't get all the photos I would have liked.  Oh well.

So we packed off J&G, and mum and then Dad and I hopped in the car with "other Stu" for the ride to the church.  Stu had had some trouble attaching the ribbons to the car, and one actually came off at one end during the trip.. oops!  So we stopped just round the corner from the church to reattach it heh.  Arrived at the church pretty much dead on time.  To be met by the paparazzi.  Honestly it was hilarious, so many photographers there and lots of very nice cameras!

Managed to get my dress out of the car, had some more photos, then it was up to the church....

It was all very exciting.  Think we walked down the aisle a little too quickly though.  And so many cameras!! 

We should have had leaders for the singing, as people didn't "get" the boy/girl bits.. so it was a little silly, and the organist played them a little too slowly too which didn't help. 

I remembered my vows.  But after a little hesitation on the second line when Stu was doing his, the minister prompted Stu all the way through his.  Oh well.  So we were married!!

Then it was things like lighting the Unity candle, signing of the register etc.  And walked back down the aisle to Saint-Saëns' Symphony #3 (what else?? :) ).

Even more photographic chaos outside.  We didn't know where to look!  Lots of various family type shots were had and eventually we decided to head off to Lake Ginninderra for the "official" photos.  We went to this lake rather than Lake Burley-Griffin because the tower would be in better light from that direction (and there was a nice park with lots of autum trees - all very pretty).  So there were at least ten people all lined up taking photos, which was such a crackup.  And they were all comparing the size of each others' .. lenses... hehe (my brother won! :) )

When we'd all had enough and run out of light, we all piled back into cars and headed off to the reception.

I had "A Touch of Elegance" do up fairly lights all around the hall, and they looked fantastic!!  That and with the candelabras they provided, as well as 96 tealight candles I got off ebay, the room looked amazing. 

Entrees then dinner was served in quick succession.  People said the food was good, and what I ate of it was good, although I couldn't really fit much in given how tight my dress was, so I really just had a taste.  But then they brought out the desserts almost immediately afterwards, which was very upsetting for me because they weren't paying any attention to my schedule for the night :(:(  sigh.  So that really stressed me out for the rest of the night, because then it felt like the whole night they were trying to rush us out the door (in the end most people had left well before the official 10:30 finish).  *And* they ran out of some desserts, so people didn't get to choose at the end :(:( 

So after dessert Damien did a speech, then Stu did one too, then we cut the cake and did the bridal "waltz" which was nothing like a waltz, but people thought it was amusing.  At least it will be remembered!!

After the dance, took off back to our room and got out of my dress and slipped into something more comfortable.  *Much* more comfortable!!  Was able to walk around more, and even joined in some of the dancing.  My playlist was relatively well received, although they did complain that some of the tracks were too slow to dance to!  oops.  But I really wasn't even expecting people to dance much at all.. so there you go.  So deleted a few tracks towards the end and added some different ones in. 

Stu and I stayed til the bitter end so we could collect everything up and take it back to our room.  Because I was so stressed I didn't feel like being sociable, which meant a tonne of people just didn't get talked to by me, which was upsetting in itself.  I felt really bad afterwards that I'd been so neglectful, and so the whole thing left me feeling very bitter about the night.  Not helped by a massive pillow that I couldn't sleep well on.  So in the morning we didn't even stay for breakfast we just took all our stuff and left very early.  Thank goodness for maccas drive through! lol.

Anyways.  Noone else really noticed the problems with the scheduling, and everybody that I did talk to said it was a great wedding and good food, so I was glad about that.  Maybe one day I'll look back on it all and laugh.. hrm... hehee.  (We went back today to pickup some things we left behind and settle accounts, and they were very apologetic about everything and took off some of the cost of the additional pre-dinner drinks, so that was all very much appreciated and left me feeling a lot better).

So we're now very happily married.  Not that it feels a whole lot different.  I suppose it'd be different if we hadn't been living together first. 

We watched "The Wedding Singer" (or I listened to it rather as I didn't have my glasses on and couldn't see it) at Kerry's on the morning of the wedding while having my hair done.  There was a part were Drew Barrymore's character said she didn't think the butthead dude was the right man for her.  Which made me realise I never once had those thoughts about Stu.  And I asked Stu if he'd ever had any thoughts like that either and he said no.  So I reckon that's pretty darned cool!