Work!

Remember when at school half term always felt too short?

That doesn't change.

Especially if you have to work during it! I was supposed to have taken this week off so myself and Bec could have some time together, get some serious decorating done. But courtesy my job we just managed to get a couple of days in wales and a mad Saturday disassembling and reassembling furniture with some frantic paintwork inbetween.

And now Bec is back to school tomorrow! I have 5 more days to try and figure out exactly how I'm going to be running this next Street Duties course before 29 other PCs arrive at the station a week monday expecting me to tell them what to do. Not unlike Bec who has 30 5 year olds doing just that every school day!

I have already drawn the parallels......

Chris 30th- pictorial evidence

Bec is the only one to remember to keep her eyes open for photos

The birthday boy, At & Matt (who'd had a few.... can you tell?)

This photo just has to be displayed to a global audience

Matt wasn't the only one donning inflatable fat suits, although Dev is looking like he might well be trying to fill the fat suit by more natural means rather than the battery powered fan.... Hum I suppose Dev is quite used to exceedingly embarrasing photos, as anyone who was at a certain birthday party of his may well recall.....


The female contingent were not exempt.

Why no pictures of me? Well, we left at midnight, and these didn't come out until after then.... probably just as well, as I'm fairly certain I would've been pressed ganged into wearing one.

Chris B's 30th

Bit of an excuse to dress up posh like and have a good time!

When Blogger gets round to being half useful, I'll be able to post up some suitably embarrasing photos of people there. Several litres of cocktail, inflatable fat suits and a camera invariably mean trouble!

So watch this space, will put up a photo or two of Matt dressed as an overweight ballerina soon, or at least as soon as Blogger decides to let me.

Hum in the meantime photo slide show jobby has been updated with various pictures from past and present. Keep an eye out for yourself!

Funky new slideshow

Check out the new scrolling slideshow!! You can't miss it, its above. Unless you are on an ancient old dial up type internet connection, in which case it may well never load up. Apologies.

Credit where it's due, I nicked the idea off Paulie's MySpace page, and somehow managed to figure out how to embed it in this page.

Anyway, I can stick a load of photos on it with captions. Muchos coolos. I have stuck a load of the Wales ones on there at the moment, as we took a load. But I will update it with other photos as and when the time comes, so keep an eye out!

Unless of course people think it is too intrusive. I can mess it about a bit so it's at the bottom, but then it's a bit easy to be missed.

Waaaaaaales

A wonderful but depressingly brief time was had in Wales... we went up on Sunday, where it rained the whole way except for the last 15 minutes. And after that, not a drop.

We met up with the family Johnson (Peter, Mary, Gareth) and had a wander round a beach on Angelsey prior to an enormous pub dinner. The sun was going down and it was wonderfully miles away from London.

On Monday, the weather looked ominous when we stopped in Llanberis, to visit a cafe which does everything with chips in large portions, essential for pre-mountain walking. The view below is looking south towards Snowdon.

The mountain area we headed off to was Devil's Kitchen- those who have either been to Wales with myself or on school geography trips (a long, long time ago- but I bet Mr Paulie and Miss Cooke may remember those trips....) may recognise the area.

We marched up the mountain to panoramic views over the whole of Snowdonia. The one we went up was only 130m or so shorter than Snowdon, who was clearly visible across the Llanberis Pass, as was the Menai Strait to the North. The photo below is a pause for breath moment on the way, looking along the Nant Francon valley.

This is (obviously) on the way back down. The picture below can be compared to the one above of the lake- we are walking along the ridge at the top, round to the right hand side. We came back down towards the lake down the boulder scree, which was quite entertaining.

The sun was setting as we traipsed back to the car park, where we cleared out the small NT shop of all their remaining cornish pasties. Took this photo on the way down. Really was a very beautiful day

On Tuesday we went to Aber Falls, halfway between Conwy and Bangor. A pleasant gentle stroll (aching legs from the previous day!) led up to a fairly impressive waterfall. I'd like to come back in winter time, or at least after a lot of rain, as from the scouring on some of the rocks evidenced that when that waterfall gets going, it really gets going.

After that and a light lunch in Conwy, it was the joys (not) of the M6 all the way home.

Thanks to: Peter and Mary for the two days; Mother and Nan J-R for looking after the cat!

Name games

Right have decided to stop changing the title and leave it as it is, or at least how it will be once blogger stops being useless and lets me update it. This post may appear twice or not at all. Apologies if anyone has an RSS feed to this, I'm told changing the title can do funny things with the feed.

It's half term! Cue a happy Bec. Invited out for dinner tonight, which is always good. I've been informed that I'll be the driver tonight so somebody can have a glass of wine!

Alright Mr Borge

You want me to go cook something Mr Paulie?
Fine. Cue home-made bolognese.
Fresh parsley, very fresh bay leaf (as in taken off a tree about half an hour before), crushed garlic, beef stock, diced bacon, carrot, celery, chopped tomatoes, baby onion, red wine (with what didn't go in the pan providing an appropriate apertif) mince, and a couple of other things (I think) chucked in a large pan and simmered down for 40 minutes. Throw in some butter-fried leeks and a bed of tagliatelle and cue inability to move off the sofa for at least half an hour.
I know it's hardly Gordon Ramsay but hey one has to start somewhere. But not a jar of anything in sight. Now here's the difference between Paulie and I. He takes photos of it on his plate. Forget that for a laugh. I'm only interested in eating it when it gets on my plate. But just for you, have a photo of it cooking ;-)

In the meantime, who needs posh cat toys? I have just spent the last 30 minutes laughing a heck of a lot running around the flat holding a piece of string, with the latter being hotly pursued by a nutcase cat. Here, I have just tied the string round the doorknob and given it a twitch, and she's off. I have a feeling when she is let out we are going to have a frequent supply of small and possibly large captured creatures. She discovered a daddy long legs yesterday which was vigourously pursued around the living room. Crazy mog

School Report

The second half of Bec's parents evening went fine. Some of the parents even went and queued to see the head to say how pleased they were with her! Bec'll hate me for putting this on, but hey I'm proud of her :-D

I've taken a couple of days off, having been at work every day since last friday. Going off to wales on Sunday for a couple of days which will be soooooooooooo nice. Big thanks to Mr & Mrs Johnson for inviting us along :-)

Something completely different: I am looking forward to the day when we can let this four legged nutcase out of the house (blue cross recommend three weeks inside before letting her out).

She is litter tray trained.

But oh my life you know when she's used it. What an incredible pong.

Usual State of Mania

Things are their usual state of chaos @ JR- UK. Bec is a bit of a stress monkey because it's Parents Evening this week, which for the none UK visitors (of which I have some! Checked out the funky map thing on the sidebar?) is where all the parents get to grill her on the educational status of their offspring in a series of 10 minute slots. This being her first one and all she's been a bit freaked out.
All unnecessary of course as without exception so far they've all been very pleased...... second half of the parents turn up tomorrow.

In the meantime things have taken a bit of a turn at work for me- I have been hoiked off team to run the borough's street duties course. This, basically, is the initiation programme for recruits who have just fallen out of training school, to make sure that they can actually handle real situations, where their decisions have a bit more consequence than the role-play world they have inhabited the last 5 months.

I have done this before as a tutor. This time I'm running it and I'll be an official sergeant for it! Which should be interesting. Because of circumstances quite beyond my control (and the apparent lack of anything approaching organisational skills from the people who should've organised this roughly 4 months ago.... but thats another story...... grrrrrr) I've kind of been thrown right into it .There is less than three weeks till they arrive, in which I have to plan and prepare 10 weeks of instruction, and figure out the various discipline and inefficiency procedures which I hope I won't need to use. So yep I'm a bit of a stress monkey too.

In the meantime: Cat name update! The initial choice was Marbles, mostly because as a certain Alaskanite pointed out, the humour value of calling out to the neighbours "I've lost my marbles? Can you help find my marbles?" was irrestible.

In the end, Bec's class decided. The vote was overwhelming: 2 in favour of Pickles, 3 in favour of Marbles, but a big fat majority of 25 in favour of Aqaya. Aqaya it is.

Aqaya remains bonkers. I think she might be a manic-depressive, just without the depressive bit. Actually, she could be feline bi-polar: with one state being bonkers and running around sliding across the laminate flooring (very amusing), the other being, well, asleep.

Lazy night tonight, video with fruit pie and ice cream, and hopefully the furball in dozy mode.

Furball Fury

Well, I am now now outnumbered in the house. There are two females in the flat, both of whom run the place.

One of them most of you already know:

The other is the recent acquisition from Kimpton:

We have not yet decided on a name: The top three are Marbles, Pickles, and Aqaya (courtesy Jimbob: that is the right spelling, isn't it....?)

Whatever she will eventually be called, she is settling in quite nicely. The Blue Cross suggestion that she be kept in the same room for a few days has been usurped by a greased ball of furry lightning that shot out when the door opened. Having said that, the spare room is definitely her territory and you are game to be pounced on if you wiggle your toe in the right manner.

Unsurprisingly the spare bed has become hers- so much for the cat snuggle sleepy bed thing I got. It will be an interesting battle come the first visitor to the flat who wishes to sleep there. (Sorry Jon). When you walk past the room you get a inquisitive eye looking at you from the end of the bed.

Currently, all I can see of her is 3 inches of tail as she is sitting the other side of the curtains watching anyone who dares walk along the road.

In a nutshell, she seems completely bonkers.

About right for a cat in this family :-)

Two posts in a day?

Also, a brief apology for no updating. Things have been their usual level of ridiculous busyness. I worked last weekend on nights and it was completely bonkers, more so than usual. At some point over the weekend had to shut down primary roads, deal with drunk drivers, illegal immigrants, barrelloads of fighting drunk idiots, undesirables taking advantage of other drunken idiots and relieving them of their wallets, a whole can of worms to do with child welfare issues, people suspected of carrying guns, it just went on. There is a police myth that all hell breaks loose when there is a full moon. I am beginning to believe it, for as we crawled back to the station at something past 6 on saturday morning, the clouds parted to show a huge full moon languishing over Parliament Hill. In case people wondered, I can't really talk about stuff that I deal with at work on here, as that kind of gets me into trouble with the powers that be who don't like it for some reason. But thats another story.

On a lighter note, Bec and I managed to find time to go for a walk a while ago. Unfortunately the weather decided to get involved and it absolutely chucked it down. We drove around for a bit whilst still hammering down where I had fun driving through various enormous puddles on the back lanes. It just stopped when we got out of the car, but you can see the water sluicing down the road. Bec is possibly looking for fish.


We got about 200 metres before it hammered down again and nearest shelter was required.

After this we were prepared to give it up as a bad job but it actually stopped properly after that and we could wander round the damp meadows.

A post in the style of Paulie

The wifeski and I were in need of some fruity refreshment the other day. As simple and honest a glass of Robinsons may well be it was time for something a little more upmarket.
So cue a trip to the local fruiterie. (Sainsbury's).

So with some late season English strawberries, raspberries (next year, hopefully, we'll be able to go out in the garden and pick our own, as well as loganberries, seeing how I've just planted some), hand-peeled banana, coconut milk, with a dash of milk and a dollop of dairy vanilla, expertly (!) blended together and served in a crystal glass to make a refreshing and notably pink concoction that hit all the right spots.

Luvverly.