Camera!

Aha! I am now able to connect to Bec's camera and put photos on the machine that are of slightly better quality than my humble phone :-)

Nice ones to start with: From Hannah & Matt's wedding the other week:

Hannah, Matt and Arwen

All of the Colchester crew and their foreign imports!

A few days ago we had a BBQ round at chateaux KJR, which was as most BBQ's tend to be, a bit daft:

The Hairy Beast of Essex is sighted in Hertfordshire

Cheese all round please

Insert your own caption: I couldn't do this justice!!!!!!

Master Barbecuer at work

The excuse for this Barbecue was flatmate Stewart's leaving do of sorts. Seeing how I'm getting married in oooooh 4 weeks I unfortunately need to turf him out. Which is a shame, as its been a laugh. I am getting a wife in return though, which with all due respect due to Stu, she's a bit prettier really ;-)

Work is a pain

Having slight issues with work at the moment. Stag do, ostensibly organised for the 9th july, has all been sorted, booked etc back in February time. However, back then we didn't realise it was the world cup. This in itself is not a problem as we'd have finished by the time the game is over (and we've got no chance of getting to the finals anyway).

Howeverrrrrrrrrrrrrrr I've had my leave cancelled at work! I've been told to go in for a 7am-7pm shift on that Sunday which doesn't leave any room to maneuvre at all.

I'm trying to wangle my way out of it but it's not looking too hopeful at the moment :-/

There may be a sudden last minute change to the 22nd july... will need a fair old amount of logistical shifting and hassle though, which is tedious.

Joys of working for the police....

Bee Reprieve

Hum. Well, according to the council they don't take action with bumblebee nests. The best thing to do is wait for the queen to die at the end of the summer and that'll be the end of it. So will just have to put up with them crawling out from underneath the washing machine for the time being...

bumblebees grrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Well my humane efforts of trying to simply shut the door to the bumblebee des res somewhere in my wall has not been particularly successful. I don't how or where they're getting in now but the ones which are now constantly appearing in the kitchen and bathroom are getting bigger. I'm afraid its a call to the council....

Colchester Wedding

Not ours! Less than 6 weeks to go though.

On Saturday myself & the better half went off to Colchester to see one of what is termed (in Harpenden) the Colchester Crew get married. When I first met Bec.... in 1999 (I think!) there was a whole bunch of characters who originated from Colchester. Bec is one, The Hairy Lawn Beast is another.

On Saturday, it was Hannah's turn to get married. I don't have any photos available at the moment as Bec took her proper digital camera and that's in Leicester with her, but hopefully next weekend she'll bring it down and we can persuade my computer to talk to her camera, and we'll put a few proper photos on.

Courtesy Peter Johnson I do have one pic of us two: look how smart we are :-)

The things I do

For those who don't know, my mother Dot works in a pre-school nursery. Every so often they have a week of 'people who help us', to help familiarise 3 year olds with (amongst other things) the 999 system: what do to when someone is hurt or they're lost- that kind of thing.

Anyway, my involvement is this is the following. Seeing how I work in the police, and my mother works at the nursery, I go in for a morning with most of my uniform and kit. On this occasion, I walked in whilst they were still in their constructive play time. The idea was to familiarise them with the sight of big adult with strange yellow jacket and strange things on belt, so they wouldn't be as intimidated should they ever need a policeman.

So:

I swiflty became the centre of attention for the more confident ones
I was wearing my own flat cap when I got in. However, that swiftly got taken off me:

My hat proceeded to be put in their (pretend) oven. Thats why I couldn't wear it the rest of the time- it was too hot, you see- silly man, can't wear a boiling hot hat

Once their play time was over I was 'formally' introduced and I sat with them and explained with the help of the leader, what I did and what the various bits on my kit belt. Radio and torches are easy to explain but they had an edited version for handcuffs (sometimes people get angry and do something naughty, and have to come with us to the police station) and baton (only used if somebody is hurt inside a house and I need to break a window to get in!). Incapicitant spray was left at the police station in london. 15 3 year olds and CS spray are truly not a good idea.

One day I might speak to Herts police and see if I can borrow one of their cars so I can show them the flashing lights and all that. A simple idea in principle but bound to be fraught with difficulty knowing job politics!

Rain! And Bees

At last. After the last few days of temperatures approaching 30 deg C (90F or thereabouts?) it has finally started raining.

I can hear yet another bumblebee buzzing about somewhere. I found an entrance to a nest of them in the back wall the other day. In what may or may not have been the best move I sealed it off. I don't mind bumblebees normally but I thought this years bumblebees are next years wasps and I don't know how big this nest is.

Problem is, now the access to the outside world is cut off they keep appearing in the kitchen or bathroom. They're probably in roughly the same place Mouse was earlier in the year, which is another reason why I sealed the hole (just a small bit in the mortar between bricks, probably an old cavity wall filling hole) as I am getting slightly cheesed off (no pun intended) with having to destroy various bits of wildlife that take residence here as I can't say I particularly enjoy it.

There were 7 bumblers in the bathroom yesterday. Some of them are really quite dozy. Two ended in the bath and one in the toilet (how, I have no idea). Most of them are really small so hopefully I've caught the nest early.

Just as well Bec isn't here quite yet! She's not the greatest fan of bumblebees :-/

wales tales (2)

Apologies, took a bit longer to get going again than expected. Time flies even faster when not at work.

Anyway, some other photo bits n bobs from Welsh Excursions. On the Saturday morning, we went down the road to Dolgellau (rough pronounication: Dol-goth-lai, apologies to any Welsh speakers) and went round the aptly titled Precipice Walk:

It really was quite toasty:

Around the opposite side of the headland was this lovely little lake which we sat down beside and sooooooooo did not want to leave!

JR's who have visited this area once or twice may well recognise the distant hump of rock below as Cadair Idris...

We eventually extracted ourselves from the lake, and had lunch by an estuary which provided entertainment with two bulls on the opposite sides of the river having a right shouting match. Full on pawing the ground and bellowing. All a big display though as the tide was pretty much out and the river was only 10 or so metres wide...

Bec still wasn't feeling quite 100% so we decided to stay on level ground and go visit Barmouth, another old JR haunt. The wisdom of this was quickly called into question as the place was absolutely packed. I found out later the locals nickname the place Little Birmingham, and I could understand why as you could barely move for either a) Slightly overweight persons wearing Aston Villa shirts drinking pints b) Slightly overweight persons wearing no tops drinking pints.

So we disappeared off and walked over the bridge. Anyone with a JR surname will instantly recognise the photos below! We even had a train come over for Dad JR's benefit:

We then went back off to our cottage residence and had another fantastic meal. On the sunday we went to a waterfall, but my phone had run out of battery by that point and so you'll need to wait until Bec has her camera developed before I can put any photos of that on!

Wales Tales (1)

Well trip to wales was verrrry nice. We somehow managed to coincide our road trip with the first bit of decent weather in literally a month.

Friday we left Colchester at a quite unearthly hour but it meant we got past Cambridge before rush hour kicked in. By the time it was lunchtime we were in Wales proper:

Hills!

Open Roads! Blue Skies!

Although despite all the good omens somebody still didn't want their picture taken. Unlike the happily grinning twit alongside :-)

She say No Photo!

So we got up to the B&B where we to stay. We know the owners from having stayed their last year. They are two people who used to work in pubs in London before deciding they'd really had enough of the place, and moving out to Wales. So they bought an old mountainside cottage and have spent plenty of time and effort doing it up. They both absolutely love the place and what they do and it is quite frankly a wonderful place to stay. Should you fancy a look, have a look at www.caedu.co.uk

They have a pair of mountains that we sort of clambered up when we got there. I say sort of as poor Bec was suffering with a cold again and didn't quite have the energy to make it all the way up. We made friends with some of the locals though:

The view we got from where we did get to was pretty cool, especially when you haven't seen anything approaching a mountain for a year! I believe the pimple in the middle of the photo below is Snowdon. In the foreground are the slag heaps from the quarries ancient and modern of Blaneau Ffestiniog (and for the benefit of any American perusers, there really is meant to be FF)

I shall update when I can with various other photo things. The ones I'm putting on here are just ones taken with my phone and aren't particularly fantastic quality. Bec took her digital camera and will stick some of the ones from there as when it is possible to do so!