Where did June go? And July for that matter?

And most of August ...

Not a lot happened in the past 3 months, so you've not missed much. However, I am getting an interest in photography and playing around with PaintShop Pro XL (The Pro bit wasn't named with with in mind ...)

So ....:

Why I'm glad I don't have sons ....

As you're no doubt aware, I am the father of 2 beautiful girls. Now, it would have been nice to have a son to foist my love of football on, and to discuss carbourettors with, but it wasn't to be and instead I got the best girls ever. Today was one of those days where I was even more happy than normal to have daughters ...:
This is Bethany at a friend's 6th birthday party today, proudly showing off the 'phone' she'd just made ... (We had told her it was a mobile, she couldn't remember the name when telling Mia about it, but knew it was something to do with the thing Daddy is always looking for). 6 feet behind her, there were five 6 year old boys participating in what can only be described as a cage fight on an enclosed bouncy castle ... In ended in the forgone conclusion tears ..

I'm lucky to be Daddy to the best daughter's in the whole wide world.

Out and about in London ...

I want a new camera, so have decided I better start using the one I have to show I need a new one ... Got that? Makes sense to me anyway.

So, my walk yesterday lunchtime, with a bit of Photoshopping (Clicking on the photos opens a bigger one).

(Tunnel below Southwark Bridge)

(Abandoned pub near Borough Market)

You'll be delighted to know, there's more coming ...

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.

I am an anti-panda ...

School trip to Walton-On-The Naze yesterday with Charlotte's class - a morning spent looking for fossils with the self-confessed 'Nazeman the fossil man' ... When walking to the meeting point with the class and the teacher, we were trying to decide what a fossil man would look like - the teacher said that she thought he had a beard ... And he did, as well as a liking for camo gear.

He had a trainee fossil lady with him, but she only had the camo jacket. It was decided amongst the adults that only when she's a fully qualifed fossil lady, is she allowed to wear the full camo gear. That said, the children really enjoyed themselves and spent 90 minutes walking along the beach looking for fossils and sharks teeth, as well as fossilised poo ... I now know how to tell the difference between a fossilised shell, and a 'modern' one, a skill I'm sure I'll put to good use in the future.We then walked along the sea-front in the blazing sunshine, eating ice creams, trying to avoid the other school parties (And the teachers trying to find their pupils who had nipped off for a crafty ciggie - we didn'thave that trouble with our 11 year olds) until we found a nice, totally unshaded spot to have lunch.

I paired up my group with my friend Nikki's, who over the past years I've been on numerous school trips with - we took a 'farewell' picture as yesterday was our last school trip together as our daughters are going to different schools in September. Nik got into the shell collecting far more than I, and wouldn't leave the beach until she had found a shark's tooth - in the end the trainee fossil lady took pity on her and made it her mission to find Nik one.

I organised a game of beach football, whilst doing my best not to injure myself 1 week before my holiday .. and then we set off to do a traffic survey in the town. One of my group had to count how many tractors and emergency vehicles passed us in 10 minutes - none. I did offer to call the Police for her, but we didn't think they'd get there in time ...

Then onto the pier where much to the disgust of the children, every ride was closed. The teacher was pleased as rides weren't covered on her risk assessment ...

After getting back to school, Mia wondered just where we had been as I was (And am still) bright red, apart from my eyes and two strips above my ears which are white from where my sunglasses were. I'm treating it as base-coat for next week in Cyprus ...

4 years at R.A.D.A*, for this ....

(*Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) Spotted whilst walking to Liverpool Street yesterday afternoon. There's probably special bars and clubs for people into this sort of thing, and I'm guessing located around Liverpool Street ...

And the excitement in our house is currently being generated by these beauties being grown by my green-fingered daughters (They've only just forgiven me for putting slug killer on the sunflower so killing both it and the slugs ...):

Quiet day in the office, as the people I sit with are off on the company golf day - needless to say everyones hair is standing on end due to the static caused by polyester golf clothes, and we have a couple of people who use golf as an excuse to dress as pimps ...

And I'm very bored of the driver/clubs talk already - and for some reason they're not interested in the Tiger Woods game I have on my iPod.

"Do you want fries with that ...?"

Out and about over the weekend, and as it was lunchtime we swung by the drive-thru McDonalds. Now there is a preconception about those who work in McDonalds, implying that they're not quite all there and can't get a job elsewhere - unfortunately the feller who served us yesterday lived up to the preconception.

Charlotte doesn't like the onions, gerkin or mustard on her cheeseburger so I ordered a plain cheeseburger for her, but was asked if I wanted the cheese on that ... Surely if I didn't want the cheese on the plain cheeseburger, then it's a hamburger?

Other than that not a lot else. I washed the hall carpet yesteday, and got a perverse satisfaction when the black mark by the kitchen door went ... I also did a spot of weeding over the weekend, having realised the bush outside the study window wasn't actually a bush, but a weed of gigantic proportions! Our little vegetable patch is growing quite nicely, and we all got excited when we spotted some strawberries coming through.

Last week at work until holiday - I set up the weather setting on my iPod set to Ayia Napa, and give frequent updates to all concerned as to what it's like over there - Currently it's 91 degrees, which is 35 more than it is here. I did go swimming shorts shopping on Saturday, and had to take my chosen purchases back on Sunday as they were too big. The ones I have now fit nicely, but unfortunately my belly hangs over the waistband .. I'm of the opinion that I'd rather my belly hung over the top, than my shorts fall down whenever I launch myself out of the pool ... And I'm sure the other people in the pool will agree.

I also have this wednesday off as Charlotte's class are off to Walton for the day, I'm police-checked due to my PTA role, so am going along as an adult helper. I gave Bethany the choice of me going on her class trip, or taking off the non-pupil day 2 days later and us all go to the Tower of London. Tower of London won.

Right, now to cram 3 weeks work into 4 days ... I better get a coffee.

...

As I can't think of anything worth writing about, there will be no blog post today ... Instead, here's a picture of some lovely puppies.

At last, I can look my daughter in the eye ....

Back in April, Charlotte spent her birthday money on an 8gb iPod Touch (Or 'Touchpod' as it's known in our house due to Bethany's mispronouncing). It was a bit of a sore point for me, as I'd been iPod-less for awhile after my 4 year old original iPod finally died.

But ... April is bonus month at work and as I have a 4 hour flight coming up plus daily train journies, I decided to spend some of my hard-earned cash on Touchpod for myself - unfortunately for me, Mia didn't share my enthusiasm which meant I was in a bad mood on Saturday.

Now Mia likes a bargain, in fact I'd go so far as to say Mia LOVES a bargain. If we have to make a major pruchase, then I leave the haggling (She prefers the term 'negotiating') to her. It was due to her that we gor £4000 off our car, and my parents got their camcorder for effectively 1/2 price .. Yesterday lunchtime, Mia called me at work to say the O2 shop was selling out their 1st generation Touchpod's for between £90 - £125 depending on hard-drive size, and if I promised to shut up about it then I could have one. I didn't need telling twice.

4 O2 shops later, I finally found a store with 2 in stock - Mia was on the phone to me at the time and decided that for the price it would be stupid for her not to have one as well! So now, we are a 3 Touchpod family ...

Back at work, I found the hack to upgrade the software for free, sent it home for Mia to download and then set about filling up the Touchpod. I did have to take a long hard look at the 21gb of music I have stored on my work PC, as my Touchpod only holds 16gb worth of music - do I really need to have 3gb of Beatles out-takes? And how often do I listen to the 2nd album by Ash? And all of the Stereophonics albums? It's at times like these (Which reminds me, I pared back on the Foo Fighters as well), I like 'Best of' albums.

I know a song that gets on everybodies nerves ...

07:40am, and the annoying woman in the office is loudly telling the rest of the office about the terrible Indian meal she had on Friday evening. Apparently the chicken was pink and not due to the tandoori colouring, and the waiter was Italian if you can believe that, Italian! I ask you ...

Obviously all the waiters in Pizza Hut are 100% Italian from the lower east of New York...

So Itunes is on, and Green Day are having a 21st century breakdown in a rock opera manner.

Anyway, first click on this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCARADb9asE

Apologies for ruining your day by getting the tune stuck in your head - most of my Sunday was spent with it running through my head (And I went to school with the daughter of one of the 'singers' of that song), as I went to see the new Star Trek movie last night.

I don't often go and see 'my' films, in fact in the past 5 years I think I've been to see a film I wanted to see twice (The last Batman movie, and Star Trek). One thing about the cinema though, why do they think for a 2 hour movie you need to have a drink in a cup the size of a bucket? And I've made a mental note for the next time I go not to say quite so keenly that I'd like some jalepenos on my nachos ...

The feeling sick due to eating half my body weight in jalepenos, and drinking the majority of a vat of Coke Zero didn't spoil the whole Star Trek experience though - good film, even if the projectionist didn't have it quite lined up to the screen. Everyone raves about how close to the original Spock is, but I personally thought McCoy was better - but then what do I know? I only go to the cinema twice in 5 years ...

Great expectations ...

I went to see Rob Brydon's stand-up show last night, and came away feeling disappointed. I think the weight of expectation outweighed anything Rob would do, as I was really looking forward to seeing him so set the bar a bit too high ...

That said the support act was really good, but then he had the benefit of being unknown which meant no expectations ..

I did look at Rob Bryson's twitter page this morning, and he's thanking people for their opinions of last nights show which got me thinking ... These days information is accessible at all times. Want to know the Norwich score on Sunday whilst watching the Ipswich match, then log onto WAP via your mobile (And don't listen to the North Stand when they start singing how Norwich are losing 5-1 ...). I can check my e-mails pretty much anywhere, and keep upto date with the latest goings on in the world via the BBC WAP site. Facebook and Twitter can be updated on the go, as can this blog, information is everywhere.

Sometimes though there is too much information - according to some newspapers we might as well cancel the milk AS WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE from Swine Flu .. No we're not. The press have latched onto a story, and as soon as an A-lister goes into rehab or gets caught in a compromising situation then swine flu will all be forgotten.

As opposed to when our parents and grandparents were our age - I'm reading a biography of comedian Peter Cook, whose father was employed by the foreign office and sent to Nigeria. PC's father would receive The Times newspaper 6 months after publication, and would remark after reading the cricket scores "Good Lord! Surrey are 78 for 6!" and then have to wait numerous months to get the 2nd innings score ...

I'm down with the kids ...

For the past 6 weeks I've been on a diet (And in a constant state of hunger) and have successfully lost 3/4 stone (Not sure what that is in pounds, so you'll have to trust me when I say it's good.), so on Saturday when I put on a pair of 3/4 length shorts I had a problem ...

The shorts wouldn't stay up - we went to the local market Saturday morning, and I was holding all the shopping whilst trying to also hold my shorts up and not end up looking like a rapper or rapper wannabee .. I've done some research on the whole 'wearing jeans so low half your arse is visible' thing, and apparently Michael Jordan is to blame as he wore long shorts when playing basketball, his contempories all wearing short shorts ... Not sure how this ties in with wearing jeans very low, but it was on the internet so it must be true.

Also the US prison system has a lot to answer for as their prison clothes are poorly fitted, and as belts are a suicide risk, low-riding jeans are the order of the day - as rappers like to show they're from the streets (Whilst driving their Humvees to their 180 room mansions with the 120" TV screens) , they wear their designer jeans in tribute to their brothers in the pen (Or something), so keeping it real.

I did almost ask the white, middle-class student I saw getting off the train last week, wearing jeans that where the waist band was almost down to his knees, how exactly you size them? Do you get your waist size (I'm down two sizes now incidentally!) or so you get your knee size? Questions .. Questions ... Questions ...

I'm a backslider me ...

Growing up in the Salvation Army, you learnt a lot of strange expressions not often used anywhere else - for example if someone in the SA died they were 'promoted to glory', whereas someone who didn't follow the Army rules they had promised to follow was a 'backslider' ...

I'm a backslider with regards to the SA and it's teachings, but more to the point where Facebook is concerned, I'm a new backslider for I have signed up once more. I'm being restrictive on my friends, and have also discovered some new ones who have signed up since I quit ... But I have to admit I'm wondering if I've made the right decision in signing up once more - guess I'll just need to be careful and monitor my actions and time on it.

Anyway ... It was a bank holiday weekend this weekend, and on Saturday Mia and I decided that diets are for wusses and that we really fancied some chocolate cake - off to the local garden centre we went where Bethany worked her way through a slice of cake the size of her head.


Sunday was football day. Ipswich took on Coventry for a meaningless end of season match, but it was Roy Keane's first home match in charge - we finished with a 2-1 win and a sense of expectation for next season. Charlotte and I were going to get autographs after the match and pester the players for stuff for the upcoming school auction, but instead got talking to the reserve keeper ... Charlotte got the promise of a match shirt out of him, and then set her sights on Shumi ('The Macedonian Steven Gerrard') and got his still damp match-shirt off him! Another item for the auction, though I have taken a shine to it ...

Today we trekked over to Lakeside Shopping Centre to stock up on holiday wear (I needed shorts ...), and then I took Jackson for a run over the playing fields with the girls. Spring is definately here.

I guess that's the end of 'Bring your pig to work day' then?

I was called into a meeting yesterday at work regarding the possibility of Swine Flu going pandemic ... Apparently face masks have been ordered for us all to wear, regardless of the fact that they don't actually work due to the germs being smaller than the holes in the mask .. Oh and once the mask gets wet or damp (Like when you breath on it a couple of times) that also nullifies the effect.

I've decided to wear this to work, and have warned my collegues in Dublin that I may sound a bit different on the phone and to ignore any statements where I say I'll be deleting them.

Along with the masks, it has been suggested that work invest in the following as well ...

Needless to say should Cyprus decide to close their borders in the next couple of weeks, so ruining my holiday at the end of May, I'll be taking this FAR more seriously.