Roundup

Monday – Boxing Day

Feeling a bit better than Christmas Day physical-wise. Up and packed the car and we set off to my Mum’s down in Worcestershire. Still loving the fuel economy of the Polo!

Went to my Uncle’s house first for boxing day lunch – he traditionally holds a party at his house every boxing day – and then because the eldest was feeling a bit poorly we went down to Mum’s house and watched a bit of TV. Had a nice buffet tea and chat.

Tuesday – Bank Holiday

I’ve been a shareholder of the Severn Valley Railway since I was 6 months old. My dad bought me some shares in my name (and keeps topping them up periodically) and as such I get an allocation of free tickets every year as my dividend. I haven’t been on the line for ages, and have never taken my two children, so we decided to go and spend a day on the SVR. The Severn Valley Railway used to be a chunk of the Great Western Railway (GWR) and although it was thought to be part of Beeching’s National Rail closure programme, it apparently was already earmarked for closure as a normal rail line prior to 1962. It re-opened in 1970 as a heritage railway and has grown ever since.

When we first used to go in the mid to late 70′s, the line ran between Bewdley and Bridgnorth. Apparently the Bewdley station only re-opened in 1974. They then extended the line all the way to Kidderminster in mid 1984. If you’re curious about it’s history see the Wikipedia Entry or their Official Website.

We travelled from Kidderminster to Bridgnorth, Stopped in the Railwaymans Arms for a pint of Bathams Bitter, and then caught the train back.

Once back at my folks house, Mum cooked us tea, we packed up the car and travelled back home.

Wednesday

Back to work today – although working from home as the site we work on normally was closed. Because of this, it gives us a chance to catch up on stuff we can’t do normally when the office is hectic. Very windy at home today. Kids were brill and quiet whilst Michelle tidied their rooms and we had a bit of an early spring clean. Sat and watched Top Gear in the evening – it doesn’t seem to be that great anymore – just a bit cringeworthy. Decided to have a look through some old photos I’d found in the loft. Wind still blowing when we went to bed.

Thursday

WFH again today. Got up and found most of the recycling strewn all over the garden. Once work was done, Fish and Chips (nice) and then scanned in a load of pictures I’d found in the loft of the trip to Japan I did in 1990 along with some others of various things. Overdosed on Chocolate Orange whilst watching Three Men in a Boat. Had some very strange dreams about diving (although if the location I was dreaming about existed it would be mega).

Friday.

Up early and off for a swim at the pool. Young lad there who was training will be an awesome athlete one day – a brilliant swimmer. Then off to work. Quiet in the office today so managed to catch up on a few things. Weather has got progressively worse through the day, however, meaning driving home was fun – lots of standing water everywhere. Crossing the Wharfe at Tadcaster, you can see the river will soon flood the football pitches in front of the John Smiths brewery. There was even large puddles in the village, which is quite unusual.

I had considered going out for a bike ride, however, when I got home I realised not only would it not be a good idea because of the heavy rain and standing water, but since my last ride I had completely forgotten to charge my headlight, which was totally flat. At least I have a valid excuse

Caught up on some TV we’d recorded and then early to bed where I fiddled with the iPad layout of this blog for a bit.

Saturday – Xmas Eve

All of us were up early today – Michelle went off with the kids to the dales to see Father in Law at 6:30am and to pick up the turkey. (It helps having an in-law who is also a butcher!). At the same time I got up and went out for a great 30 mile bike ride. The weather was lovely and very mild too, although a fairly vigorous SW wind made some bits a little heavy going. It’s the only thing that makes me frustrated is riding into wind. Just seems so soul destroying.

Home and Michelle and the girls were already home. I had a freshen up whilst they all went for horse riding lessons.

Watched Nativity! (the Martin Freeman film) which appeared on iTunes for rental the other day. Didn’t realise it had been on BBC2 the night before! I could just have recorded it to the Sky+ box or watched it on iPlayer. Great film, though.

Brother in law came round in the evening and we had a nice christmas eve playing some party games and demolished the rest of the ham from last night.

Sunday – Christmas Day

I woke up early this morning feeling quite poorly. I hadn’t been drinking so it definitely wasn’t self-inflicted. Kids came in around 6am and opened a few presents, then we went downstairs and opened the rest of the gifts.

Smoked Salmon and Scrambled eggs for breakfast, along with some bucks fizz. Very civilised.

Then we went into the kitchen and in between watching Gordon Ramsay with the Hoff, we prepared our christmas lunch – a nice turkey roasted with butter, apples and onions, covered in bacon, roasted in a roasting bag. Meat was brilliant. Then you have to have pigs in blankets, some stuffing, sprouts, roast potatoes in goose fat, roast parsnips, and a parsnip/swede and carrot mash. During the cooking I was feeling progressively worse. But whilst the meal was cooking we realised we’d run out of washing up liquid. Thank god for 24 hour petrol stations next to McDonalds

Weather was amazing today – if I hadn’t felt quite so ropey, I’d definitely have gone out for a walk or a bike ride. Bright sunshine and the thermostat in the car read 14C!

Once we’d had a lovely lunch, we settled down and watched TV and chilled out for the rest of the day! A nice relaxing christmas.

Monday

Last day off of the year and a day for daddy and girls. We were up early this morning – mainly due to the fact that Michelle had to go to work today. Once Michelle had gone, I gave the house a quick once over and a tidy. Then I took the girls down to the Bowling Alley. We did two games – first game Lottie used the ramp but for the second game she tried to do it properly. The kids really enjoyed themselves – even if there were some weirdo teenage girls on the next lane that kept stealing their bowling balls. Once we left there we had a vote as to where they’d like to have lunch and it was decided to go to Heston’s Little Chef, which just so happens to be less than a couple of miles from our house on the A64. Great food as always (why can’t they make all Little Chef’s like the Heston ones? Although I do think some of it is down to the boss of Little Chef having a rather large ego and thinking he knows best, if the programme was anything to go by.) Then we came home and watched Lost Christmas on iPlayer – with a sterling performance by Eddie Izzard.

Tuesday

Up early again. Bah. Michelle was at work early that day, so I was primary carer today again. I dropped off kids at Out of School club and went into work today where it was one of my team’s last day before Christmas. A big team pub lunch was had, which was great fun. I never knew that pub had a massive upstairs bit! Then home via Bishopthorpe to pick up the kids. With wifey out tonight, we had a daddy and girls night in and watched Super8. I have to say I was worried the kids would find it a bit scary but Lucy has watched it twice since!

Wednesday

Another normal day today (booooring) – Dropped off kids again. On own in office but worked through stuff as usual. We had a quiet night in.

Thursday

Did some preparation for the meal on Friday night and wrapped a few last minute presents. Sky ADSL was up and down like a yo-yo this evening, but was not a problem with the line but must have been some work they were doing internally, as the line never dropped – it was just the authentication (PPP/MER) that was down. Glad I didn’t need it this evening

Friday

Worked from home today.  First thing in the morning we put a ham in to boil for dinner – sliced an onion, put the Ham in (which was massive), and put in some cloves, ground cloves, star anise and peppercorns, along with a bayleaf. Instead of water we used 2L of Coca Cola. It was then put on 1 (so very low electric) for the best part of 10 hours. We were meant to roast it when it was finished to complete it, but it was so tender it just fell off the bone when I tried to retrieve it out of the pot! Had to skip the roasting bit. We served it with some carrot/swede/parsnip mash I made and froze last week, along with crushed minted new potatoes and peas. We had a houseful round for tea and everyone seemed to go back for seconds which was great although we still have enough ham left for stacks of sandwiches. I’m tempted to make a turkey and ham risotto for Boxing Day! One of our friends made the desserts – an AMAZING white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake which was just to die for. Probably consumed way too much red wine, but if you can’t do it at Christmas, when can you do it!

Monday

Up early and off to the pool for a swim. I’m sure they used to have three lanes roped off in this pool – a laps lane, a slow lane and just free swim. However, they just have two lanes now – a free swim lane and a laps lane. Problem is that where most of us who swim laps are all pretty much doing so at the same speed, you get a couple of old gents who we do two laps for every one of theirs. But whereas we all give way to faster swimmers, these guys are totally oblivious to those around them. So I try to peg my swim so that I’m just in front of them. That way I’ve clear water in front of me. Anyway – 800m done today. Eventually I’ll settle down to 1500-2000m as a standard once I get better.

A day at work trying to work through the resourcing issue we have. It’s just getting a joke – they’ve cut us to a skeleton staff to save money over the last few years and made working life unbearable. It’s been getting progressively worse throughout the year, but in the last few weeks it has become extremely problematic. Even if all of us in our team worked 24 hours a day for the next 6 months we won’t get through the backlog of work. Everyone shouts at you because they think they are the number 1 priority, 5 major projects all intersect at the same time, and as such life becomes unbearable. I can honestly say that in my working life I’ve never felt this bad. I personally am finding it very very difficult to cope with and it’s making me very ill.

Home and packed for the next two days.

Tuesday

Train to London this morning. Worked in London for the day, had a social night out with my fellow management team (which we paid for) which was quite enjoyable. I didn’t drink at all – mainly because I know I’m feeling so ropey at the moment if I did I might say / do something I’ll regret.

Wednesday

All day meeting. Felt very depressed. Had little lunch and nothing else to eat all day. Train home and then went to daughter’s Christmas Concert. Packed again.

Thursday

Into work in the morning – planned for some work on friday and then left late afternoon and drove down to the midlands to stop over at my mum’s place. Had a callout at 1:00am with some webex browser issue.

Friday

Left mum’s quite early and arrived at a customer’s site 120 miles away at 9am. Spent all day trying to do something that should have taken 2 hours due to a management company not having the passwords to something they should have done. Left that site at 5pm, drove from there to a colleagues house near London to collect some servers and kit from a site which needed to be relocated for next week, and then spent all of my own time at night driving back from London to the office (whilst my colleagues had a nice night out which I missed due to this), dropped the kit off around midnight, and then home to York. Due to the kit in the car I couldn’t stop, so I had no dinner and only had lunch today. Total mileage for 2 days – 523 miles. Home at around 12:45am saturday morning. Very very depressed.

Saturday

After the winds had subsided I needed to fix the roof. Saturday morning was lovely and sunny (albeit very very cold) so first thing I hopped in the car and took a ride round to B&Q. Needed some no more nails, some weatherproof plasterboard screws and little nails to hold the filters on with. Back home and got out the new set of ladders for the first time.
I always feel a little unstable on ladders – these ones were great but I always feel like unless I’m leaning right in on the ladders I worry I’ll lose my footing and fall backwards. Also, I needed more than one pair of hands – carrying a drill, screws and a piece of plasterboard took a bit of skill but eventually I managed to screw the plasterboard back onto the joists. Then it was time to fit the filters back. Stacks of no more nails and some little nails to hold them onto the joists. Except no more nails doesn’t dry very well when it’s cold so no sooner had I fitted the filter than it dropped on my head, rubbing the no more nails on my jacket and falling on the floor. I’m not the most skilled workman. But after many attempts and some contortion on the ladder we eventually managed to get everything up and done. Phew. The guttering can wait for another weekend
By the time we’d done this, Michelle and Lucy needed to go off horse riding. At the same time I was sorting out some bits and bobs on the computer, ready for when they came back and we could get into town.
We had a quick bite to eat at the Christmas market in the coppergate centre (I can heartily recommend the gourmet burgers – and not too calorific either) before wandering through town, making our way to the matinee of the pantomime at the Grand Opera House in York.
The main actor was the guy who played Ashley from Coronation Street. Very entertaining, although I couldn’t help think the guy who played Abernazer looked just like my younger brother.
For dinner we decided to get a Frankie and Benny’s – they do some pretty good low calorie stuff now – a steak salad that works out at only 400 calories which is great. However, youngest child decided to not eat most of her meal and then proceeded to have a paddy which caused some friction for the rest of the evening and put a bit of a black spot on what was otherwise a wonderful day. I let the family watch x-factor whilst I read a book.

Sunday
Up early and left Michelle in bed and went out for a rather nice 20 mile bike ride. When I returned home I was summoned up to the loft to pull down all the Christmas decorations. So whilst I was having a nice shower Michelle was assembling the tree.
Then back into town for the second time this weekend and met up with Karen and Claire who were looking after the kids for an hour or so (thank you!) whilst we went to have a rather spiffing preview meal at Wagamama’s new branch in York gratis! Great new site, lovely location, and I’m sure we’ll end up being regular customers. I used to go to Wagamama alot when I lived in London and always try to eat there when I’m down on business. (I’ve been to the Bloomsbury, Covent garden, moorgate, st Paul’s, canary wharf, tower hill and Oxford street ones in London, and the Harrogate and Leeds ones up here – can you tell how much I like their food? ).
Met up with Karen and Claire at the castle museum after having done a little bit of shopping and then we went home. Bit of a drama (maybe an understatement) with Lucy and us having bought the wrong book. (she wanted One Direction book, we bought JLS one as it was cheaper – thought she would be happy – ended up with a massive row ). Made our evening very interesting.
I made dinner (omelettes)after which during a quick social media session we discovered that our youngest should have done some homework she hadn’t told us about. So another mad panic and a big of a do, I downloaded the instructions from the VLE but couldn’t open the file on my mac. (thank god for online MS .pub to PDf converters – Who still uses MS Publisher anyway?)
So the end result was whilst they were watching the xfactor, I was making meringues!
Once that was done, I saw the Coldplay songs on the Xfactor and checked whether there were any tickets for Manchester in June 2012 – and there were! So I got some.
Tired so bed and looking forward to a swim tomorrow.

Dear Diary.

It’s long time no see I think. About time I wrote some stuff on here again.

Saturday

Drove down to see my folks in the midlands for the weekend. We would normally travel down on a Friday night, but having been in our office in Liverpool running cables and plugging in shiny Cisco Nexus kit all day on Friday, I really didn’t fancy another 150 mile drive on top of the journey from York to Liverpool and back. This journey to my folks was the first proper family run out for our little Polo Bluemotion and it’s fuel economy really shines and it definitely drives well on the motorway with lots of ‘go’, even though it’s only got a tiny engine. The Volkswagen engineers certainly know how to wring every last drop of performance out of their cars. Probably by bolting a huge turbocharger on top of the engine. Even with 2 adults, 2 kids and an overnight bag, the Polo seemed bigger than it looks. And cruise control definitely was a bonus on a quiet saturday morning motorway. With the cost of fuel at the moment, my 4WD car is definitely the polar opposite to this – to fill this up costs £50 and road tax is £0. To fill the Pathfinder up costs £100 per tank (with an annual road tax bill of £460). And the Polo does way more miles to a tank than the Pathfinder does.

As soon as we arrived my Dad dragged me back out to the pub for a pint. The local pub in the village is a Bathams pub and is one of the only pubs I know left where food is a sideline and beer is the most important thing. They do a wonderful pint of mild. (Their bitter’s nice too but I prefer the mild if I can get it). We ended up talking about the economy and how it’s all going down the tubes. Quite scary, really.

When I visit, I’m the odd job man for my parents. ‘Can you replace the security light outside the flat’, ‘we need the water filter cartridge changing on the tap’, ‘can you fix the computer and put some new shortcuts on the desktop for your Dad, please?’. But I don’t mind – it gives me something to get on with and keeps me busy I suppose, whilst the kids run around like some sort of whirlwind tiring my dad out, and the Mrs sleeps on the sofa because she’s imbibed too much whisky.

Sunday

Went into the Frankfurt Christmas Market in the centre of Birmingham today. It’s a long time since I’ve wandered around the centre of Birmingham – probably well over 10 years. It’s changed an awful lot since I was last here. Things look almost the same as I remember, but the shops have all changed. No more Spud-U-Like and a nice bike shop that never used to be there. Sadly it looks like the centre of Brum is dying. There are many empty office buildings, and walking up back streets that used to be full of bars and pubs, many have closed down – even the City Plaza, which was a lovely little shopping centre, seemed to be closed on that Sunday. Everything seemed much darker and dirtier than I remembered. Even Rackhams, which when I was young I thought was epic, was showing it’s age and looked quite small. The kids wanted to see Father Christmas, so Michelle queued up whilst I took the kids round the toy department (which still seems to stock loads of actually really good toys). 30 minutes later we went back and Michelle was still in the same place in the Queue – in fact, the queue hadn’t moved at all. Seemed like Santa had eloped with his elves and decided not to return. So we decided we’d take his tip and decided to not bother. As a treat we let the kids go on the carousel instead and I had a nice coffee. Mum, Dad and Michelle had a warm Pimms Winter cup with hot apple juice, which apparently was very nice. Once we’d got home we had a slowly roasted a piece of pork which had been slowly cooking in the Aga – and tasted lovely. More odd job work fixing a sunken light in the kitchen where one of the wires had frayed and was short circuiting. Then it was back to attack the M1 home.

Monday

One of my local twitter friends recently replied to me (cheers, Nat!) when I was grumbling about being fat, and recommended ‘My Fitness Pal’ which is a website, but also an App on the iPhone. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now and it’s really good. The best bit is that you can scan the barcode of pretty much any food in and it’ll do the portioning and calorie bits for you. I’ve already gone from 111kg to 108kg in a couple of weeks but I hadn’t really been exercising that much. Going from cycling 200 miles a week to pretty much no exercise in 2011 meant I ended up putting on all the weight I lost in 2009/2010 (I got down to 95kg at one point). I did a swimming course earlier on in the year which taught me how to do front crawl properly (I never learnt how to breathe whilst swimming even though I’ve been swimming for years! I must have been away the week at school they taught us how to side breathe).

Last week for the first time in a while (probably since I donned a wetsuit and swam the 1500m Swim for All at Pugneys) I went to the pool before work and really enjoyed it. So first thing Monday morning I’m at the pool at 7:20am and find it even easier and enjoy it even more.

New member of my team at work today, so was a day of looking at our workload and trying to fit a quart into a pint pot. Nothing unusual there I suppose.

Got home and was trying to work out a plan for a cycle tour I’m thinking of doing with Mrs W in 2012, Cycling to Hull and then getting on the ferry from Hull to Zeebrugge, then cycling from Zeebrugge in Belgium all the way up the dutch coast to Rotterdam with an overnight camping stop en route, carrying all our own gear. Having never been to Holland (well, except a 5 hour layover in Schipol airport) I thought it would be a nice way to see a bit of the world I’ve never seen. Then we get the ferry back from Rotterdam to Hull and cycle home. Except what should have been the easy bit ended up being the hardest bit. P&O’s website doesn’t let you book two people, two bikes and one cabin online. Dur. So I tweeted about it.

Tuesday

P&O replied to my tweet saying it was a limitation of their website. No surprise there then. Conf call hell day at work and not much on at home. Although I’ve realised that if I want to go swimming regularly it’ll cost me quite alot because a single pool swim is £4.20. However, they do this off-peak monthly pass in Leeds which covers you from opening up until 4pm – perfect for 7am swims or lunchtimes if I want to. Best bit is they’re £25 per month which means if I’ve swum more than 6 times in a month I’m saving money. Well if I go 3 times a week then I’ll definitely be quids in. Plus we get corporate discount so I get another 15% off the prices. Nice one. So I went to Tesco to get some passport photos and went and got my temporary card. After work I got home and ordered some more road bike tubes and some swimming stuff from wiggle. Rock n Roll.

Wednesday

A great early morning swim and used my shiny new card – managed to get to the pool for 7:10am and did a good 40 minutes and swam 750m. Once I’m confident and happier I’ll probably do 40 lengths / 1km per swim every other morning during the week. Scarily if I do this every week I’ll be swimming 12km per month. The first morning I went in to have a swim when I finished I felt utterly wiped out. Now even only 1 week on I’m swimming further with less effort and enjoying it much more.

The winds were really bad when I got in the office. You could hear it whistling through every gap between every window. The weather changed from bright sunshine to overcast to bright sunshine every 20 minutes, and then it rained. And rained. Was worried about the loose soffit under my guttering at home as our house is south west facing and pretty much always get the brunt of any storm.

Today was a day of conference call hell. I think I had 5 in total during the day. More work and less play makes Mark a dull boy

Thursday

Worked from home today. Needed to get some documentation squared away but also was slightly worried about the house. Another bit of the roof had dropped off overnight leaving the soffit very very loose. I ended up ordering some Ladders from Amazon because it’s the one thing I don’t have which is why I can’t fix it. One of my local friends offered to lend me their ladders in case mine don’t arrive. But the wind just got worse and worse and worse. Then at lunchtime it rained. It was like some biblical storm. The whole close filled up with water – I reckon it was 6 or 7 inches deep at the deepest point. People’s drains were overwhelmed with the torrent. The radio (which was playing via satellite) stopped playing and all you could hear was the rumble of the rain. Then the wind came. We saw peaks of 65mph pretty much at the back of the house. The loose board was getting even looser and I went outside to see if there was anything I could do. I poked it with the handle of my apple picker but it just seemed too loose. But with the wind and rain I dived back indoors, made a mug of tea and  resigned myself to the fact it’ll probably be gone soon.

The noise stopped around 9pm.

Friday

WFH again today (waiting for the man to deliver the ladders – which amazingly were delivered at Lunchtime – great service by Amazon considering the time of year).

I really wanted to go swimming again this morning but I’ll probably end up going for a bike ride on Saturday morning instead. I was drawing visio pictures most of the day for a customer, but I was also helping one of my team who was having a mare of a time with a piece of hardware in a customer’s in the north east (ironically the same customer) that we’re doing an implementation for. Meh.

Went outside mid morning to investigate the carnage (it looked like someone had got all the bins and just let a bomb off near them – the recycling bin is nowhere to be seen) and saw the soffit had snapped in half and was laying on the patio. Well, at least it broke near a joist so with my new ladders I should be able to fix this now. So I remembered to put the drill on charge and dig out the drywall screws so I can get this done tomorrow when I get some time.

Got some tickets to see Dave Gorman in Harrogate in June 2012 – and tweeted that I couldn’t wait, at which point Dave Gorman replied to me and said “Um… you don’t have to wait. I mean you can if you want, if you can’t, you don’t have to!”