Insane

Giant Waterslide Jump - BestofYouTube.com

I can only assume that this is fake - but a really good fake... I wish it was real!

Making full use of the sofa

A three dearer needs three people, even if two if them are halflings.



(oh yeah, and we had the sprinkler out)

Time marches on

2007



2009

Dad in charge

We seem to have spent most of the holiday travelling to various venues so that owen can sit on/play in/stand next to various farm vehicles.






We also went Hatton today where owen showed uncharacteristic braveness to do the giant slide solo.

Indoor fire engine

Folds up into a big book. Genius.

Becca's baby

Becca has had a baby, here it is:



Sam alexander, 8lbs 4oz.

Excellent.

Shed clearance

Cleared out the whole shed and re packed it today. Now have significantly less crap and enough space for a sizable wood store. Here's my little helper for the day...

Coventry sports tour (pt 3)

The latest leg of Mark and I's sports tour of Coventry took us to the Greyhounds. Located at the same place as the speedway and slightly seedy, so no high scores were expected. Here's the track in full floodlit glory.





For those who can't remember Mark and I set up a usefully complex scoring system that spat out a number with many decimal places. The first leg of the tour (Rugby) scored 8.774964387, while leg two (Ice Hockey) fared better at 10.44030651. The categories used to compile the score (all out of five) are:

Refreshments
Transport
Merchandising
Quality of game
Entertaining Extras
Value for money
Springfield Factor
Fellow Spectators

A little excel jiggery pokery and from the average of the square root of each score we get our total. The photo below reveals why the scoring in the 'fellow spectators' category was unlikely to be high -namely there were none. More on scores later.






Mark and I spent ages pretending to understand the complex form guide shown below before placing bets essentially at random based on whimsy. (At one point Mark bet on a little horse "because it shares my bosses name in part" - it obviously lost and Mark will naturally claim the £2 back from the aforementioned boss as really its her fault). In the end some wins did come our way and both of us left feeling like we had not been robbed too badly. (Although I did point out that we could have saved ourselves the trouble by walking in, handing the bookie a tenner, then walking out again)






The ticket stubs below are the loosing ones, the winners you don't get to keep.








The all important scores:

Refreshments: 2 (standard burger and chips, hot chocolate, nothing interesting)
Transport: 5 (parked outside for free)
Merchandising: 0 (there was none)
Quality of game: 1.5 (not massively engaging)
Entertaining Extras: 1 (see shrubs lining the track in top photo)
Value for money: 3 (not bad)
Springfield Factor: 1 (seedy and quite coventry like, no real "bought in" element)
Fellow Spectators: 0 (there were none)

All this gives a predictably low total of 6.5, currently in last place. Oh well...

Kept out of the loop

When your older brother is playing train in the conservatory with the door closed there is no where else in the world you'd rather be...

Holiday fun list v1.0

As we are not going away this summer catherine and I made a list of fun thugs to do as day trips etc. We have loads lined up but started today with a trip to the west midlands air museum. Turns out to not be that much fun and very expensive, ten English pounds to get in and not a fat lot in there. The one saving grace was the Vulcan bomber shown below. Here's to more luck with the rest of the fun list.





The Vulcan is by the way massive, it's not that I am incompetant at operating my phone camera.