My Month in Numbers 2014: July

Hello hello.

One of the best tips I always offer to anyone looking for a starting point to a Month in Numbers post is: browse through all the photos you took during the month, all your moments are there, just look for the numbers in them.

And, when I did that myself for my July I realised that the entire month was coloured by two - quite opposite - themes. All my photographs were either of the 5 Christmas magazine commissions I've completed ... or were the hundreds James and I took on our summer holiday!

To spare you the unseasonal mind-shift I'll just focus on my holiday statistics!  Here goes ...

Reference No. 39047 + 39046 = the numbers on our tickets for the RAF Waddington Air Show:

And, as you can see on the pedometer, we fitted in 12,596 steps in while looking around. Thank goodness for comfortable shoes!

I've blogged my annual exploits as James's non-expert-sidekick-who-just-goes-for-the-day-out many times before here so I won't bore you with the details ... but do let me tell you a tale about what happened before the show - less than 24 hours before to be exact - which almost led to us not going ...

A few weeks ago on Facebook I wrote a silly status mentioning how I'd just casually dropped by the page of the hotel we'd booked to just double-check it hadn't experienced some calamity that would ruin my holiday! Fortunately everything was in order ... and I continued looking forward to the break.

Then, on the morning we were due to set off for Lincoln, while James had something last-minute to organise at the office, something made me do the same 'just checking for calamities' thing with the air show's page ...  which is where I learnt, for the 1st time that ...

... all tickets to the show had to be bought in advance!! No tickets would be on sale at the gate. Anyone without a ticket would be turned away.

Which meant us.

Now, it wouldn't have ruined my week if I didn't get to see another noisy plane doing a flying thingy ... but I knew a man who'd feel differently!

So, angel that I am, I read up about where on earth we could get tickets in the remaining 7 hours we had left before places closed for the weekend. Especially considering we live 2.5 hours and 130 miles from the showground itself!

And then ... I had to just had to sit wait until he got home to break the news to him!

Fortunately ... the website detailed where the tickets were on sale; branches of HSBC bank and Morrison's supermarkets, so I printed off the full list of all the participating stores in the hope that at least 1 of them along the route down would have 2 tickets for 2 very stressed holiday makers. [well, one was more stressed than the other ...].

If you can remember Anneka Rice running around the country collecting clues against the clock in the Treasure Hunt TV show in the 80s ... you might get an idea of how I expected the afternoon to pan out!

But - stop the clock, stop the clock!! At 12.40pm-ish,  4 hours 20 minutes before the close of day, in a HSBC close to home we finally breathed-out ... because we secured 2 tickets!!!!

And we let the holiday commence ...

2 = number of rooms we stayed in over 6 nights at The Rest hotel.  This was purely due to a scheduling/ room availability thing and was something we knew when we booked the holiday. And as both rooms were lovely [and the helpful staff moved all our bags while we were out!] it was rather fun ... as if we'd stayed in 2 different places!

The first room, named 'Sunflowers' was on the ground floor:

 ... and then we literally moved up into the tree tops ... kind of ...

As you might have already spotted each room was decorated with a wallpaper whose pattern reflected the name of the room, here's the arboreal paper and side-lamps of our 'Treetops' room:

And the remainder of the rooms continued the matching name/paper theme too!

[I cannot confirm how I know this. OK, alright then, I peeked in all of the windows on our floor when I learnt that we were the only guests staying on that level one particular night!]

14% = the gradient of the steepest part of 'Steep Hill' Lincoln ... on which our hotel stood, so if we wanted to go anywhere ... and then return home again ... we couldn't avoid tackling the hill at least once a day [and more often several times!]. I shared photos of this noteworthy street - including the ways people ascend and descend it, in a Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt post earlier this month here.

 

The outdoor veranda overlooked Steep Hill and from there, in between people-watching, I wrote out my 6 postcards for Sian's 'Pile of Postcards Exchange' and enjoyed some guilt-free holiday reading: 

1 = the number of books I read this month. Just when I thought there couldn't possibly be room in my life for yet another Sherlock Holmes adaptation ...

...I came across 'The Beekeeper's Apprentice' the first in Laurie King's Mary Russell / Sherlock Holmes stories in a charity shop. It's a fun read, nothing too taxing [which is what you need on your hols isn't it?] and, if I come across the next in the series for a bargain price ... I might just continue with them.

At the start of the book Mr. Holmes is in his mid-50s and I must admit I spent a good part of my reading time trying to think of a hot actor in his 50s who I could visualise in the part!! Call me shallow but, I like my Sherlocks to be beautiful as well as clever! [Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch have utterly spoiled me!]. ;-)
 

£2 = all I spent after browsing the hundreds of thousands items at Hemswell Antiques Centres! £2!!  

One full day of our break was spent wandering around the VAST antiques centres at Hemswell - which consists of several huge, sprawling ex-RAF buildings. And even after being there all day, we didn't get to see inside all the buildings on the site!

 

While browsing though I did stumble across this number ...

 

902 = the code for one of the dealers, inside one of the Antiques Centres, who dared label one item of his stock like this ...

... and the hairstyle in question? Was this one ...

I hope his wife never visits  ...

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So, those were my vital July statistics ... how about yours?

 

If you'd like to join in - this month, next, or at any time at all then all the My Month in Numbers rules/details can be found here. Everyone's welcome. If you've lived through a month and can throw a few numbers at it ...  then you're in!

You can visit all previous contributions from both me and the entire number-crunching community on the Month in Numbers Pinterest board here.

 

Here's to doing anything we can to keep the summery / holiday atmosphere going well into August [especially as Christmas is almost over for me!].

 

Julie :-D