George and St. Albans Cathedral

Great picture, though taking with Jill's camera phone, of George in Verulamium Park. Remarkable as much for Jill's mastery of technology (she sent it to a website for me to view before she as much as got home) as the lovely cold crisp weather).

My Birthday

It was a while ago (late September in fact). Ollie's present to me was a disco. We had had one on out North Wales holiday last Christmas-New Year when it was so dark and so cold a disco made lots of sense!

Ollie had put an announcement on the kitchen door that Friday night was disco night, but still when I arrived hope it was still a surprise to have all the lights turned off, except the strange blue ones in the kitchen, and a disco ball our friends from across the road lent us.

DJ Ollie ran the show. He had created a couple of playlists for the evening, and organised the dancing competition, which Charlie won.

Then we all had a jolly good dance!

Scattering The Ashes

This is a shot of the beach at Tisvildeleje, and old fishing village in North Zealand, Denmark. My great aunt and great uncle had summer houses within a few miles of here. My grandparents honeymooned here. My dad came to the beaches here when he was a boy, and he brought Anna and me to the beaches here, when we were kids.

Dad didn't specify what he wanted done with his remains. We decided to scatter his ashes into the sea around Tisvildeleje. There is a beautiful little jetty that seemed the perfect place.

We decided to do it at sunset Monday August 24th. It was a lovely sunny day and the wind was blowing away from the shore (probably a good thing when scattering ashes). Anna's family had come up from Copenhagen on Saturday with us and Uncle Alick, Dad's younger brother, arrived on the Monday morning. We had a proper Danish lunch and played on the beach and in the sea in the afternoon. It was good fun. Alick, Anna and I made a little tour of the aunt and uncle's summer houses and he also showed us where our grandparents spent their honeymoon; the black cottage just back from the beach, below.

We had had a late lunch and didn't fancy returning to the summer house, so we went down to the ice cream shop at the car park and bought the most amazing (and expensive) round of ice creams to keep us going; flavoured scoops, soft ice on top, 'guff' (meringue whilst still soft), flodeboller (a kind of marshmallow encased in chocolate), with coatings. It was great. Rupert took the pictures. Firstly, Anna and I (don't worry about the moustache, it was a bad holiday experiment, it's gone now)...

and then the whole group:

Then we got down to the business at hand. The wind was blowing off the shore, and the tide was going out. We felt that we should be discrete, so Anna and I chose a site amongst the rocks on the seaward side of the jetty.

We all gathered about twenty minutes before the sunset. Those who wanted to say a few words did and Anna read this short poem;

Do not stand at my grave and weep

I am not there; I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow,

I am the diamond glints on snow,

I am the sun on ripened grain,

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,

I am not there;

I did not die.

We had given everyone an egg cup with ashes and some lovely purple petals that Anna had picked from the bushes just behind the beach, and after the poem was read, we stepped up, in our own time, and placed the ashes and petals into the water.

And they drifted, slowly and gently towards the setting sun.

It was all lovely and sad and beautiful and poignant.

Bye Dad

x

c

George Gets Published

We learnt that a piece of George's creative writing has been selected for publication in the Young Writers' anthology. It is published by Young Writers. We don't know if George is one of ten or a million. But we do know his piece was very good. It has to be less than 50 words. This is it:

Blood

Walking down the street he saw drops of red leading down an alley. The red dots looked like drops of blood. Worried, he followed the blood crimson blots at equal lengths. The alley way seemed to darken, to shrink. He saw the ketchup bottle leaking from an overfilled bag.

My Basil Plant

The pot on left used to hold my basil plant. The basil plant (in picture, with green leaves) grew nicely to the point where it was way too big for the little black pot. So I bought a bigger pot and transferred the basil plant. It is as exciting as seeing ones stock grow!

Watford 3 Parma 2

After a week at football camp Ollie and Charlie got tickets for today's pre-season warm up match between Watford and Parma, newly promoted to Serie A. It was a good game, though lacking a bit of atmosphere! I think we will be back at some point in the season for real.

Weekend In Norfolk

We had a great weekend with the Fryers at their cottage in Norfolk.

It is a lovely cottage, originally four tiny cottages, now as one.

With a lovely garden.

We went to the beach near Wells, flew kites, made sand forts, and played on the dunes.

The kids played happily in the garden; swinging, bouncing and playing badminton.

The kids also went to the local river and paddled the inflatable downstream, until it punctured!

We also ate wonderfully well. Jill's fish pie on Saturday evening:

And a lovely outdoor Sunday lunch

It was a splendid weekend. Thank you Jacki, Stuart, Miles, Max and Rose

For a few more photos, click here, and go for the slideshow option.

Stitches Out

Remarkable they can shave some bone off my shoulder with only two stitches. One, the top pic, more on the back of my shoulder, and the other, the bottom pic, more on the side. 

Tomatoes, Football Awards And WWII Day

Jill's tomato plant bore its first fruit:

Ollie, forth from right, was with his team, St. Albans City Youth FC (East) to collect their end of season awards at the St. Alban arena:

And Ollie had World War II dress up day at school:

I didn't include his gas mask box. The kids all had to line up as they would have done in WWII, in separate sex queues with the gas masks. Like my Dad had to. 

Jane And John Get Married

Jane and John got married 5th July at The Node. Huge congratulations to them. Here is little Eva helping them out. And below a great shot of Matt, Molly, Jane and Paul. 

Thanks to Abbie's Facebook pages for the pics!

Charlie-isms

The best 'mail from America' (my occasional email letters back to UK from USA) I never wrote compared the difficulty of translating English to American English with the difficulty of translating Charlie speak into any language (he was 2-3 years old at this stage). I really ought to do a glossary before too long before I forget. Anyway, following on from this one here are his latest two. 

Firstly, when talking about tactics he referred to them as Tic-Tacs. 

Secondly, when referring to someone else's verruca he referred to them as bazookas. 

I still like Guerilla Cheese (grilled cheese)

What a dude!

Kym, Arthur, Ella and Will Visit

Great to see the Vanderbilt-Frieds last weekend in St. Albans. The weather stayed pretty warm (it had clearly been roasting in Paris the previous week) and we had a lovely couple of days hanging out. Friday evening we wandered over to Clarence Park and learnt about the mystical game that is called 'cricket', and picked Ollie and Charlie up from their classes. On Saturday morning Kym, Arthur and I explored St. Alban's market and bought our picnic lunch; cheese, saucisson, baguette, fruit. Kym also bought, and devoured, a carton of rather nice olives en route. We walked down Fishpool St, past the £1,000,000 house, here, (not that it is terribly expensive for the street but we commented on it as we trundled by), into Verulamium Park for lunch, out again to pay a quick visit to the Roman theatre, here, and a return to the park to lie in the sun, play soccer, and eat ice cream. Just like every summer's day should be. We strolled home via the Roman Wall, the oldest pub in Britain (as the Guinness Book of Records says), Ye Olde Fighting Cock, up past the Cathedral and stopped off for a decent dinner, and pint of good proper beer, at the Hare and Hounds in Sopwell Lane. 

On Sunday we went to Knebworth House, above. We checked out the maze, 

and the dinosaur park:

Will and Ollie had their picture taken with the statuesque park gardener,

and we took a picture of one of his colleagues as well:

We went to the kids adventure area, and finished off with a miniature train ride:

The only thing missing was George, who was on a school activities trip to the Lake District.

But George returned on Tuesday evening which meant we could all meet up on the Wednesday night in Windsor where the Vanderbilt-Frieds were staying. I haven't got any pictures of everyone having a great time together, as I was a little late, but I did take a decent picture of Windsor. 

It was wonderful to spend time with the Vanderbilt-Frieds. 

Shoulder Operation

Almost two weeks ago I had an arthroscopy of my right shoulder. All the years of tennis serving, throwing and cricket have taken their toll, and my shoulder bone grew a spur. Of course when trying to serve or throw all the muscles, tendons, ligaments and whatever else is inside my shoulder rubs against the spur and hurts to the point where I can't do it. I have had, over the last decade, two bouts of physio, some shots and a lot of pain. So, at last I had the operation. 

It was pretty quick, in and out in a day, but I didn't do so well on the anaesthetic, being sick for some hours after the surgery. I also got worried about how red the right side of my chest and arm got, but realised, after the red rubbed off onto my clothes, that the red was a dye, probably iodine, and I could wash it off!

The sling was on for three days. Once it was off I could hardly move my arm. The kids laughed at how little movement I had in it. 

I have the stitches out on Monday. Hurrah!

Fleetville School Fete

A regular feature all over Britain are school summer fetes. Today was Ollie's school. There was some BMXing, some nice dancing by pupils and all manner of catching things, throwing things, kicking things and lots of food, including sweets, BBQ, and of course the scones stall:

George also did his bit, by helping out at the penalty shoot out: