Getting Busy Living

Keeping It Smooth

2011-11-27T19:15:00.000Z

I was recently given the opportunity by the good people at The Clubhaus to review their EMJ Shave Cream Signature Mint. I am not a regular “wet shaver” but I do like to go down the traditional shaving route now and then. Sometimes an electric shaver just isn’t enough :)

The Clubhaus concept is simple; you Clean, Shave, Treat and then Style yourself. They will provide you with any info you need and a great selection of products; you then decide to what extent each stage suits your lifestyle with products to match. If you are looking for a Christmas gift for the man in your life this may be the place to go!

Anyway, as I said, The Clubhaus have given me the opportunity to review the EMJ Shave Cream, and I have been using it for the last 10 days or so. Although it is their “Signature Mint”, neither Dori nor I could discern much of a fragrance from the cream, but that ain’t necessarily a bad thing! The product claims that the “rich, low-foam formula softens and preps your skin and beard for a more comfortable shave,” and that it “won’t dry out skin or clog pores”.

Now one issue I do have is that my skin is very dry, so I was eager to test out these claims, as I know from past experience that some shaving creams can leave my skin feeling a little raw and dry. That was certainly not the case with this product though as the shave was indeed very comfortable and my skin felt refreshed and not at all dry afterwards. As they say, it is not a very foamy cream, but it certainly seemed to do the trick in keeping my skin as soft as is possible when you are running a razor over it. I have no complaints at all about the EMJ Shave Cream, and I will certainly be using the remainder of the 200 mL (6.7 fl oz) tube that The Clubhaus generously sent me. I may even go back for more afterwards!

Sharpening My Pencils...

2011-10-30T16:47:00.000Z

The days are zipping by and it hardly seems possible that tomorrow will be Halloween. Where has this year gone to? Heck, it’s only 8 weeks to go til Christmas! You got all your shopping done yet? No, me either :)

Anyhoo, if it is Halloween tomorrow then it must be November 1^st on Tuesday. Obvious I know, but I mention it because this year that is an important date for me. You see, for the first time ever I will be taking part in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as it is more commonly referred to. The aim of the project is to encourage people to get writing, and in particular to write a complete 50,000 word novel within a month.

Now, I haven’t written any piece of fiction, long or short, for many decades, not since I was at school in fact, and so to jump right in with attempting a full-blown novel is probably foolhardy and reckless. As you will have seen, I haven’t exactly been consistent with my postings here over the last good number of months, and so I have my own severe doubts as to whether I will be disciplined enough to get anywhere near the 50,000 word target for NaNoWriMo. For those of you who haven’t worked it out yet, that is 1,667 words each and every day for the 30 days of November. That is a lot of writing, especially when you are doing it part-time, alongside a full-time job and life in general. But then, if you don’t try you will never achieve anything! I fully expect to fall well below the 50,000 word target, but I am going to give it a shot and even if the end product isn’t exactly Shakespeare, or even Dan Brown, then it might still be the basis of something useful. And if not even that, then I will have a chunk of fiction that I have created myself and may be able to mould into something half-readable for my own personal pleasure and satisfaction. If nothing else it will be an adventure!

PS Happy Halloween everyone!

Sunday Snaps #13 - Our Summer

2011-09-18T17:06:00.001+01:00

Time flies and I can’t quite believe that it’s been almost 5 months since I last posted on this site. Time has been short and for this, and a bunch of other reasons that I won’t bore you with, this blog has been just a little neglected over the summer. So, in order to get back into the swing of this blogging lark, I figured that it would be a good idea to resurrect my Sunday Snaps thread and share a few pictures that either Dori or I took during the summer. I hope you enjoy them :)

These first two photos were taken in St James’s Park, just across the way from Buckingham Palace in London. They were taken on the beautifully sunny day that followed the Royal Wedding way back in April. It was a lot calmer strolling through the park that day than it had been 24 hours earlier amongst the joyous chaos of the wedding celebrations!

These nest three snaps were, fairly obviously, taken during our trip up to this year’s Wimbledon championships. The day we were there was one of the hottest days of the year, though as the rest of the summer was fairly non-existent, that isn’t saying too much! Anyway, we had a great time and saw some really great matches, as I talked about over on my sports blog at the time.

The last couple of pictures are from our day-trip down to the south coast town of Bournemouth. We had a really great day out, and thoroughly enjoyed our first visit to the coast for 3 or 4 years.

Well, that was the summer that was. Halloween is just round the corner, and Christmas is only three months away. I swear that time is speeding up! Anyhoo, I will be trying to blog a little more regularly again from now on, so please drop by when you can and pay a visit. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!! Til next time.

Our Anniversary...Oh, And The Royal Wedding

2011-05-02T14:27:00.001+01:00

Well, what a weekend that was! As I mentioned in my last post, Dori and I were heading up to London for a few days to celebrate our wedding anniversary, and since William and Kate decided to choose our special day as their own wedding day it became a double celebration for us.

We left home on Thursday morning, travelling first by bus and then by train as we made our way into the capital. Once in London we headed towards our hotel where we dropped off our luggage and then went back out to see what we could of the last minute preparations for the Royals’ big day. We went first to Westminster Abbey where the crowds were already thronging outside. People had been camped out both there and on The Mall outside Buckingham Palace for a couple of days by then, in order to secure a good view of the events on Friday. The world’s media was out in force, as you would expect, and we saw a number of recognisable faces reporting back to the four corners of the globe.

We were kind of looking for a feasible spot to pick to stand at the next day, and it was immediately obvious that outside the Abbey was not going to be it! So we made our way over towards Buckingham Palace to see what was happening over there, and how many rows of tents there were already! It was busy there too, but a little less frenetic than at the Abbey and we decided that we would look to stand somewhere along The Mall on the following day. We hung around outside the palace for a while, enjoying the atmosphere and watching another large section of the world’s media doing their thing :) Everybody was in a good mood and the atmosphere was already building. After a couple of hours there we realized that we hadn’t eaten properly all day, and so headed off to get a bite to eat, before then going back to the hotel to get an early-ish night before getting up extremely early the next day!

The temporary media centre opposite Buckingham Palace

So, the big day arrived and we got up and washed before heading out a little before 6:00 a.m. We took the tube to Charing Cross and then walked down through Trafalgar Square and on towards The Mall. A lot of people were already there and we quickly chose a spot to stand about ¾ of the way along The Mall. There were some people who had camped out at the front and then a couple stood behind them, but we were right behind them with a good view of the processional route. It was cold, and we had a long wait ahead of us. Luckily, the people we were around were all very friendly and the atmosphere was one of excitement and anticipation. The crowds quickly grew, and before we knew it we were absolutely surrounded by people, and were unable to move much more than just shuffling on the spot. I think we managed to bag our position just in time!!

The procession to the Abbey started at 10:10 a.m. with William and Harry being driven past us, dressed very smartly in their military dress uniforms. We did try to get some pictures of them, and of the subsequent cars carrying the rest of the royal family, and the Middletons, but they were all going just a little bit too fast for us to be able to get any clear shots of them. That was especially so given that whenever a car went past the crowd would get very excited and everyone would be jostled about.

The ceremony itself was broadcast via loudspeakers to those of us waiting along the processional route, with many a cheer going up at various stages of the proceedings. Before too long they were all on their way back towards the palace, only this time in horse-drawn carriages. Here are a couple of snaps of William and Kate, and the Queen and Prince Phillip. Apologies for the quality, but as I said before we were all being buffeted and we were trying to catch a moving target!!

Once the procession had finished we very slowly made our way up The Mall towards the palace. My knees wouldn’t have allowed me to go fast having been stood on one spot for nearly 7 hours, but the huge numbers of people there made that impossible anyway. By taking a circuitous route via St James’s Park, we were able to get ahead of a lot of the crowd and back onto the now-open Mall and walk towards the palace ready for the traditional appearance on the balcony. The crush of people was amazing, but very good-natured. We were able to get reasonably close to the front of the crowd, though not as close as when we went to Trooping the Colour a couple of years back :) Here are another couple of snaps to give you an idea of what it was like.

And then, once the royals had disappeared to enjoy their celebrations, we VERY slowly made our way away from Buckingham Palace and towards our own anniversary celebratory meal in Covent Garden. It was a really great day and, no doubt, one that we will always remember. It was very colourful and the atmosphere was wonderful. Occasions like this come along about once every 25-30 years, so we felt very lucky to be able to join in this time around.

The following day we had some time to waste before heading home, and so we revisited the scene of all the festivities as things were being dismantled and taken away. Here are a couple more pictures that we took that day.

Which just leaves it for me to say that I hope that William and Kate have a very long and successful marriage, and to wish Dori a very happy anniversary!!!

PS Dori has also blogged about our adventures over the weekend, with some other interesting photos. Check her out over at The Yellow House!

Sunday Snaps #12 - A Royal Occasion

2011-04-24T11:11:00.005+01:00

Happy Easter everyone! Yes, it's been over a year but Sunday Snaps is back by popular demand!!

The holidays are coming thick and fast right now here in England. It’s a four day weekend for a lot of people this week, with Good Friday and Easter Monday being public holidays and then next weekend will also be a four day break with the Monday being the May Day bank holiday. Friday is, of course, also a public holiday here because of the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. So, for the sake of 3 days leave you can actually have an 11 day break from work! Lovely Jubbly!

As Dori mentioned on her blog a little while ago, the day of the Royal Wedding is also our 5th wedding anniversary and, by happy coincidence, we had arranged to be in London next weekend anyway. So we will spend a great deal of our special day on the streets of the capital enjoying the ambience of the royal occasion. Whether we will actually get to see much remains to be seen, but it is really the atmosphere of the day that we are looking forward to.

We have already seen pretty much all of the royals, including William and Kate – though they were on a break at the time! The first time that we saw William and Harry (and Kate) was at the Concert for Diana back in 2007 on what would have been Diana’s 46th birthday. Here are a couple of snaps we took that day, including one of Harry taken on a mobile phone through a pair of binoculars – hence the very poor quality!

We caught most of the rest of the family at Trooping the Colour in 2009, which I blogged about at the time. It was a little surreal to see them all lined up on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, just as I have seen dozens of times before on TV. Here are a couple of snaps from that day too.

If we do get to see anything of interest on Friday then we will no doubt share that with you here on our blogs. If we don’t then we will just enjoy our wedding anniversary together just as the nation goes wedding crazy!

It promises to be an interesting week.

One Day in a Decade

2011-03-27T16:21:00.000+01:00

Today is not only the start of British Summer Time here in England, when the clocks spring forward by an hour, but it is also Census Day. Which, come to think of it, makes it an odd day to choose – give every household in the country an extra job to do and then take an hour out of the day on which they are supposed to do it! But then “Government planning” has always been an oxymoron. :-)

So, this morning we sat down and filled out the form giving information such as the number of rooms in our house, employment status, educational qualifications, etc. For the first time ever it was possible to complete the questionnaire online this year, but we opted instead for the traditional paper form. It somehow felt as though it had more import that way. Of course, not being a traditional couple, the form did present us with a couple of difficulties – such as trying to write a US address into boxes that were structured for a British one. But, overall, the process was relatively painless and was completed surprisingly quickly, given how thick the form was! At least that job is now done for another 10 years.

The rest of the weekend’s highlights have been sport-related, and I did promise not to bore you all here with my sporty witterings now that I have a separate sports blog. So, head on over to The Sports Ground tomorrow if you want to know how else I have been filling my time this weekend.

Hopefully it won’t be another five and a half weeks until my next post, like it has been since my last one! Well, I know it won’t be because Dori and I are going on a little expedition within that time which I think a number of you may be interested in. Stay tuned for more info!!

Gone Fishin'

2011-02-17T18:52:00.001Z

There has recently been an updated version of an old TV commercial running here in the UK. The old advert was one of those standout ads that stick in your mind and provide a cultural reference point for everyone who was around at the time. It has been parodied and lampooned by many comedians down the years, but they wouldn't have done that if the commercial hadn't already entered the public conciousness. Here is the original ad:

I must admit that I got goosebumps seeing this again after all these years - it was first aired back in 1983. Following the huge success of this ad, there were a number of sequels and even a real book published under the title "Fly Fishing by J.R.Hartley"! Life imitating art :)

The new version has been updated to reflect modern times - after all almost all the bookshops on the High Street have disappeared now. Have a look and then contrast and compare.

To me, it doesn't have the charm of the original ad, but then I'm just an old fuddy-duddy! lol What do you think?

Opening of a New Frontier

2011-02-07T17:34:00.001Z

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been working on a couple of projects that have kept me from posting here as often as I would like.

One of those projects is actually a second blog that I have been busy creating. Entitled "The Sports Ground", it will come as no surprise to you to find that this is a sports based blog! As most of you will know, I am a bit of a “sporty spice” as Dori would say. :-) So, it seemed a natural thing to create a separate sports blog where I can ramble away to my heart’s content on all things sports related. It will also mean that those of you who aren’t sports lovers won’t have to put up with quite so much talk on the subject here on this blog!

I have actually been posting there for a little over a week now, but haven’t publicized the fact as I wanted to get the tone and appearance of the blog closer to how I would like it, before I let the world in. But I have to bite the bullet sometime, and today seems as good a day as any. So, if you are at all interested, then please visit me at “The Sports Ground” – where the turnstiles are always open!

My post over at the other blog today is partly about my views on yesterday’s Super Bowl. We both stayed up to watch the game, expecting that we would probably call it a day at half-time after watching the Black Eyed Peas. But the contest got us both so intrigued that we actually stayed awake right until the end, and the trophy presentation at some time around 3:30 a.m. It was an exciting game to watch, with the outcome liable to go either way right up until the dying seconds. Sadly we couldn’t get to see the famed Super Bowl commercials so I’ll have to leave it to those of you who could to let us know if they were any good!

I hope that all of you – football lovers and others – had a great Super Bowl weekend, and that the coming week is good to you. ‘Til next time!

Back to the Future

2011-02-01T21:05:00.000Z

Well, I am glad that doing more blogging wasn’t one of my New Year’s resolutions! Apologies for the lack of updates here, but sometimes life has a habit of getting in the way of your plans. I have been working on a couple of projects this month and time has been in fairly short supply for anything else :-)

I spoke in my last post of living in interesting times. Well, those times just keep on rolling. Firstly in Tunisia, and now in Egypt, the people are making their voices heard and it looks like there may be major changes ahead in the region. It reminds me a lot of the wind of change that blew through Europe in the late 80’s and early 90’s, and which saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the melting of the Iron Curtain. Back then millions of people were released from oppressive regimes and the world celebrated along with them. Only time will tell what will happen this time around, but I suspect that the international reaction may be a little more muted on this occasion. Instability in that part of the world would not be appreciated, and yet freedom from oppression – in whatever form it takes – is always welcome. I guess we will all just have to wait and see what happens.

An interesting aspect of this story is the prominent role that social media has had in helping the protesters to organize themselves. We really do live in a different world now. Back in 1989 when the Wall was coming down we didn’t even have an internet. Now, many millions of people manage their lives via social media platforms. It has never been easier for the people of the world to communicate with each other, and to have access to information previously hidden from them. Information technology has become a very useful tool in the fight for true freedom.

Back in the day, when I was a young boy watching the first runs of Star Trek, having a door that slid open as you approached it seemed like the height of advanced technology. Now you can get that at your local Wal-Mart! Portable communication devices, hand held tablet computers and video calls were all science fiction at its most imaginative back then, but all are now very much part of our everyday lives. It is truly amazing the advances that have come our way in the last 40 years or so, and especially in the last 20 years.

I was reminded of this just the other day when I noticed Dori watching a music video over the internet via her iPod. And all I could think was “wow, we really do live in the future!” Try explaining that picture to that small boy back in the late 60’s/early 70’s who was so amazed that you could hear music from putting a piece of plastic on a rotating plate and dropping a needle onto it! The times they are a-changing, and a-changing at an ever increasing speed it seems. Hold on tight because if the next 20 years are anything like the last 20 then we may not recognize the world that will be 2031. The journey could be fun though.

Interesting Times

2011-01-11T22:22:00.004Z

We are barely a third of the way through the first month of the year, and yet 2011 has already left an indelible mark on the consciousness of most of us. From freak weather to sporting triumphs to mindless acts of violence, this new year has certainly gotten busy very early on.

Although restricted to TV highlights and radio commentary, I have been greatly enjoying following the Ashes series in Australia. For those of you not in the know, I am talking about cricket – and the oldest rivalry in the game. Last week saw the culmination of the series, which resulted in England beating Australia to win the Ashes “Down Under” for the first time in 24 years. A wonderful achievement from a team who were hitting rock-bottom not so very long ago.

Of course, elsewhere in Australia, they have been battling against a natural disaster with the terrible floods they are encountering there. The world’s weather seems to have gone haywire recently, with the dreadful floods in Pakistan and Australia, the unusual amounts of snow in Europe that crippled the entire transport system (in the UK at least), and a similar story in the US where large snow storms have been battering the country for some weeks now – including the southern states. It seems to me that our weather patterns are changing, and in quite a dramatic fashion. If we carry on like this we will be having hot summers in England soon – and that would never do!! :-)

On another note, today is January 11th - or 11/1/11 ...or 1/11/11 depending on your own point of origin. I have been seeing a lot of repeating numbers lately. I glanced at the clock a couple of nights ago and it said 22:22, then the next day when I was watching the news the onscreen clock showed 3:33, and then later I noticed that I was following 1111 people on Twitter. It must all mean something. I am sure that a numerologist would be able to give some guidance. I am just taking it as a sign that the universe is aligning in some way and that, hopefully, good things are just around the corner.

“May you live in interesting times” is reputed to be an ancient Chinese curse. Well I don’t think many of us would argue the fact that we do indeed live in such times, but should we be seeing that as a curse, or a blessing? And, was there ever a period of time that wasn’t “interesting”? Whatever the truth is, I think that 2011 is already shaping up to be both interesting and memorable.

Hair We Go Again!

2011-01-04T17:32:00.002Z

Happy New Year everyone! I hope that you all enjoyed the holiday season, and that it brought everything that you hoped for.

So here we are at the start of yet another year – don’t they come round quick?! It is, of course, the traditional time to make resolutions to improve your life in some way. I have already completed one of my resolutions – to shave off the beard that I have grown over the last few months. Well, I say beard – it was more like a mass of hair that had sprouted out of my face in various directions! It wasn’t done purposefully either, just an inevitable result of the fact that I failed to shave for a number of weeks :-)

Anyway, the “beard” took a dive on New Year’s Day and is now no more. It was a strange experience all round. It is the first time that I have let my facial hair grow to that extent, and so when I looked in the mirror it seemed as though it was somebody else peering back at me. And yet, once I had shaved the whole thing off and was back to being clean shaven, that also seemed odd as I had now grown used to seeing this bearded geezer in the mirror every morning. A very strange feeling indeed. But now, three days later, I am starting to recognize my own face again, so the world is righting itself :-)

None of us can know what 2011 will bring, but I hope that every one of you has a happy and prosperous year and that we will all be better off – both financially and spiritually – by this time next year. If you are making resolutions, may you have the will-power to stick to them. I wish you all the best of luck as we each embark on yet another adventure in life!! Bring on 2011.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

2010-12-24T15:51:00.000Z

"The Christmas Song" - Nat King Cole

I hope that everybody has a happy and safe Christmas, and that Santa brings you everything you asked for!!

Silent Night

2010-12-22T13:23:00.000Z

"Silent Night" - Sinead O'Connor

One Week to Go

2010-12-18T10:30:00.002Z

"I remember one christmas morning

A winters light and a distant choir

And the peal of a bell and that christmas tree smell

And their eyes full of tinsel and fire"

"I Believe in Father Christmas" - Greg Lake

Getting Ready for the Big Day

2010-12-16T16:42:00.000Z

It is now less than 10 days to go before Christmas Day is upon us. Doesn’t it creep up on you fast?! Luckily, Dori and I finished our gift buying a little while ago before it got too manic in the shopping centres. We have, believe it or not, also already wrapped those gifts and they are currently snuggled safely under the Christmas tree. Well, I say we wrapped them, but it would be slightly more accurate to say that I wrapped my present for Dori and she did all the others!

Before I was married, I would just about be thinking of starting to buy presents at this point in the year, and yes I have even done the stereotypical male thing of rushing round the shops on Christmas Eve trying to get those last few gifts :-) But age, marriage and the sheer dread of battling with thousands of other sharp-elbowed shoppers has led to me being much more organised nowadays. So, the gifts have been bought, wrapped and installed under the tree, and the decorations are up around the Yellow House. Talking of the decorations, for those of you that didn’t see them over at Dori’s blog, here are a few pics to give you an idea of what some of our festive characters look like.

The forecast is for the snow to return tonight and over the weekend, so there is the very real possibility of a White Christmas at the Yellow House this year. I can’t remember the last time we had snow on the ground at Christmas. Santa may need a sleigh for real next week!

Catching Up

2010-11-29T17:57:00.001Z

It’s been a little while since my last posting. Apologies for my absence, but sometimes real-life takes precedence over the blogosphere :) So, what’s been happening in the interim?

Well, I guess the big news was the announcement of the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton and the subsequent fixing of the date for the Royal Wedding. It’s been a while since there has been an occasion of this size in this country, certainly not since the Queen’s Golden Jubilee and probably not since Charles and Diana’s wedding back in 1981. Back then there were street parties across the country and a real mood of national celebration. I suspect that it won’t be quite like that this time round. Questions have already been asked about how much the taxpayer should be paying out for the wedding at a time when drastic cuts are being made to public spending, taxes are on the rise and people are fearful for their jobs. But the reality is that hundreds of thousands of people are going to want to be in London to see some of the wedding and it will obviously be a huge security operation for the police that is going to cost millions of pounds. At a time of such austerity in can sometimes be a positive thing to have an event such as this to celebrate and get people’s minds away from the daily drudgery. Whatever the rights and wrongs, I can only wish the couple every happiness in their life together.

We have also been doing some celebrating of our own over the last week. Of course, last Thursday was Thanksgiving. This year we had a quiet, though very delicious, celebration here in the Yellow House. Last year, you may remember, we flew over to Georgia to enjoy the holiday with Dori’s family. Well, plane tickets sadly aren’t getting any cheaper and so we stayed on this side of the Atlantic this time round – although thanks to Skype we were able to experience a little of the festivities over in America :)

The celebratory mood continued yesterday as we attended the christening of my nephew’s baby girl. The weather here for the last week has gotten progressively colder and icier with many areas experiencing heavy snow, so the thought of spending an afternoon in a cold and draughty church – even for such a happy occasion – was a little daunting. However, as it turned out, the church was quite small, not at all draughty and even had some very welcome heating! The service was lovely and everyone thoroughly enjoyed it. Ironically, after the fears of getting too cold in the church, when we all decamped to the venue for the celebration meal afterwards, we found that the heating there was not turned on and it was frrrrrrreezing!!! Everybody was sat there, still in their coats and scarves for the entire time. It is always good though to have a story to relate to an event like that though – makes it even more memorable. :-)

The forecast looks like some of that snow I mentioned may be heading our way tonight. Hopefully it won’t be too heavy, although if it is we may be able to get some even better photos than we managed at the start of the year when the country was paralyzed for a couple of weeks! Here are a couple that we took at the time as we walked around on the first day of heavy snow.

Finally, can I wish the team bidding to bring the World Cup to England in 2018 every success over the next few days. FIFA will be announcing on Thursday the host countries of both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups and England have thrown their hat into the ring for the 2018 competition. Football politics may scupper their chances apparently, but you never know. Everyone assumed that the 2012 Olympics would be in Paris and look what happened there! Good luck to everyone involved!

Remember, Remember

2010-11-08T17:26:00.003Z

As I mentioned a couple of weeks or so back, we are now in holiday season and they are starting to come thick and fast. After Halloween at the end of October, we celebrated Bonfire Night aka Guy Fawkes Night on Friday. Although not strictly a holiday anymore, it is a day of celebration and one of the landmark days in the calendar.

The day commemorates the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605 in which a group of men attempted to assassinate King James I by blowing up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament on November 5th. The man tasked with setting the explosives was Guy Fawkes, and it was during the night before the State Opening that he was discovered in a cellar beneath the parliament building with over 30 barrels of gunpowder. He was arrested and later executed (in horrific fashion) along with the majority of his fellow conspirators.

Since that time, November 5th has been marked as a day of national celebration. At one time it was, apparently, a public holiday but that has long since been abandoned. Nowadays, it is marked by the lighting of bonfires on top of which are placed “Guys” (effigies) and by firework displays. As kids we were also all taught the following little rhyme...

Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot

There were many firework displays around here over the weekend, both official and unofficial. Whilst they always used to take place on the day itself, most modern public displays tend to be held on the nearest weekend to November 5th. Dori and I were out visiting on Saturday night and saw and heard many fireworks as we travelled to and from our destination. It is one of those nights of the year that I very much look forward to.

Whilst talking of remembering, I would also like to mention that Norman Pritchard passed away recently. Whilst none of you are likely to have heard of him, and indeed few in his home town knew of him either, his legacy has garnered world-wide attention, for he was partially responsible for the design and implementation of Swindon’s notorious “Magic Roundabout”. This junction at the intersection of 5 roads was very revolutionary when first built and still strikes fear into the heart of many a driver today. It consists of a central roundabout with 5 mini-roundabouts around the outside. The beauty of it (if you are experienced at negotiating it) is that you may take several different routes through the road junction to reach your desired exit. Dori has previously posted a video over at her Yellow House blog to show what it is like, and here is another one to give you an idea of this wonderful creation!

The Times They Are A-Changin'

2010-11-02T17:41:00.002Z

Sunday, as well as being Halloween, also marked the end of British Summer Time (BST) for this year as the clocks were turned back an hour in the wee hours of the morning. We are now back on good ol’ Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) for the duration of the winter.

This, of course, means lighter mornings (for a few weeks at least) but darker evenings. With the days getting ever shorter as we near the winter solstice, the hours of sunlight that we have are getting less and less. It is already darker at 5:00 pm now than it was at 10:00 pm at the height of summer! It is for this reason that a “Lighter, Later” campaign has been gaining some following over recent years. Their idea is for Britain to adopt Central European Time (CET), meaning that our clocks would be advanced to an hour ahead of GMT during the winter, and an hour ahead of BST during the summer. Their argument is that this will move an hour of sunlight from the mornings to the evenings, when more people are up and about to enjoy it.

Is this a good idea? It will certainly alleviate some of the darkness in the evenings, which can make the winter days seem so short and miserable, and it is said that it will also save on electricity as the lights won’t be turned on until an hour later. That is all good. But, the mornings will be terribly dark when a lot of people are getting up and going out in the mornings, or when children are walking to school. Whatever we do with the clocks, we will still only have the same amount of daylight as before. And it is not as though the mornings are light at a ridiculously early time of the day anyway. I, for one, am still dragging myself out of bed whilst it is dark outside now – that would only be exacerbated if this new system is adopted. But then, I like the lighter evenings too.

So, I am a little undecided on this one. There is going to be a parliamentary debate on the subject next month but it is unlikely that anything will be changed very quickly. No doubt the campaign will continue, and new times may well lie ahead at some point. If only they could make the daylight last longer, then that would definitely get my vote!!

Happy Halloween!!

2010-10-30T11:17:00.002+01:00

It's a Jungle Out There!

2010-10-22T17:26:00.000+01:00

We have a new pet, of sorts, here at the Yellow House. As you will see below, a new friend has decided that he or she wishes to hang out with Dori and Brit Boy!

I took these pics the other day through our back window. Spidey has taken to sitting there on his/her web during the day and soaking up what little bit of sunshine that we get. In fact, Spidey even decided to eat with us a few days back as I looked out on my way to the kitchen and saw that an unfortunate fly had been captured and was in the process of being bound up before becoming our friend’s teatime treat :-) Having done a little bit of research – ie I googled it – I believe that our new lodger is a Cross Spider, by which I mean that is the type of spider, not that he/she is particularly peeved! Apparently, despite appearances to the contrary, they are harmless creatures – unless you happen to be a fly I guess.

Spidey isn’t the only visitor we get in our back garden. During the all too brief summer, we had an army of butterflies who graced us with their presence, as well as a battalion of wasps (yellowjackets) who were somewhat less welcome! We also have a pair of blackbirds who like to visit us, again quite often at meal times, and pick at the grubs and worms outside as we feast on something a little more tasty inside. Dori was also “lucky” enough to see a snake slithering its way around our garden shed a couple of years back. Snakes aren’t exactly common here, so that was quite an unexpected find!

So, the Yellow House garden has quite a little menagerie building up, and apparently that now includes a neighbour’s cat who we have just seen in our garden for the very first time. It is starting to sound a lot like a song I remember....

A Tale of Two Cathedrals

2010-10-14T14:51:00.001+01:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, it was my birthday last week. It was also my mum’s birthday on the same day - strange how that happens every year! :-) For her gift from us this year, we decided instead of giving her something that would probably be put away in a cupboard somewhere never to be seen again, or that would be used up in 5 minutes and forgotten about, we would take her out for a day sometime. And so, as the weather was so good at the start of this week, we went for a little day-trip.

When my mother was a young child, during World War II, she would often spend some of her holidays in Coventry, staying with some distant relatives. She loved these vacations, I guess because the city was so different to the rural life she was used to. It was on one of these visits that her “aunt” took her to see what remained of the recently bombed Coventry Cathedral. During the night of November 14, 1940 the whole city of Coventry had been decimated by a Luftwaffe bombing raid, and the cathedral did not escape from the punishment. Several bombs hit the cathedral and it burned along with a lot of the surrounding city.

My mum has very vivid memories of the sights she saw when she was taken down there sometime afterwards, and of the overpowering smell that still lingered in the air. But, she had never been back since to see either the remains of the bombed cathedral again, or the newly erected cathedral that was built alongside it. So, Coventry was our destination this week!

The new cathedral was designed by Sir Basil Spence and completed in 1962. Although there was some opposition at the time to its modern design, the cathedral is now very well loved, and was voted as Britain’s favourite 20th century building in a national poll. It certainly is an amazing place, and Dori has taken some wonderful pictures which I believe she will be sharing with you sometime soon when she returns to the bloggy world :-) In the meantime, here are a few snaps that I took with my mobile phone that will give you a little idea of what this house of worship is like.

The old....

..and the new...

The tapestry that you can see behind the altar is apparently the largest in the world, measuring 74'8" by 38' and was made in just one piece by Graham Sutherland. The stained glass windows are stunning, and my pictures don't even vaguely do them justice. As we had set off early, we were lucky enough to have the new cathedral almost to ourselves for a few minutes before a group of schoolchildren arrived, and it was an amazing experience to be so peaceful in that huge space.

It was a great day out, and a long-held ambition fulfilled for my mum.

Birthdays and So Much More

2010-10-06T17:43:00.001+01:00

For Dori and me, this last weekend marks the start of a holiday season that goes all the way through to next spring.

It began with my birthday, which I celebrated by watching Team Europe squeak a victory in the Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor in Wales. As I foretold in my last post, the weather left a lot to be desired for much of the competition, only to end with a gloriously sunny day on Monday as the contest entered an extra day for the first time in its history. To say this year’s event was close would be a massive understatement, with every single match counting towards the final outcome. If just one individual match had gone from a Europe win to being halved, or from being halved to a US win then the American team would have been flying home with the Ryder Cup yesterday.

The tie ebbed and flowed considerably over the course of the 4 days, with Europe starting well only for the US to gain the upper hand, and then Europe fighting back with a stunning third session of games to take a commanding lead into the singles matches. But all was not done and dusted, and the Americans made a tremendous effort to claw their way back into the contest and level the scores with just one match left on the course. The pressure on those two final players must have been immense and it was US Open champion Graeme McDowell who managed to hold his nerve better and secure the win for Team Europe. Yet again the Ryder Cup produced sporting excellence and drama in equal measures and I am already looking forward to the next staging of the event, which will be at Medinah Country Club, Illinois in 2012.

Aside from the golf, we also went out for a meal together with my Mum, who celebrates her birthday on the same day as me. The food was delicious and we all had a very pleasant time. It was a good weekend.

But, as I was saying, this is the start of our holiday season. Being from two different places, as I have mentioned here before, means that we get to celebrate even more holidays than most people. Starting with my birthday, we then have Halloween, Bonfire Night, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, Dori’s birthday, Valentine’s Day, Pancake Day, Mothers Day, St George’s Day, Easter and our wedding anniversary – and no doubt I’ve forgotten one or two in there :-) And by the time we have gone through all of it will be time to start looking ahead to next summer! Time to get buying cards methinks!!

Let Battle Commence

2010-09-29T17:36:00.003+01:00

It may not seem like it, but it was 6 months ago that I posted an entry on this blog looking forward to the sporting summer ahead. Well, now obviously that summer has been and gone and we have seen some tremendous performances over the months. It has been a very good year for the Spanish, with the football team finally realizing their potential and winning the World Cup after many years of thwarted dreams – and, of course, Rafa Nadal completing his collection of Grand Slam tennis titles at Flushing Meadows earlier this month.

There is, however, still one huge sporting event of the season still to take place, and that will be happening this coming weekend. I am referring, of course, to the Ryder Cup which will begin early on Friday morning and reach its climax on Sunday evening. This year the golfing battle is being hosted at Celtic Manor in South Wales. That is not too far distant from us and both Dori and I would have loved to attend the event and cheer on our respective teams. Sadly the cost of the tickets is exorbitant and we just could not justify the expense at this time. So, instead, I will be heading over to my Mum’s house to watch part of it there, as she has the sports package on her TV. Attending the Ryder Cup one year is, however, definitely on my bucket list!

Ever since the Great Britain and Ireland team was expanded to include the rest of Europe in 1979, this contest has never failed to provide drama and exciting competition. Having won 5 out of the previous 6 matches the European team suffered a heavy defeat last time out, losing by 5 points at Valhalla in Kentucky two years ago. So, this year they will be out to avenge that defeat in what looks like being some fairly wet and windy weather.

As always on these occasions, Trevor’s loyalties will be divided and he will no doubt be cheering for the American team when Dori is in the room, and the Europeans when I am there – or, failing that, maybe he will just be rooting for whoever may be leading at the time. He is a bit of a glory hunter after all :-) Whoever wins, expect a lot of ups and downs and some very heated competition. May the best team win!

A Happy Friday

2010-09-24T12:30:00.004+01:00

Happy Friday everyone! And today is an even happier Friday for two reasons. One is that we are finally getting a new shower installed after nearly a month of wrangling with our property agents (of which you can read more over at Dori’s blog), and the second is that I have received the Happy 101 Award from Lis of An American Girl in Bristol. Thank you very much Lis, I am very honoured to receive this award, especially as it is the first blogging award I have received from someone who I’m not married to!!

The Rules of the Award are that you should say who passed on the award ( thanks again Lis), and to name 10 things that you like and then pass on the award to 10 other people and notify them with a comment. Well, I’m going to bail on the last of those conditions and just say that if you have ever commented on my blog, or if I have commented on yours, then you are free to take this award away with you and do with it as you please. :-)

The 10 things that I like are:
1. Cheese – the food of the Gods
2. Football – the beautiful game (aka soccer in some places!)
3. Sunny days when you don’t have anywhere in particular to go
4. Snow days when you don’t have to drive out anywhere
5. Bath – that’s the city in England not something you may find in your bathroom, although now I mention it....
6. A long soak in the bath when you can just relax and let the stresses melt away
7. The West Wing – see Friday Favourites #1
8. Music – I couldn’t live without it
9. Sophie’s Steakhouse, Covent Garden – our new favourite, affordable London eatery
10. Travelling with Dori and seeing the wonderful world around us.

As I say, feel free to take this award home with you if you are a commenter/commentee.

Have a great - and happy - weekend everyone!

Random Monday #4 - To Be or Not To Be

2010-09-20T17:43:00.001+01:00

It must be time for another Random Monday I think. So here goes -
Today’s question is ....

Have you ever appeared in a school play?

Well, the quick answer is no, but that would make for a very dull and short blog post!! So, let me bore you instead with tales of my (very brief) stage adventures!

As I said, I haven’t appeared in a school play, but I did appear in a play at school. I may be interpreting the question incorrectly, but to me a “school play” is one where the participants are drawn from the whole school and the play is performed for the public. I ain’t never done that! But I do have a tiny bit of theatrical experience from my schooldays.

Our secondary school, like many here, was split into “houses” and every year, just before Christmas, each house year-group would put on a play, performed in front of the rest of your year. The plays were then judged by the headmaster and the head of year, and the winners would be rewarded with something. No doubt the prize was fabulous and stunning, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was. Maybe that is because we never won - I couldn’t possibly say :-)

Anyhoo, it was in these yearly plays that I made both my stage debut and my final performance. Most of the plays were stolen ...uhh, I mean borrowed from somewhere else. I recall that one group did their version of a Fawlty Towers episode one year, which went down a storm. In the first year (when we were all 11 or 12) our house-group did a small play about a wax museum where for some reason or other the wax figures suddenly came to life, and the people froze. My role in this masterpiece was as one of the visitors to the museum, and I had one line to say. Yep, one whole line. About half a dozen words if memory serves me correctly.

I learnt the line in five seconds flat – well, how long does it take to memorize six words? And, of course, when it came to the crunch on the big day itself, those same six words somehow flew away from my brain and stubbornly refused to return. To be honest, I think that if you had asked me at the time what my own name was, I may have struggled to remember that too. As a visitor to the museum, my character was supposed to freeze, but as an “actor” in the play it wasn’t called for so much!! So, yes I appeared in the play but I completely bombed out! LOL

My memory is a little hazy, but I believe that I also took part in the 2nd Year production, although I can’t recall what the play was or what my part in it might have been. I know for sure that it wasn’t a speaking part!! “Member of crowd” was clearly my theatrical forte! After that I moved to backstage roles in subsequent years, which I have to say I enjoyed immeasurably more. Not all of us are cut out for the limelight I guess.

Do any of you have a more auspicious experience of school theatrics? I am guessing that no one has a worse tale, although I suppose that at least I didn’t fall flat on my face!! Let me know your own stories of woe or wonder.

Keeping it random!

Two Popes

2010-09-16T17:18:00.001+01:00

Today is the first day of the state visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Great Britain. He arrived at just before 10:30 this morning at Edinburgh airport, and has spent the majority of the day in Scotland before flying down to London in the evening.

It is the first Papal visit to these shores since Pope John Paul II came here in 1982, and has caused a little controversy in some circles. Whilst some people are against the visit on religious principles, others are up in arms over the Catholic Church’s role in recent abuse cases and then there is the matter of who pays for this event. Unlike the Papal visit in 1982, this is an official visit by the Pope in his position as a head of state and as such a large proportion of the cost is to be borne by the British taxpayer. This comes at a time when the country is struggling under a heavy debt and massive cuts are being made to public spending.

I do think, however, that it is a shame that only the second visit by a Pope to this country has been categorized, in the media at least, by the negativity surrounding it. Hopefully the good will outweigh the bad during the 4 days that His Holiness is here and people will come away with good memories of the time, much like people still have of John Paul’s 1982 visit.

I cannot quite believe that it is 28 years since that time. Somebody is definitely accelerating the passage of time somewhere behind the scenes!! Anyway, as a reminder of what the world was like way back in May/June of 1982, here is a video of the song that was at Number One in the charts during the majority of Pope John Paul’s visit way back when.

The subject matter is quite ironic when you think about it!

New Look and A Wonderful World

2010-09-09T17:12:00.005+01:00

You may have noticed that things look a little different around here today! I decided that after nearly 18 months, it was time for a bit of a revamp. And as we are fast heading towards autumn, I plumped for an autumnal feel. Of course, that means that I will have to redecorate again in two or three months time, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. I think it was about time for a fresh feel to the blog. I hope that you like it.

Today’s is just a short post, to show you this little video that I put together last weekend. I was browsing through some of our old photos and thought how gorgeous some of the places we have visited look. So, I put a few of the pictures together and set them to some appropriate music. The photographs were all taken by either Dori or me (mostly Dori) and are mainly nature shots. This is the first video that I have uploaded to our new YouTube channel. We hope to post some more videos in the near future, of our travels and other stuff. So, bookmark it now! :-) Apparently this video won’t be available to watch in every country because of copyright issues, so I apologize in advance if you can’t see it.

Anyway, here it is. I hope you like it.

If you don't see the video above, then click here instead to watch it on YouTube.

Random Monday #3

2010-09-06T16:26:00.001+01:00

So here we are again. Another Monday, another Random Monday post. By the way, Happy Labor Day for those of you celebrating it :-)

Today’s mind scrambler is:

When was the last time you drove “out of town”?

Now, I am going to have to interpret this question to stop my answer from being extremely mundane! As we live in a small town with just a few local shops and a couple of supermarkets, going out of town is a regular occurrence and a necessity on an almost daily basis. Strictly speaking, the last time I drove out of town was on Saturday when we went to get ourselves a KFC, which was a mistake in itself but that’s a whole other story!

Before that, we did, of course, go to London a week or so ago, but we travelled on the train and the question does specify driving. So, the last time that we actually drove somewhere else was a couple of days after our London trip. It was a Bank Holiday here, and we decided to go on an impromptu little drive around after visiting another fast-food outlet (maybe we should look at our eating habits!!). We ended up going through the northern part of Wiltshire and over the county border into Gloucestershire, and then on into Oxfordshire.

This led us into the Cotswolds, with its beautiful scenery and lovely golden coloured buildings. It is so picturesque around there. We didn’t have a camera with us on the day, but we will have to go on a photography mission one day soon so that you can all get to see how gorgeous that part of the country is. We drove through Lechlade, which was bustling with cars and people out enjoying the holiday, and on through Burford, before looping round back towards home past Cirencester and back into Wiltshire. It was a very nice change to do something a little different, and we saw some stunning panoramas in just that short time. As I say, we will have to take you all along with us the nest time that we head that way!

But, we never actually stopped anywhere on that drive, so I don’t know if I have even now really answered the question properly. Where did we last drive to that was outside of the surrounding area, that wasn’t for work purposes and where we actually stopped and got out of the car? I will admit that I am struggling to think of the answer here. Give me a minute....

Five minutes later....
Aha! It took a while but inspiration has finally struck!! The last time that I drove out of town, with a purpose, was to collect Dori from Gatwick airport after her visit back home to Georgia. Now that was back at the beginning of July, which says to me that we need to go on a few more trips out before the weather turns much colder – I won’t say wetter because that would just be silly :-)

So where have you driven to lately? I would be interested to find out. As always, leave me a comment and we will see if anyone has a more interesting answer than an airport!

Friday Favourites

2010-09-03T17:42:00.001+01:00

Sometimes as a blogger inspiration is somewhat lacking when it comes to deciding what to write about, well it is for me at least! So, I was racking my brains this morning trying to think of what I could share with you all. Dori has already described, in wonderful detail and great pictures, our trip up to London last weekend for what we thought was going to be a visit to the theatre but ended up being a delicious meal, a walk around Covent Garden, a visit to the Science Museum and a bit of relaxation in Hyde Park. So, what else can I write about today?

Looking around the room for inspiration, my eye fell (not literally you understand!) on our DVD collection, and I had what passes for a brainwave in my head. So, today I am starting yet another semi-regular series on this blog – Friday Favourites, and yes I am spelling it like that :-) Now, as with everybody, my favourites come and go and change over time and with my mood, so there may well be different subjects appearing in these blog entries under the same topic. For example, my favourite song very much depends on whether I am feeling happy, sad, optimistic, melancholy, etc.

Anyway, the first in this series is my favourite TV show. Now there are many shows that I could have plumped for under this title, from way back in the 70’s as a kid when I was watching the Banana Splits or The Six Million Dollar Man or Star Trek, through the 80’s and 90’s with Inspector Morse or The Simpsons, and into the new millennium with current shows such as Brothers and Sisters or Monk. Some of you may also remember that I wrote a guest post on Dori’s blog about the cancellation of Eli Stone, which I thought was a wonderful and original series and was ditched way too soon.

But the show that I have decided to highlight today, and which is my first Friday Favourite is The West Wing. It is one of a very few shows of which I have the full DVD collection. I may tell you sometime what the others are ;-) The West Wing premiered in September 1999, which incidentally was also the month when the moon was knocked out of Earth’s orbit at the start of Space 1999, but I may be getting a little sidetracked there! The show ran until May of 2006, clocking up seven seasons and 156 episodes. It won countless awards including three Golden Globes and 27 Emmy awards.

For the few of you out there who might not know, The West Wing chronicles the ups and downs of a fictional Democratic administration in the White House. Starring Martin Sheen as President Jed Bartlet, the show also featured Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford, Rob Lowe, the late John Spencer, Richard Schiff, Janel Moloney, Dule Hill and many others.

The dialogue is consistently sharp, funny and very well written. Like many West Wing fans, I prefer the first four seasons of the show which is when Aaron Sorkin was still the main writer and creative driving force behind it. But right up to the very last episode, this show never failed to deliver a combination of incisive writing and great acting. I am constantly remarking to Dori how some current situation in the world reflects what has already happened on The West Wing. For example, they solved the Israel/Palestine situation many years ago on the show, and we currently have the two sides in talks as you read this post!

As another example, way before the 2008 Presidential election, the show’s writers modelled their own Democratic candidate on a relatively little known Senator from Illinois (Barack Obama) and the Republican candidate on Arizona Senator John McCain. I guess they really did have their fingers on the pulse of Washington politics!

I love this show for its realism, its humour, its drama and its message of hope. And, when I have the time, I love nothing better than to sit myself down on the sofa and watch episode after episode after episode. Bliss.

Is That Rain I See?

2010-08-26T16:21:00.000+01:00

It was a typical English summer’s day yesterday, i.e. wet and cold! Today is no different, and it has been much the same story ever since mid-July. It seems that nowadays we no longer get hot and sunny weather in July and August, instead we have to deal with floods and downpours. The best weather, such as it is, appears to be more likely to appear in April or September than in the summer months!

Anyway, as the day was a wash-out, and since we hadn’t been to the movies for a couple of months, Dori and I made the decision to head on over to the multiplex and catch a film in the afternoon. Now, as we are both big kids at heart we were quite keen on seeing Toy Story 3, but it is still the school holidays over here, and we thought that it might be a little packed out in there. So, instead, we plumped for “Salt”, starring Angelina Joile and Liev Schreiber.

If you don’t already know, Jolie plays a CIA agent and the film follows a “Bourne Identity” type line, with her character on the run and the audience left to work out if she’s actually a good guy or bad guy. It won’t be winning too many Oscars come next February, but it was certainly an entertaining and diverting way to while away a couple of hours on a wet Wednesday afternoon :-)

In other news, I forgot to mention that I became a great-uncle a couple of weeks back. I mean, I already was by virtue of marriage, but this new arrival was to my brother’s eldest son. They are calling their little bundle of joy Macy, or possibly Macey – the lines of communication have been a little fuzzy! Baby and mother (and even father!) are said to be doing well. I can’t quite believe though that my brother is a grandfather – it only seems like 5 minutes ago we were both in school! Time, as they say, does indeed fly.

Walking In A Summer Wonderland ?!

2010-08-19T17:39:00.000+01:00

They say that Christmas comes earlier every year, and that is certainly the case this year. Dori and I went into town on Monday to get a few essentials, as well as a new shower head as the old one has been falling apart on a disconcertingly regular basis lately. In fact, thinking about it, our plumbing system as a whole has been a menace ever since we first moved in to the Yellow House. During the 6 years we have been renting here we have had a new cistern, repairs to the bath as it was leaking through the ceiling downstairs, a brand new shower, a new washing machine, several replacement parts for the immersion heater and a few dripping taps. Dealing with the landlord/property agents has been a nightmare at times, and so nowadays, as long as it is not going to cost us too much, we tend to do any running repairs ourselves and save ourselves the hassle!

Anyway, as I was saying, we were in town doing our little bit of shopping. We had finished up and were on our way back to the car park when I happened to glance at the window display of a shop to my left. And what did I see? A Christmas tree, faux presents, a Santa and Rudolph blow-up thingy (!) and some random Christmas crackers. I must admit that for a second there I did a mental flip, thinking “what month is this?”. But, yes, on checking with myself I found that we are still indeed in AUGUST!!! Yes, August! I fully expect the shops to be crammed full of Christmas decorations and the like by October time - a mere two months or so before the festive season, but August!? Seriously? The kids here haven’t even gone back to school from their summer break yet! Grrr.

Of course, it is not just Christmas that comes around early. There are Easter eggs in the shops before New Year’s Day, summer clothes are on the racks whilst the snow is still on the ground and Valentines cards have to battle it out with the Christmas cards for shelf space. I guess that looking ahead is no bad thing, but surely it is better to first enjoy and relish the season that you are actually in. I don’t want to be thinking of buying Christmas gifts in summer (though it has felt more like winter here lately, but that’s another story!), just as I don’t want to be buying in BBQ supplies in January!

A Fresh New Season

2010-08-13T16:44:00.001+01:00

Happy Friday the 13th everyone! I hope that your day goes well :-) I wouldn’t be quite so spooked by the date if I didn’t also (yet again) have 666 followers on my Twitter account (@BritBoy)!! I will be avoiding walking under any ladders, spilling salt or going anywhere near any mirrors for the rest of the day. Not that I’m at all superstitious you understand!

Anyway, that is not what this post is meant to be about. Tomorrow, when Friday the 13th will be safely behind us all, will see the start of the new English Premier League season. Another 9-month campaign will begin again to see which super-rich, but heavily indebted, club can secure the Premiership title. I would like to say that the field is wide open, but if the eventual champions aren’t either Manchester United or Chelsea then it would be a major surprise. In fact, those two teams plus Arsenal are the only ones to have won the Premiership since 1995, and they all occupied the top three positions in last season’s competition. Despite a miserable showing by the English players at this summer’s World Cup, every team will be hoping that this is “their year”. The start of a new season brings fresh hope to every fan, player and manager alike and optimism is rife. For some that optimism will be fulfilled, whilst for the majority it will be a season of struggle and ups and downs.

Away from the Premier League, the rest of the professional teams kicked off their seasons last weekend. Swindon Town, fresh from reaching the play-off final at Wembley last season, have started this campaign rather badly. They have so far played two matches, and lost them both, going out of one of the cup competitions in the process. Of course, last season started with a 5-0 drubbing on the opening day, so it is worth remembering that you can’t predict the outcome in May based on a few games in August! It is, however, a disconcerting start and some of that optimism that I was just talking about has already dissipated!

But the life of a football fan (and a Swindon Town fan in particular!) is often harrowing and filled with disappointment, but it is those very same hard times that make the good times, when they do eventually come round, all the better and more satisfying. If you are a Chelsea or Man Utd supporter, then second place at the end of this season will be a disappointment, and first place is just “job done”. But as a Town fan, another season like last year, with the excitement of the play-off matches and a day out at Wembley Stadium, would be a very exhilarating experience. I guess it just comes down to your perspective :-)

Anyway, as the season gets into full swing this weekend, I wish every football supporter a great 9 months ahead – unless your team is playing against Swindon, or you happen to be an Oxford United fan!! Let the games begin!

Random Monday #2 - Yes, already!

2010-08-09T16:51:00.002+01:00

So, one week on and here is Random Monday #2. “Not very random” I hear you cry – but the whole point of randomness is that you don’t know when the next one will occur. Who knows, Random Monday #3 may well appear next Monday ...or not. :-)

Thank you for your answers to last week’s question, which ranged from the very mundane (mine included) to the truly extraordinary. Hopefully this week’s question will also provide a wide-ranging variety of answers. So, without further ado, this week’s Random Monday question is:

What was the last concert that you attended?

Now, Dori and I are avid concert-goers, but we have had a bit of a drought lately because of a number of factors. In order to go to a decent concert over here we usually have to travel into London, and often stay overnight as the trains don’t run quite late enough for us to get back. So, concert-going is not a cheap occupation, especially considering the already astronomical prices for the tickets themselves. Added to that, there haven’t been too many of our favourite acts touring lately. We missed out on seeing Alicia Keys at The O2 in the spring, and have been searching the listings ever since but nothing has really caught our eye.

The last concert that we should have gone to was, of course, Michael Jackson’s “This Is It” tour, also at The O2 in London. We were too excited for words at the prospect, and then completely shattered when the awful events of June last year unfolded. For a while, we didn’t feel like we wanted to go to see anyone in concert at all. Having seen the subsequent film of the same name, we know that the concert would have been out of this world, and simply extraordinary. What a loss.

So, I still haven’t answered the question. I have had to rack my brains, because we saw two or three concerts very close together last spring and I’m not entirely sure which one was actually the last. But I believe the answer is that the last concert we went to was the magnificent, incomparable and truly legendary Tina Turner. Once again this was at the O2 (can you spot a pattern here?) and she was simply amazing. Ms Turner is no longer a spring chicken, but boy did she have energy to spare that night! And she knows how to put on a show too, with great choreography, costume changes and visual effects. We had a fantastic night, sung along to almost every song, and were able to cross another off of our Legends We Must See list!! Truly wonderful.

The O2 in Greenwich, London

It is only now that it has sunk in how long ago that was. We really do need to get out and see somebody else is concert very soon. There is nothing like the Live Music experience. I will have to get back to searching the listings again – there must be somebody out there who’s worth paying the price for!!

As always with Random Monday, I would be fascinated to hear your answers too. Leave me a comment and tell me who was your last concert experience! Have a good week everyone!

Random Monday #1

2010-08-02T18:46:00.000+01:00

OK, so this is the first of what may be an occasional series of posts called Random Monday. It is occasional because it couldn’t really be random otherwise, could it?! :-) But the randomness doesn’t stop there. Oh no. The random in the title refers to a random question that will be plucked from the ether and which I will then answer for myself. If you would like to give your own answers then please do so in the Comments. Oh, by the way, I’m doing it on a Monday because “random” and “Monday” share 5 of their 6 letters! Sorry, just a random thought :-)

So, anyway, the first Random Monday question is:

Where were you this time last week?

I like this question, not because of the answer, which I suspect we will all find out in a minute is very unspectacular, but because it is one of those questions that actually makes you think. Anything to get the grey matter bubbling!

So, my answer to this question is....right here on this same chair in our little yellow house in Wiltshire, and writing another blog post in fact! I would have loved to have said I was trekking up Kilimanjaro or something, but I guess honesty is the best policy with these questions. I did warn that my answer would be something less than stellar! If you have a more interesting answer, or even if you don’t, I would be intrigued to know what it is.

Look out for the next Random Monday, which will be appearing. .. umm... randomly sometime in the future!!

Two years, 1 day and counting.....

2010-07-26T17:40:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is July 27th, and that will be exactly two years from the start of the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games. The five years that have passed since the announcement that the games would be coming to London have flown by, and I have no doubt that the next two years will pass by even quicker.

We were talking about this last week to some friends, and one was saying how much she is dreading it. She is not a sports lover, but it isn’t the wall to wall sports coverage that she fears, nor is it the influx of all the teams, athletes and spectators into our already over-crowded little island, or even the mass of Olympic merchandise that you know will flood every shop in the country. No, what she is apprehensive about is the impression of our country that will be given at the Opening Ceremony! This is not a view that she holds alone, I have to say. If you were unlucky enough to have caught the brief London 2012 section of the Closing Ceremony in Beijing then you will be aware of how badly wrong something like that can go!! And it is quite a widely held feeling that this will only be magnified when it comes to the Opening Ceremony in two years time.

Of course, it is part of the British psyche to put ourselves down – we are World Class at it! LOL Hold on, was that me boasting the Brits are good at something?? No, couldn’t have been! :-) Anyway, Dori tells me from her own experience, that it was the same with Atlanta before the 1996 games, but that it all turned out great in the end. The London 2012 organizing committee have appointed Danny Boyle, who directed Slumdog Millionaire amongst other films, as the director of the opening ceremony, which does gives some cause for optimism. I am sure (ish!) that it will be “alright on the night”!

But, whatever happens at the opening ceremony, I am sure the Games themselves will be a great success, and that is what is important at the end of the day. I am very excitedly looking forward to what will be the biggest sporting occasion this country has witnessed in my lifetime. And with the English FA also bidding to host the World Cup in 2018 (decision to be announced in December) it could be quite a sporting decade for England! Two years, 1 day and counting.....

Live Aid 1985 - The Cars - "Drive"

2010-07-18T10:02:00.002+01:00

As I mentioned in my last post, this week saw the 25th anniversary of Live Aid. Watching the documentary about it, I was reminded of this piece of film. It is probably the most moving film I have ever seen, and still retains its power to this day. Watch it again, and remember that there is still too much suffering on this planet, and that we as a world should look after each other.

The world doesn't have to be like this.

A Quarter of a Century Ago....

2010-07-16T18:56:00.002+01:00

As many of you will have seen, this week marked the 25th anniversary of the Live Aid concerts. 25 years! Can you believe that? Time really does fly. There was a documentary on BBC3 this week, which was actually made for the 20th anniversary, and that brought the memories flooding back. As somebody said in the documentary, Live Aid was one of those seminal moments in cultural history that everybody remembers, and knows where they were, what they were doing and how they were feeling at the time. It was a day never to be forgotten.

So, what was I doing on that day? Well, as it happens, it was always going to be a day that I will remember for the rest of my life even before Live Aid was first mooted. Every year at our school the Lower 6th form (ie 16 and 17 year olds) would do a charity challenge, and back in those days it usually involved pushing a vehicle of some description around the school grounds. I remember before our year there had been a milkfloat push, a Mini push, a boat on wheels,... all manner of different craft. So when it came to our turn we were a little stuck for ideas, and eventually landed on the idea of pushing an aeroplane! Now, obviously, pushing an actual plane around our school would have been more than a little problematic, so what we did was to adapt an old DAF car to look aeroplane-like! It had wings and everything.

The preparation for the charity challenge lasted the whole of the school year, and the event itself would always take place on the penultimate weekend of the year. So, we knew months ahead that our charity challenge – or marathon as it was colloquially known – would be taking place from Friday July 12th to Monday July 15th 1985. So imagine how excited and then gutted we all were when Live Aid was first announced. The greatest concert ever – but on one of the days that we were doing the marathon! Why didn’t Bob Geldof consult us first?!

So last minute arrangements had to be made to bring in somebody’s portable TV, and a host of radios. The 6th Form Marathon was organized so that teams of 5 or 6 students would push the “plane” around the grounds for an hour at a time, over the course of the 78 hour duration of the challenge. So, we had about 8 teams who worked in a rotating shift system. The challenge started at 9:30 on the Friday morning and went on to 3:30 on the Monday afternoon. When we weren’t actually pushing the plane, we would eat, sleep and hang out in the 6th Form common room and adjoining classrooms.

The portable TV, with its grossly poor reception, was set up in the lecture room so that as many people as possible could see the concert when they weren’t either running or sleeping. A small transistor radio was also fixed onto the plane so that those doing the running could also hear what was going on. So, contrary to most people of my generation, Live Aid Day wasn’t spent camped out in front of a TV, but in a much different way. But we all got to see some of the concert, and heard the great majority of it. Most people’s highlight of the Wembley concert was Queen’s amazing performance, and most of that I listened to whilst running around our school pushing a car disguised as a plane!! Our team were lucky enough to have our extended break from running (each team had one) on the Saturday evening, and I was able to go home and see the end of the Wembley concert there.

So, yes I do remember exactly what I was doing, where I was and how I was feeling when Live Aid occurred!! I have never been so sore or tired in my life than I was after we had finished on the Monday afternoon. But, they are memories that I hold and will treasure for the rest of my life. We may not have been quite on the level of Live Aid, but we did our own small bit for a local charity and raised a few thousand pounds for a Special School, which caters for students with learning difficulties, physical disabilities or behavioural problems. And we all have an extra story to tell when the subject of Live Aid comes around! :-)

Sunday Snaps 11 - Lanzarote

2010-07-11T12:29:00.001+01:00

So, today is World Cup Final day. The Netherlands will meet Spain at Soccer City in Johannesburg to battle it out to become World Champions. I hope that it will be a good match to finish off the tournament.

But this is a Sunday Snaps post (the first since January would you believe?!), so what pictures can I share with you today? I have never been to Holland, or to the Spanish mainland, but we have been to Lanzarote, which is one of the Canary Islands and belongs to Spain. So today here are some of the sights of Lanzarote, taken while we were honeymooning there :-)

The first two pictures are of Timanfaya National Park and show the volacanic landscape of the island. It is almost lunar in some places.

This next photo is of the marina at Puerto Calero. We took a day trip there, and even had a voyage out on a Yellow Submarine!

The next snap was taken at “Rancho Texas”, a park that evokes the old Wild West, and which houses many animals and birds. We watched a Birds of Prey show there, but some of the birds got a little too close for comfort!!

The last pic was taken from our hotel room, showing a passing cruise ship. Lanzarote lies just 79 miles off the coast of Africa, and is a popular drop off point for cruises.

Good luck to both Spain and the Netherlands today. If you are watching the match then I hope you enjoy it, but have a great Sunday whatever you are up to!

Remembrance

2010-07-08T17:06:00.000+01:00

I visited my Dad today. I haven’t seen him in a while, and to be honest, I didn’t see him today. We didn’t say anything; I just spent some time with him. It was peaceful and comforting. I didn’t stay long, but I wanted him to know that I love him and I miss him. It’s been three years now, and at times that feels like just a heartbeat ago. At other times it feels like a lifetime has passed since we were together.

Ironically, where my Dad now rests is just a stone’s throw (literally) from my childhood home, and where my Mum still lives. In fact, she can sit in her chair in the front room and still see my Dad – and who is visiting him. I know that she finds comfort in that, and so do I.

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I do not die.

(Mary Elizabeth Frye)

Miss you Dad. x

Weekend at the Yellow House

2010-07-06T14:48:00.001+01:00

I hope that everybody who celebrates it had a great 4th of July. Coming from two places, as we do, Dori and I get to celebrate the holidays from both places, which is great. We can celebrate Independence Day, as well as Bonfire Night, Memorial Day, St George’s Day, Thanksgiving and all the others. There is nothing like a good excuse for a celebration :-)

On Sunday we cooked burgers, corn on the cob and beans and bacon and had a great eat-out meal – although we actually had it indoors for one reason and another. As a Brit, I guess I shouldn’t really be joining in on 4th of July celebrations, but what the hey! It was a good day.

As we ate our celebration food, we also watched the men’s final at Wimbledon. Not unexpectedly, Britain’s Andy Murray failed to make it into the final and so it will be at least 73 years now between the last British finalist and the next! Both the men’s and women’s finals were a little one-sided and were decided in straight sets. But both were won by true champions of the game, and congratulations have to go to both of the deserved winners – Serena Williams and Rafael Nadal. It has been a great Wimbledon fortnight this year, with many a cracking match – not least the longest tennis match ever. And there was not a single rain delay in the whole two weeks, which is a very rare occurrence indeed! The Wimbledon fortnight is my favourite two weeks of the year, as I have mentioned here before, and this year was no exception.

Of course, this year I also had the added distraction of the World Cup taking place simultaneously, over in South Africa. On more than one occasion I found myself watching the football on the TV, whilst having my other eye on the tennis on my laptop! It’s not easy – even less so when you are also tweeting about both events at the same time!! Who says that men can’t multi-task!

Talking of the World Cup, we are now at the semi-final stage having seen some shock results in the quarter-finals. What was looking like a Brazil-Argentina final has now totally been thrown out of the window after both teams were eliminated in the last round. The quarter-finals also saw the end of the last African team in the tournament, as Ghana were beaten by Uruguay in a penalty shoot-out. This now leaves Uruguay plus three European teams in the competition. Tonight sees Uruguay take on the Netherlands, and then tomorrow Germany will play against Spain. The winners will meet in the final, to be played on Sunday.

Other than the sport, it has been a relatively quiet time at the Yellow House. Dori is now just about recovered from the jet-lag and we are slipping back into our routines. It is good to be back together again :-)

We have a wedding reception to attend on Friday, so that may prove interesting as it is being held in a hotel that we have been trying to find an excuse to visit for a long while. LOL You may hear more about that on one of our blogs at the weekend!

I hope that you all have a good week.

Crunch Time

2010-07-02T10:25:00.001+01:00

Today is a big sporting day. At Wimbledon it is men’s semi-finals day, and in South Africa we have the first quarter-final matches of the World Cup. My place on the sofa in front of the TV is already reserved!

Just like last year, Britain’s Andy Murray has made his way into the semi-final at Wimbledon, and that means that the nation and the press in particular are now getting very excited about the prospect of a British men’s champion for the first time since 1936. Although Roger Federer has now been knocked out, it still won’t be an easy task for Murray, as he has to play world number one Rafa Nadal today. Should he reach the final (a big if) he will be the first Briton to play in the men’s final since 1938. The nation would, no doubt, go into complete tennis fever !!

That fever will be heightened because there is no longer a distraction being caused by the England football team at the World Cup. They were beaten – well beaten – last weekend by Germany, and left the competition in ignominy. England has perhaps the greatest club competition in the Premier League, in which many world stars compete, but the national side have performed nowhere near those levels. In fact, so poor were they that there has even been a call for a Parliamentary inquiry into their abysmal showing! I have to say it is the worst performance I can ever remember from an England team at a World Cup finals, but that may be taking things a tad too far!

Anyway, the competition continues, and today sees Brazil take on the Netherlands in what could be the game of the tournament, and unfancied Uruguay play against the even more unfancied Ghana. It would be wonderful if Africa’s first ever World Cup were to see an African nation in the semi-finals, and they certainly stand a chance. Tomorrow will see Germany play Argentina – another clash of the titans – and Spain will play Paraguay. It should be a very exciting couple of days, and I am sure there will be much drama. The semi-finals take place on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, and the final is on the following Sunday.

So, even with the inglorious showing of the England team, there is still plenty of sporting action to look forward to over the next 10 days. Now I have to go and claim that space on the sofa...

Welcome Home

2010-06-29T11:47:00.000+01:00

Dori is back home. Yay!

I drove up to Gatwick airport yesterday to collect her. As with the outward journey, it meant a ridiculously early start for me - before the birds had even begun to clear their throats! Gatwick is further away than Heathrow, about 40 or 50 miles more, and Dori’s plane was due to arrive at 7a.m., so it was a crack of dawn start to the day.

The weather here for the last week or so has been glorious. In fact I can’t remember such a long stretch of unbroken sunshine for a very long time. So, it was a pleasant ride up to the airport (if driving along the motorways here can ever be said to be pleasant!), with my iPod choosing the music as I went. The sun rose as an orange ball as I left home, but was very soon shining brightly as I sped along the motorway.

I arrived at Gatwick at nearly the exact time that Dori’s flight was due. We are both very used to that journey, having made it countless times when we were both flitting back and forth across the Atlantic before we got married. So I knew roughly how long it would take me, and I arrived at pretty much the time I anticipated. It was a little chaotic when I arrived at the terminal as they are currently making changes to the road layout there, and have moved the drop-off point to directly in front of the car park entrance. Cars were going in all directions! Anyway, I manoeuvred my way across one lane of cars, and slipped quickly into the car park, leaving the mayhem behind me.

Having parked up, I walked over to the terminal and began my wait for Dori. The plane landed just a couple of minutes later, and so I anticipated a further 45 minutes or so for her to deplane and go through immigration, baggage claim and customs. An hour and a half later I was getting a tad worried! Thankfully, Dori then appeared at the end of the corridor. Apparently it had taken forever to get through immigration because they only had 2 people working there trying to get 2 or 3 plane loads of people through! But all was well :-)

We said our hellos and then made our way back to the car, and onwards back to Wiltshire. Sometimes the journey back from Gatwick can seem like it is taking forever, and yesterday was one of those days. Having to travel around the M25 (the inspiration for Chris Rea’s “Road to Hell”) doesn’t help!! For those that don’t know, the M25 is a ring road that encircles London, and is always extremely busy; and sometimes, as yesterday, at a complete standstill. So, it took much longer to get back home than it had for me to get up to the airport.

But, get back we did, and Dori is now fast asleep upstairs as I write this, trying to catch up on her missed sleep, and recovering from the jetlag. She had a wonderful time back home in Georgia, and I am sure she will be blogging about it all for you very soon!

In other news, apparently the World Cup is still going on, but I forget who is doing well and who is doing so abysmally poorly!! :-/ Maybe I will remember before the next time!

A Sporting Time

2010-06-22T10:20:00.000+01:00

So, I’m in Brit Boy sporting heaven right now :-) The World Cup has been going for 10 days already and is reaching the end of the group stage. This is where the fun really begins as every match is absolutely crucial.

England’s campaign so far has been abysmal, but long experience has shown me that they nearly always start big tournaments slowly and then improve as the competition progresses. They have drawn both of their opening games, and so have to win their third group match on Wednesday to go forward into the knock-out stages. Their poor performance so far has been a major item on all of the news shows here, quite often being the lead story! The country is certainly getting itself into a bit of a lather over their below-par showing. So, I am keeping everything crossed that the players will rediscover their form tomorrow and be able to beat Slovenia.

And, as well as the football still proceeding, yesterday saw the start of Wimbledon 2010. And what a start to the fortnight it was too! Six-time champion Roger Federer came extremely close to going out in the very first round. He lost the first two sets to Alejandro Falla, a Colombian ranked 60th in the world. But Federer isn’t the great champion he is just by accident. He drew on all of his reserves and experience to claw his way back into the match, and eventually ran out the winner, taking the fifth set 6-0.

That wasn’t the only near shock on the opening day either, with Novak Djokovic and Nikolay Davydenko both being taken to five sets to win their matches too. Djokovic’s match didn’t finish until 11pm local time, and was completed under Centre Court’s new roof that was installed last year. Late matches like this are a new thing for Wimbledon, having only been made possible by having the aforesaid roof put on the top of Centre Court.

I am sure that Dori was glad she wasn’t here yesterday as there was 12 hours of sport on the TV non-stop! And that is likely to continue for a while yet – as I said, Brit Boy sporting heaven!

The Yellow House Garden

2010-06-18T11:24:00.002+01:00

As you may have seen in her last post, Dori is having a great time back in Georgia and has taken some wonderful photos of her surrounds. I love how green it is around there and I know that Dori has been enjoying some lovely walks along the local nature trail there.

Since Dori has been gone we have finally had some decent weather here, the first in a long while. It was so nice yesterday that I had to get out into the garden to enjoy it – these opportunities are far too rare! I thought that I would take a few pictures of my own to share with you all, showing some of the flowers and bushes here at the Yellow House.

I’m am far from being an expert in the identification of plants, so forgive me for not doing so here, The only ones that I do know in our garden are the roses, and we have a surprising variety of colours given that our garden is tiny. The first I will share with you is this lovely deep pink rose.

We also have a few lighter pink, and almost white, roses in the Yellow House garden.

And, of course, we couldn’t live in a Yellow House without some yellow roses to go with it!

I love the deep yellow colour of this rose, and the reddish tinges to it. We did have some lighter yellow roses, but those that have already bloomed have started to turn already, so I will have to wait to see if any more bloom to get some photos of them :-)

Other than the roses we also have other plants and bushes in the garden which will, by me at least, remain nameless! Here are a few...

If nothing else, these pictures prove that we do sometimes get nice, cloudless weather here in Wiltshire!! Let's hope there is plenty more to come.

Have a great weekend everyone!

The Greatest Show on Earth

2010-06-14T16:26:00.000+01:00

So, the fun has now begun in South Africa. The 2010 FIFA World Cup kicked off on Friday with the hosts playing out a 1-1 draw with Mexico. 32 nations will be competing to be crowned World Champions on July 11th in Johannesburg.

The first round of the competition is played in 8 groups of 4 teams, with each team playing the others in their group once. The top two teams of each group will then progress to the knock-out stages of the tournament, which is when the excitement really kicks in!

England began their campaign on Saturday when they played against the USA. This could have meant for a very interesting evening in the Yellow House if Dori hadn’t been on the other side of the pond right now! :-) But, as she wasn’t here, I convinced Trevor to join me in cheering on the England team. After a very competitive match (and one goalkeeping howler) the match ended at 1-1, with honours even. Having subsequently seen the other two teams in the same group I would imagine that both England and the US team should have little trouble in qualifying for the 2nd round.

No team has shone out yet, though there are still 10 more teams yet to play as I write these notes. Tomorrow will see the first game for Brazil, who are the perennial favourites when the World Cup rolls around, and then Wednesday will mark the first game for Spain who are a lot of people’s tips to win it this time. Spain are currently the European Champions, and will certainly be a very big obstacle for the other teams to negotiate.

But, the beauty of sport is that nobody really knows what will happen. There will be favourites and underdogs, but there will also be upsets and surprises and a few broken hearts along the way. As an England fan I am well aware of how crushing an exit in the latter stages of the competition can be, and how hopes can turn into despair in a matter of seconds. But that, of course, is exactly why so many people love the game.

Now gotta go – I’ve got the Japan v Cameroon game to watch!

Bon Voyage

2010-06-10T14:59:00.001+01:00

We had an early start to the day yesterday. Dori was going on her trip back home to Georgia, and so we had to get up at the break of dawn to make our journey up to Heathrow.

The last time we made this trip was back in November, and it was dark and pouring down with rain. Thankfully this time, the change in seasons meant that it was already light by 4:30 when we woke, and the rain stayed away for most of the day. We drove up to London on the M4 motorway, and made very good time in reaching the airport. We like to leave extra early to ensure that any delays don’t prevent us getting to Check-In in plenty of time, and also to avoid the worst of the traffic.

So, we arrived in plenty of time at Heathrow and went to have breakfast at one of the cafes there. It was a French restaurant, but we both had a traditional English breakfast – sausage, bacon, eggs, mushroom and toast (although fried bread would have been more traditional). It was very good, and very filling :-) We then had some time to kill before Dori had to go through security and hence to her boarding gate. We are both quite used to killing time at airports now, and so we went and found somewhere to sit and I read a book as Dori checked through her bags to make sure she hadn’t forgot anything. I took this picture as we sat there as I thought the roof looked interesting.

I would have taken more photos, but I didn’t want to look like I was casing the joint!!

It soon came to the time when Dori had to make her way to the boarding gate. We have had plenty of emotional goodbyes in the past, as we have had to go our separate ways for months on end. So, this small separation of 3 weeks is child’s play for us :-) We said our goodbyes, and then Dori went off through the security area. I waved her off and then made my way back to the car, and onwards back to Wiltshire.

The journey back was almost as easy as the one up to Heathrow, with no major problems traffic-wise. In fact, the journey went so quickly that I was back at the Yellow House before Dori’s plane had even lifted off of the tarmac!

I have just spoken to Dori on the phone, and she had a good trip over. The journey time was almost an hour less than scheduled, which is always a nice surprise, and she tells me that she sat next to a very nice French lady on the way over. She is now looking forward to spending some relaxing time back in her hometown.

I will miss Dori whilst she is gone, but will be consoling myself with lots of World Cup football, Wimbledon tennis and having the whole bed to myself! Now, I just have to try to find out where it is that we keep the kitchen....

Rolling Back the Years

2010-06-04T09:18:00.001+01:00

It was while we were having our recent spring clean that I came across a relic from the Ark – my old vinyl records. They had been tucked away out of sight, and out of mind, for a long while and so it was quite a surprise when we uncovered them the other day.

I’m not exactly sure when the last one was bought, but I guess it was sometime in the late ‘80s, and flicking through the collection was like taking a step back in time to that decade. The ‘80s were when I was at my vinyl buying peek, as before then I was a kid with not much cash to spend on such things, and after that time it was CDs that came to the fore, before the digital revolution of music downloads. So looking through my record collection I came across names such as Queen, Wham, Eurythmics, Altered Images, Kate Bush, The Bangles, Belinda Carlisle, Dire Straits, Billy Joel, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, ... and the list just goes on and on. Many happy memories, of spending hours in my room playing whichever was my latest fave record over and over again, flooded back.

It is interesting that despite growing up on different sides of the Atlantic, Dori and I have a shared musical memory of the ‘80s. Many of the biggest bands of that time were British, and there was a lot of crossover from one side of the pond to the other. There were though, a few bands/artists that, naturally enough, Dori hadn’t come across before. One of those was the band who made the very first single I ever bought. Or actually, to be precise, the joint first single I ever bought as I actually purchased 2 at the same time.

The band in question was Bad Manners, who were a ska band from North London led by the unique Buster Bloodvessel, and the song was “Walking In The Sunshine”. Here it is...

Wow, that was a long time ago. Ironically, with the title of the song being about sunshine and all, the video was shot on a very grey day. It must have sounded like a good idea at the time when they were thinking about how to shoot the video – “I know; we’ll go down to the coast and have lots of shots of the band messing about on the beach” - only to be scuppered by the traditional English weather!! :-)

If you are at all interested, my other first single was “Shut Up” by Madness, which contains one of my favourite lines of lyric – “I’m as honest as the day is long - the longer the daylight the less I do wrong!”. I guess I was a bit of a ska boy back then. :-)

Aah, memories! I would love to know what your first singles all were. Drop me a comment and let me know!

Fading Dreams

2010-06-01T14:45:00.004+01:00

I hope that everybody had a good weekend. I know that it was a holiday weekend for a lot of us, with it being Memorial Day yesterday in the States and the imaginatively named Late May Bank Holiday here in the UK.

As you all know from my last post, I was at Wembley on Saturday to see Swindon Town take on Millwall in the League One Play-Off Final. Sadly, things didn’t go to plan and the Town ended up on the losing side of a 1-0 scoreline.

I headed out from here early in the day as we had to be at the County Ground by 9:00am to be ready to board the coach. It was a grey day when we left, with a few spots of rain in the air. As the day wore on, so the rain got harder ...and harder ....and harder! Maybe that was a sign of things to come! Anyway, the coach was waiting for us when we got to the ground and we hopped straight on. There were 62 “official” coaches being run by the club, with something like another 100 being put on by other groups, clubs, pubs, etc. We left spot on time, and made our way along the M4 motorway towards London.

The journey went quite quickly and we arrived at Wembley in very good time, and got straight into the car/coach park, which is something that never happens! Wembley Stadium is not the easiest place to get into, or out of, and the traffic is normally backed up for a number of miles as you approach it. But this time, as I said, we sailed straight in and parked up to the west of the stadium.

As we had so much time to kill – it was still another three and a half hours until the match kicked off – we decided to go and get something to eat and drink. First stop was a local McDonalds, which was bursting to the seams with both Swindon and Millwall supporters. It was literally Standing Room Only. Having refuelled ourselves we then headed out to find a pub for a little pre-match refreshment. On occasions like these, the local police allocate certain pubs to the fans of one team or the other, so that any trouble is minimized. So we set off to look for a “Swindon pub”. Of course, we went in entirely the wrong direction and the further we went the more and more Millwall fans were surrounding us.

I should explain here that, although football hooliganism in England is far less than it ever used to be, the Millwall following still has a bit of a reputation as being one of the most violent in the country, and from what I have read since, there were some incidents on Saturday. So, our being encircled by throngs of Millwall supporters was not exactly reassuring! Realizing that we were now in entirely the wrong part of town, we asked a policeman for directions to the “Swindon pubs”, and were told that we would have to go right back to where we started from. If only we had turned left instead of right! D’Oh!

Anyway, we made our way through the rain and the Millwall hordes back to virtually the stadium itself and then followed all the other Town fans to the nearest pub. The rain really was lashing down by this time. The pub had prepared well (I imagine they have plenty of practice being so close to the stadium) and had erected a marquee in the grounds, from which to sell beer. You can see the top of the marquee in this photo, behind all those sodden Town fans!

We had a couple of pints as we sheltered beneath the branches of the trees that bordered the beer garden, and then decided to head back to the stadium and hopefully some dryness :-)

The atmosphere was already building by the time we got there, and thankfully just as we did arrive so the rain finally eased off. I bought a programme and this T-shirt....

...and then we headed on out to find our seats. There was a little pre-match entertainment, including these floating flag things, and then the excitement jumped up a notch as kick-off time approached.

Sadly, as I mentioned earlier, the result was not what Swindon wanted. The team looked overawed by the occasion during the first half, and were very nervous. Millwall took the lead during that time, and though the Town played better in the second half, they were unable to score the goal that would have levelled the match. Their best chance fell to Charlie Austin, whose story this year has read like a fairytale. At the beginning of the season Charlie was working as a bricklayer and playing for a part-time club down on the South Coast in front of crowds of about 200 people per match. The Town management team spotted him, signed him on and believed that he may play 2 or 3 games by the season’s end. In actuality, Charlie played 31 games for the Town this season and scored a miraculous 20 goals. He is already being talked about as a possible future player for the national team. Anyway, having started the season in front of a crowd of 200, Charlie Austin ended the campaign at the National Stadium playing before some 73,000 fans. That is some journey.

As I said, Town’s best chance fell to Charlie, but unfortunately the Wembley pitch is not what it should be. There has been plenty of controversy about the state of the pitch lately, and it has had to be re-laid 12 times in 3 years! As he raced past the last defender and was about to fire the Town level again, the ball bounced up off the poor Wembley turf, causing it to hit Charlie on the shin and forcing his shot wide of the post. You could hear the shock go round the ground as everyone had been certain a goal was inevitable. And that was that. Town had some other half-chances but it was not to be.

The referee whistled to end the game and the dream was finally over. We all made our way back to the coaches and began the long journey home. Incidentally, it took forever to get out of the Wembley complex, after having got in so quickly. It was nearly an hour and a half before we were away from the stadium grounds and battling with the other traffic trying to get out of London and back to Wiltshire.

Another three hours later and I was walking in our front door - tired, disappointed but very proud of what the team have achieved this year. Nobody believed at the start of the season that they would be able to get anywhere near the top of the table, let alone enjoying a day out at Wembley for the Play-Off final. So I have to say congratulations to Millwall, and I hope that the Town can follow them into the Championship next year. It’s going to be tough, but the dream will be born again in August :-)

Come On You Reds!

The March to the Arch!!

2010-05-28T14:06:00.000+01:00

Well, the waiting is nearly over, and you can almost feel the excitement and anticipation in the air. By this time tomorrow I will be at Wembley Stadium to see Swindon Town take on Millwall in the final of the League One Play-Offs.

The New Wembley Stadium

It has been 17 years since the Town were last at Wembley, when it was the old Wembley Stadium. A victory beneath the Twin Towers that day saw Swindon claim a place at the top table of English football – the Premiership. Now the old stadium has been demolished and a shiny new one built in its place with a huge steel arch taking over the mantle of iconic architecture from the Towers.

I have already been to the new stadium twice (it was opened in 2007), but this will be the first time that Swindon have played there since the redevelopment. There will be something like 100 or more coaches making the trek along the motorway from Swindon to London, with many more people getting there by car, train or whatever. More than 31,000 Town fans will be making the journey, and we will all be cheering on the team to (hopefully) a great victory.

Swindon Town have only ever played at Wembley three times – the 1969 League Cup Final and the play-off finals of 1990 and 1993 for a place in the top division of English football. My Dad went to all three matches, and took me with him for the last two. Sadly he passed away three years ago, but I know he will be looking down on the match this time – he wouldn’t miss this for the world. I will take something of his along with me tomorrow, maybe his old watch, so that his spirit will make the journey even he can’t be there in person :-)

Swindon Town win the 1993 Play-Offs to book a place in the Premiership

Swindon have never lost at Wembley, beating Arsenal in ’69, Sunderland in ’90 and Leicester City in ’93. The ’93 match was one of the best ever seen at the famous old ground, and I am hoping that tomorrow’s game will be equally as entertaining, although frankly, so long as the Town win I don’t care!! The nerves are starting to jangle.

Now, where did I put my flag.....

Spring Clean

2010-05-26T11:43:00.001+01:00

As Dori mentioned on Saturday, we have been having a bit of a Spring Clean here in the Yellow House this last week or so. We have also been doing some rearranging of the furniture, which always freshens up the feel of a place, don’t you think? It is almost like we are living in a different house after just moving a few items of furniture from one side of the room to the other! :-) We both like the new layout, and it seems to be working well so far.

We have also taken the opportunity to get rid of some old junk that we are never likely to use again, as well as some books and DVDs that we will be donating to charity. It is like clearing out all the old stuff frees up the space for new, and better, things to come into our lives – physically and spiritually. Right now the house feels almost spacious, which is some feat believe me! The spring clean has given the whole place a fresh and revitalising feel to it, and I think we both feel better for it :-)

On Monday we also had a filing cabinet delivered, which was another driver in getting everything cleared out and rearranged. Sadly, the cabinet came as a flat-pack and I had the task, with help from Dori, of putting the dumb thing together. You may guess that I am not a fan of self-assembly furniture! LOL I am a complete klutz when it comes to anything practical like that, which may be a little surprising when you know that my brother is a carpenter/joiner. I guess he got the practical gene and I was left with the brains and the beauty ;-)

Anyhoo, I set about trying to fathom the instructions to assemble the cabinet. To be fair, I have seen many worse instructions than those given. These at least had diagrams that (mostly) showed what should be done and what went where. We did have one panicky moment when the cabinet had been assembled to the point that the sides, back and top were all fitted, and the runners for the drawers had been screwed in and then we looked at the diagram and it seemed to suggest that the runners had been put in the wrong way round. Eek! As it happened, the diagram was wrong and we were right, so the crisis was averted.

It was a hot day, and for a klutz it was hard work. But after about 3 hours and having stabbed myself at least 4 or 5 times with a screwdriver, the thing was complete! Hurrah! It is now sitting in the corner of the room, having already been almost filled to overflowing with various bits of detritus and paperwork from elsewhere in the house. Today is a shredding day, as we will be going through all our old files to see what we can get rid of and free up some space in the already groaning new cabinet.

Onwards and upwards!

Wembley, Here We Come!!

2010-05-18T20:24:00.001+01:00

Well, what a night! Yesterday evening saw the second leg of Swindon Town’s play-off semi-final against Charlton Athletic. Swindon had won the first leg 2-1 on Friday night at The County Ground and so travelled to London needing just a draw to book their place in the final at Wembley.

I was unable to travel to the game myself, but it was televised live on Sky Sports, so I scooted round to my mum’s house to watch the excitement unfold. I won’t bore you all with all the details but suffice to say that it was a very, very dramatic evening’s entertainment that had my blood pressure going through the roof! Close to the end of the match Swindon were 2-0 down, had lost their goalkeeper to injury in the first minute and had seen their captain sent off leaving them with ten men. At that stage all hope looked lost.

But this Swindon side are nothing if not battlers, and a very well taken goal levelled the overall scores at 3-3 and pushed the game into 30 minutes of extra-time. No more goals were scored during that time and so the tie had to be settled on a penalty shoot-out. Now, Swindon’s record in penalty shoot-outs is a little like England’s, ie they don’t win ‘em!! But last night, under the greatest of pressure, all 5 Town players scored their penalties and, as Charlton missed one of theirs, Swindon incredibly won the tie and secured their place at Wembley a week on Saturday.

Town players celebrate their win

So, Swindon will be deserted in 11 days time – a burglar’s paradise! It has been 17 years since Town last played at the home of English football and the recollections of that day are still very vivid. Hopefully this month will see the creation of some more good memories!

Tension Time

2010-05-13T17:26:00.002+01:00

It is now less than a month to go until the start of the World Cup when all the best players from around the globe will come together to compete for the greatest prize in football.

Before that, though, the club season still has a few notable matches to play out. Last weekend saw Chelsea claim the English Premiership title, and yesterday the final of the Europa League saw Atletico Madrid squeeze a win against Fulham by virtue of a goal deep into Extra-Time. On Saturday, Chelsea will be aiming to complete “the double” when they meet Portsmouth in the FA Cup Final. And then next Saturday (22nd) will see the biggest single club game in the world when Bayern Munich take on Inter Milan in the Champions League Final.

But I’m not actually writing this post about any of those matches. If you have a very good memory, then you may remember that I mentioned how my team, Swindon Town, had been heavily defeated on the opening day of the season. At that point the prospects for the season ahead looked bleak, and 9 months of struggle loomed. But, just to show that “one swallow does not a summer make”, the form shown by the team since that day couldn’t have been more different. So much so that, if the results on the final day of the regular season this last weekend had gone slightly differently, then Swindon would have finished second in their league and been promoted to the Championship (that’s one level below the Premiership).

Swindon Town club crest

But all is not lost. Having actually finished 5th in the league, Town are now taking part in the end of season play-offs, the winner of which will be promoted along with the teams who finished 1st and 2nd. The semi-finals of the play-offs take place this weekend, with Swindon playing Charlton at home tomorrow night and then away on Monday night. If they win the semi-final then they will go forward to play either Millwall or Huddersfield at Wembley Stadium in two weeks time. So the next few days will be full of nail-biting and lots of frayed nerves. Hopefully the results will go the right way and I will be going on a trip to Wembley at the end of the month! Fingers crossed.

Election Day

2010-05-06T20:19:00.000+01:00

So today is the big day. Britain has gone to the polls to decide who should lead the country for the next few years.

I went round to the polling station after getting back home from work. It was very quick and easy, and I was out again in less than 2 minutes. In the UK you vote to elect your local Member of Parliament (MP) and whichever party has the majority of MPs will form the next Government. If the polls are to be believed, and frankly they’re not, but if they are right then we could be heading to a position where no one party will have enough MPs to command a majority. This could lead to all sorts of pacts and alliances between various political parties or even a second General Election in the near future. But that’s all for another day.

This campaign has been defined by the TV debates – the first ever in the UK. Before the campaign kicked off it was thought that this would be the “internet election”, but the debates have so captured the public imagination that it has turned out to be very much a TV campaign. And it is because of the debates that this looks like being one of the closest elections in the last 40 years.

The results will come in from all over the country overnight, and Dori and I are planning to stay awake for as long as we can to watch the drama unfold. It could be a very long night!

Two Days to Go

2010-05-04T18:45:00.002+01:00

Shakespeare's Birthday n' all

2010-04-23T14:50:00.000+01:00

Happy St George's Day!! A day to celebrate all things English.

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall,

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England

William Shakespeare, Richard II, Act 2

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Elections and Eruptions

2010-04-16T17:19:00.000+01:00

Okay, so I don’t want this blog to become a political one, but this is going to be the second post running to mention the current General Election campaign.

Yesterday saw a landmark occasion in British TV and political history – the first ever Leaders Debate. The leaders of the three main political parties took part in the debate which was held in Manchester, and broadcast live to the nation on ITV. Ahead of the programme, the Conservative leader – David “call me Dave” Cameron - was seen as the likely winner, whereas expectations for the less media-friendly Gordon Brown (leader of the governing Labour Party) were much lower. When it came to the night itself, however, it was actually the leader of the third party of British politics - Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats - who blew away the opposition and emerged as the clear winner of this historic event.

Dori and I settled down to watch the debate at 8:30 last night, not entirely sure what to expect. We have both seen a number of the Presidential Debates in the US over the years, but didn’t know how the format would translate into the British political scene. The election campaign up to this point had been somewhat lacklustre and uninspiring, and there were fears that the debate would not be able to rise above the malaise. But I for one was quite surprised by how energised the programme was, and even more surprised that some actual debating was allowed to take place, and not just a series of recited Talking Points as has been seen elsewhere previously.

Gordon Brown performed, by and large, above the admittedly very low expectations, whereas David Cameron was surprisingly overshadowed and subdued and did not perform at all well. Nick Clegg, on the other hand, was a revelation, he came across as affable and he was able to make a distinction between the Lib Dems and the other two main parties. All the post-debate polls had him as the winner, with the other two leaders sharing second place depending on which poll you read. And, talking of polls, this morning revealed a further poll of people’s voting intentions which showed the Lib Dems receiving a monumental 14% bump on the back of their leader’s performance. It’s looking like the British political landscape may have changed forever. There are two more debates before Election Day on May 6th, due to take place on each of the next two Thursdays. I’ll be watching.

In other news, we are currently sitting under a cloud of volcanic ash! If you haven’t seen it on the news, an Icelandic volcano has erupted throwing up a huge plume of ash that is now sitting squarely above the UK. Due to safety fears for aircraft, there have been no flights into or out of England since early yesterday morning, and none are expected until at least 7:00 tomorrow morning, possibly longer. I was in the bank this morning, and overheard a conversation where someone was expecting visitors from overseas today who have now been told that they may not be able to get here until next Friday! Strange times indeed!

The Date is Set

2010-04-06T16:54:00.001+01:00

So, the waiting and speculation is over and the date of the General Election here in the UK has finally been announced. Gordon Brown went to Buckingham Palace this morning and asked The Queen to dissolve Parliament, and hence fired the metaphorical starting gun for the General Election campaign. The country will go to the polls on Thursday May 6th.

This election promises to be very different from any that has taken place before. We now live in the digital age, and as Barack Obama did so successfully in 2008, all of the parties will be trying to make the best use of Twitter, Facebook and the other social media that have come to the fore since the last election. That’s not to say that there won’t be some old-style campaigning taking place, and the old ”Battle Buses” are sure to make an appearance during the next month.

The biggest difference this time round though, is that there will be three Prime Ministerial TV Debates. Whilst the US has been having Presidential Debates since the days of Kennedy and Nixon, this will be the very first time that it will happen in this country. Previously it has been impossible to get agreement for any debates from the leading parties, mainly because the favourites to win would always see it as a way to slip up, rather than an opportunity to seal a win. This time, however, the race is close enough that everyone has something to gain from taking part in the debates. They will be taking place on April 15th, 22nd and 29th and will feature the leaders of the three leading political parties. It promises to be a very interesting addition to a British election campaign.

So, we have a month of campaigning to go through when I will not be answering the door to anyone, and will be avoiding strange people on the street with over-sized rosettes. But, that’s not to say that I won’t enjoy it at all. Democracy in action is a wonderful thing, and something that not everybody in the world has access to, so I certainly honour that fact. The debates will also be something new and fascinating this time round to look forward to.

Let the campaigning begin!!

The Summer of Sport

2010-03-24T16:14:00.002Z

Spring has finally sprung – both ’officially’ and in reality, and now is a time to look forward to the warmer months ahead. And for a sports nut like me, that means a host of great events to anticipate.

This coming summer will see the biggest event of them all – The FIFA World Cup, which is being hosted by South Africa. This will be by far the largest sports event ever to take place on the African continent, and promises to be a spectacular tournament. The opening game will take place in Johannesburg on June 11th and will feature the hosts taking on Mexico. Some 32 nations will compete over the following month through the group stage, quarter-finals, semi-finals and the final itself to be crowned World Champions on July 11th. Spain and Brazil are the current favourites, but there are plenty of other genuine contenders to claim the trophy.

The first major tournament of this sporting season will be the US Masters, which as always takes place in Augusta, Georgia. This year the big focus will obviously be on Tiger Woods’ return to golfing action after his personal troubles that came to light very publicly on Thanksgiving last year. What price a Tiger win in his first event back? The Masters is my favourite golf tournament of the year and Augusta is a beautiful course. Getting to go there in person one year is definitely on my To Do list.

And then there is what is often referred to as the Great British Summer of Sport, featuring such events as The Boat Race, The Grand National, the London Marathon, the FA Cup Final, the Derby, Wimbledon, the British Open and the British Grand Prix.

Here are some of the important dates to note:

The Boat Race	The Thames, London	April 3
US Masters	Augusta National, Augusta, Georgia	April 8 - 11
Grand National	Aintree, Liverpool	April 10
London Marathon	London	April 25
FA Cup Final	Wembley Stadium, London	May 15
Football League Play-Off Finals	Wembley Stadium, London	May 22, 29, 30
The Derby	Epsom Downs, Surrey	June 5
FIFA World Cup	South Africa	June 11 - July 11
Royal Ascot	Ascot, Berkshire	June 15 – 19
Wimbledon	Wimbledon, London	June 21 - July 4
British Grand Prix	Silverstone, Northamptonshire	July 11
British Open	St Andrews, Scotland	July 15 - 18
England Test Cricket Series	England	July 29 - August 30

And then finally, and I accept this is way after the summer will have ended, there will be the Ryder Cup. This year it will be played at Celtic Manor in South Wales from October 1st to 3rd, and the Europeans will be out to avenge the heavy defeat that they suffered at Valhalla back in 2008. The captains this year will be Corey Pavin and Colin Montgomerie and I am sure the competition will be as white-hot as usual.

I just can’t wait

Sunday Snaps 10 - Beautiful Bath

2010-03-21T17:53:00.002Z

Welcome to the latest of my occasional series of Sunday Snaps. Today I have three photos of my favourite city - Bath, England.

Bath was where I attended university sometime way back when, and I fell in love with this most beautiful of cities. It is named after, and centred around, the Baths formed by Britain's only natural hot springs. It is said that the city reminded the occupying Romans of Rome itself as both cities are built upon 7 hills. The Roman Baths remain to this day and are one of the countries most visited tourist attractions.

The first photo is of Pulteney Bridge and Weir, one of the most distinctive vistas of the city. The bridge is one of only four in the world which has shops running the full length of both sides.

My next picture is of the bandstand that lies within Parade Gardens. I took this picture when we visited the city a couple of summers back, and somehow we managed to visit on a gloriously warm and sunny day - it must have been the only one that year! The bandstand always reminds me of the end of the BBC children's series Trumpton, which was one of my favourites when I was growing up. Every episode would end with the firemen playing a concert on the bandstand in the park - don't ask! :-)

The last snap for today is of the glorious Bath Abbey. This photo is of the South side of the Abbey, which shows some of the wonderful gothic architecture.

There is much, much more to the City of Bath, and I will no doubt share some more pictures with you sometime in the future. I am now itching to visit again after looking through all my photos. I can see a road trip coming up for us!

Enjoy what remains of your weekend!

New Boxes and Old Heroes

2010-03-15T16:06:00.003Z

It was a good weekend here in the Yellow House. Sunday was Mother’s Day in the UK and we took some flowers and a small gift round to my Mum’s house to celebrate the fact. She was most pleased with the gift and we spent a couple of hours over there just hanging out.

We also had a visit from the satellite engineer on Saturday. The analogue TV signal will be switched off over the next two weeks in our region, as part of a programme to convert the whole nation to digital television. We already have satellite TV on our main set, but the switchover would mean that we would be unable to watch different shows on the main TV and our bedroom TV, or to record something other than the channel we are already watching. So, we decided to upgrade our satellite box, and move the old box upstairs for use on our bedroom TV.

The engineer was here for about an hour replacing our old satellite dish, installing the new box and moving the old one. The new receiver we have for our main TV is a Sky+HD box. Our TV isn’t an HD (High Definition) ready one yet, but it was more the Sky+ features that we were interested in getting. Sky+ is the UK equivalent of TiVo, as well as being a satellite receiver. So, we can now record over 200 hours of programming without the need for loads of video tapes or DVDs, record 2 channels at the same time, pause live TV and record a whole series automatically. The Yellow House has now truly joined the digital age! :) As a bonus, we now have access to all the satellite channels on our upstairs set. We feel like we are in a 5 star hotel! LOL

This is our new Sky+HD receiver.

In other news, today marks the 41st anniversary of Swindon Town’s momentous League Cup victory at Wembley. They defeated the mighty Arsenal 3-1 with the legendary Don Rogers scoring twice. This is still arguably the club’s finest hour – although I would suggest that their promotion to the Premiership in 1993 was a greater achievement. Anyway, today is a day to remember the boys of '69.

Yep, It Is Spring - Sort of.

2010-03-02T17:44:00.003Z

My last post was entitled “Is It Spring Yet?” as winter seems to have lasted for about the last 5 years here! Anyway, imagine my surprise when watching the news today to find out that, apparently, yes it is spring already!

Now I know what you are thinking – “spring doesn’t start until March 20th” (if you are in the Northern hemisphere at least). I agree. The vernal equinox is the start of spring, or at least it has been for as long as I can remember. But now, The Meteorological Office here in the UK have declared that spring now starts on March 1st, and similarly summer starts on June 1st, autumn on September 1st and winter on December 1st. Oh, and because they have decided on this timetable, those are now the Official Dates for the various seasons. Not for me they ain’t! My diary still tells me that spring starts on the vernal equinox, and that’s still the day that I will be observing.

Anyhoo, in other weather news, the same Met Office say that this winter – that’s the one that ended on the last day of February obviously – has been the coldest in England for over 30 years, and for nearly 50 years in Scotland. I can well believe it, the cold weather seems to have gone on forever, and the snow has been a much more regular occurrence than usual. This was illustrated by this NASA satellite photo released in January of a snow and ice-covered Great Britain.

The Met Office have yet to release a seasonal forecast for this spring, even though it is already here! But then, given their track record for last summer – “a barbecue summer” it rained and rained – and this winter – “milder than average” coldest for 30+ years – it is maybe not so surprising.

I am just glad to see the sun come out for the last couple of days, even if it is going to go back in hiding again tomorrow!

Is It Spring Yet?

2010-02-15T18:41:00.004Z

Fed up of this.....

Can't wait for this....

Okay, so we don't have any snow on the ground right now, and we don't live by the sea, but I've had enough of this winter. Spring seems such a long time coming!

Back to London, the Thames and the O2

2010-02-01T16:16:00.005Z

In my last post I shared some pictures of London taken from the Thames river, and as it happens we travelled a similar journey yesterday. We journeyed up to London in order to see the Michael Jackson Exhibition at the O2. As I have mentioned before, we were due to go to one of his “This Is It” concerts at the same venue last summer, but MJ’s tragic and untimely death prevented us from achieving what had been a long-held ambition for the both of us. As a small compensation for missing out on seeing Michael in concert we decided that we would travel up to the O2 on the last day of the MJ Exhibition.

And so yesterday we rose early, well early for a Sunday anyway, and prepared for our day out. I managed to see a little of the start of the Australian Open men’s final as we got ready, but it was obviously not going to be Andy Murray’s day. Still 74 years and counting since the last British male winner of a Grand Slam tennis tournament! Maybe this year at Wimbledon or the US Open? Time will tell. Anyhoo, I was talking about our trip.... We left home about 9:45 which should have left us plenty of time to catch the train up to Paddington, but unfortunately we had forgotten to bring enough coins to pay for the parking while we were gone and so had to turn back towards the Yellow House after 5 minutes and go all the way back to get some more. This meant that our time window for catching the train was getting very narrow indeed! So, it was a race into town to go and get parked, and then a mad dash to the train station as the time ticked away. We arrived breathless at the station just as the tannoy announced that our train was waiting at the platform. So we ran again up the steps to the platform and jumped on the train, relieved that we had made it in time.

The journey into London was much more relaxed! We always enjoy travelling this way, as you don’t have to worry about the driving, or the other idiots who drive like crazy, or about getting parked at the other end. As the old adverts used to say here, we “let the train take the strain”. :-) Once we had arrived we headed towards the tube station. Normally we would take the tube all the way to the O2, but unfortunately the line that goes there was shut for engineering works yesterday, as were a lot of other routes. So we had to be very inventive with how we got to Greenwich. We took the tube to London Bridge (via Elephant & Castle) and then walked over to London Bridge pier in order to catch a Thames Clipper – a catamaran river-taxi – that took us all the way to the O2.

This trip on the river, although once again on a very cold day, was much more comfortable than the one I spoke of previously as we were inside this time and not sat freezing our wotsits off on the top deck! Here are a couple of videos that Dori took on our trip from London Bridge to Greenwich. The first shows the approach to Tower Bridge...

And this second one gives an idea of what it is like to travel the Thames. You get to see a mixture of old and new buildings, as well as some old industrial buildings that have been converted to new luxury apartments. The skyscrapers you can see in the background towards the end of the video are at Canary Wharf which is the modern centre of London’s financial district.

It was a very enjoyable half-hour trip along the river, and we agreed that we will have to do this again sometime in the summer.

We arrived quite quickly at Queen Elizabeth II pier just alongside the O2, disembarked and made our way over to the arena. After the rush earlier in the day, we now found ourselves with a little time to kill before our allotted time to enter the exhibition came round. Sadly not quite long enough to grab something to eat though! There are some great restaurants at the O2, many of which we have yet to sample. Before we knew it though, our time had arrived and we made our way into the exhibition.

The MJ Memorabilia Exhibition was just great. There were so many personal items there, as well as films, photographs and paintings of the great man. It was so sad to see some of the footage of Michael, and to see the little sandwich boxes that his children used to pack for him when he was in rehearsal for “This Is It”. But there were plenty of uplifting exhibits too, such as his handwritten lyrics to “Beat It”, plenty of his stage clothes and some items taken from Neverland. We were in there for a little over an hour but the time flew by – a sure sign that you are having a good time!

The exhibition was fantastic,and I felt that it was fitting that we got to see it at the venue of what would have been his comeback concerts, and indeed what was the site of his final public appearance in the UK. We would both so dearly loved to have seen MJ in concert here, and judging from everything I have seen both in the exhibition and in the “This Is It” movie, those shows were going to be something out of this world. Nothing could make up for missing out on that experience, but visiting this exhibition has gone a long way to healing some wounds and helping me to reconcile that some things are just not meant to be. The world lost a kind and gentle soul last June – a true Legend.

For Dori's view of our day out and of the exhibition, click here.

Sunday Snaps 9 - London...from the Thames

2010-01-24T11:58:00.000Z

It's been a while since my last Sunday Snaps post, so here is the latest in the series.

These photos were all taken 5 years ago during a trip up to London on a VERY cold Sunday in January. We took one of the river boats that travel along the Thames, getting on at Westminster and off at Greenwich.

This first snap is of the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge.

Just opposite Parliament is the London Eye. You can take what they term "flights" in the pods of this massive ferris wheel and get some great views of London. The flights take about half an hour to do a full circle and are well worth trying if you get the chance.

Perhaps the most famous bridge in the country is Tower Bridge, which is named after the nearby Tower of London. It was a little surreal to be sailing underneath this famous landmark.

The last picture for today is of the rebuilt Globe Theatre, the original of which saw many of Shakespeare's original play performances. It is a wonderful project that has constructed a faithful reproduction of the original theatre.

Viewing London from the river is a very interesting way of seeing the city and some of its most notable landmarks, but I would highly recommend not doing so on the coldest day of the year!! :-) We do have some more pics from this trip so I may share those in another Sunday Snaps someday soon. Stay tuned!

Snow Day!

2010-01-06T13:43:00.001Z

As Dori mentions in her post today, we have had significant snow here overnight, and it has continued to fall during today too. The weather has been on a cold groove since a little before Christmas, but this week has seen it get even worse. Most nights have seen a very sharp frost that has made everything look like it has been placed in an ice-box. On Monday, which was my first day back at work since Christmas, our car refused to start and I had to call out the breakdown service. The verdict was that the car battery had met its demise and had gone to meet its maker. So, the New Year started with a £70 bill for a new battery, and a late start to my working week which was exacerbated by the fact that the delay meant that I was then driving into the office during the peak of the rush hour. Ho hum, things can only get better.

The snow started late yesterday afternoon, and the forecast was for anything up to 16 inches of snow in some areas of southern England. The reality was that we got about 3 inches or so where we live by the time I woke up this morning, but even that was enough to cause traffic chaos. With the snow still falling heavily, I was fearful that if I did drive into the office then I may not be able to make the return journey later in the day, so I rang to say that I would not be able to make it in – and by the sounds of it I was far from the only one in that situation. So, today is a Snow Day! Yay!!

Dori and I decided to have a walk out to see what the conditions were like around where we live, and to take a couple of pictures to share with you all. The wind was quite icy, and we both had our hats pulled down around our ears, and our scarves pulled up over our mouths. It was like a scene from “Scott of the Antarctic”! :-) I hope that you like the pictures.

The snow continued to fall quite heavily up until lunchtime, so it is now deeper than you see in the photos, and the forecast for tonight is for possibly more snow followed by a very severe frost. So the conditions tomorrow are likely to be even more treacherous than they have been today! I brought some work home with me yesterday, so I will work from home tomorrow if I can. At the moment there is no sign of this cold stretch ending anytime soon, and there may be another heavy snowfall at the weekend.

It may be time to barricade ourselves into the Yellow House and just wait it out until the thaw!!

Yellow House Merchandise

2010-01-03T11:31:00.004Z

As I mentioned in an earlier post, when we were visiting family and friends over in the States at Thanksgiving we handed out some homemade gifts and cards. You have already seen some pictures of the cards we made, and I thought now would be an appropriate time to share some photos of the gifts too. I say appropriate because the gifts were all calendars, and I am sure that you have all been hanging up new calendars this last week – or wondering when and where you will be getting one for this New Year!

These calendars weren’t entirely homemade as such, but all the photos were our own, as were some of the backgrounds, and we laid out each page of the calendars to our own design too. We then got them printed up by a company in Belgium. We made calendars to two different designs – one as a wall calendar and the other as a desk calendar.

Here are the pictures of the pages of the wall calendar.

And here are the pages of the smaller desk calendar.

The lighting wasn’t the best when we took the photos of the pages and some are a little blurry – but you will get the idea!

We very much enjoyed putting the calendars together and we are hoping to take some more photographs during this coming year that we can use for more calendars for 2011. All being well, those will then be available to buy from our blogs sometime in the autumn. Unfortunately we cannot sell the ones for this year because we don’t have the image rights for some of the places that we have photographed.

Now, I have to go and plan some photographic expeditions with Dori !! .

Happy New Year

2009-12-31T21:20:00.000Z

New Years Widget by Widgia

A Happy and Prosperous New Year to everyone!!

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-24T12:21:00.000Z

Doesn’t time fly! Christmas Eve is here already and it only feels like 5 minutes ago we were over in Georgia celebrating Thanksgiving. We have spent the last few days completing our final preparations for the festive season. We have even braved the local supermarkets on a couple of occasions, where you would think that people were buying in readiness for a month’s hibernation rather than just a couple of days worth of celebration!

Yesterday we went up to London to see a play in the West End. It really made it feel like Christmas. We spent the train journey up to the city looking out at the snow-covered countryside as we sped by. The snow and frost that we have had over the last week has made this the nearest thing to a White Christmas that I can remember for a long time. Unfortunately it looks as though it will all be gone around where we live by tomorrow. Anyway, the blanket of snow over all the fields, barns and houses made for a very Christmassy scene as we travelled towards Paddington Station.

Our day in London was wonderful. We took the Tube to Covent Garden and had a bite to eat before going to the Novello Theatre to see “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” starring James Earl Jones, Phylicia Rashad, Adrian Lester and Sanaa Lathan as directed by Debbie Allen. The play was tremendous with exceptional performances all round. We had great tickets slap-bang in the middle of the 8th row – just perfect. The show lasts for 2 hours and 45 minutes, but that time simply flew by – a sure sign that you are having a good time! After the show we went to have a meal at a nearby restaurant, which was buzzing with people enjoying a pre-Christmas night out. The food was great and served very promptly, which was a relief as we had a train to catch back to Wiltshire. We decided as were sat in that restaurant that we will have to make trips like this our new Christmas tradition, every year on December 23rd. Anything else we go to see though will have to go some in order to match that production of “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” though!

Today we have had to stay in and wait for the washing machine engineer who is supposed to be bringing us a new machine as the last one died just after we returned from our trip to the States. We are, however, still waiting as I write these notes! Hopefully he will be here very soon as we have some Christmas movies to watch and some cards still left to finish off. I hate having to wait for deliveries and the like.

Anyway, yuletide is upon us and I wanted to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. I hope that you all have a great holiday season.

PS The new washing machine has just arrived – who said that Santa doesn’t bring exactly what you want at Christmas?!

Christmas Creations

2009-12-19T20:41:00.000Z

Christmas is so very nearly upon us now. Amazingly, we are all but ready for the festivities with still 6 days to go until the Big Day. We have all the presents bought and wrapped, the Yellow House is also fully decorated and the tree has been up in place for 2 weeks now.

We have also written and sent most of our Christmas cards. When we went over to the States for Thanksgiving, we took the presents and cards for our family and friends over there. Both the gifts and the cards were manufactured by ourselves and we thought that you would like to see what we have made. Dori will be talking about the gifts in a future post, but here are some pictures of a few of the cards that we made.

We obtained all the various materials from different sources and then had a small assembly line going to get all the cards made. We used small sticky pads to make some of the elements on the cards stand out, and give a 3D effect to them. The envelopes were not lined when we bought them – Dori lined them all herself using some patterned paper. And then when the cards were all complete, we put them in envelopes and then sealed the envelopes with a wax seal. This involved melting some wax onto the envelopes and then pressing the wax with a metal stamp.

Don’t worry that I am spoiling any surprises here – we handed out the cards when we were in Georgia and everyone was very pleased to receive them. Sometimes something that is handmade can be so much more personal, and shows that some real thought has gone into it, as time rather than just money has been spent on it.

It was an enjoyable process, and we definitely got better at it as time went on! This may well be the way of the future. I can definitely see us producing more homemade products in the upcoming years. If we do, then I know we will share it all with you here.

Merry Christmas everyone.

It's Been A While

2009-12-10T16:43:00.000Z

You may have noticed that I haven’t been around for a while; in fact it is three weeks since my last post here. Firstly, of course, there was our trip over to the States for Thanksgiving, which was wonderful, and since our return back to these shores we have had to contend with jetlag, a broken washing machine, illness and an internet-phobic laptop! Life has been upside down for the last two weeks, and still isn’t yet fully righted.

Anyway, all of this means that there is some catching up to do. Dori is posting a full documentation of our Thanksgiving trip over at her blog, but here are my own brief thoughts. We were in Georgia for 9 days and that time simply flew by. We had a great time while we were there and we were able to catch-up with both friends and family. We did regular stuff like visiting the mall and going to the movies, and we also ate some extremely tasty meals – both restaurant produced and home-cooked. The weather was great, for the most part, and we enjoyed a couple of walks along the local nature trail. As Dori said a number of times, it was just like our own spa retreat! :-)

As I said earlier, the time flew by and we were barely able to believe it when the time rolled around for us to fly back to the UK. It was like we had only been there for a couple of days or something. Naturally, when we arrived back at Heathrow the weather was exactly how we had left it – cold and extremely wet. But we were happy in the knowledge that the trip “back home” had been so enjoyable. We had a fantastic time and really enjoyed kicking back for a short while.

My laptop died, or at least refused to do anything internet related, just before we flew out to the States. It is now three years old, which seems to be about the most you can hope for as the useful lifetime of a modern computer. So, we had to take the plunge and order a new laptop, which finally arrived three days ago. It is a shiny black Compaq complete with Windows 7 and all. Right now I am enjoying the novel feeling of things actually working in a timely manner and not freezing up every few minutes or so. Long may that continue!

So, what else has happened during my hiatus? Oh yes, the World Cup Draw. The general view is that the draw was very favourable to England, as far as their group is concerned, although I can see some tricky obstacles further along the path should they progress. But as Fabio Capello said himself, you have to beat the best teams if you are seriously considering yourself to be in with a shout of becoming World Champions. One interesting aspect of the draw is that England find themselves in the same group as the United States. That will make for a very fascinating match-day in the Yellow House come June!! :-) Trevor is already having panic attacks about which team he should support!

Well, I think I’ve covered more than enough ground for one post – and I haven’t even got around to talking about Christmas yet! That will have to wait for another day. Have a good weekend everybody.

Bye For a Bit

2009-11-19T18:22:00.000Z

We are off early tomorrow morning to head up to Heathrow ready for our flight over to Georgia. We are both so looking forward to our break away. When we get back we will no doubt both be blogging about our adventures. Until then Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I'll see you all in December.

Sunday Snaps 8 - Georgia On My Mind

2009-11-15T16:59:00.006Z

It’s Sunday and so it must be Sunday Snaps time! Today I am going back to some photos taken in Dori’s home state of Georgia.

These pics were all taken at Stone Mountain Park, which is said to be home to the world’s largest piece of exposed granite. The first picture shows one side of the top of the mountain which features a relief carving of three figures – Generals Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Robert E. Lee and Confederate President Jefferson Davis. It is the largest bas-relief in the world, measuring 90 by 190 feet.

This second shot was taken from the top of the mountain, which can be reached either by foot or, for the ~~less adventurous~~ smarter, via a cable car which provides a great close-up view of the relief carving on the way up. If you look really closely at the photo you may just be able to see the Atlanta skyline some 16 miles in the distance.

Stone Mountain Park is some 3200 acres in size and has a number of attractions other than the mountain itself, including a railroad that encircles the top of the mountain, a riverboat, laser show, woodland walks, a campground, demonstration crafts, a 4D theater and shops and restaurants. This last photo shows the main thoroughfare of Crossroads, a recreation of a small town of yesteryear.

I love this place – do go visit it if you ever get the chance.

If you look closely at the final picture, you may just be able to make out some Christmas decorations and trimmings on some of the buildings. This is because I took that photo when I was visiting Dori for Thanksgiving, back when we used to live on either side of the Atlantic before we got married. Which brings me to the reason for posting these pictures today – we are going back for Thanksgiving again this year! Woo Hoo! We are both so excited to be going back “home” for a week. Be sure that we will both be blogging about our trip in the upcoming weeks. Now, got to go – got plenty of packing to do!

Sunday Snaps 7 - Royal Kensington

2009-11-01T12:43:00.008Z

This is another in my occasional Sunday Snaps series. Today I am staying closer to home and sharing some of the pictures we have taken during our many trips up to London.

The first is of Kensington Palace, which lies within the boundary of Kensington Gardens, which itself borders onto Hyde Park. The palace is a working palace to this day, currently the official residence of several minor royals. It is perhaps most famous today for being the former home of Diana, Princess of Wales following her separation from Prince Charles.

Lying just outside of Kensington Gardens is the Royal Albert Hall. It was built in 1871 and named, at the behest of Queen Victoria, after her beloved husband Prince Albert, who had died 10 years previously. It is a wonderful building and hosts many concerts, including the BBC Proms, as well as some sporting events. Dori and I are hoping to get the chance to attend a concert there sometime in the future.

Just across the road from the Albert Hall, back within Kensington Gardens, is the Albert Memorial. Completed a year after the Royal Albert Hall was opened, it is the official memorial for Prince Albert. The statue of Prince Albert at the centre of the memorial faces south towards the Royal Albert Hall, and is surrounded by a number of other sculptures that represent Agriculture, Commerce, Engineering, Manufactures, Asia, Africa, America and Europe. It is a wonderful memorial, and is certainly much more fitting than the abomination that is the Diana memorial which lies just a few hundred yards away!

The Price of Progress ....Part Two

2009-10-18T15:38:00.002+01:00

Dori and I have been watching an interesting programme on the BBC over the last week or so. Produced in conjunction with the Open University, it examines the effect of modern technology on today’s society. A family have volunteered to live their lives as though they were living through the 70s, 80s and 90s with each day of the month representing one day of the three decades, starting off in 1970 on day one.

Dori and I often remark on how much has changed during our lifetimes, which isn’t a huge amount of time – no, really, it’s not – and this programme brought that fact home. You really do forget exactly what life was like back then. Most houses didn’t have central heating or double glazing, no freezers, no microwaves, no dishwashers, no colour TV, no CDs, no mobile/cell phones and, of course, no computers let alone the world wide web! Cars had no power steering, air conditioning, or power assisted braking systems. You couldn’t listen to music on the go as the walkman was still years away in the future. We lived in the Stone Age!

The production crew also decorated the family’s house to suit each decade complete with vivid 70s wallpaper, or chintzy 80s furniture. As each day (year) went by so more technology was introduced into the house. At the start of the project the family found that the parents spent much longer doing housework as they had none of the modern conveniences, and had to shop for food just about daily as freezers were yet to reach most houses. The children, in contrast, had more time on their hands than they knew what to do with, without any game consoles, cell phones, mp3 players or much TV to watch – there were just 3 stations, all in black and white and were only showing a test-card for the great majority of the day. So, they ended up spending time together, playing board games or even actually getting out of the house and playing in the great outdoors. Of course, back in the 70s, parents were also more likely to let their kids play out for just about the whole day without worrying too much – a complete contrast to today.

The 70s brought music centres, colour TV, calculators and, at the end of the decade, Pong! The 80s brought primitive computers into the house, slightly more sophisticated games consoles, the walkman, video recorders, CDs and microwaves. During this decade the family started to drift away from their communal activities and found that they had the technology to allow them to entertain themselves more. When the 90s came around so did the Sony Playstation, satellite TVs, mp3 players, mobile phones, digital cameras and, of course, the World Wide Web. The pace of change was ever increasing and the throw-away culture became more evident. The children would be alone in their rooms watching their own TVs, playing on a games console or listening to an mp3 player. And the adults would be doing something similar downstairs. Technology had rent the family unit completely apart.

Modern convenience has given us so much more leisure time but we spend it in such different ways now – more often than not in more individual pursuits and not in enjoying the company of those we love. We surf the net, blog even, we play on games consoles, or we listen to our own music on mp3 players. The price of “progress” indeed.

The BBC and Open University have created a website to go along with this series which is worth a look at, if only to remember how “bad” things really used to be!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/electricdreams/index.shtml

The Price of Progess ....Part One

2009-10-12T19:47:00.005+01:00

So, as Dori mentions in her blog post today, it was a relaxing weekend in the Yellow House this week. We watched some DVDs, worked on a project, and did a bit more organizing of a couple of trips we have coming up before the year’s end. We got some things done that needed doing, but they were done at our own pace and without any self-imposed pressure or timelines. It was a good weekend – despite the weather!

I was also able to watch the highlights of the Ukraine v England World Cup qualifier on Saturday evening. You may not think that is anything remarkable, but there has been a controversy raging here for the past week or so concerning this match. To cut a long story short, the TV company who had the rights for this match went bust a couple of months back, and no other UK TV companies were either able or wanted to step into the breach. As a result, the company to whom the TV rights had reverted decided to screen the match live on the internet with no live TV coverage at all, and charged up to £12 (about $20) for the privilege.

Thankfully, England have already qualified for the World Cup, and so there was no burning need for most people to fork out a portion of their hard-earned dosh to view the game. But the thought of this being the way of the future is not at all appealing. I would certainly not appreciate paying £12 only to spend two hours watching a message say “please wait....buffering”. And, whilst having an option to watch sport online is a good thing, restricting live sport to only the internet is far from it. I hope this isn’t the start of a slippery slope. Anyhoo, the highlights of the game were screened on Saturday night by the BBC, but they had been prevented from advertising the fact that they would do so until after the end of the game (just two hours before their show started). Presumably this was to ensure that everybody who may be tempted to pay for the live coverage would do so and not just wait for the free-to-air highlights on the BBC a couple of hours later. So, it was only by pure luck that I saw the listing for the game on the Electronic Programme Guide as we were flicking through to see what was on.

As it happens, all of this fuss was for nothing as England had their goalkeeper sent-off after 15 minutes and went on to lose the game 1-0. Ho hum.

Sunday Snaps 6 - A Town Called Helen

2009-09-27T19:50:00.003+01:00

Over at From a Yellow House, Dori has posted many a photo of our travels around Wiltshire and other parts of England. So I thought it was high time that I did the reverse and posted some pictures of Georgia, taken during my visits over there.

These snaps are of a small town called Helen in the Blue Ridge Mountains in North-East Georgia. As you can see, Helen is a recreation of a Bavarian Alpine town. It felt quite surreal when I first went there to find this little piece of Europe thousands of miles away!

It even comes complete with it's own windmill.

Helen is a cute little town, which I enjoyed visiting tremendously.

Fifty Things About Brit Boy

2009-09-19T20:35:00.000+01:00

Dori posted this meme on her blog back in August, and invited whoever wanted to take it to do so. So I have (even if I have taken my time about it!) :-) I have changed 3 or 4 of the questions - because they weren't really relevant - and swapped them with other questions from other memes. I know you are not supposed to do that and the meme police will probably be knocking at my door in the morning, but hey, it's my blog and I'll do whatever I want with it!

If you want to take this meme and use it yourself, then please do.

1. What time did you get up this morning?
6:20. I had a lie-in as it is the weekend! The alarm goes off at 6:10 during the working week. I’ve not been sleeping in lately at the weekends. Don’t know why.

2. How do you like your steak?
Well Done. Although the steak we had in Paris on our 1st anniversary was still pink but tasted gorgeous. I guess it depends more on whether the person cooking it is actually a good chef or not, as well as the quality of the meat.

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
Julie and Julia, starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. Really enjoyed it, even though I had never heard of Julia Child before the film was released.

4. What is your favorite TV show?
The West Wing. The most intelligently written, entertaining show on TV ever ...by a mile. And very prophetic too, as it turned out! Gonna talk more about The West Wing on here in a few days time.

5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be?
Near a beach, somewhere warm

6. What did you have for breakfast?
Skipped breakfast today (slap on wrist ...naughty boy!)

7. What is your favorite cuisine?
Italian or French, I guess. Not really a foodie, just like food that’s been well prepared.

8. What foods do you dislike?
Nuts, cherries, olives, ...I won’t bore you with the full list!

9. Favorite Place to Eat?
Frankie & Benny’s is my current fave. I’m a cheap date.

10. Favorite dressing?
Uhhh, ranch?

11.What kind of vehicle do you drive?
Rover 45

12. What are your favorite clothes?
Casual. Hate wearing suits or anything formal. Spend most of my time in jeans and t-shirts

13. Where would you visit if you had the chance?
Whoo, where to start?!! Lapland is on our list for a Christmas break one year. Australia, Rome, New York, Washington, California, Paris (again), Scotland (never been up there despite living only a few hundred miles away),.........

14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full
Half full ....mostly.

15. Where would you want to retire?
To that beach house I mentioned earlier.

16. Favorite time of day?
Early morning, just after the sun has risen from it’s bed.

17. Where were you born?
Wiltshire, England

18. What is your favorite sport to watch?
Football (soccer).

19. Would you move for the person you loved?
Yes. Dori has already done it, and we intend to move again - back to the States in a few years time.

20. Where did you live in 1987?
Bath, England.

21. What is your favourite film?
The Shawshank Redemption – love that film.

22. Are you a bird watcher?
Not really. Birds scare me.

23. Are you a morning person or a night person?
Definitely a morning person, which is a switch from my younger days. But if I don’t get what I need to get done in the early part of the day now, then chances are it won’t get done!

24. Do you have any pets?
No. Not unless you count Trevor!

25. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share?
Yes. I recently passed the course I have been taking on Web Design at the Open University, and can now put a whole sentence of letters after my name.

26. What did you want to be when you were little?
A rock-climber, a doctor (I even had the stethoscope and a little bag for all the equipment!), a magician, the Six Million Dollar Man, grown-up, ....

27. What is your best childhood memory?
Family holidays (vacations) in Cornwall.

28. Are you a cat or dog person?
I guess a dog person, cos I really don’t like cats. We used to have a dog when I was growing up, but I can’t say I have any great urge to go out and buy one now. Unless it was a robotic dog of course.

29. Are you married?
Very happily so, to the wonderful and beautiful Dori.

30. Always wear your seat belt?
Certainly do.

31. Been in a car accident?
Yes, yes and thrice yes. I’ve been hit by a car, a lorry and a van ...and aquaplaned into the back of a van myself on a very wet surface. I sometimes think our car must have a target painted on the back somewhere!

32. Any pet peeves?
People who stand in shop doorways, or who stop dead in front of you when you are walking along. Shopping. Bad drivers.

33. Favorite pizza topping?
Mushrooms

34. Favorite Flower?
Ummmm....

34b. How much cash do you have on you?
£3.12

35. Favorite ice cream?
Not a big fan of ice cream. If I do ever have it then it is usually a “99” – thats a soft ice cream with a flake for the unitiated.

36. Favorite fast food restaurant?
Steak n Shake. Thank you Dori for introducing me!

37. How many times did you fail your driver's test?
I passed first time – much to both my own and my instructor’s surprise! Never been so nervous in my whole life.

38. From whom did you get your last email?
The National Lottery to tell me that our syndicate had won a massive £13 in Friday’s Euromillions draw. So near to that £89million jackpot and yet so, so, so far away.

39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card?
Gotta think about this one.... Ummm.......Ah, I know! The merchandise store at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Loved it. Can’t wait to get back there - that's to the KSC not the store!

40. Do anything spontaneous lately?
Not great at spontaneity. Oh no, hang on. I bought Dori flowers for our proposal anniversary a few weeks back. That was a sort of spur-of-the-moment thing.

41. Like your job?
No. And yes. But mainly No.

42. Do you like broccoli?
It’s OK. Wouldn’t nominate myself as the leader of the Broccoli Lovers Association, but yeah, it’s okay.

43. What was your favorite vacation?
Paris for our first anniversary. We were only there for a few short days but the whole time was magical, including a virtual private audience for us of the Eiffel Tower doing it’s night time lights thing.

44. Last person you went out to dinner with?
Dori

45. What are you listening to right now?
Swindon Town playing against Walsall. It’s 1-1 at the moment if you are interested. :-)

46. What is your favorite colour?
Don’t think I’ve got one. Always struggled with this question ever since I was a kid. I’ll say RED, cos that’s the colour of Swindon Town’s shirts. (Grabbing at straws here)

47. How many tattoos do you have?
Zero

48. How many are you tagging for this meme?
I’m not. If anyone wants to take it forward then they are more than welcome to do so.

49. What time did you finish this meme?
8:33pm

50. Are you a coffee drinker?
What? Hold on, the previous question asked what time I had finished this, and then you go and ask me another question!? What kind of **** is that? Uhh, yes I am but only if it is not instant coffee, and then only sometimes. And now it’s 8:35pm and I’m being made out to look like a liar....... you can’t get the staff these days ....grumble grumble...

South African Dreams

2009-09-10T17:18:00.004+01:00

Yesterday evening Dori and I went our separate ways as Dori had some study to do for her course, and I settled down in front of the TV to watch the World Cup qualifier between England and Croatia at Wembley Stadium. This qualifying campaign for the England national team has been somewhat unusual in that they have not had any of their usual mishaps or freak results. In fact, prior to last night’s game, they had won all 7 of their group matches in the quest to qualify for next summer’s tournament in South Africa. Victory in the match against Croatia would guarantee England their place at the World Cup Finals, which, as you can see from the Countdown Timer on this page, starts on June 11th 2010.

There was a little history to this fixture too, as just two years ago England were again lining up against Croatia in a match that, if they had won it, would have meant they had qualified for the European Championships of 2008. In a bizarre performance that night, England somehow contrived to slip to a 3-2 defeat and hence failed to qualify for a major tournament for the first time in 14 years. That result also led to the sacking of manager Steve McClaren who was later replaced by Italian Fabio Capello. So, last night was an opportunity to put things right and re-establish England as a major force in world football.

Wembley Stadium

And the match could not have gone any more smoothly, from an English point of view. The team went ahead after just 8 minutes when Aaron Lennon was tripped in the penalty box and Frank Lampard smacked home the resulting penalty. Then, just 10 minutes later, it was Lennon again who played a crucial role, this time providing the inch perfect cross for Steven Gerrard to power home a header to make the score 2-0. Although the score remained the same for the rest of the first half, England were dominating the play and the result was already looking a foregone conclusion. The second half saw England score another three goals (Lampard again, Gerrard again and Wayne Rooney). David Beckham made a cameo appearance to notch up his 114th International cap. The only blot on an otherwise flawless performance was a momentary lapse in the England defence, allowing Croatia to score. But a resounding 5-1 victory meant that England have now qualified in some style for next year’s World Cup Finals, with two qualifying group matches still left to play. It is the first time ever that the national team have qualified so early for a World Cup, and they have scored 31 goals on their way to doing so – more than any other European team.

So, now the countdown to June 11th really starts, when the world’s best football teams will gather again to battle it out to become World Champions. England have won the World Cup just once before – in 1966, before I was born. Every four years, when the World Cup rolls around again, the expectation that England might just do it this time is ramped up, and each time they fail to live up to that expectation – more often than not going out at the quarter-final stage. But could this time be THE time? Capello has got the team playing impressively, and he is a manager with a proven track record. I am not going to predict an England win, as there are teams such as Spain and Brazil who have much stronger claims to be favourites for the crown. But this qualifying campaign has renewed belief in the national team and given me, and several million other long-suffering England fans, that little bit of optimism that means we dare to dream once again.

Just 273 days to go! Yay!

Bank Holiday Films

2009-08-31T18:01:00.003+01:00

As Dori mentioned in her post earlier, it is a Bank Holiday here today. It is the last Bank Holiday until Christmas here, and marks the end of the summer. It doesn’t seem like five minutes ago when we were making plans to go to Trooping the Colour, or to the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge, but here we are fast heading towards Autumn.

We have had a lazy day today as it is also the last day of my time off from work. For much of this afternoon we had the TV on in the background showing a countdown of the “100 Best Family Movies”. How they decided on this list I have no idea - it has seemed very arbitrary at times. I mean, how can “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” not be in the top 10, when "Pirates of the Caribbean" is? For the record, the Top 10 Best Family Films, as suggested by this programme, are:

10 – Wizard of Oz
9 – Star Wars
8 – Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
7 – Back to the Future
6 – The Lion King
5 – Toy Story
4 – Pirates of the Caribbean
3 – Mary Poppins
2 – Shrek
1 – ET:The Extra-Terrestrial

A lot of the films that were mentioned brought back a lot of memories for one or both of us, such as “The Amazing Mr Blunden” which used to be shown here almost every Christmas but which I haven’t seen for years now. But what this show really made us think about was why don’t they actually show these films anymore rather than just having interminable countdown lists about them?!

Anyhoo, what are your thoughts about the final list? What would your favourite family film be?

A Time Travelling Tuesday

2009-08-26T19:25:00.003+01:00

This week is my last bit of vacation time for a few months. As seems usual for the times when I am off work, the weather has been a bit dodgy all week. In fact we are “enjoying” the last remnants of Hurricane Bill as I write this – nothing too extreme, it’s just been a bit windy with constant drizzle all day long. So, as a consequence we have been spending most of our time pottering about the Yellow House rather than going on days out.

Yesterday, however, we did venture out a little, and decided to go to the movies. We went to see “The Time Traveler’s Wife”, the film based on a novel by Audrey Niffenegger. Dori had read the book a couple of years back, and was keen to see how they would adapt it for the movies. The premise of the story is of a man who suffers from a genetic disorder which causes him to involuntarily travel through time. He has no forewarning of when this will happen, and no way of controlling it – he just disappears from one time period and appears in another. The focus of the story though is, as the title would suggest, the wife of this time traveller and the effect that his random disappearances have on their relationship.

This is certainly not a sci-fi film - it is a romance story and an examination of how this unusual “illness” affects the life of those around Henry (the time traveler). Starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana, it is a wonderful picture that I enjoyed thoroughly. This could have been a real mess of a movie, with all the different timelines involved, but director Robert Schwentke has done a superb job in keeping the audience aware of when they are and the pacing of the plot is absolutely perfect.

I won’t go into any more detail regarding the storyline, as I wouldn’t want to spoil it for anybody who has yet to see the film – or read the book. I will, however, highly recommend this movie if you fancy going to see a grown-up love story that will have you searching for your tissues by the end. As I mentioned earlier, Dori had read the book previously, which can sometimes colour your perception of the movie when it comes out. But she tells me that she was in no way disappointed with the film version. And as for me, I enjoyed it so much that I have already lined the book up as my next read!

Sunday Snaps 5 - Natural History Museum

2009-08-16T12:22:00.011+01:00

Earlier this week, Dori and I went up to London for a day-trip. We decided that we would go to the Natural History Museum in Kensington. The museum is housed inside one of the most beautiful buildings in the whole of London. We took a few photos while we were up there, and so I thought that I would share them with you today. The first two pics show the outside of the museum. When we arrived there were long queues to go into both entrances - we had forgotten that the schools were still out for the summer! Anyhoo, we joined the shorter of the two lines and were inside soon enough.

There are some great exhibits in the NHM, a lot of which are interactive. We were a little reluctant to try too many of the interactive elements though, due to the current Swine Flu outbreak. You never know what germs the person before you may have!! The main entrance to the museum opens up into the Central Hall, which is overlooked by a statue of Charles Darwin. This year marks the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth.

We didn't have time to see everything in the museum, especially as the queue for the dinosaur exhibit was over 45 minutes long, so we have already decided to go back another day - when all the kids are back at school. But we enjoyed our day out. Have a look at this little quirky video that Dori filmed during our day. It shows a bit of our train journey there and back, as well as some views of the museum itself. It is the latest in Dori's new Mini Cam Moments Series. I hope you like it.

Sunday Snaps - 4

2009-08-09T12:48:00.005+01:00

This weekend saw the start of the football season here in England. The Premier League teams don't play until next week, but the Football League kicked off with one match on Friday, and then everyone else playing yesterday.

My team are Swindon Town, and their first match was away at Gillingham. And what a disaster it was! The Town were on the end of a 5-0 drubbing - their worst start to a season in living memory. It means they are already in the relegation zone of League One, and they've got some tough matches coming up too. It is looking like it may be a long season ahead :-/

Anyhoo, in honour of the new season, here are a few pics of the County Ground, home of the not-so-mighty Swindon Town.

The season can only get better from here (says he hopefully).

Summer Memories

2009-08-07T14:45:00.002+01:00

It has been a relaxing week here at the Yellow House. I am enjoying my summer break from work for a couple of weeks and I can hardly believe that we are already half-way through that time. We are saving our pennies right now, with the hope that we may be able to get away later in the year, so the week has been spent doing a few of those jobs that always get put to the side to complete “when I have the time”. We also took a trip to the movies to see the remake of “The Taking of Pelham 123” on Wednesday, which was an entertaining way to spend a wet weekday afternoon.

This morning Dori had some school work to complete, so I left her in peace to do that and headed outside to wash the car. It was the first opportunity I have had all week to do that as the weather has been typical of the English summer – i.e. raining! :-) When I have finished this post I will be heading back out to vacuum the inside of the car too. It will be like having a whole new vehicle!

As I said, it is amazing how quickly the time passes when you are away from work and it reminded me of how different it felt as a kid in the summer when you had weeks and weeks in front of you that seemed to last forever. The weather seemed better back then too :-/ And the days seemed longer as well. We would watch some TV in the early morning, then head outside and play for the rest of the day until it was time to eat, before heading back out for a while before it got dark.

One of the shows that we used to watch on summer mornings back in the ‘70s was “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe”. This was a slightly badly dubbed French black & white version of the old classic, and I know the thought of it will bring back lots of happy memories to anyone of a certain age. Apparently the series was shown here in 13 episodes, but it seemed to go on forever back then. The part of the show that is probably best remembered is the theme tune, and the incidental music. For me, that theme tune is THE tune of summer holidays. Whenever I hear it, it always evokes thoughts of long, lazy summer days when all you had to think about was who was going to be the “cops” and who the “robbers”, or where you had left the Swingball racquets, or how could you convince the ladybirds to race round the Olympic track you had just created on the back of a piece of wood (yes, we really did).

Here is a clip that I found on YouTube that will give you a flavour of the show, and the music.

Aah, memories.

Three Years and Counting

2009-07-27T17:43:00.005+01:00

Three years from today will see the start of the London Olympics. The opening ceremony will take place on the evening of Friday July 27th 2012. I, for one, just hope that it will be a little bit better staged than the fiasco that was the handover section of the closing ceremony at last year’s Beijing Olympics. After the spectacular displays put on by the Chinese, it was an embarrassment to see the complete debacle of the London section of the ceremony!

But now is not the time to look back at past ignominy but forward to future successes. The British team had their most successful Olympics for 100 years in Beijing and with the next Olympiad being held in this country, hopes are high that the British team can do even better next time. There hasn’t been an Olympics or a World Cup held in this country during my lifetime, so I am very excited at the prospect of seeing the world’s sporting stars performing on these shores. Dori and I are hoping to get some tickets to see at least one of the events that will take place between July 27th and 12th August 2012.

Only three more years to wait!

Sunday Snaps - 3

2009-07-12T19:44:00.006+01:00

Here are 3 more pictures, taken during our travels.

These were all taken during a vacation we took a few years ago in Cornwall. I enjoyed many family holidays in Cornwall during my childhood, but it was Dori's first visit to the area.

This first snap is of the place where we stayed for the week. It was one of three self-catering cottages located at the end of a very bumpy, rural track situated between St Agnes and Perranporth. It is a lovely, secluded and very peaceful location far away from the madding crowd.

The other two pics were taken at Land's End - the most south-westerly point of England. The first photo shows one of the many ships that have ended up being grounded on the rugged, rocky coastline around the area.

The final shot shows, in the distance, the "First and Last House" in England, located on the last few yards of the mainland between England and the United States.

Cornwall is a very beautiful county with a wonderful coastline. I love it. :-)