New tricks

New socks for aidan and a new photo smile for owen. Neither are a great success...

Bill Bailey on Footballers

Bill Bailey is a genius. I got his Tinselworm DVD for christmas. He's at his best when launching into slightly abstract and lengthy descriptions of things, here's how he describes footballers:

"A bunch of vein, illiterate, millionaire, borderline rapists, who's job it is to shepherd a bit of leather into a badly made outdoor cupboard"

Nice.

Post Christmas music

Nothing has ever really been written to fill the void between Christmas and new year. Perhaps some rerecorded material would work. "I'm dreaming of the 27th of December, just like the ones I used to know". Or "it's 27th of December, there's no need to be afraid". Etc etc.
I'm the mean time here's owen and grandad and harry out on a frosty walk.

Is this the way to Bethlehem?

This was put together by Mark and I as an intro to a nativity at the service this morning. A big thanks to Esther and Jim for being willing to wander around town in weird costumes on a saturday morning!

Flight of the Conchords

Alice told me about these guys ages ago, been meaning to blog about them. Very very funny.




Loads more on Youtube...

The dangers of not napping

The trrouble with not having an afternoon nap is that you might fall asleep at any moment, even if your favourite film is on...

Solids

Commence proper food...






Then catherine accidently took a photo of the carpet.

Blog Post Thief

Thats me, a cyber burglar. I shamelessly stole this you tube clip from Dre and Josh's blog (see links) - its great though so I thought I should post it on mine too.

Tis the season.

We found a cracking little local farm near our house that sells trees and also has a small plant nursery. Excellent news as we avoided the annual trip to be ripped off at homebase. Here's catherine and owen decorating, and then the final product (final until catherine moves some of the many decorations that owen hung on one branch once he is in bed!)

A good track.

This is the best one owen and I have built.


It includes a nice loop back that ensures that the train. Always ends up going clockwise roun the main loop whatever direction it starts in... Accidental, but a nice design feature.

More twittering

This might be the coolest thing currently on the web. http://tinyurl.com/ywceyx

A really nice 3D view of all the tweeting that goes on around the world. For those still out of the twitter loop... seriously, get in.

Good morning...

BBC i-player

This is old news really but still amazing.

http://tinyurl.com/2avwok

1 gigabit per second... wow. I wish our school network could do that.

New hat and gloves

New hat and gloves. Fingers not quite in all the right holes yet but close enough.

New toaster

Toasters are like jars of mustard, you only get to buy a new one every so often. Ours broke and here's the carefully selected replacement with digital display and lit progress bar. It definatly wasn't the only four slice one tesco had...

The last word.

A branch of the new scientist that I have blogged about before. Here is a question that mark and I submitted. All comments/answers welcome.

Which bounces higher given a flat solid surface and the same drop height and velocity, a rubber bouncy ball or a ball bearing. If you scaled them up to be the size of a car wool the result be the same?

You can find the last word blog at: www.newscientist.com/blog/lastword

Red bushes

Nice.

The great stupendo and his amazing coffee trick

The great stupendo (real name Mark Grew) did his amazing coffee trick after church today. It involves him being served a cup of coffee where the milk has sunk leaving a nice layered effect. Here it is:

More from the land of St Albans

The visit was for harry's second birthday. Owen took full advantage of the presents, making sure he played with them all, especially the Thomas costume.


A good time was had by all, especially me as I really enjoyed the carrott and roasted red pepper soup Tom had whipped up. Say what you like about Tom but you can't deny the boy makes great soup...

Grandparents and grandchildren

Here's mum and dad with their collection of four...

Joint TV watching

Grew children plus owen. What else would you do on a Sunday afternoon.

Indoor climbing frame

A fire

A good bonfire party needs a bonfire or it's just false advertising. Here's a picture of jeff's. Mainly made up of old chairs and fence pannels but it went well.

Glorified patio

Spent this morning laying Slabs in church. Pews have moved and the resulting gap needed re slabbing. Just like laying a patio really but a little more pressure in a seven hundred year old church! Still, got to play with a cement mixer all day and felt like a proper builder, pleanty of rediculusly sweet tea and standing around the cement mixer sucking air in through our teeth...

Lego tower and a haircut

Not a bad days work...

Swearing like Thomas the tank engine

In a magazine we bought owen I happened upon a list of "exclaimations" that Thomas the tank engine might say (through the medium of ringo star) in sticker form. Happily many of them can easily sub in for swear words and so could form the basis of a new sub culture. Ambitious I know, but let's give it a shot at least before we give up on the whole idea. So here they are, I shall attempt to put each one into a suggested sentence.
1) "bust my bufffers" - oh bust my buffers this is hard
2) "cinders and ashes" - cinders and ashes, what was that...
3) "burst my boiler" (on reflection very similar to bust my buffers)
4) "wheels are wizzing" - my wheels are wizzing

Any suggestions to add to the list gratefully recieved. Happy swearing!

Waiting in restaurants

While waiting in restaurants we often do drawing. I recon we could flog these as modern art, better than a messy bed or glass on a shelf! This one is called "waiting in the cottage". You can see how a theme for titles might develop...

Snow

The tropical rainshower

Here's our new shower, it's like being in the rainforest during a sharp shower. (although there are no trees etc etc).

World series update

The sox got dumped out, missing out to tampa bay, close in the end but deserved as just not enough run production in the post manny era. Lots of talk of new signings to replace him, some rediculus (Halliday, Peavy) some not (Upton, Textiera). Roll on next season.

Happiness is...

...having all your cars lined up.

Possibly the best...

...fancy dress costume in the world.
Out for a stroll and ended up watching some of the Coventry marathon, this guy was cheering on the runners inexplicably dressed as a large daffodil. A few questions: 1) Was he paid by the event organizers or did he just hire the costume himself and turn up? 2) Why a daffodil? 3) Where did he get the costume? I want one...

Potty training

More fun than you can poke a big stick at...

A weekend with Alice

We popped down to Welwyn a few weeks ago and saw Alice while mum and dad went away for a few days. Here's a couple of photos.

The New Bathroom

Enough text stuff, time for some photos...

Our bathroom is being re done - almost done, just some final bits to be done on Monday. However, in the mean time here's a few photos of the work so far.

The 'World' series

I rememer when being a red sox fan was neiche, now with the demise of the evil empire and the sox looking good to tie up the ALDC and go to another world series I am starting to empathize with the man utd fans who genuinely supported them before they got good. Someone on twitter accused me of being a glory fan... Stil, it does at least look like manny won't be there to haunt us in the finals as the philies are doing a suprisingly good job of dispatching LA. Beckett v kazmir in game two tonight and even though being a lefty is essentially cheating at baseball I still fancy Mr October himself to step up to the plate and deliver something approachng a shut out.

Tim Westwood

I am reliably informed by Lord Mark of Grew that Timothy Westwood is 51 today. 51! that's crazy talk. I remain convinced that one day just before retirement he is going to come clean as being normal and therefore the biggest commedy genius of all time... Till then; put you finger in the air and push the button four times.

twitter

I've just discovered twitter.com. It's great. It's the new facebook. It is in fact the good stuff about facebook without all the irritating crap. It links phone with web really nicely and is simple and realistic to keep up with. Everyone who is not the type of person that enjoys the irritating stuff on facebook should use it. Everyone else should not.

mobile blogging

...I'm now blogging from the toilet... Just because I can.

blogging from phones

I can now blog straight from my iPhone. Nice.

Nowt taken out

A new bread maker! £50 of eBay, and below a shot of the first loaf. Costed out at 85p - not bad considering the soaring costs of food send a crappy Tesco loaf "baked in store" to £1.09. The pictures are not to scale by the way, clearly the loaf is not actually bigger than the bread maker that made it...

A new dressing gown.

They don't come along very often, so when they do you have to take full advantage. Here's Owen taking advantage of his.

Fresh stuff...

...is great. Here's what we ate tonight, all picked from our garden. Potatoes, Carrotts, Corgette, and a rouge apple.

The vegetables of our labour

On returning from holiday we found nine courgettes. We picked them, and Owen played a nice game of biggest/smallest.