Final Bank Holiday

Today is the final Bank Holiday Monday of the year. No more free holidays for us here in the UK. I spent it in a fairly uneventful way. It usually goes like that, it kind of marks the End of Summer – so I feel both sad that summer has gone but also glad that I have Halloween, Bonfire Night and Christmas to look forward to.

I’ve been sorting out my iTunes Library and playing with the my son and his Go Gos in the back yard (see the video), they are these odd shaped little characters. They look like bits that fell out of a board game, except there are hundreds of different ones.

I’m composing this on my new Netbook, got it set up and working in minutes: all good so far. I hope to be posting a bit more frequently now that it is much simpler and convenient to do so. Got to get my money’s worth!

New Netbook

I've been wanting to get a replacement for my PC for a while. I have it set up in our bedroom, which isn't ideal but there is nowhere else really in our tiny house. The fan in my PC is quite noisy and it is rather slow and frustrating. So I was thinking of a laptop. But then we got some Costco vouchers and there was 30 pounds off a Toshiba Netbook NB200 10G, so I decided to take the plunge and get one. They are dinky and really light and will hopefully do everything I need without costing the Earth.

The Hobbit

I'm reading this book to my children on a frequent basis as their bedtime story with dad. I have to admit to probably enjoying it more than they are but what a great storyteller Tolkien is. I'd love to write a story as well as that.
It's the film noir season on TV and the channel we watch a lot is showing some old black and white American film noir films from the 50s. I love watching old films, they just have so much character and charm. Great actors too, classics like James Stewart. We're also watching some of the old Doctor films with Dirk Bogarde, good clean fun.

Cameraphone

I wanted to blog about the phenomenon that is the cameraphone or mobile phone with camera. They are very common these days, even low priced phones seem to offer the built in camera. Whilst the quality of the lens doesn't really compare to an average digital camera , the cameraphone does offer the advantage of being one multi-functional device that is small enough to keep in a small pocket. For me it allows me to take snaps of the average everyday stuff that I would normally not have any record of. Things like how I looked on a certain day, how long my hair was, whether I was clean shaven or not and how I'm aging month by month. Other things can be recorded too, like points in a routine journey. There is something about being about to quickly record something seemingly quite trivial at the time yet with age gains something. Maybe I'm talking rubbish. If I were to take my digital camera out with me I might have some better photos but it's not always the photographic quality I'm looking to capture. Does this make any sense? Maybe some examples would help...

 

Ok so not the greatest examples but over the last few years I've owned a cameraphone I've collected over 600 snapshots.

Back in the saddle

We had a great time away in Boscombe. I didn't take as many photographs as I thought I would and what I have shot is spread between my digital camera, video camcorder and cameraphone. Our apartment was at the top of a big house, so we had a few stairs to climb and their was a slightly odd smell to the room with the double bed my wife and I shared. Other than that it was pleasant. The town itself was the same as I remember but the beach was fantastic. Lots of sand, so we just set up wind breaks and lazed around watching and playing with the kids as they built castles or buried themselves. The fresh sea water was exhilarating to say the least! I only managed waist-depth before getting too chilly, surprising since the air temperature was hot and the sun was blazing. My daughter managed to enjoy herself in the water with her inflatable.
Now I'm back I miss having all the time to do other stuff. Instead work again takes priority. Gloom!

The Day Is Here!

I can't quite believe it but the day has finally arrived. We're leaving later today for our holiday. Still got packing to do but I think travelling light is the best option, we're only away for a week. The important thing is to pack a range of clothes for unpredictable weather. And pack things like camera, reading book, portable game system and a game or two, drawing book and notebook plus pens and pencils. That's just my list! The kids will no doubt want to empty the contents of their rooms to take with them.

Last time at the seaside we took a mallet, which came in very handy with bashing in the windbreak. It's lovely just sitting on the beach watching the kids play in the sand and the wash of the sea. We have some binoculars somewhere, I'll have to try and find those.

Bye bye my friends, I hope you have nice weeks too.

Looking forward

4 more working days to go until I take a week off. We're heading down to the South coast. We have an apartment from Saturday to Saturday. I can't wait to be somewhere else, enjoying a new experience and chilling out on the beach etc. There are lots of events happening in Bournemouth next week, like candles in the park, fireworks from the pier, roar on the shore and other stuff that should keep us all well-amused.

Work has been pretty horrible the last few months, so I sort of wish I had taken more time off but I didn't so I shall do my best to enjoy the time away from it that I have.

I plan to take a lot of photos while I'm away so I hope to be posting up a few more pics when I'm back.

Long Weekend

I had Thursday and Friday on leave, so we went from London's Soho on Thursday down to Brighton on Saturday, with an overnight stay in Eastbourne. We didn't play pinball as in the Pinball Wizard song however!

The weather on Friday was delightful, I actually got burned on my head - for some silly reason I didn't wear a hat that day - I think it was because there was some wind that cooled me down. Pictures below show how nice the beach at Eastbourne is.

 

Brighton was cooler but we had the best of the weather, getting there reasonably early and doing what we wanted to get done. It was the weekend of the Gay Pride festival, so the train station was continually pouring people out of it - I've never seen so many people in Brighton. The kids wanted rainbow flags, so we bought them one each to wave.