After weeks of preparation, Christine and I finally got to endureenjoy Emma’s first school production: the obligatory nativity play. Christine went to the first showing with Duncan in tow (and the local nurseries also in attendance) and I had the pleasure of attending the adults only performance. The show was quite entertaining with each of the three classes split in to two halves and each half doing a dance routine. Emma was in the star group and I don’t think I’m being biased if I say she wasn’t the worst in her group! If nothing else it gave me a chance to give my new flash (Canon Speedlite 430EX II) a run for its money. Sadly no photos here as I don’t have any good ones with just Emma and I don’t want to suffer the wrath of any other parents. We have some amusing videos for posterity. Let’s just say, it isn’t always obvious that all of the children are doing the same routine!
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Star Performer
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011Castle Cake
Sunday, November 27th, 2011Emma’s becoming a bit demanding when it comes to birthday cake decoration. For Mummy’s birthday, it was to be a castle. This proved to be an unmitigated disaster: there wasn’t really enough cake mixture and then the icing was too runny so I spent a good while spooning the icing off the plate and back over the top of the cake until it finally reached a consistency where it would stick. Thankfully there were no complaints from the children when it came to eating it!
Racing at work
Monday, November 21st, 2011I’m going to be upfront – I’m about to do some gross back-dating of posts. This post is actually being written in January 2012 as I’ve been hopeless at blogging in the last couple of months of 2011 – not helped by having to re-instate a months worth of posts from Google’s cache when an enforced AWS reboot seemed to send my image back in time. Don’t expect volumes of text though: just a few words and an excuse to link to some photos. The one’s about the running race that I organised at work as part of the inter-departmental games. It was three laps adding up to (approximately) 5km. There was a good turnout, helped by the . I got a bit of stick for being too far out in front although still took 19:15 (the course did have a few hills). It actually transpired that I wasn’t far enough ahead as, having applied the World Masters 5k grading (my rules), I actually ended up back in 4th place. One way to look at it is that I don’t need to get faster – I just need to get older and not get slower! Andy Piper did a nice write-up on eightbar.
Classic Mistake
Sunday, November 20th, 2011A belated post to offer my excuses for appearing at the bottom of the results for the Brown course at this year’s November Classic. Having done our helping in advance of the day it meant we didn’t have quite the same rush on the day. I took the children round the string course which was conveniently located adjacent to the parking and assembly area. When the chill wind dropped and the sun came out it was actually quite pleasant. Christine then took over the child minding and I jogged off to the start.
I was pleased to find that my ankle, although still slightly swollen from the CompassSport Cup final, didn’t seem to be causing me any trouble and, not having done a huge amount of running, my legs actually felt reasonably fresh. My navigation wasn’t particularly clean though and I seemed to spend rather a lot of time about 50 metres adrift from the control site. It wasn’t a bad run though and would have put me in fourth place had it not been for the small fact that, on downloading, I appeared to be missing control number 4…
I try to use a backup card at larger events using Emit but there was apparently no mark in the appropriate place. Unfortunately, the use of a backup card was probably my downfall. Without one, I’m pretty good at checking the display on my card to ensure I have punched but I tend not to when I do have a backup card. As is often the case with Emit though, on this occasion there were several controls where I found it impossible to get my wrist oriented to get the card down flat. It would seem that control 4 was one of these and, although my GPS shows that I did at least visit the control (I found I couldn’t actually remember!), I stand disqualified.
Screaming fireworks
Sunday, November 13th, 2011In the run up to fireworks night Emma was once again very excited and was in high spirits as we set of for the display at her school. That lasted until all of 15 seconds in to the display when, as two years ago, she then proceed to scream the place down and we had to make a rapid exit. Even the other side of the rec (from where we had watched last year) wasn’t far enough away for Emma although the display did mercifully finish as we reached that point. Worse still, Emma has now become absolutely paranoid and the slightest bang during the evenings will set her off in to screaming fits, even if it’s just someone closing a door. There has still been the occasional firework going off this weekend but hopefully that’s it now at least until the New Year. Duncan, of course, loves fireworks…
Alarming outing
Thursday, October 27th, 2011I was on child minding duty today. We had a good morning with a trip to the swimming pool where both children had a great time. It’s the pool where Emma has her lessons and she certainly seemed at home paddling up and down with a froggy float (it was fun time) and jumping in from the side (although still trying to ensure her head stayed above water). This afternoon we headed in to Southampton for a bit of shopping. I can’t claim it was all that successful. We spent the first half an hour waiting to pick up my wedding ring (now without a break in it and also looking very shiny once again). Duncan and Emma had their feet measured – still 6F and a marginally larger 10.5G so no new shoes.
We did manage a few purchases before heading back to the car. A decided we should pick up an IKEA catalogue on the way which required us to descend to the first floor in the lift. I mistakenly still pressed button two – the floor for our car. We let the floor pass… and then the lift ground to a halt with the doors open adjacent to a blank wall!
The buttons no longer responded so we hit the alarm. There was a series of modem like noises from the speaker and then nothing. We tried again. More noises. I had no mobile reception but one of the other people in the lift did and she phoned her Mum who phoned the number under the CCTV. After leaning on the alarm button for a couple of minutes we also eventually raised someone on the intercom who dispatched assistance. It turns out that they had been ignoring the alarm up until then – apparently people are always setting it off. So, the moral of the story is that it pays to be persistent. Mysteriously, when they finally prised the other set of doors it turned out that we were on the 10th floor! Somehow the lift must have taken us to 10 instead of 1 and consequently opened the doors on the wrong side before shutting itself down.
Half Term-O
Thursday, October 27th, 2011It being half-term, we decided to head along to the Wednesday orienteering taking place at nearby Micheldever Forest. My ankle still hasn’t recovered from the trip up to the Peak District so I went round the shortest course (the 3k Yellow) with Emma and Duncan whilst Christine ran the Blue. Duncan was already asleep by the time we had completed the 1k route march to the start which was a bit of a shame as it wasn’t the smoothest of courses. In the background of this photo you can see the ‘ride’ that we had just come along – a mixture of foot high grass/brambles, foot deep water-filled trenches, and branches! I certainly got a good upper body workout hefting Duncan over all of that and needless to say Duncan was awake when we finally arrived at this control. We didn’t complete the course but did have fun and also enjoyed the Junior Squad cakes that were on sale!
Ankle injury at Longshaw
Thursday, October 20th, 2011It was the CompassSport Cup Final last Sunday and, SOC having qualified, we felt obliged that at least one of us should attend (having concluded that Sheffield was too far to take the children when they probably wouldn’t get much of a run about). I shared a lift with a couple of other club members and we stayed at Edale YH the night before. The day itself started with cloud on the hill tops but by the time I started around mid-day there were glorious blue skies. Unfortunately, at control 6 out of 28 I landed badly from a 2ft drop off a rock and twisted my ankle. After half a minute sat on the afore-mentioned rock I hobbled off in the direction of the next control (also the direction of the finish). I found I was still able to run and completed the course.
I didn’t have a bad run after that with just a couple of minor wobbles on 11 and 22. I was, however, simply just too slow ending up down in 47th place albeit out of a large field of 129. I’d like to think that maybe without the ankle injury I could have completed the course 3 or 4 minutes faster and may have just scraped in to the top 30. It was a tough field though. I was just glad not to be the one doing the driving as, once the adrenalin left my system, the ankle was pretty sore. Today, the swelling has started to subside and the ankle seems to be pretty flexible so I’m hoping for a quick recovery.
