Its all happening....

Here......

Haven't done much on here the last month or so I know. We are much more frequent visitors to above mentioned site.

As such, things are on a bit of a pause here. Should there be a request, I'll stick things on here! For those none-facebookers amongst you.

Chaos Reigns

Well, we are back from globetrotting. No more holiday for us until..... well, ever at the moment. I have all of 2 days leave left to last me till next year! Although thats because I've booked christmas as time off you see.

Alaska was v cool. We had very good weather most of the time, quite often it being warmer over there than it was here. We were very fortunate and got do some extraordinary things and see some amazing sights. Glaciers rock.

We also had a great deal of fun with Kurths senior but especially Kurth junior!

Lake district brought us back to England. Lake district weather is summarised as such:

Low cloud base. Dull.

Low cloud base. Rain.

Low cloud base. Wind and Rain.

Low cloud base occasionally lifting to allow some view.

Fortunately we chose our big walks on days the cloud base lifted so we could actually see some of the sights. I've never really been to the Lake District. I like it a lot. I did laugh at the Miss Potter film though where it is always sunny in the Lake District. We also had a fine cottage and waterproofs so the end result was good.

Alaska photos are mostly on facebook. I took 211 photos just myself! I intend to stick a slideshow jobby on the side some point soon.

But the point of the post title is down to approx 4kg of fur, paw and ears. We have picked up cat No2. This is one of the cats found round my Nans shed a while ago. He got taken in with all his siblings and mother by the Cat Protection League charity. However, they are now old enough to be homed by themselves. The Protection league people were quite happy for us to have one of them back.

So, white-socked tabby kitten now named Samson has now taken up residence in the spare room and is dutifully proving to be a whirlwind of a mess creating ball of energy-charged fur. If he's awake, good luck doing anything productive in the spare room. No space is sacred, and keyboards are a particular favourite, as is tugging the mouse lead from under the desk.

At the moment, I am fortunate as he is sleeping. Right in front of me. Bec has taken about a zillion photos of him in various stages of cuteness (he still hasn't figured out his reflection in the mirror, providing much amusement) but I can't see her camera.

So here, hastily taken is Samson the chaos generator. He's discovered the shredder bin as a fantastic source of play material . But he's cute when he's sleeping......

Limeys

Hey for the occasional person who stumbles here and doesn't actually know me lack of updates is due to being 4481 miles away from home, in Anchorage, AK.

See Facebook for most updates and the occasional photo from a borrowed interenet connection!

It's raining cats

They're everywhere round here at the moment.

Nan JR has just collected two of the things. At 10 weeks old they are little more than mobile fluffballs that squeak every so often. They're called Muffin and Jelly I think. It could be Stuffing and Mello. I'm not 100% sure.

Either way they are small and hairy and cute. The black and white one has hilarious eyebrows. Check them out on the second photo:

Meanwhile, we are likely to get a spare cat. When Bec heard one of the shed kittens from a while back was a tabby, the little creature's number was up. We shall be collecting it when we return from Alaska. We went to have a look at how they're doing the other day.

He was too busy fighting most of the time to pause for a photo but they stayed still long enough to get one good shot:

A couple of vids from the weekend

Stew's copybook golf swing:





Jon being sheared in preparation....




And the waxing itself!




Some others are at http://uk.youtube.com/user/kandrjr or click here

Poor old blogger

Blogger has been ignored a bit these days in favour of that young upstart facebook. Poor old thing! A blog seems so last year ;-)

Heh will still keep the old thing going though!

Things usual busyness. Bec is counting down the days till the end of term. I'm waiting for a promotion date, probably won't know till the returning from Alaska.

English summer has been its fine usual self with half the midlands underwater and floods metres deep. There were some monster thunderstorms hanging around Londinium today, took a couple of pics from the job car whilst sat in traffic:

The original JR fleabag Aqaya is still going strong. We are now highly likely to adopt one of the kittens found in my Nans shed (currently at a rescue centre), and will probably be picking up fleabag number 2 upon return from Alaska. Will start taking suggestions for names now though.....

Here below be Aqaya getting one of her "fuss me fuss me" sessions. As usual she takes up residence on the nice duvet on our bed whenever we go out. Cheeky mog.

Irish bits n bobs

Have put all the pics etc on facebook: but a couple of vids too:



and



Will be more updates soon!

This weekend.....

I shall be mostly drinking......

Whilst Bec shall be quaffing....

:-)

The Shed Kittens

Was minding my own business playing the xbox this morning when mother darling knocked on the door. I was expecting her (I was being bribed with lunch to help cart stuff down the dump), but not this early.

She tells me I need to come and look at something, in a manner I initially find highly suspicous. I follow her over to Nan JR's flat and am shown the shed.

Lo and behold in the corner, nestling on top of an old bag, are 5 tiny kittens. Estimated at 10 days old, they're only just opening their eyes and aren't big enough to walk yet. I see one tabby mog in amongst the mewing bundles (who are mostly black and white) and immediately know precisely what Bec would want if she was here.

In the meantime figure I better phone the Blue Cross to figure out what on earth to do with them. As I'm on the way back over to my flat I meet Kelly, next door neighbour, who asks have we seen a bunch of kittens as she's seen Mother cat wailing.

Turns out she realised they were underneath her window nestling in a hedge last night. She phoned a Cat charity who said they'd send someone in the morning. However, during the night, ma had transported them across the road to my Nans shed, which has a broken lock and so is open all the time.

To cut the story short Kelly speaks to the Cat Protection people who say if we get hold of the mother and keep them all together, someone will be round shortly. Mother is sat underneath a car on the road and is easily tempted out by a plate of cat nosh. Kelly picks her up and she doesn't struggle at all, which suggests she isn't wild. She doesn't have a collar on. I wonder if her owners have kicked her out when they found she was pregnant. I hope not.

Cat protection woman is round within 20 minutes. Mother cat is in the shed which we've managed to shut with the whole family in there. I open the door slowly and grab mother before she shoots off, and she now puts up a right struggle to be put in the cage. I get away with only three scratches. I then move all the tools around to get to the furballs right at the back of the cage. All 5 are extracted- they're only so big they easily fit in the palm of my hand.

I took the chance to grab a couple of photos with the phone. The kittens were a wriggly bunch and because it was dark it was quite a long exposure- but a few have come out ok:

And here's all 5 of them in the box on the way off to somewhere safer than a shed :-)

Wales!

Found the link cable! There are squillions of photos on there, didn't realise we'd taken so many. Ok so maybe not that many but a good 60 odd. Not bad for a weekend, plus another 25 odd on my phone.

Anyways. Selected photos of that Celtic place out west as follows.

On way out there stopped off at a place called Lake Vrynwy, a vast reservior that provides bathing and washing options for a sizeable chunk of the midlands. It is now also a fairly major recreational place, with several birdwatch hides, fishing places, walks etc. We were just stopping off to stretch the M6 out of our legs and had a look around their sculpture park.

I then however found an assault course, which of course I had to have a go on. Bec couldn't resist it either despite her attempts at superior matureness.

We then made our way up to central Snowdonia, to a place we have come to know quite well, a B&B called Cae Du. We stopped off for fish and chips and as you would hope munched it by the sea.

The weather was high cloud and low wind the next day, ideal for hiking up mountains. We chose a veritable chunk of rock named Cadair Idris to hike up.

Cosseted southern shire legs stood up well to welsh mountain abuse. We went off dinner in Betws-y-Coed, going past Waterloo cottage. I have an album of photos from a holiday we had there in 2003 (I think), from which we have quite varied but most definitely entertaining memories.

We went for a walk along the river, where inbetween being attacked by mozzies I felt the need to skim some stones.

The next day we found legs were indeed a touch achey after climbing up and down 2900 feet of granite so we wandered off to Carneavon Castle, whereupon we discovered that narrow steep stone stairs do not provide welcome relief from whinging muscles.

Nevertheless we had a good look at most of the castle before meeting Gareth (Bec's brother, who is slowly morphing into a Baywatch surf extra) for some lunch (hmmmm big burger and chips).

We then headed to Beddgellert. This has old memories of as a child being taken along the old railway track on walks. The old railway track though has now become a new one again- it is being restored by the Welsh Highland Railway. This was a much more gentle walk alongside the river (whereupon I once again felt the need to skim some stones) although I was quite disappointed to find the old pitch black tunnel is now out of bounds.

We had a sumptious feast at Cae Du that night before reluctantly headingback down Sarf to the prospect of work. We stopped off at Vrnywy again on the way back, but this time hired some bikes. The lake perimeter is approx 12 miles, but all nicely flat, and was an enjoyable relaxed ride around.

Will endeavour to put more photos- have got loads to upload, inc a few quite funny ones not at all related to Wales - on albums on facebook or Slide ASAP.

Wales?

Well ok recovered the digital camera from the glovebox of parents car where we left it last week.

Now can't find the link cable to get the pics on the computer! Grrr.

Will put Wales pics on here when can find camera cable.

Humph.

River Lea floods

Apologies for not updating. Have either been at work or away, not leaving much time to do stuff on here. Anyway, coming soon will be photos of recent weekend in Snowdonia where for the first time that I can remember in a while we didn't get rained on.

This is in slight contrast to the glorious bank holiday weekend at the end of May! The photo I took on the previous post is a bit inadequate, really. I went down the following day and couldn't get anywhere near that bench. I took this one from as near as I was prepared to go, and you can just make out the bridge poking through. The River Lea is not exactly well known for flooding and nobody I spoke to could remember it up this high.

I went a bit further up river towards Wheathampstead. This one gives a bit of an idea of how wide the river had got. There should be a path underneath this lot


This is the river actually going over the road in Wheathampstead, something I've never seen it do. Most of the buildings to the left were flooded out unfortunately. There were two fire brigade pumps round the corner doing their best to keep it at bay




The morning after the day before. Things were a bit back to normal with all sorts wrapped around the bench and pillars.

The water a bit further upstream was sufficiently strong enough to uproot trees

Bec of course thought I was mad going off to take photos of all this (choosing to stay inside where it was warm and decidedly not raining) but the frustrated physical geographer in me found it irresistable!

Normal Weather Resumed

Well we did pick the right week to go to Devon. Weather has resumed its state of absolute miseryness. Coming back up from London town it was bucketing down yesterday evening. The river down the road was the highest I've seen it in a long while. Won't be sitting on this bench then.....:

Devon!

Right. Apologies for not doing much on here, but haven't been here all that much to do stuff. I abandoned Bec at the beginning of last week to meet up with colleagues from work who had hired a converted barn type place in deep Devon. This was not a training exercise or anything official at all, more on the lines of taking advantage of shifts to book it at an off peak time. Got my new phone with camera on it with which took a number of photos of the scenery and surroundings. Hadn't quite figured out how to use the camera properly then so some of the photos aren't the best.



There were about 14 of us down there. The place slept in total 18 as reflected by the enormous outside picnic table! It was called the old winery but whether there was a history of winemaking in the building I never found out.


Monday was spent recovering from the trip down. I went down on the bike and got rained on all the way to Salisbury. Saw stonehenge from the roadside but didn't stop to take photos as I was a bit fed up with the aforementioned rain. However by the time I got there things had dried and cheered up enough to have a barbecue and have a shandy or two (maybe).

Tuesday we went to a nearby activity centre (entertaining moment with satellite navigation and a whole load of cows en route) where we undertook an assault course. This was a messy muddy and very wet affair meaning I have no photos of it as I sensibly left the phone locked away somewhere warm and dry. There are however some very good photos of me (taken by someone else who had come up with some excuse or other not to partake), launching into a pit of muddy water with sufficient velocity to completely obscure myself when I land in it. It was quite an attritional affair and the belt on my trousers disintegrated, meaning I had to complete the course with a bodge job of a donated shoelace and ripped strips from my t-shirt.



The weather was by now scorching and we went back and checked out the pool, and pulled the table tennis outside onto the grass. For when this activity got too much we generally sat down, put the world to rights (as you might just expect a bunch of coppers to do) and check the fridge was working properly by collecting a beverage every so often.


Wednesday myself and a couple of others wandered down to the nearby town and after a very nice lunch (mmmm, steak sandwich) headed off on the Heritage coastal trail to Ladham Cove (suspect memory, but I think thats what it was called). I have learned something from being married to Bec and took suncream with me. I didn't burn, a couple of the other guys did!!! I came back later that day, which was earlier than most of the rest of them who came back on Thursday, in order that I could spend some time with Bec before going back to work.




Overall a nice couple of days with work people in a non-work environment a long way from London. It was a shame it wasn't a week later so Bec would've been on half term and could've come down (it wasn't an exclusively job do, people brought partners), it was a top place in very rural surroundings (complete with 100 decibel cockerels in nearby farms) that meant a very relaxing break from London grime and grind.

Slacker

Will update on here soon, honest..............

Dawn of the living dead

Is pretty much an accurate method of describing my current state of alertness. Had a bonkers night last night with a right old Police Camera Action style chase of a car all round north london. That meant I finished late (he crashed, didn't manage to catch the driver, annoyingly, just his passenger).

I was planning on staying up all day as at some point our new sofas were scheduled to be delivered (hurrah! farewell, old tatty sunken second hand things) but by half ten I gave up and fell in a heap on the spare bed. I couldn't even face walking the 5 metres to the main bedroom. Next thing I know its midday and they're knocking at the door. They had been here for all of 10 minutes before mog decides to attempt to sharpen her claws on them. Errrrrrrrrrrrr no you don't.

I'm not going to be so sad as to post pictures of them. Come round and see them! Alaskan people are exempt from this and can have photos on special request, if they really want.

Have seen Bec for all of hum maybe 20 minutes since Tuesday what with the joys of nightshifts. Am on some days off now so can be almost like normal people for a week or so!

Have a phone line now, always handy. It died on Tuesday, spent about 15 minutes on BT's automated "press one if you think these automated systems are immensely irritating" fault reporting system. However, at the end of it all it went "we are sorry, there has been a fault in the system, we are now transferring you to an operator". Why couldn't they just do that in the first place? Grump.

So yes back to having a phone line and t'internet. I did question the wisdom of the advice given by BT that I could track the progress of the fault online when I couldn't access the internet due to the existence of the fault in the first place. Can't whinge too much though, it was sorted within 24 hours of being reported. Was less amused at the several line tests (i.e. phone ringing repeatedly) at 1pm when trying to sleep cos I'm on nights! Grump. (Again.)

Right. I'm off to do stuff in the garden. It may involve power tools, so if you never hear from me again, you know why.

Even Bigger Hurrah!

I'm on days off. Much better.

A tale of gore with a scene straight out of Saw was the job from the weekend that'll remain in the memory longer than most. It was bad enough my uniform trousers have had to beincinerated they were that contaminated. I'll spare you the details, suffice to say the source of the blood is alive and awaiting hospital procedures.


On a somewhat lighter note I am determined this summer to get back into some kind of regular biking. I've had my mountain bike which was horribly expensive (especially to an a-level student as I was at the time!) being sadly underused for the last couple of summers. So I've gone and bought some new bits and bobs for it and myself, and I will be using it more this summer!



I went out this afternoon for a pootle about. Having only had 4 hours sleep after getting into bed at 8am it may seem a daft thing to do, but it was nice- sun on back, a nice breeze, and I wasn't in any particular rush to go anywhere, I just went out and enjoyed the fact I was nowhere near London.



Having said that, there were bits when I was belting along a country single track when I remembered how much fun off road biking is. The off road aspect makes it that more unpredictable than road riding and I was having a right old time belting along down the sides of fields and woods.


I took a couple of pics with the ever-present phone.....Somewhere southeast of Wheathampstead:

Twisty knobbly bits with roots sticking out of ground to catch you out

Slightly easier blat along a field

Greenwall tunnel (ha, ha.) Will probably be impassable in a couple of weeks time

Its not as easy going about on two wheels when you don't have an engine I tell you! But still good fun. And I can't lift the motorbike over fences.........

Hooray! I'm on nights.

Which means I have the joys of staying up late tonight. I don't really particularly enjoy it (staying up late, that is) but when faced with the fact I'm not going to be going to bed again until roughly 8am tuesday morning it kind of makes sense in a nonsensical way.

The police car fleet took a bit of a battering at work today. The vans engine caught fire whilst pootling round Hampstead Heath. One of the astras got hit in an accident by a VW who mistook his accelerator for his brake (!) and the final one got rammed by a disqualified driver who didn't particularly wish to have a nice calm chat about why he was driving a car.

Fortunately for me I wasn't in any of the cars above. Will be a bit of a problem tonight as we have 2 serviceable vehicles available for all 999 calls! Should be interesting.

Facebook is still the flavour of the day and we're both still spending too much time on it really!

Right I think that will have to do. I'm off to watch a DVD or something. Three days of getting up at 5am and not getting home before 8pm is kinda exhuasting, especially on a day like today where things are going a bit crazy.

I was really looking forward to next weekend. Not doing anything at all, and that was the whole point. It feels like ages since I've had a weekend at home with Bec doing nothing in particular, going out for a walk in the country or something. So next weekend that was the plan- to stay in, sleep in, not have anything major planned. Except of course I've now had the weekend cancelled- again- and I've now got to do some mincing extra friday night shift, which of course takes out most of the weekend. Hurrah.

Anyway. DVD. Not think about work. But to finish, here's the aftermath of a burning police van after the fire brigade put it out. About 30 seconds earlier, there was so much smoke you couldn't actually see the thing. The fire brigade station is about 30 seconds away from our police station and so they got there before it really got going, but the engine bay was a bit of a mess to say the least....

More internet lunacy

Right first it was Blogger, then myspace, and now facebook. Current excuse for not posting anything constructive on here is I'm too busy mincing with facebook trying to figure it out!

So there you go. If you're on facebook, find me (and Bec!) and poke us or whatever strange thing it is you do on there.

In the meantime, a couple of guys from work have recently bought pushbikes and are vowing to use them over the summer. I have also resolved to get back onto mine and have bought new bits and bobs (tyres, mostly) and have started riding again.

A prize (maybe) to any serving or ex-harpendenite who recognises the below: answers on a postcard or in the comments please!

This will be worth millions in years to come!

Never mind Turner, Constable or Van Gogh...one of the best things about being a teacher is having children give you pictures they've drawn of you! Most of them are brilliant and will make you smile everytime...others, you wonder whether they've meant to be that insulting! Fortunately, the picture chosen for the new school website is actually quite cool...

If anyone fancies checking out the school site you can view it before it's official release here. All the pictures of the staff were drawn by my children and some of them are brilliant...although as their teacher i'm quite bias in thinking their work is brilliant...they are only 5!

Anyway, I only hope their pictures will be this flattering in 30 years time...

Pics!

Rightyo as promised I did some housework and have found the camera. Spurred into action by the fact Paul has now updated his site, I figured I better get my butt into gear and post some too.

So.

We initially lounged about in Paul's Posh Peckham Pad for a bit, after a bit of a trek to find Bec (F) who had got off the bus a stop too late, but was conveniently located outside a garage with an off-licence. It was daft hot (in April?!) and the coolness of the flat was welcome (hence my bare feet just sticking out)

Nosh itself was (of course!) top quality. Paul wisely planned the fact I was coming into his "how much do I cook" mathematics and I think I finally cleared the main course after going back to the oven a third time.

Despite appearances, Matt did actually like the food too.

This below is the photo I was dying to get: Paul taking photos of his plate! I was impressed with the very rapid and quick manner in which it was taken- I think much practice there has been! (as Yoda might've said). The fruit pudding of which he is taking a photo of, is on his site (see sidebar). The pudding itself was Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice (as Borat might've said.)

Once lunch was munched and had settled down we set off for a "20 minute walk" (i.e. 45 minutes) to the Thames and south bank watering holes. We passed this sign on the way which I found suitably appropriate!

We settled on a bar just opposite HMS Belfast and managed to find a spare bench.

Bec JR's expression on the one above can attributed to the fact she is holding my drink, which has lime in it. Bec doesn't like lime.

Unfortunately, Bec and I had to leave fairly early because she was back to work the next day and still had prep to do. I understand the others slummed it a while longer even descending to the depths of cheesy chips!!! But all in all a top day to which Bec and I are most grateful to Paul for hosting. It shall be repeated again!