Spring
After what certainly felt like one of the harshest winters for a while, Spring finally arrived in the UK this weekend. I couldn’t have chosen a better time to visit my old University town, Cambridge. As nostalgic trips go, it’s hard to beat clear blue skies, spring flowers and a pint of Green King IPA [...]
Wishing the real world was more like the digital one
Wouldn’t it be nice if every 18 months, your house doubled in size, your car went twice as fast and your bills halved. A quick ‘arrange all’ command was all it took to tidy the room. And you could google the contents of the house to find your lost keys. Body slowing down and getting [...]
Life lessons from my iPhone
My iPhone tells me that I have just won my 564th game of Free Cell. It reliably informs me that I have spent 103 hours and 23 minutes achieving this milestone. Now, that is a serious amount of time to have wasted playing solitaire. But has it really been wasted time? I have come to [...]
And the snow keeps coming…
So what is it with the weather? Most years we don’t get any snow, but this year the UK seems to be turning into Siberia. I managed to miss the big snowfall on Monday since I was in Madrid. But the kids have been very happy, school closed and lots of snow to play with. [...]
Snow everywhere
Just returned from a very enjoyable week’s skiing in Chatel, France. Sunny every day except the third day, when it snowed. Perfect! The snowy theme continued this morning when we woke up to a covering of snow at home. Although it had gone by 8am, at 7am when I left for work and took this [...]
More summer…
What do you know? Some more decent weather. Went for a very enjoyable walk around the lake at Dinton Pastures. The boys particularly like some of the trees you can climb en route. As you can see.
Could this be England?
Last weekend we were lucky enough to be visiting our friends in Felixstowe. They live within a short stroll of the beach and on this occasion, the weather was (just about) good enough to have an enjoyable couple of hours sunning ourselves on the beach. We even braved swimming in the (rather bracing) sea. It [...]
Chao
Our youngest, Peter, created this masterpiece from banana leaf, freshly shredded by hand during a meal to celebrate my parents’ Golden Wedding Anniversary. Cool.
Laura in concert
Enjoyed watching Laura’s orchestra perform today (she is left of centre at the front). Marcus was also supposed to be playing earlier in the programme, but couldn’t since he managed to break his arm last week whilst on camp with the Scouts. Fortunately a minor break from which he should be fully recovered in 4-6 [...]
Olympic centenary
I attended a celebration of the centenary of the London 1908 Olympics at Windsor Castle. I have to say that the castle is in fantastic condition. The restoration following the fire has been done really well.
Too good to be true
Amazing, it’s the weekend and the sun is shining, the sky is blue and it’s lovely and warm. Sitting in the garden listening to the birds tweeting with a Bud in my hand. What could be better? To my astonishment, the WIFI signal here at the end of the garden is perfect, despite the router [...]
Mac machinations
I finally succumbed and bought myself a Macbook Pro laptop. Since then, I’ve been working through the challenges of replicating my Windows existence whilst taking advantage of the things that Apple do better. Thus far, I’d give it 9/10… but it has not been without its frustrations. The thing that finally pushed me over the [...]
Snailing
Very strange weather this weekend. OK, so it is Bank Holiday and we expect ghastly weather. But we seem to have managed sunshine, rain, snow, sleet, hail and gale force winds in quick succession. Yesterday we had something which was half snow, half hail. So we decided to christen this new kind of weather ‘snailing’.
Create your own annoying ringtone
Robert’s annoying ringtone I thought I’d have a go at composing a ringtone for my phone. After all, how difficult could it be to produce something better than the ghastly annoying ringtones included with the phone? I needed something that started quiet (less embarrassing when accidentally left on in meetings), but became louder and more [...]