Archive for the ‘Family’ Category
Sunday, June 14th, 2009
765We were looking for something to do today when I remembered seeing an advert for the National Gardens Scheme open day at Cranbury Park. Cranbury is a private estate on the northern edge of Chandler’s Ford and despite living here over 10 years now I’ve never ventured in to the grounds. We cycled over and, despite arriving only 10 minutes after the opening time, the grounds were already busy. Seemingly you have to arrive early if you want to get a good bargain from the plant stall!
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Sunday, May 31st, 2009
759We headed over to the Isle of Wight today for the Needles Cross-Country Marathon (although I was only running the half). Our gamble of getting the 8:45 ferry seemed to pay off and we arrived in reasonable time for the 10:00 start from the West Wight Sports Centre. There was a good turnout (around 300 for both events) with a fair sprinkling of Tuesday night runners present (myself, Neil, Darren, Roderick, Sue and Jane).
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Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
756It seems hard to believe but Emma is two today. She usually goes in to nursery on a Tuesday and as they do a good birthday celebration we thought it would be a shame if she didn’t go in. (She also came home with a good haul of presents from the nursery!) Christine had made two cakes – one for home and another for nursery which is probably just as well as it meant I could practice my decorating skills on ours before doing the one for nursery. Present opening had to wait until I got home from work (as we feared we’d never get Emma off to nursery if we started on them in the morning). Emma has certainly got the hang of tearing off the paper but there were really too many new things for her to concentrate on one for very long. More photos on Flickr.
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Sunday, May 24th, 2009
753Today’s trip out was to the New Forest. After fighting our way through the hoards heading towards the beach we parked at the Reptile Centre and then walked to the New Forest Inn at Emery Down where we had lunch. Here we came across a group of Morris Dancers who thankfully seemed more interested in eating and drinking than dancing. We didn’t miss out entirely though as the merriment began just before we made our move to leave. We therefore headed off in the direction of the Portugese Fireplace to the strains of the recorder. From there we crossed to Knightwood Oak and then back to the Reptile Centre. Perhaps as a result of the additional sunshine I was able to improve on my Tuesday night count by spotting two adders, some natterjack toads and a green frog. Perhaps more interesting though was the webcam of the goshawk nest.
Posted in Family, Food | Comments Off on Dancers and adders
Sunday, May 24th, 2009
750Christine’s parents and my brother are down for the weekend and yesterday we decided to head out to Hillier Gardens. We enjoyed a picnic lunch outside in the sun before heading in to the gardens, making the use of some of the 6 free guest passes that come with our joint membership. We’d managed to time our visit for another first: the first day of this year’s Art in the Garden season (the 10th year it has run). This provided additional entertainment for children and photographers alike! Sadly, when Michael and I popped over the road to look at the rhodies (whilst the others checked out the tree house again), we discovered that most were already past their best. Anyway, a selection of my photos are on Flickr.
Posted in Arts, Family, Photography | Comments Off on Sculpture season starts
Sunday, May 17th, 2009
747It was pay back time this weekend as we spent both days helping out at various events. On Saturday we went along to the SOC event at Hut Wood. We walked there and got soaked as a result when the heavens opened. Thankfully the sun came out as we arrived and the rain didn’t return until later in the day. The downpour didn’t seem to have discouraged attendees either with over 60 participants. I went round with a group of juniors from nearby Halterworth Harriers running club. Not wishing to be stereotypical but the two lads did all of the work whilst the older girls discussed boys, films, TV etc. I’d originally only planned to shadow them for the first few controls but when they started heading off in the wrong direction to number three then I thought I’d best stick with them. Who knows – perhaps they’d have paid more attention if I hadn’t been there as the safety net? I think even Emma on the yellow course with Christine may have averaged faster minutes per km…
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Posted in Family, Friends, Orienteering, Running | Comments Off on Weekend Helping
Sunday, May 10th, 2009
Christine’s laptop has been slowly grinding to a halt over the past few weeks and, as the university support services were proposing to take it away, I thought I’d take a look. I was initially sidetracked by an issue with a SQL Server 2005 Express update which Windows Update was repeatedly trying to install. In the end, it turned out she had the same issue with the IDE Channel transfer mode that I’ve experienced before. The Windows Update was just one of the many disk intensive operations where things got really bad. Just for good measure I uninstalled some apps I’d put on her machine and ran CCleaner and JKDefrag. Hopefully Christine will come home from work in a better mood tomorrow!
Posted in Family, Technology | Comments Off on Amateur IT support
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
739We headed down to Cornwall over the Easter period to visit my brother-in-law and his wife at Falmouth. In a very cosy arrangement their landlord let us stay in one of the other barn conversions where they live. These were previously holiday lets and are still fully fitted out. This meant we had our own space but were still nice and handy. We started our journey down on Thursday, stopping at the Tumbling Weir Hotel for the night. This was nice enough all mealtimes were a bit child unfriendly: dinner service starts at 7pm and breakfast isn’t until 8:30am. Trying to find somewhere else in Ottery St Mary to have dinner didn’t prove too easy either. The suspicion is that the hotel makes most of its money from weddings.
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Posted in Family, Travel | Comments Off on Cornish Holiday
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