Boy on Top

You may have noticed I haven't blogged much lately. Well, blogged at all. On thinking about it this morning I realised it had been a long long time since I last blogged, and I'd even stopped trawling all those sites of you out there I know and love.

So, for the record, I haven't died, I am fit and well, the family is fit and well, even the building works are fit and well (though a bit slower than planned). Its just, well, life... Its all a bit manic at the moment, not overwhelming or depressing, just very very busy. As much as I enjoy blogging I have to admit to myself its a pleasure that I'm putting aside.

Probably only for the moment. I will still stop by once and a while out of the blue, or even post if something momentous happens. I just find myself not devoting the time to it I once did. So to all of you, I will be around. Offers of a cup of coffee or something stronger are always welcome. You are all a part of my life that I didn't expect, so do stay in touch. As I'll try to do.

But for now, on this website. Farewell.

For those that enjoy piccies, the hole in our garden. It will get deeper still, partially so I get a cellar to store my wine, partially because of the horendously over specified foundations we have to put in. You could build a scyscraper on these babies, I swear. Please notice the dilligently working builders. This is not a shame, they are actually dilligent. They show up on time, work hard, leave late and don't break for tea every 5 minutes. They are not even Polish, but are actual Englishmen!

If I look at the blessings in my life, perhaps the biggest is happy children. They are human, of course, and we get the odd arguements or stroppiness, but really not much. They get along with each other the vast majority of time. They seem to enjoy school and their friends and love playing outside and all that stuff. It is very very good.

Take last night, for example. I got home early enough to read to the boys. Call us old fashioned but we still read books aloud before bedtime more often than not. My oldest, the nine year old, has started taking the odd turn, but even he just likes to lay back and be read to. We're currently reading a very silly book about a boy viking and his dragon.

I love putting on all the voices and pauses and noises. They really get into it. We had laughter at the silly bits, boys curled into corners of the sofa at the exciting bits and groans of dismay when it was time to close the book and go to bed. I only get to do it once a week, maybe twice. To be perfectly honest its one of my favourite times of the week. I love it. Then its tooth brush time and big hugs as they get into bed. I know they'll grow out of it some day, but I so hope that won't be for a long long time...

My second post in two days. I feel quite faint, must go have a lie down now. I don't promise to keep it going, but the mood has taken me so far.

So, just before our jaunty holiday to florida our Builder and team finally arrived. Three delays isn't so bad in these sorts of things. They got off to a grand old start. The garage was demolished in no time flat, and a good start was made on a moved stone wall and new bit of fencing we needed (some hedge had died away under a growing tree, the tree was definately staying so no replacement hedge).

Within two days we had our first complaint from our joyful neighbour I've mentioned before. They really are quite something. We often wonder what they do when they don't have anything to complain about.

Off then we went on holiday. No calls from the builder while we were away, though on comimg back looks like there should have been. Nothing serious but some confusion between the builder, architect and structural engineer that it took them all some days to sort out. I probably could have done it faster, but there we go. Our current house needed underpining, which our builder hadn't understood. Lost us a few days.

Still, good progress. The rainwater harvesting tank is now in, as is a new soakaway. All fences and walls are done and a new shed is up. Vast amounts of soil have been removed to make way for the cellar and foundations. Its all going well. Within the week the foundations should be down, then the real fun begins as the walls start going up. Overall? Still happy. We have a good relationship with our builder, and for once I feel he's actively working in our interest.

As long as we can keep happy with our neighbours (angry neighbour has now complained in a email at great length) I think its going to be good. I'm quite excited about it all!

No, I'm not dead. Yes, everything is fine.

Am just back from a two week trip to the wonder of the world that is Orlando. There is a mound of work to get on with, nothing drastic, just a lot of it. All is well with the world. The kids terms ended with a grand round of sports days and assemblies. Pirate Pete got one of his class prizes as well as a stellar report card. He was marked above average in all but a smattering of subjects, sometimes well above average. This in a selective school where the average is already high. He was chuffed and we were well pleased. The other two got great feedback as well, though they are too young to be so formally marked. It is a fine fine thing to have happy kids, it is a finer thing to have happy kids who are getting along well with life.

Orlando was quite the experience. Not necessarily a relaxing holiday, we were out doing "things" every day. It was an enjoyable holiday though. Hard not to in that mecca of entertainment. We did ride after rollercoaster after ride. We did movies, we did a safari and watched whales behaving very unwhale like. We saw men joust on horse back. We saw
pirates fight on a pirate ship. We saw some absolutely fabulous clowns and acrobats.

It was my princesses fifth birthday, and it being Disney she got to wear a badge saying it was her birthday and I swear to god had more than 50 people stop and say a cheery "Happy Birthday" to her. She also got to have dinner with her favourite fairie tale princesses. Though she made her mother very happy when she also rolled her eyes and said in perfect sarcasm "That one gets to live happily ever after, how sweet!" Then she got to see a big fire works. She was one utterly happy five year old.

We got to go to a truly amazing water park with five story high slides and a wave pool that generated eight foot high waves every two minutes on the dot. That place we went back to four times. We had good food, and truly crap food. And it was hot, meltingly hot with thunderstorms every afternoon.

Still, it was America. Do they really truly need to serve a five year old a portion that would normally feed a family of six? Does everything, and I mean everything, have to be sweetened? I began to get paranoid and checked the ingredients on everything I could. With the expection of some (not all, just some) crisps (chips), I don't think we ate a single thing other than fruit that hadn't had sugar or sweetener added. And does everyone have to call my little girl "princess"? That's my word for her, I just never call her that to her face. It wouldn't be right!

Despite those minor griefs we really did have a fine time. Our kids (and ourselves) are exhausted, but content. Thankfully they don't need to go back next year, but they did inquire if they could just possibly go back when they were teens?

Breaking the summer silence for a mo. My identity was stolen! Well, a small part of it anyway, just a credit card number. It is rather disturbing all the same.

I got an email from a particular bank I use for the card I restrict to use on the interweb. Appearently my online password had been change. I certainly hadn't changed it. A quick call to said bank showed that a whole host of charges had just been rung up. Large items for big amounts of money, other than a pizza, had been spent using my name and credit card. The total was a large number of thousands. Thankfully the bank is honouring their fraud protection promise and I won't have to pay for it. But... blimey...

Now, being in the business I guard my web presense very carefully. This is also a card that I had only recently been sent a new one. I can not, for the life of me, figure out how they got my details. To order they would have had to have had my name and address, the card number and the little security digits on the back. It must have been hacked from somewhere I had bought something from.

Very disturbing.

Hi, I haven't been doing well at blogging lately, have I? So, a couple of pictures. These are "life", our garden. One of the timesinks at the moment, albeit a very worthwhile one. We lost our gardener at the start of the year. He'd been with us for ages, but at the fine age of 72 had a heart attack and decided it was time to retire.

LL loves her gardening, so it didn't feel like a hardship, but a garden like this, it takes time! A lot of time. Thankfully I've now found someone to at least do the mowing, so it should return to acceptible levels. But... there will be other things to take up time.

Lots of things. Kids take time, a joyful time, but time. Keeping up with my lovely and sexy if sometimes moody dear wife takes time. Work in particular is taking a lot of time. I used to be able to better blog during the commute and at odd spare moments during the day, but the train has become very crowded of late and blogging then just doesn't work. Work doesn't work either. I'm really enjoying myself at the moment, and feel like I'm making great progress, but boy does it take time.

Thing is, I've rather enjoyed blogging. The funny bit, I've started to not to need to post. I don't miss it so much. Yet I've been feeling guilty about not posting. You see, there's a lot of you out there, that in a very real way have become friends. There's the Count, the lovely Z, the wonderful Lady in the Smoke, that Angry guy, one who was a bug, the irrascible Punk, a very peaceful empress, that boy, the man with the abreviated life, she who commented first, and many others. There's a whole lot of you out there I really like. I don't want to loose touch.

Yet feeling guilty and doing crap posts doesn't make sense. So, I'm not going to close down exactly, but the posts will likely become few and far between. There's things I still want to say, but I'll say them when the mood and time allows. I want to spend more time posting recipes, for example. Bizarelly some of the ones I've posted have had thousands of hits. People seem to like the way I describe cooking, so I'll keep that up. I'll still try to stop by and comment at yours, but even that won't happen as much as it should.

Yet I do want to stay in touch. So, for those in London, or passing through London, those that I've met or not, there's a drink and a meal on offer. You can find the email on the page, and that's open for just chatting too. Friendships should be able to survive the virtual world.

So, its not good bye, but it is adieu