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Saturday 27th February 2010
jazā’ir banī mazghannā
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Damn it. You know, I really should have taken my camera with me today (I was actually thinking of that before I left) when I went for a walk with Rory to work. I had to go to work to turn on my work PC, in order to allow me to do some work from home. That mission failed, as someone had taken all the office keys home with them for the weekend . . . ah well. Exactly why my PC had been turned off remains a mystery, but hey . . . So, we walked past some sorry excuse for a pond (adjacent to the dog graves . . . I don't have time to explain) and there was this freakin' great big heron, just stood there. I was like, "Hey, Rory, check out the heron. Let's have a closer look." And yeah . . . a heron. Weirdness. We had a little walk around the campus and then headed home for lunch. Not a great deal else happened today. Typical Saturday - loads of cleaning, tidying, etc. |
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Tuesday 23rd February 2010
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Mel was thinking, "Hey! We haven't had a decent picture of Alex and Rory together for, like, ages," so I had to jump around like a buffoon behind Mel whilst Mel tried to get a picture of them. I guess we were partly successful. Rory's current thing is going, "That daddy bart," whenever he hears the escape of intestinal gases. Of course, he'll 
replace 'daddy' with whoever was the culprit at the time . . . it's just usually me, I guess. Oh, and broccoli is 'brocky', which is kind of funny. Alex found that hilarious first time he heard him say that. "No brocky, daddy. No brocky." EAT YOUR GREENS! EAT THEM!
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Monday 15th February 2010
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Most of the pictures are above are taken from our walk somewhere around Halton/Caton. We started at Woodie's car park (I'm only calling it that because Paul Woodruff's locally renowned bacon buttie van often hangs around here) and then went down the steps towards the Crook o'Lune. We crossed a pedestrian bridge over the Lune and then followed a tarmac path that I don't think I had ever been on before. As it transpired, it went towards Caton. By the time we reached Caton, Rory and Alex were both starting to whinge a bit, so we headed back. See, this week is Alex's half term, so I took today off work to look after the pair of them. The day consisted of: pop to town, drop Alex's disposable camera off at Boot's, head to Halton, feed the cats, go for a walk, go home, have lunch, watch the Empire Strikes Back . . . do some tidying up, wash some clothes . . . dinner time, etc.
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Saturday 13th February 2010
Carlisle Castle
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Above are various pictures from our day out in Carlisle. Apparently I've been here before but I don't remember . . . must have been a long time ago. |
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Saturday 6th February 2010
The camera doesn't really capture it here, of course, but throughout today there was a mist that kept kind of rising and falling, before eventually settling to a uniform, thick greyness throughout the afternoon.
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Monday 1st February 2010
Alex - trust me, the television's definitely broken
 
So here's me rushing around, trying to get the children ready for school/nursery (and myself ready for work) and Alex is like, "Dad, can I watch television?" and, of course, the answer is, "Erm . . . no, we're about to go, Alex. No time." Little did I realise exactly what he meant by watching television. The old CRT TV is no more - one of the guns (or the circuitry controlling the guns) can't really do much red any more and it's all just a mess. I took the opportunity to replace the TV with a 22" LCD monitor wired up to a computer with a TV decoder PCI card built in. The only problem now is the noisy PSU. Hmmmmmmmm.
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Sunday 31st January 2010
Bolton-le-Sands
  
Another of those, "Let's get the children out of the house, get some fresh air, let them work off some energy," moments. Oh, and we had a load of mouldy bread that we thought we could feed to the ducks and seagulls.
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Sunday 24th January 2010
Cockermouth
 
Well, this was all a bit odd. We drove to Cockermouth Sands, thinking there might be something to do there, an abbey to check out or something. But it was a miserable, ugly, grey place (I'm thinking, "Fine, let the sea have it"). We didn't stay long. Rory and I walked part of the way to the abbey. I took a few pictures . . . even managed to observe the distant wind farm off the coast of Barrow, if only fleetingly. These wind turbines are elusive things, seemingly only visible at certain times under certain atmospheric conditions.
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Saturday 23rd January 2010
Yeah, sure, the beading's gone! What the hell - let's just replace the whole freaking window!
  
I think . . . think the title from this entry came from an event recently . . . was it Friday night? Who knows? Anyway, it was the end of the week, it was Friday night, I had finished work and I was on my way home. I got home and there was Mel talking to some dude at the front door. Rory was curious about all of this and kind of sidled up to his mummy, wondering who this guy was . . . probably. I kind of stood there, listening. I think he was selling windows or something. Mel was doing the whole, "No, we're really not interested," thing and the guy was like, "Well, okay, I'll give you my business card because that price is only valid for, erm . . . you know? . . . not very long and stuff so, erm . . . right," and, erm . . . I dunno. I think I've digressed. Mel was like, "Do you wanna come in?" (to me, not the salesman) and I was like, "No, it's fine. I'm just watching . . . listening, you know." But going back to today . . . Mel went to work. Alex and I made Mr. Men and Little Miss Cup Cakes. I wonder how many copyright symbols that last sentence required? Alex and Rory loved the cakes but they tasted . . . well, pretty much as you would expect, I guess, given a shop-bought pack of cup-cake mixture. Ah well. Alex felt like he made some cakes, doing a bit of baking,so that's good. I nearly forgot - it was very misty throughout today, hence the first two pictures. The sun tried to break through, with limited success.
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Sunday 17th January 2010
Grange, grange, grange . . .
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Saturday 16th January 2010
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Saturday 9th January 2010
An appointment at Maureen's
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So yeah . . . Mel rang sometime this morning (she was at work) asking if I could make an appointment at Maureen's, our nearest hairdresser. Both Alex and Rory needed their hair cutting. This would be Rory's very first haircut. Maureen's hairdressers doesn't have an on-line presence, which is fair enough but I would at least expect an entry in yell.co.uk (yeah, yeah, so it costs money, whatever). . . but nothing. So we walked there instead. There was an old lady there, seemingly comatose underneath one of those weird helmet hair-drying things (what are they?!); she was the only customer. A younger lady (say, in her late 40's) came down the stairs (Maureen? Is that her?!) and I asked if she did children's hair. Yep, no problem. Some time after 2 o'clock? How about 2:30? Fine by me. See you then. But to cut a long story short . . . I don't think Maureen's really cut out for cutting children's hair. Mel and I kept trying to get some kind of positive response out of Maureen, during what was actually a very stress-free event. Rory cried a tiny bit, but nothing much. Alex just sat there, doing as he was told. And Maureen just . . . did her job, she cut their hair as she would any of her customers. And to give Maureen her credit, she even got one of Rory's long curls and tied it up in Sellotape, following our half-hearted attempts to do the same. But, erm . . . at the end, Maureen might as well have said, "You know, I really don't usually cut children's hair. It's not my thing, you know? I just do old people. Blue rinses and stuff. I was trained during the 70's and it's not like I've moved on since then, but these old dears . . . they don't really care, you know? They're hip with that," but instead of that she said, "Eleven pounds, please." I don't think we'll be going there again.
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 I think I must have taken this picture thinking, "Ooo, that's a nice sun-rise," but this was before I looked at the camera lens and noticed some Rory fingerprints all over the glass. Still, it seemed to come out okay, the picture, despite that.
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Thursday 7th January 2010
Ooo, look! More snow!
 I think Mel took this picture. I don't know what's going on here.
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Sunday 3rd January 2010
A walk around Leighton Hall
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