Pictures

I have been having fun with a new camera recently - and seeing as we seem to have been all over the place recently here are some links to the pictures. Click on to picture to get to our flickr account

firstly a few days with in the in-laws!













then off for a tour of the Highlands and Westerns Isles of Scotland


















then off to Treyarnon Bay in Cornwall with 60 people to celebrate our friends 40th - taking over the YHA







you may spot a theme emerging!

travels so far or not so far ....

On Wednesday morning we set off bright and early in our van (Evie) for adventures up north. This was the test for Evie as the furthest she has been so far is Hampshire!

We sailed up the M5 - with a quick pit stop In sunny Birmingham to collect bits for a friend and see where Gayle grew up (other highlights included Adam's old stomping ground and the Villa ground!). We made brilliant headway up to Dumfries and stayed in a awesome campsite in the Mabie Forest - where you can stay in a roundhouse, tee-pee, bunkhouse or your own tent or van. the site comes complete with compost loos and wood-fired hot tub and sauna - which was great! Pictures to follow.

Thursday morning we set off and as we stopped in Hamilton there was a strange clunking sound and Evie refused to get into gear... both of us felt slightly nervous but decided best ignore these things!! but by just north of Glasgow there was no getting her into gear and so i surrendered and Gayle called the AA - a "very nice man" arrived (who thought we were travellers!! how many travellers belong to the AA??) who did everything he could but there was nothing else for it - we had to take her to a garage... this the day before the Scottish bank holiday!!
we had visions of being stranded in Glasgow until Tuesday - not quite the plan!
Amazingly though the garage had the van fixed by this afternoon and we will be back on the road tomorrow after sampling some of Glasgow's nightlife tonight.
As i drove Evie through Glasgow i did ask myself why had i not got the gear box seen to earlier as it is now quite easy to drive!!!
Frank is not sure what to make of all the comings and goings!

yoofs

On Monday at work I was delivering to a house in an nice town we all know - and encountered a group of young people spitting and shouting racist comments at an elderly Asian woman.
Being the shy retiring type ,i decided to intervene and got into a bit of an argument with the young men. at the time it seemed the right thing to do - i couldn't walk past and let them treat that person like that, but afterwards my heart was racing and i was not quite so convinced as to the sensible-ness of my actions!
the interaction with the young men started with just challenging 4 of them but the group grew rapidly to 10 and all of them were wanting to take me on!! somehow i managed to talk my way of of them all attacking me but given recent media coverage of young people attacking those that challenge their behaviour maybe i was lucky rather than a skilled linguist!

the good part is the woman was extremely grateful for my intervention and the young people left! but i still feel quite shaken by the incident.

What would you do?

there is an elderly woman (in her 70's / 80's) in a large supermarket chain and when she gets to the medicine aisle you see her open her handbag take an item of the shelf and hide it under her purse and then walk away.

So what would you do...

a. tell a member of staff

b. approach her and say what you have just seen

c. ignore it - she's old and might not have much money

would your answer be the same if she had stolen an item of food rather than medicine?

Wychwood 2007

Last weekend we went off to our festival of the season - a new one to us: Wychwood

It was excellent a good time to chill out - with some decent music and beer and company! and even a good cup of tea and slice of cake were available
more photos can be seen here

Onion

Gayle showed me the Onion website with clips from ONN
there is a news article on Gap Kids clothing on her blog but this one caught my eye! Excellent


In The Know: War On Terror

Goodnight Irene ...

Saturday saw 40,000 gasheads heading for Wembley stadium - 2 of which were me and my eldest son - and what a day it was!
A game of high-tension, from the first few minutes going down 1-nil to the Shrews to us coming back to getting 3-1 and getting through to League 1.

Next season we will be playing Leeds Utd (my brother-in-Laws team - he is very excited about the prospect of loosing to us!)
Wembley Stadium was a great venue - but expensive and they haven't quite worked out how to get everyone out of the car-parks yet!

Couple of fav photos below - rest on flickr here

Wembley Wembley, we're off to wembley

Well we did it -we got tickets and we are off to Wembley on Saturday!

Frustration

Brilliant news - Rovers are in the play-offs on Saturday at Wembley (much to Gayle and her family's disbelief) but to my utter dismay i can't get tickets!!

We (me and my friends) have been trying all day on the website and all evening on the phone lines Gayle says - who knew there was 35000 rovers supports out there!

Anyone have spare tickets??

Foundation little service - fun with a phone camera!

On Sunday there was a larger than normal little service for Foundation - it was designed as a guest service.

there are a few pictures on Flickr of the service taken on my phones camera - makes for some interesting light effects. Click here for more















also if you want some entertainment from YouTube go to Gayle's blog

Farmdation

Last week we became the proud caretakers of an allotment in North Bristol, after a false start of digging the incorrect plot for 3 hours, yesterday we got things well underway - planting our first veg - some potatoes!

Yesterday was spent digging more ground over - and i have the blisters to show for it - but there was something very satisfying about the process, the blood, sweat and tears - a bit of hard graft, being at one with the earth, planting to bring new life, camaraderie with fellow allotment owners was evident with everyone being extremely friendly. I could go on with the trite phrases but somehow it was actually like that

So here's to all the fresh veg the Farmdation crew will be enjoying and a few moments of peace in the shed - yes our plot even has its own shed!

PS this picture is not of our actual allotment - pictures of the work in progress will be appearing on various foundation members blogs in the future

Portugal

Last week we were visiting Gayle's parents - in between doing jobs around their house we went out to their local towns - Churches seem to be the main attraction for visitors.
In Ovar their nearest town there is Chapels du passo - which are chapels built to represent the stations of the cross - unfortunately not a single one was open though it is their main tourist attraction!
When we did eventually find a church open to have a look inside - we very quickly discovered that the reason for it being open was that there were 2 dead bodies inside (in their open caskets) for people to come and pay their respects - they didn't appreciate 2 English tourists bundling in with camera and flash photography!









here are some photos of their beautifully tiled churches and the manny crosses we discovered on our travels. The last 2 pictures are of grafitti we saw outside the church!

Brunch

Yesterday we discovered a fantastic little place for brunch (well it also offers lunch, dinner, coffee etc!) It was a quirky little place in Bradford-on-Avon called the Lock Inn - tiny little cafe with lots of outside eating spaces including a boat and garden sheds. The was a great selection of food as well - great breakfast choices - veggie and non, as well really good looking lunch and dinner menus!
The general message is that everyone and everything is welcome - including dogs, cats, ducks and children!

this little ditty was on the front cover of the menu:
I wish I was a glow worm
A glow worm's never glum
Cos how can you be grumpy
when the sun shines out of your bum!

You can even have a very pleasant walk along the canal to walk off all you have just consumed in the cafe!
Highly recommend a visit!

Cheesy films

Last Friday we needed to distract ourselves and decided to go to the cinema, though very interested in going to see Babel we decided we needed something a lot less taxing on the brain and opted for Music and Lyrics with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore.

it was just what we needed: light hearted, funny, good reminiscening of the 80's, cheesy but not overly American entertainment!

Sometimes you just need to escape ...!

Adoption

I know this has taken a few days, but I feel quite stunned that Rowan Williams has "sided" with the Catholic church over the issue of exemption from the Equalities bill and gay & lesbian couples rights to adopt children. This does not feel like my church. It has made me feel so angry that Christians are asking to be allowed to treat people differently, who are we to say people should not be allowed to care for a child who is without a family because of their sexuality. In the church i go to - we want people to be who they are and this kind of statement makes me (and i would imagine most gay and lesbian Christians?) feel more alienated from the church.

Having just written all this i see Tony Blair has done the right thing ... click here

travelling

create your own visited countries map

inspired from Ellen and Gayle! shows how much more there is to see of the world ... though i would love to go back to Russia one day though

Well I've played

I had to buy new squash trainers and trousers and managed to organize my first game I got slaughtered - lost count after losing the 5th but I really enjoyed it !!
The sweat I produced was unbelievable - you could wring my socks out!
I think my opponent was kind to me in the end - though I am not sure advising me to go for an eye test was entirely justified!
roll on match 2 ...

Winter Blues

Christmas has been and gone, people's plastic is all spent out and we start to promise ourselves we are going to change our lives around, make resolutions (or not), planning and filling in diaries for 07. So my resolution (even though I don't make them!) is to get a little bit fitter by playing squash!
We'll see how long this one lasts ...!