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!