Finding your way around a new area?

When you move to a new area, you want to start to find your way around it.

The best way to do this is to do drving lessons. I've been doing them for some months (and amazingly, I haven't killed anyone yet!) and it is a great way to learn your way around an area.

You find the nice bits (like driving around Ingatestone), the nasty bits (not much around here so I'll just make a disparaging comment about Wilson's corner) and the just scary bits (the roundabout at the junction between the M25 and the A12).

Gardening and lunch

You know you're getting old when you get up on Sunday, go to Church, then go to B+Q to sort out the problem with the strimmer they sold you three weeks ago (some of the important bits were missing from the box - not the first time I've had this issue with B+Q but in fairness this time it was Black and Decker's fault), go for a pub lunch in a nearby village, come home and then spend the afternoon doing "gardening".

In fact gardening consisted mostly of getting the strimmer to trim the very long grass, and then realising we probably also wanted a mower and a vacu thingy to clean the garden up properly. Oh, and about twenty minutes of psycho fun involving a hedge trimmer and two hedges that were blocking windows.

Lunch was at the The Plough in Mountnessing. It's the first time we've been there - I've driven past in a couple of times doing driving lessons, and thought it would be nice to try some of the pubs there for lunch. It was a pretty good experience - herself's cod was fantastic, though my garlic bread suffered from using margarine instead of butter on the bread. We both had the roast lamb - although the meat was nothing special, the gravy and vegs were fantastic. Verdict - we'll definitely be back (though next time we might need a reservation).

Irrational

One moment my wife is going "don't put your details in your profile, people will know where I live".... the next she's complaining that I've not mentioned her in this blog.

Well I've mentioned you now sweet heart :)

First Post....

This is just a first post to sort of give an idea what this blog will be about.

I'm Thomas, and I moved to Brentwood Essex a year ago from Ireland. Hopefully I will blogging fairly often, and I'll be interested to see if anyone actually bothers reading this.

Maybe someone from Brentwood will see this and go "ooo - there's a new Brentwood Blog". Hopefully it won't be too boring.

First comment is on the subject of the front page of the Gazette - apparently the town is about to get a cinema. And not before time I say - it's crazy we have to drive to Romford or Lakeside to watch the latest films.