This is actually the second time I've written a post about recent events in the Roberts' life. Hopefully this time the computer won't be shut down, losing my almost finished post.

News, then. We've had a 300% increase in the population of 37 Munro street since the start of August, although only one of these is a real person. Hannah, a student from church, has joined us for a few months, and has brought her hamster with her. Over the last few years, both myself and Monika have been wanting to get a dog, although we weren't sure whether we'd have the time to look after it. More recently, my Dad and my younger brother Peter expressed a smilar wish, and so we decided that with their help, we should have plenty of time to care for a dog. However, on looking around the dog kennels, we saw two brothers who had to go together. They're two of the quietest dogs I've seen, although they're also a lot of fun. After a couple of days we knew we could trust them off the lead, as they treat us like we've just saved them from a burning building.

The allotment's been a bit neglected this year, although we have been able to get some good crops out of it, so it's not been a total waste. The trees I planted earlier this year have grown well, and we were able to get about 10-15 apples, which isn't bad for such young trees. Last year I tried to increase the yield on our damson tree by cutting back another tree which was choking it. This seems to have worked very well, as this year we harvested about four shopping bags full of damsons. We've been doing a lot of jam, cordial and chutney making over the last week or so, to try to use up all of the fruit before it goes off.

Next week I start university again, I've been thinking a lot about how this year will go, as I would like it to be more produstive than the last one. I'm going to try to avoid using the internet too much for research, not because it's not useful, but as I think it would be good for me to work mainly with libraries at the moment. I'm also going to try to spend more time at college during the week, in the attempt to create some kind of partition between work and home. Monika's on permanent nights between Monday and Wednesday, which means we get a proper weekend and a regular timetable, which I really appreciate. I found last year quite difficult as I could never work out a regular schedule for my work, which meant that I would often spend less time studying than I probably should, and then I wouldn't be able to enjoy my free time much.

Well, there's most of the news from us, now you're all updated hopefully I'll be able to write more often.