Robert's ramblings

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All Saints Church, Binfield

We’ve decided we need to get out more. It’s not that we haven’t been busy. We’ve actually been very good lately at getting out to concerts, sporting events and dinner with friends. But we concluded we should do more “going for walks as a family”. So for the last two weekends, we’ve been heading off for a 3 mile walk each Sunday.

For walk one, we were lucky in almost every way. The weather was gorgeous and the walk a scenic one. The only problem was the shoes I had stupidly picked to wear. Within a couple of hundred yards, I already had blisters on my heels and could only complete the rest of the walk by squashing down the back of the shoes and creating a pair of ‘improvised mules’. Which made the whole thing more of a shuffle than a walk.

For walk two, my blisters had mostly recovered and I had chosen my footwear more wisely. I was looking forward to enjoying a nice Sunday stroll. The sun was shining as we finished our pre-walk pub lunch and headed off. Twenty minutes later, the rain was setting in. By the time we reached the half way point, we were in the middle of a gale being lashed by torrential rain. Cold and drenched we arrived back at the car, just as the rain stopped and the sun came out again. Third time lucky next weekend?

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Where is everybody?

It has been great to exchange the business pressures of surviving the credit crunch for the task of trying to stay upright whilst skiing an expanse of fresh powder. Although I must admit that there are some similarities to the two challenges, on the whole it has been a pleasant escape. However, it was impossible to avoid being constantly reminded of the world’s problems. Whether it was the ease of getting a table in the restaurants or the length of the queues for the lifts, there were signs everywhere of the downturn, even though this must have been one of the busiest weeks of the year. What has certainly not helped is the weakness of the pound: suddenly everything is 30% more expensive for us Brits, and Val d’Isère was far from cheap to start with. At least the shops were running sales, so Amanda and Laura got some rather nice new ski jackets with a 30% discount. That made me feel better, almost.

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Snowy garden

So what is it with the weather? Most years we don’t get any snow, but this year the UK seems to be turning into Siberia. I managed to miss the big snowfall on Monday since I was in Madrid. But the kids have been very happy, school closed and lots of snow to play with. Off skiing again next weekend, so I think I’m going to need some beachtime as an antidote soon!

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Snow in Wokingham

Just returned from a very enjoyable week’s skiing in Chatel, France. Sunny every day except the third day, when it snowed. Perfect! The snowy theme continued this morning when we woke up to a covering of snow at home. Although it had gone by 8am, at 7am when I left for work and took this picture, it was a rather magical scene.

I thought I’d try a new approach to recording events this Christmas. Here’s a timelapse movie of the ‘present opening’ phase!

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Yellow

Had an excellent evening at the O2 on Sunday being entertained by Coldplay, who were brilliant. Laura summed up Chris Martin’s performance perfectly as “very bouncy”!

I've found Vox easy to use and it has great templates, but it is not the best for compatibility with other services and not as flexible as some of the other blogging platforms.  So I've decided to switch over to a new Wordpress based blog.  Vox does import from Wordpress, so I'll probably keep this one going too.  Somehow I find it hard to throw away the old when I get something new.  I guess that's the reason our attic is full of rubbish!

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Mac Pro

Our main desktop machine died last week. Power supply failure, I’d guess from the symptoms. All the backups fully up to date and the drives readable from another machine anyway, so no drama. Actually an opportunity to buy a nice, shiny new machine! You can tell I’m a bloke, can’t you.

I had been flirting with the dark side for a few months with my Macbook Pro laptop, and decided to take the plunge and ‘go Mac’ with the main machine too. All now set up (pretty much) and working great.

Looks nice and shiny too…

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Kitchen Day 16

The kitchen took another big step forward yesterday with the installation of the granite work surfaces. Taps, hob-fitting, flooring and painting still to go…

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Kitchen Day 10

The kitchen project has reached the end of phase one. Everything that can be done prior to the fitting of the granite worktops is done. Oven and fridge/freezer are operational. Next step is tiling in the utility room and fitting of the granite, which takes place later in the week.