Easy like Sunday Afternoon....

Sunday afternoon... a large roast dinner courtesy of parents (one of the advantages of living in the same town: a pretty much open invitation to sunday dinners heheheheheh). After eating one of these meals, there's pretty much two things you can do: a) fall asleep, or b) go for a walk. Being healthy and all that we tend to go out for a walk. The above is a long-abandoned railway line converted into a footpath near where I live. Today was the first "official" day of spring but nobody had told the weather that. Grey grey grey grey grey! We did manage to get home just before it actually started tipping it down tho.

Bonus points to anyone with good enough eyesight: Hawk the space-brained sheepdog is in the picture somewhere. Hawk is my nan's dog who gets borrowed on regular occasion for these walks. I could be sure he has canine OCD. He is obssessed with sticks and for as long as your arms are attached to your body (and probably when they're not) he will find one (stick, that is- not arm) and drop it literally on your feet until you throw it. He will then race after it like failing to get it will result in Armageddon, and then run back and drop it on your feet. And wait with a ever-so-slightly mad look in his eyes until it is thrown again.....

Talking of rain, can't complain if we get it. A week tomorrow a hosepipe ban comes into force: apparently this was one of the driest winters on record and the water supply companies are getting a bit panicky that there won't be enough to go round come the end of the year. They're talking about banning sprinklers on golf courses too which being a golf-a-phobic I find immensely amusing....

H

Right this ugly mug is my darling older brother. He deserves having a fairly awful photo of him put on here.... after all he was the one in the comment below claiming to be from Azerbijan and offering me 10 tukruts for Bec: giving her a place of honour, cleaning up after a camel named Abdullah. Rudeness

True romance........

This is Bec's reaction when I tell her I want a kiss........

Canal vs Mountain

Well, it appears to be letting me post photos again so I shall maintain my faith with Blogger for the time being!

At the weekend meself and the missus went out for a walk. Ok so there's a bit of a trade off here. We don' t have spectacular mountains, tidal inlets with sounding whales, or ice fields (unlike a certain place I know) but we have got canals. Won't find a view quite like this in Anchorage: a place where 200 odd years ago some victorian chaps thought it would be a remarkably good idea to dig a long trench and fill it with water. So there!

Route of walk was pretty much decided by getting OS map, identify hitherto unvisited village (Wilstone) with a pub (Half Moon, I think- ancient old place where I kept hitting head on ceiling), drive there, find pub, eat lunch, and walk it off afterward.

Well, mid Buckinghamshire may not be Anchorage but it was flippin cold. Sun was just about out but the wind had come straight from Siberia without passing "Go". Poor Bec is trying her best not to look cold here but doesn't quite pull it off..........

The good thing about the canal system is that invariably you don't have to walk too far before you find another pub. We'd gone about half an hour before we found another, and it was too cold not to go in and have a hot chocolate. Well, I say it was hot chocolate: it was about 3 part chocolate to 4 part sugar to 1 part hot water, with cream on top. Give that to a small child, you'd spend the next 15 minutes peeling them off the ceiling
Suitably recharged we wandered back. Happily neither of us fell in on the way. Annoyingly though I did manage to leave Bec's walking shoes on the roadside when we got back in the car. DOH

Person who correctly guesses the bit of canal we are alongside wins a prize!

Computers are still rubbish

Right, I don't know whats going on but I am having a persistent problem with posting photos on here. Maybe because it's an American site, and I'm from the UK and something or other is not compatible but every time I try to upload a picture the window just goes blank. I don't have the option of clicking the 'done' button to upload it onto the post.

Rubbish! I shall have another go tomorrow but I may try a different host site cos this is doing me nut in, y'know..... had a few photos of us freezing our butts off at the weekend strolling along a canal but I can't post them!

Wild life

I had an extra visitor to the flat (well, the garden) on Saturday... a somewhat dozy fox.
Proof that there is wildlife in this corner of England! Even if, unlike certain American states, you don't run the risk of being maimed, trampled or ripped into small shreds should you come across one.

This character I think was a bit lost, hung over or something. For a creature that is supposed to be nocturnal coming out in mid-afternoon for a stretch and a scratch is a bit unusual. There was a lot of scratching, trust me. Well ingrained fleas it would seem.

Still, one of the benefits of hunting being banned, I suppose. Coming out for a Saturday afternoon wander, maybe catch some rugby (england lose again, useless bunch) , without running the risk of bumping into a horde of bizarrely dressed horsey types with a pack of mutts.

Might have been after the relatives of the mouse I caught in the kitchen the other day, I suppose. Only the one caught so far, which is a relief. Didn't really fancy having to chase a family of the things. Still, it has brought forward the possibility of getting a cat much closer. I'm not allowed a dog by the better half...... well, okay to be fair I agreed that getting a dog wouldn't be right for a few years yet..... but a cat that can cope with long periods of abandoment whilst we're both at work does make sense. May well start looking at Easter for one!

Computers!!!

Trying to update and stupid hunk of electro-machinery for reasons unfathomable is absolutely refusing to upload photos. So I'm giving up.

Intro

Welcome to the blog! This here to the left is I with poor excuse for goatee beard (now since gone). Apologies to those who have stumbled upon this blog by accident and are eating breakfast. To my right, the much more pleasing to the eye, future wife Bec.

I don't have to rush off to work this time, so thought would spend a bit of time here. Prompted into this by Alaskan-dwelling sister who started a ball rolling with her 'British Import' blog; www.tamsink.blogspot.com .

The general idea being to put pictures and stuff on here, basically relating to what the Harpenden division of the JR clan is up to.



Future updates will probably include various embarrasing pictures from stag do (not till July though) and wedding itself. I shall endeavour to include things about what the other Harpenden JR's from the posh side of town, Mr and Mrs JR senior are doing, along with resident dog of little brain Tig. Tig is seen on right in typical gormless pose with stuffed toy in mouth.

I have plenty of mildly embarassing photos of Bec but I need to get permission before posting them on the world wide web!

The two photos here were from christmas before last: a bit old but the only ones available I have of my parents. The one on the left is mother, being quite typically photogenic. You'd never guess she was a nursery school teacher, really. My mother's ability to be shameless and grow old disgracefully is so far unlimited! Below, Dad is somewhat more regal in his photo, in his natural environment: i.e. outside on a hill somewhere with an impossibly big rucksack, even if does only have tea in it. The character behind Mother is ex-pat Tamsin, on a holiday sojourn back to these shores. It was about 5 deg C on that day, which makes it a considerable warm step up from Anchorage.


Enough for now.... got to hop off to Sainsbury's to get some nosh! Meeting some characters from work tonight for a guiness or two (well, it is St Patricks day).....