There are a few things I would like to blog about today. I get the bad thing over first.

Last night I got in at 8pm after coaching trampolining. Everything was as normal, then at 9pm it started. Where I live is a quiet residential area with many young families and retired people. Suddenly many young men (called neds here, mostly wearing white tracksuits) were running about shouting, and fighting, in our street. There were police cars, ambulances and two police helicopters hovering right over the house for hours. I spoke with a neighbour who said it was rival gangs from Castlemilk and Toryglen (two areas near here) that had met on neutral territory and had been drinking. I went to bed about 11pm and it was still noisy. Periodically throughout the night there loud music, police sirens, people singing sectarian songs etc, so I've hardly slept. This morning as we got in the car to go to work there was graffiti on the car. (enough said) GRRRR!

Now to Secret Pal. When I signed up for SP10 I thought it would be fun to get to know some creative knitterly folk from elsewhere as most of my friends in Glasgow are either scientists or climbers (and I consider myself more European than British). I received emails from someone called tweet (my upstream pal), who turned out to be Julie. I finally found out her name although my reveal parcel has gone on some long detour in the postal system. It was posted nearly one month ago from Germany and still hasn't arrived here. I feel really bad for my SP who spent time and effort preparing it for me, all we can hope for is that it arrives here soon or is returned to Germany. I have a lot of faith in the postal system in general so here's hoping. At least every time the postman comes I get a little rush of excitement that he might have a parcel for me. Will post more as soon as there's more news.

I have found a real gem in my downstream pal Lene. We share many common interests outside of knitting, and it feels very natural to chat away to her like we've known each other for years. Imagine my surprise and curiosity when she said she'd posted something for me, specifically for my birthday. Then 3 days later the postman brings a parcel! (I've noticed this throughout SP10 that any parcels I've sent to her have arrived really quickly).

Look lovely stamps for my stamp collection, and cat stickers! I was hoping to get up early this morning as the anticipation was too much. However I finally fell asleep at 5am and woke up after the alarm. I couldn't resist having a sneak peek inside and a read of the lovely cat card while I was having my breakfast.

I will save proper investigation and enjoyment of unwrapping when I have more time and am not half alsleep. I feel like I want to sit down and absorb all the warmth and friendship that's been packed into this box for a good while. I'm sending DH out for a long run after work to give me time. The excitement of what awaits is distracting me from work!

You may ask why I am working on my birthday. Today is the only day that I haven't got to tend to students and teaching commitment this week so I have time to get on with things. I also (usually) find this a difficult time (for various reasons) and get very negative and working is a distraction, however today feels very different from other birthdays :-) !!!! A big THANK YOU to Lene and DH for making me feel special!

Finally some congratulations are in order, to Phil and Carol on the birth of Sebastian and to the Keyboard Biologist and John on the birth of Zofia!!!