Oxford

We had a busy family day on Saturday. A trip to the theatre in Oxford proved to be an interesting experience. Knowing how bad traffic congestion and parking can be we took the Park & Ride, leaving the car on the outskirts and catching the bus into the city. The city centre was absolutely rammed with people. There were the usual beggars, buskers and other street sellers but the worst thing was, as my wife put it, "it's like walking through a landfill site". She was referring to the bins, they were all full to overflowing and were overflowing. Mainly with fast food packaging, it was quite disgusting. We had an hour to spend before the show, I suggested a small restaurant I knew down a side street. My wife didn't think there would be any seats at Saturday lunchtime but we tried and were very pleased to find that despite the main thoroughfare being crowded to bursting that the Thai restaurant was not particularly busy. We got seats without waiting and were served with excellent food very quickly. The theatre production wasn't so great, it was a kids show and my son enjoyed it but my daughter wasn't at all bothered. There were quite a few adults asleep around us, so that gives you some idea how bad it was. I took some photographs, so here they are - they are all looking up because the ground level view was so disgusting.

 

 

 

June

Well I couldn't let June go by without a blog post could I?
I've been a bit depressed lately, hence my lack of blog activity. Hope you all understand. I'll be back when I've recovered a bit more of myself.

An expensive month in prospect

I completed my job application and was totally fed up by the amount of time it took up outside of work hours - I felt cheated that it was taking my free time but what else can I do? I stopped at a Post Office in a village I've driven through many times to post it. I have never called in at that Post Office before but it was truly lovely, that might sound like a strange thing to say about a Post Office but it was set way back from the road and had a small pond outside. Inside it was kind of a general store/Post Office and sold practically everything you might need from a village store. They even sold sweets in big jars, I love that excitement of seeing big sweet jars come down from a high shelf to be shaken out into the weighing scales. The village is really nice and has lots of trees, it just had a good feeling about it.
Monday of this week was a Bank Holiday, which meant a day off from work. The weather was really good, so I decided to try and put up the tent I bought last year. It was the first time we have tried to erect it. It's a 4 person family tent and has an inner (bedroom) tent that you can divide into two. I hope the prediction of a hot summer is right, I hope to take the family to a camp site at some point. The tent took a bit longer to erect that I thought it might and it only just fitted width-wise into our garden - so it's comfortably large. I just need to work on my wife because she's not keen on camping, I love it (for a few days) because it's such an alternative way of life.
I've been hoping to replace my slow, ageing PC with a new laptop this month but yesterday I had to get some new tyres. I've been driving around with a screw in my front tyre for a few weeks and it has been praying on my mind. I eventually got it sorted but I needed two new tyres. They aren't cheap are they? They also called me up during changing my tyres to say I need new brake pads urgently. Also I have my MOT and annual service check in just over a week, so I won't be able to afford my new laptop this month and next month I'll be paying for our family holiday - so basically bye bye laptop until August/September and by then I'll be thinking of Christmas. I'm also considering selling my car for a smaller, cheaper model - I'll let you know how that goes.
Today, I have a day off from work. We're going to see Monsters vs Aliens with the kids after lunch, for lunch we're going to a nice pub that sells good food and this evening just the two of us are going to go and see a Swedish horror film called Let The Right One In - fortunately we managed to get a babysitter. Don't know how scary the movie is meant to be because I haven't read any reviews of it.

Eurovision 2009

Well another year and another Eurovision has come and gone. I just didn't feel as excited about it this year, don't know why that is. I did watch it and score the acts alongside my daughter who was doing the same. The UK song did well, within the top 5 I think - I wasn't paying too much attention to our entry because I thought the song was rubbish. There were much better songs, I thought the song from Malta deserved to win but it didn't really come anywhere near. The German song was catchy but having Dita von Teese on stage with them was a bit too gimmicky. I thought there were about 5 songs that would have made ideal winners, Turkey was the only one I liked that came close. The runaway song of the night was from Norway, I didn't think it was bad but I didn't think it was the strongest song either. The voting this year was shaken up a bit, or it appeared that way, so the political voting wasn't quite as blatant as it was in previous years.
In other news, I saw Derren Brown on Tuesday night last week. It is amazing what he can do with his mind games, I'm glad though that I didn't go up onstage. He does use a lot of the audience, I'm just not that susceptible to his screening, I'm always in the half that deselect themselves.
In film news, I'd like to go and see the new Star Trek and Wolverine movies but I don't think I'll get the chance to see them before DVD. I also missed the Watchmen film too.
Tomorrow I have the day off from work. There's a couple of things I need to do. Complete a job application, watch my son's sports day at school and collect a piece of mail from the post office. I hope the weather is fine for my son's class sports day. I'd like to cheer him on but tomorrow is the only day I could get, so I really hope the weather is kind and it still goes ahead. The forecast is "chance of rain", which gives me hope that there is a chance it might not rain.

More videos

I think I'm getting the hang of these video things, here are a couple more I shot on the beach.

A day out

We had a day trip to Brighton yesterday. It was nice to see the sea, we live so from it that I forget what it's like. I have a couple more videos. We were walking on the beach just after 10am and surprisingly it was pretty quiet, it was lovely. I have a couple more videos to post.

Take the stairs

Tara has made me remember another thing this week. Speaking of how she influenced someone to take the stairs, I was reminded of an advertising campaign I really liked by The British Heart Foundation, the campaign was called The Big Red Fight Back and featured groovy posters that were designed in an art style used for wartime propoganda. The one I was reminded of was about stairs being your friend, an image of the poster is above. I thought the campaign was a great idea.

Movies I watched this weekend

It's an older film now but I watched Re-Animator last night. It made me laugh with the over-the-top gore and silly plot. As a fan of gore horror, I enjoyed it and the acting was brilliant.
I also watched Girl From Next Door which starred Emile Hirsch and Elisha Cuthbert. In honesty, it was a film I watched only to see Elisha Cuthbert. It turned out to be quite different from what I was expecting and not in a good way. As the film closed I just thought what a wasted opportunity it was to have such a good cast and still to end up with such indifferent fodder. The cast looking great is about the only thing it is worth watching for.

Childhood memory

Tara's trespassing post reminded me of one of my earliest childhood memories, not about the act of trespass though.

It was in my pre-nursery/pre-school years so I must have been under 5. The airforce did recruitment open days every year in our town, they had a couple of planes, a mobile caravan and various other events and displays in an area of the town. My mum must have thought I would be interested to see a jet plane up close. They had two sets of narrow stairs up to the jet's cockpit and there were a lot of guys crowding in on both sides. Somehow my mum managed to get up the stairs carrying me and I don't know if I was a special case or not but she was allowed to sit me in the pilot's seat. Great! What a treat! Then it all went wrong for me. Seems such a silly thing now but the guys were all crowding around and were interested in the flight joystick, that's where their focus was - I think an airforce man was moving it around and telling the other guys about it while I sat quietly. Being an infant I was naturally curious, so as soon as he let go of it I grabbed hold of it. It must have been amusing because all the guys erupted into laughter. That cockpit turned into a pit of hell as all the attention turned on my young self. I was probably a bit frightened when they all started laughing and it was really laughing at nothing but my infant curiosity however I remember crying and wanting desperately for my mum to remove me from the cockpit. What should have been an enjoyable experience became something much less pleasurable.
It was an experience that has stayed in my memory for a long time. I often have to talk to groups of people for work, often times they are strangers to me and I have no problem doing that. I am in control and am confident. However, when I find I am suddenly the centre of attention in situations where I haven't been warned or haven't instigated it, I hate it. The simplest example of this is when I join a group of friends at a pub or restaurant and they are already there and seated. They might be talking and laughing about something completely not related to me but as I walk in and hear their laughter, my sensitivity is "are they laughing at me?". I am suddenly thrown into the limelight and I dislike it intensely - I much prefer to be part of the group from the beginning or walk in with someone else. We all have insecurities, this is mine.

It's been a while....

It has been a few weeks since my last update. I'm afraid a lot has been going on and it has mainly been all work related, hence the lack of time to look at blogs and blog about social stuff.

We're having a new fence in the garden this week. A nice man from the Czech Republic is doing the handiwork for us. I'm so bad at DIY that this was the best option to have the work done quickly, I usually take too long and end up not doing the job properly.

We have a long weekend here in the UK, Good Friday and Easter Monday. The weather has been a bit grim, grey and drizzly. My wife and daughter went to the seaside but the shops were shut and the weather defeated them. As I write this, they're currently on their way home. My son has been ill this week. So I stayed home with him, mainly playing Mario Kart.

This afternoon, I set up Twitter - you can read my Tweets just over there -> somewhere.

Friday 13th

Its Comic Relief Day today, a great institution. There'll be plenty of silliness in places of work and education today. My daughter and son have gone to school wearing red clothes because paying a pound to charity means they can dress in non-school uniform. My daughter is also wearing her red wig - she looks a bit like Annie or Shirley Temple or Ronald MacDonald. I hope they raise a record amount of money because everyone needs cheering up in these hard times.

What else has been on my radar recently:

• Jade Goody - she has cervical cancer and it has spread, which effectively means that she is not going to recover. She became a celebrity after appearing on Big Brother 3 in 2002 and has since remained in the public eye due to some rocky professional and personal experiences. I haven't yet formed a solid opinion about Jade, I have heard criticism of her fund raising for her children however I'm not sure I wouldn't do exactly the same if I had to
• Spring-like weather - despite sometimes feeling very cold, the weather recently has definitely been changing more to mild and it makes me happy to think of Spring coming
• Colds - along with the weather change it is bringing the family down with coughs and colds as usual
• Swimming - I actually managed to swim 3 widths in the pool on Tuesday so I think I'm making good progress, I'm actually sad when the time comes to end the session, there are some nice people also attending the class so its nice in a social way too

That's about it for now. Hope today is a good day for everyone, despite the date! Have a great weekend!

Here it is, March...

My wife has lost a ticket. One of those times when we win something and the ticket goes missing. Actually, its not our winning ticket, she runs a syndicate. How can a ticket just disappear? Well, it has and cannot be found - believe me, we tried. It has gone into the ether, the thin air. So apparently has the 75 pounds along with it. To each person in the syndicate it is a small amount but any win is a win and it just so happens that a ticket with a Post-It note attached to it decided to get itself lost on the very week the ticket was actually worth more than it cost. So frustrating!

I'm feeling slightly more upbeat than usual this Sunday evening, next week I'm off work and instead am attending a course. I'll probably end up feeling really tired and stressed because there are exams at the end of it but really just lately I'll take any excuse to do something different.

This weekend I actually managed to sit down and catalogue our movies. I was supposed to be working but the computer was on and yadda yadda I ended up doing the cataloguing and then couldn't find the willpower to stop. So, do you want to know how many films there are? It's frankly disturbing but we have over 430 films ranging from the 40s to the 00s. That's 32 days and 11 hours worth of back-to-back movie going. Sheesh!

Well bless my soul! In the course of me writing this the ticket has turned up! It was in the smallest crack between the computer desk and the chest of drawers - but right at the back. How it got there is still a mystery but at least the ticket has been found and my wife avoids the embarrassment of having to explain about the loss. She found it, as I'm working on my computer upstairs.

My swimming is going quite well. I am starting to enjoy the water and I didn't ever think I'd feel that way. I can see myself actually swimming soon, it is just a matter of time and patience. I never thought I'd be able to. I think I'm so determined to conquer my fears this time that it will come eventually.

What happened to February?

The month is slipping by fast. The weather is getting a bit milder, so I feel more upbeat about that. It was a downer feeling so cold and the dark nights are moving further back.

I heard this news story about the final bag of Woolworth's Pick & Mix sweets being sold through e-Bay for charity. Great idea but shame about Woolies closing, I just thought that store had so many retail outlets that its presence on the high street was rock solid. Just goes to show that you can't take anything for granted.

Last week I had some time off from work and it was great, it's just such a pity that I had to return to work. It was nice not to have to do anything but spend time with the kids. We had great fun unlocking extra tracks and karts on Mario Kart Wii. We did buy a camcorder, so I hope to put up some videos at some point - when I've worked out how to do it and what to record.

We went out last night for our last Chinese meal for hopefully a while (need to lose a few pounds again). We also played a game of ten pin bowling with friends and their kids. It was a pleasant night out but I didn't sleep very well - I think it was the feeling of returning to work and the food lodged in my belly.

In other news, I've started looking out for a new job. Not sure what I want to do yet but I'm scanning regularly.

More of the white stuff

I was back from my travels North last night. And this morning I was awoken by my wife at 5:20am, she was getting up and looking out of the window. Fresh snow had fallen, I actually thought it looked worse than it had done on Sunday night. Here is a photo from back of the house looking to the garden.

Weather

The weather on Sunday turned bitterly cold, wind from Northern Russia I think. Then late in the afternoon and overnight the snow fell. Several inches on our town and as usual a bit of snow has brought everything to a near standstill. The schools closed in large numbers. My own kid's school was open but it too had closed by lunchtime. Here is a shot of the road I was waiting on - the traffic was slow but it was at least moving, except for this shot I was actually waiting at traffic lights.

I love the snow when I don't have to travel in it. I might have to travel further North today or tomorrow and the snow was moving in that direction. Last night the snow turned to ice around here, I think that's worse than the snow.

John Martyn, a hero passes away

My calendar now has a photograph of the lovely Cristina Scabbia from Lacuna Coil on it, man she's gorgeous!

Since my last post, one of my all time heroes has sadly died this week. Singer and songwriter John Martyn passed away, his songs were of great comfort to me. They always brightened my mood. He was one of those artists that didn't ever compromise, so some of the music is not so easy to get into - you have to absorb it and let it wash over you but once you get it, it is some of the most beautiful music you'll ever hear. Thanks John, Rest In Peace.

I'm now booked on an adult swim class on Tuesday evenings. This was one of my New Year's resolutions and I didn't want to mention it before in case it never got off the ground but now the money has been paid and I start this week - or next, depending on if I have to work in another part of the country on Wednesday or not, I might have to travel this Tuesday night. So, I'm feeling both a bit terrified and happy that I'm doing something about it. At least my son is still learning to swim, my daughter is already an excellent swimmer. I wish I'd done it sooner but I guess its never to late to learn something new.

Blurry

Doesn't time fly? January is going by in a bit of blur. I missed a friend's birthday a couple of weeks ago, just didn't get around to making the extra effort required; she moved away and I don't see her very often. I do feel bad about it though.

The weather varies here from very cold and dry to mildly cold and very wet. I think I prefer it dry and cold. It's the kind of weather that makes you just feel like coming home from work and getting into bed as soon as you can to keep warm together. I'm drinking lots of hot beverages. Watching the news every night is a bit depressing, hearing about companies laying off hundreds of employees and closing branches. We'd like to move house this year and I don't know how we're going to achieve it. Last year we only had a short holiday away form home for a few days; this year I wanted to go away again but I don't think we will - moving house is going to take precedence - my work is going to get very stressful with a big change coming up and I selfishly wanted to go somewhere to relieve myself of the stress of it. Just as well we're staying home, with the added expense of a holiday, it might have just added to all the stress rather than relieve it. There is so much preparation to get done if we're to move house this year I don't know how we're going to get it done.

It's Chinese New Year tomorrow and to celebrate we had a Chinese takeaway tonight for tea. I could only eat half of what was on my plate - it was so filling! I love Chinese food though.

Obama-tron

Lots of excitement in the States over the inauguration of a new President. It is a remarkable thing that America has achieved. I really do hope that he is able to make a difference to the lives of hard working, ordinary Americans. I can only remember one black UK politician off the top of my head. I expect that people will forget Obama's ethnicity as soon as Washington's political machine starts churning. It does feel like history is in the making though, I think you can be much more hopeful and optimistic when you have a young, good looking leader for your country. You know he has a lot of energy to contribute. Good luck President Obama.

Here I am

Its funny how sometimes in your life you can be in a time of change, with lots of uncertainties and stuff happening all around you and people you know being affected, and in the middle of it all you have thoughts of great clarity. Just when you'd expect your thinking to be muddled or distracted. Its as if the world keeps turning but you see yourself from the outside of a spinning world and you realise that the world is a big place and you do anything (within reason) or lead a life anywhere you choose. I feel that 2009 is going to be a creative year and a year of change for me.

First post of the year

My Christmas holiday is over tonight because tomorrow I return to work. I've had quite a bit of time off this Christmas - or at least it feels that way because I had to take a couple of extra days this week because my children's school started back later than other schools.

The holidays were good for me, I felt we spent a bunch of time together as a family and my wife and I even got to spend some a couple of nights alone together (a first since our daughter was born eight years ago). I saw two pantomimes, attended a carol concert and a wedding. I even had the luxury of not having to get up early in the mornings. All that has to change tomorrow.

I know its the season but I don't want to make any resolutions yet, there are a number of important things I want to do this year but I feel if I put them "out there" I may just end up not doing them. I'm looking at the calendar infront of me and the face of Kat Von D from LA Ink is watching me. I wouldn't want to make her any promises infront of her that I can't keep!