No such thing as bad press?

Whilst driving back from taking Bethany to a party in Colchester on Sunday, I saw this ...:

The car is legally parked outside the dealership it was bought from, and because it's legally parked the dealership can't do anything about it. (And the dealership isn't mentioned on the car, so that's another reason they have no say over it.)

The only thing that struck me was that's a £50,000 car. You must be seriously minted (and seriously annoyed with the dealership) if you can leave a £50,000 car parked on a main road, for ever ...!

G'day, g'day, g'day, g'day .... Goodbye.

Sad weekend in the Partridge household, particulary for Charlotte. Our friends, the Linehan's (John, Ruth, Alec and Charlotte) are emigrating to Australia (Or in John's case, returning home). Charlotte and Charlotte have known each other since they were 4, so there were tears yesterday as they said their goodbyes.

Johnny and I used to hang out a fair bit as well, either sharing drinks on the train home or going to watch football down the pub, or just taking the girls for a walk with my dogs. Being Aussie, Johnny always greeted me with "G'day, g'day, g'day, g'day" and then invariably called me "dude" ... And it didn't matter where we were going, he always had a rucksack and a bottle of water on him - even if it was 1/2 mile walk to the library, Johhny would be prepared as if he's going to be stranded in the outback.

Charlotte's going to miss Charlotte, and I'm going to miss Johnny (And we're all going to miss the Linehan family).

Johnny has given me his sat-nav, which after being so dismissive of over the years, I've actually quite enjoyed playing with. I've downloaded some hooky maps for it, and have updated all the software, and Bethany would have quite happily sat and watched it simulate the journey to Grandma and Grandad's had I let her ... All 5 hours of it. That said, we did use it going to Lakeside at the weekend and I made it recalculate its journey twice - doesn't it know that the M25 route is not a good one? Tsk ...

Friday night was spent down 'The Crown' for a 40th birthday of a friend of ours. Mia was pleased as the friend thought Mia was in her late 20's ... I did point out she was drunk, but Mia insists that she wasn't when she said it ... I was the designated driver, so spent the evening on Pepsi or Becks Alcohol-Free lager - but I still had a good time. I even got chatted up at the bar, and yes, she was drunk.

Charlotte was away all weekend with her class at an outward bounds place - sounds like she had a good time climbing, playing laser tag, doing the zip wire (And watching her headmistress scream her way down it), and breaking the assault course record with her class. Bethany swears blind that she didn't miss her at all, but there's a little fibbing going on there ...

Mia and I took the opportunity to redecorate Charlotte's room, so I spent Saturday evening ripping a cabin bed to pieces and then putting together the numerous bits of flat-pack furniture that Mia had bought in Ikea (And which took us 20 minutes to load in the car in such a way that we could still get 3 adults and 1 child in ..). I'd just like to thank Mr Black and Mr Decker for their wonderful electric screwdriver, and Mr Apple for his iPod - couldn't have done it without their help.

Teamwork ...

The platforms at Manningtree train station are being relaid, which has resulted in uneven surfaces everywhere and lots of men in high-colour clothing carrying pickaxes. However, I took this photo at 05:30 Wednesday morning - good example of teamwork I thought ...

One person to do the actual work, 5 to stand round and watch ...

4 hours in London

Annoying woman in the office is going on about a spam mail that's made it through to her mailbox, despite "IT telling us they block them". We do, would you like to see the thousands that DON'T get through each day? And it's not my fault if you've used your work e-mail address to order something, which means you now get the odd spam message ... I also suggest you re-read your terms of employment which states that company e-mail addresses aren't to be used for personal use (Says he who is at work, using his work computer and internet connection to update his blog!) ... So now is as good as time as any to put on the iPod, reacquaint myself with the Bernard Butler album I used to listen to incessantly about 10 years ago, and drown out annoying woman ...

As last Friday was a 'Non-pupil' Day at the girl's school, I took the day off so we could go and do something as a family. Now Bethany has been banging on for the past 6 months about going to see the Tower of London, and Charlotte is doing a school project on World War 2 and just across the river from the Tower is 'Winston Churchill's Battle of Britain Experience' so that was her sorted.

We got the train into London, then the underground across to Tower Hill - all the way B was telling me how she was looking forward to seeing the Crown Jewels and the Beefeaters at the Tower, so imagine my surprise when she sees the Tower of London and says that she's not going in there! No amount of persuasion whilst walking over Tower Bridge to Winston Churchill's would get her to change her mind, she just looked genuinely scared. So after dropping Mia and Charlotte off at WC's, I asked Bethany what she wanted to do. "I want to go up that ...." she said.

So up that we went.

I like Tower Bridge, my Dad took me up the bridge when it re-opened to the public back in 1982 so me taking my daughter there seemed quote fitting. Bethany LOVED Tower Bridge, running up the stairs in the North tower so we could get to the walkways - as I was being 6 again I didn't get to look at all the exhibits showing how the Tower was constructed as the view out of the walkways was far more exciting.

View to the east from the tower walkways. Pleasure boat doing 3 point turn in the middle of the shot, and for all you Doctor Who fans, that's Torchwood in the top left of the picture.

View to the west. HMS Belfast in the foreground of the picture, something else B considered instead of the Tower of London.

Whilst waiting for Mia and Charlotte, we took some pictures utilising the 'art' outside the Mayor of London's office - Bethany liked the ball (Even though I was bricking it incase she fell) and was concerned that I'd actually push over the big raisin looking thing ... Oh to be 6 again. (Andy, mate you have all this to come, and I envy you!)

Define 'irony' ...

Liverpool Street rail station at approx. 07:45am yesterday, with the London Underground strike in full swing resulting in no underground access to anywhere in London. Note the crowd of people on the upper concourse, all congregating around the small doorway that leads to the already overcrowded buses.

The line actually stretches to both the left and right of the photo and out of shot. Outside the station the queue for cabs is at least 100 people in length, so imagine the delight of the already stressed commuter contemplating the 90 minute walk to their place of work in London due to no underground trains when they see the following:

Yesterday wasn't good for the heart for the poor girl outside Liverpool Street station having to hand out leaflets advertising the above ...

And in the office, the annoying woman in the office was complaining about having to walk in from Liverpool Street station to the office. That's Liverpool Street station which is 7 minutes walk tops from our office ... Perhaps if she wasn't wearing high-heels she'd find the journey a bit more bearable?

Back to work, back to reality ...

Can't remember if I've already titled a post with the above, but can't be bothered to trawl through the blog to find out ...

2 weeks of no work makes 04:30am seem unearthly, even the dog didn't want to get up this morning. On the upside, this week is a 4 day week as I have Friday off due to the girls having a 'teacher training day' so they're not required at school - instead we're off to London to see The Tower of London (Bethany wants to see the Crown Jewels) and then Winston Churchill's World War 2 experience (Charlotte has a school project on WW2).

So holiday ...

Cyprus was very hot, mid 90's the entire time we were there, but due to the location of the hotel there was enough of a breeze to make it bearable. The girls and I pretty much lived in the swimming pool, whilst covered in factor 50 suncream - yet I still managed to get sunstroke one evening as well as a 1st degree burn on my arm!

The main reason we went to Cyprus though was for the wedding of Mia's brother Matt to our new sister-in-law Michelle. The service was held on the penultimate day, and was performed by someone who can only be said looked as if he was part of the Cypriot Mafiosi ... A big part of the ceremony is an explanation about bigamy and how it's illegal - but unlike most weddings it was over in 20 minutes. The girls looked beautiful though in their roles as bridesmaids, and both took the carrying of 'Chelle's train very seriously.

I shadowed the photographer with best man Russ's camera (A Canon EOS 40D for all you camera nerds out there), and where the photographer took one photo I'd take 10 ... I've fallen in love with the camera mind, so plan on saving up to get my own - might take awhile as the best I've seen it is £500, and that's without a lense. Some of the photos were taken over on the rocks overlooking the sea (I did think 'on the rocks' wasn't the best way to start a marriage) which involved Matt giving Michelle a firemans lift and me holding the train ... I did say to the wedding co-ordinator afterwards that anyone passing must have thought Chelle had one very butch looking lesbian bridesmaid ...

Highlight of the holiday for Bethany was breakfast; only on holiday can you have chocolate donuts for breakfast.

We also had ex-ITFC 'keeper Nick Colgan staying at our hotel, and I'm sad to say that it took me 2 days to realise who he was (And that was only because his son was wearing a Chelsea shirt with 'Colgan 10' on the back) - I honestly thought he was someone I'd see on the train ... Had a good chat with him at the end of the holiday discussing ITFC's chances for next season, nice bloke.

And back to reality, and the 58,000 (Yep, you read that correctly - the joys of automated e-mails for when things go wrong) e-mails that I need to read/delete before even thinking about work.

Better get another coffee ...

Walton - The return.

After our week away in Cyprus (I'll blog about that at some point ..) we decided yesterday to go to Walton and have a play on the pier.

Cyprus was 94 degrees, with a crystal clear sea which had little fish swimming around in the shallows. This was Walton's attempt:

I coudn't tell if there were little fishes in the shallows ...

The girls had a go on the rides on the pier, (Bethany having to navigate this time on the dodgems as the wheel was on my side) with Charlotte having the 'Jumping Star' to herself. She did her best to look scared, but in all honesty walking down the stairs would have been more frightening.

Walton is a small seaside town (It doesn't even have a cashpoint!) so no McDonalds or the like - instead we had to favour the local chippy which if I'm honest isn't all that ... I also got told off by the grumpy git manning the yard sale opposite for bringing my chips into the yard - not sure how my chips would have affected the sale of the boxes of tapes containing mostly childrens choirs from the 70's, but non-posted rules are rules. Me saying to him that his attitude is the reason he's sat manning a poorly attended yard sale in Walton on a Saturday afternon, and why he hasn't actually made anything of his life probably didn't help though ...

Walton also isn't the best place to go if you don't like birds...

But a not too bad place for a photo with your daughters in front of an amazingly choppy sea and numerous seagulls.