15 Beane Rd, Watton-at-Stone

I exchanged on Dad's house earlier this week and on Saturday we went around as a family to the house for the last time. The last few times we have been have been less emotional as the overwhelming need is to get the rest of what remains out and the house in good order for the next owners. The house is now looking like it needs someone new to live in it. It is ready to be a home again.

That said, it was the last time that the kids will go inside. Charlie cried. I think it is a way for him to access Grandpa. Ollie was a regular visitor to the house with me, and I think it was the same for him.

The picture is a Google Maps shot of Watton-at-Stone. Even though you can't see the house itself, I like the shot. It is a little like we are pulling away from house. The sale will be completed this Friday and I will take a last look then.

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Today, Charlie created The Love Club, and started to populate it with all the people he loved. It was nice that Grandpa was included. I think he would be happy with that.

Charlie and The Grand Pee

Charlie confused the Grand Prix with a grand pee today. 

George Soccer

George's football/soccer club has a web site, http://www.clubwebsite.co.uk/londonroadjuniorfootballclub/under12s/

Unfortunately George isn't in the team photo, nor has his individual photo on-line but he was man of the match in the report below. If you do look at the site ignore the number of games they have played. To be honest, they have played a lot. It is just that the website has only been up for a couple of matches.

Sun 08 Mar 2009

Whetstone W 4
London Rd Under 12s 1

The under 12s produced their strongest team performance of the season. Unfortunately lack of concentration at the back , proved costly . Both teams played some nice football and the first half looked to be heading for a stalemate .With a couple of minutes to go , a Road clearance dropped to a Whetstone midfielder who smashed the ball back beyond Aaron. With seconds to go , the ball was pumped into our box. With time to clear Ollie hesitated and their forward nipped in to lob Aaron. Half time gave the manager a chance to make some changes . Ollie , Jacob and Marli made way for Josh , Gavin and Harry. We came out flying ,Connor shored up the defence. George Barnett bossed the midfield and captain Jack Gage was running them ragged. We were soon back in the game, after a fine run and finish from Jack Gage. The next 15 minutes saw us push hard for an equaliser. Once again lack of concentration, saw Ben Nailard divert the ball to their forward 3-1. Jack Armstrong was introduced for Jack Rintoul and Marli replaced Ben. Ross dropped back in Ben's position. We kept pushing forward but could not break through. Just before final whistle , Ross sliced a clearance to a grateful forward 4-1. The scoreline did not reflect the open game. A few more performances like this and we will march up the table. Aaron and George both had their best games for the club.

Cross Dress Friday

Click here for the why. Look below for the pictures.

Bloody gorgeous!

Skiing at Super Devoluy Pt 2

As promised in previous post, I managed to post film of boys skiing. This is a nice blue run. I think George and Ollie are holding back a little. 

Skiing at Super Devoluy

It was a long 750 mile drive, plus a ferry crossing, and a night in Dijon, but it was worth it. The snow was good, weather perfect and scenery fantastic.  Super Devoluy has this big chalet block that on first sight looks pretty gross but by imagining being in a 1960s spy story and appreciating its design, it begins to grow on you. 

We all squeezed into a small but good apartment behind the big block, thoroughly enjoyed the food, especially the baguettes, crepes, pate, cheese and cheap wine, and didn't like lugging our skis to and from the slopes morning and evening. But hey, if that is the worst part of the holiday, I can live with it. 

The best thing was to see the improvements the boys made. They all did ski school and really seemed to get a lot out of it.  Enjoy a selection of photos and film below and if you really want to see more photos, click here.

The English Channel in Feb is windy;

We picked up breakfast in Dijon after our overnight stop;

This is the view from our balcony;

The 1960s spy set;

And some pictures of ski-ing and slopes; 

Unfortunately I can't load any film of the boys skiing up yet. I will do so as soon as possible. Cheers for now. 

We had the most snow we have had for 18 years last week. London buses were kept in their depots, train services were scant, at best, the whole country seemed to go into a paralysis. But it was very pretty. Here are some pix. First, our back garden;

Two halves of a giant snowball from a short walk near Colman's Green;

And the insides of one of the halves;

And some rather pleasant views on our walk; 

Ollie's Birthday Sleepover

This weekend was Ollie's birthday sleepover. Yes, it was a little late in the day, but that is one of the drawbacks of having a birthday five days before Christmas Day, sorry Ollie! His guests were Adam, Daniel, Doran, and Eddie. They were quite a little gang. I haven't got any decent pix of the crowd but they did a replay of what Ollie did on his real birthday, namely to go bowling, eat and have cake, like this. They also played some fusball, made slushpuppies using the snow and fruit juice and watched a Simpson's film. They also woke Jill up at 3 am. She went into Ollie's room and found them playing game boy on the top bunk. Hmmmm. 

Reporting Dad's Death

At the inquest for Dad's death, there were two journalists present. I didn't mention them in the post, here, as they didn't play a significant part in the inquest. I exchanged a few words with them; enough to find out which papers they represented and that they often spend days sitting in court inquests like this. They gave me the impression that they would file a report of a few sentences that might appear in a far flung column of their papers. 

Not so. 

The Herfordshire Mercury reported Dad's death in the 5th Dec 2008 edition, in a prominent place on page 3. Go here for the edition and hit 'next' to turn one page to see it (oh, and click on the back arrow twice to get back to this post!).  I wasn't too impressed with their reporting, nor was Anna. They got Dad's age wrong, they wrote 60. The headline; 'Widower unable to cope with onset of Parkinson's' offended us. Admittedly we are a little sensitive to this type of headline which is not exactly untrue, but our belief, given the notes he left, was that it was more a deliberate act of someone who knew what was going to happen to them taking a decision about how to end their life before being unable to do so. I rang the Mercury and suggested that their reporting was factually inaccurate, that as he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1999 the use of the word 'onset' was probably incorrect, and three, it conveyed what we believed to be an incorrect perspective on the death.  I spoke with the reporter, who after initially seeming to be a little defensive listened to my idea that if my father's death is to be reported, I would far rather be used as a springboard for a useful discussion about assisted suicide, euthanasia, etc. than it being portrayed as another sad old man killing himself in his garage. 

They printed an apology about Dad's age and the reporter did go off and write an article as I suggested. Given the number of programmes recently on the subject, most notably Julie Walters starting in the drama 'A Short Stay in Switzerland' about a Doctor going to take her own life in a clinic in Switzerland, it is a subject that has been given a fair bit of oxygen recently. The article appears in this edition, on page 16 and even gets teed up on the front page. 

So good for the Hertfordshire Mercury. I hope they do manage to start a debate on the subject. I understand that society has to be very careful about legislating in this area, but for those people who do want to end their life due to a terminal illness it feels right to me that they should have more provision that what is currently available to them. 

George's Birthday

George's real birthday was on 21st January. We celebrated it with a little family gathering. 

But this weekend was when he had his mates around and played War Hammer for most of the afternoon and evening. I can't pretend that I have any understanding of what War Hammer is about beyond a kind of Airfix meets Lord of the Rings meets Risk in a five day test match way, but these kids are totally immersed. And good on them. Next time we might get them to set up in George's attic room and send some food up once every few days.

Many happy returns George