With Christmas and New Year falling on a Sunday in 2011 it’s meant that I’m not sat at my desk since Friday 23rd December. It was hard work waking up early and despite my usual routine of a quick coffee before booting up the MacBook, it did take a while to get into a work groove thing. It didn’t help being distracted by Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield on BBC radio 4Extra, a book I realise I have never actually read, nor that I can remember seeing on the telly. The last adaptation was done in 1999, a lavish £4 million drama with the lovely Bob Hoskins and a young Daniel Radcliffe.

The next post below will be from years ago – at the moment I currently rescuing my blog from the depths of time – first started in 2005 it disappeared in 2007/8 and thought lost in the ether, but thanks to the Wayback Machine I’m currently rebuilding it, with some editing of course.

Stay tuned for a custom theme and new content!

Having tried on someone elses specs the other month I realised how poor my eyesight had become – so after a quick sight test it emerged I wasn’t that blind, I just need specs for distance vision – driving, the cinema etc. Having tried on numerous pairs I quickly worked out that I preferred frames that had a silver colour inside the frame as this effectively made the frame disappear – this left me with 2 choices – either make a statement and look like Peter Sellers – cool, but I’m not quite ready for that! Or a lighter frame – which I’ve gone for (bluck, bluck, bluuuck!).

I’m 40 next year, so I’m old (and eccentric) enough to wear a ‘proper’ hat – and there is none better than the Fedora. A trade mark of many a film noir character, not to mention Indiana Jones, the Fedora has a wider brim than the tribly. Mine is a classic black wool felt one.

I think the best way to listen to an iPod is using shuffle – mine is a 20gb model and stores 18 days worth of songs, so by using shuffle I get to listen to songs I’d forgotten I had, especially the odd single I downloaded, or the occasional track I like while browsing GarageBand.

Is there a word to describe that moment when you hear a track you haven’t heard for ages, but can’t remember who the artist is?

I made a quick Google search and came up with ‘acoustic unregonition’ and ‘archaic sound’ – not very catchy, so I’ve come up with my own word for it – combining anamnesis with sonic to get ‘sonoamnesis‘ – you heard it here first folks!

Or should that be ‘realising what little time I have for me’

I love those pie charts and histograms you get in newspapers like the Guardian, which show you how much time or money is spent on a current news item, so I thought I’d do my own and see why I don’t have much time for this blog!

I’m a creature of habit, I love routines, mine is to get up at 6.50am, shower, get dressed, make my partner a cup of tea (won’t do anything without that!), make my daughters lunch box, feed the rabbits, feed myself, get my daughter up and dressed, drive to the train station, read my book on the train, get a coffee, read my emails, wook till 1pm, get lunch, work till 6pm, catch the train (read again), drive home, catch up with my family while making dinner, play with my daughter, get her ready for bed, watch telly and go to bed at 11.30pm.

Ok, weekends are a bit more random, but here it is expressed as a pie chart:

Strange thing is, although I love a routine I also like surprises and doing implusive things too!

Seckford Hall was the venue for my partners cousins wedding, a rather grand affair and we decided to stay a night at the reception venue – we’d booked a room called the Thatcher room and only discovered when we arrived that it was named after Margaret Thatcher who had stayed in the room in 1983 – sleeping in the same bed as her and Dennis gave me the shivers! A very un-grand room but being on the corner and having a small balcony I could see why her security might like it! The wedding reception was a delight topped off with a firework display, marred only by the really hot temperatures and no aircon in the room!

Today 4th May 2006,
at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 am,
the time and date was:

01:02:03 04.05.06

Work up to 5 inches of snow and 2foot drifts this morning – what’s up with the weather? We’ve got buds coming out on the trees and bulbs coming up thinking it’s Spring!

Anyway as it was so deep we decided to build an igloo, somthing I haven’t done since I was around 10 – built a wall, then rather than build a roof we filled in themiddle with snow and scooped out the underneath to where the walls were – great soft snow which stuck perfectly. Igloo is just big enough for my daughter to climb into.

Woke up this morning to discover we had had 3 inches of snow in the night! Hasn’t snowed like that for at least 6 years – in fact I’m sure our daughter hasn’t seen proper snow where we live (though she did enjoy a wintery New Year with my mum when she lived in Scotland). Snow was so deep that the main road out of our estate was blocked, so I took the morning off work. Gave us time to get the sledge out – an old fashioned traditional wooden one and make a snowman – great stuff, hope it stays around for the weekend!