Suits and birthdays

We have had quite a weekend of it. Uncle Christopher is getting married in June so yesterday was suit fitting time for me, him and the boy. Lukey has never worn anything smart in little life (much like his dad, really), so it was a bit of shock to see him dressed like a man, only in miniature. I guess it was probably as much of a shock for him to see me dressed smart, like. He did look rather good though. And he found a hat which kept him entertained for some time.

Woke up this morning to an interesting sight. Caryn says she heard a dull thud in the night and thought it was one of the children falling out of bed. Couldn't find one on the floor so gave up and came back to bed.

We think, Watson, that it just fell over - the evidence? No rowdy noise before or after, no sign of any other damage on our street, no reports of silent wall knocking down gangs roaming the streets at night.

Next door reckon the previous owners rebuild that part of the wall which would explain its sudden falling over - arch DIY bodgers of the highest order... a tale for another time, or perhaps not.

Lastly, with my brother in town for the weekend, the whole family managed to make it out for Sunday lunch. Caryn (pictured, looking very lovely don't you think?) and my dad (he's not 65, no, no, no. Really he isn't. And he absolutely doesn't have a free bus pass. Nope.) had their birthday's last week so it was a good excuse.

For some reason, Sunday lunch seems to be the hardest meal to get right when eaten out (maybe we're just eating in the wrong places), but this was surprisingly good. Little pub just down the road - if anyone's planning on coming to Norfolk, let us know and we'll book a table. Good play bit outside for the kids too. Smashing.

All in all one of those weekends that you need another weekend to recover from. Gosh, is that the time. Bed?

Sunshine - flipping heck!

So, the rare night out was a big success thanks for asking Rob. Sunshine was amazing - right from the opening sequence you know you're going to like it. It looks absolutely fantastic and we loved the deep spaceship rumble that seems to be the constant soundtrack. Don't wait for it to come to DVD, it won't be the same.

Best of all though, we turned down paying extra for the posh seats and sat in the blooming things anyway - and didn't get caught. I know how to treat my lady right don't I? £2.80 spent on pick and mix too.

Quack Quack

Caryn's birthday today so we're off for a rare night out tonight at the pictures (think we're going to see Sunshine) with grandma kindly picking up the slack at Ebenezer Terrace.

She was at college all day (the wife, not grandma) so it was business as usual. Me and Luke popped out this morning to get some bread and feed the ducks with the old bread.

There's usually loads of ducks down by the river, but there was little sign today. Spring has really sprung though, we saw sheep and lambs, rats and baby rats (sure they're called something...) and we found this mum with her brood, we think there were 16 ducklings but it was quite hard to count.

Right then, off out now. Early showing as we might get dizzy if we're out when it gets dark.

900 years old is quite old

This weekend saw some birthday celebrations for Wymondham Abbey which has 900 years on the clock this year. On Saturday they held a fete as only small market towns can and it looked like the whole of the town turned out.

Despite being in our third year of living here, I've never been into the Abbey, but it's quite a treat. Above is the alter screen, tester and rood which is quite breath-taking. It's a recent addition in the grand scheme of things, completed in 1934.

Quick history if anyone's interested... founded as a priory in 1107 by William D'Albini, Chief Butler to King Henry I, who insisted the resident Benedictine monks let it be used as the local parish church, but foolishly forgot to say who could use which bits. Caused a ding dong that got so bad it had to be resolved in 1249 by the Pope.

Fat lot of good that did, because 162 years later, King Henry IV stepped in and dispatched the Archbishop of Canterbury to knock some heads together. Which he did in 1411, or eleven minutes past two as we know it today.

The Grand Designs team visited in 15th century to see how Sir John Clifton, of Buckenham Castle (near Banham Zoo) would get on with his West Tower project and whether his budget would run to a hammer-beam roof in the Nave with exquisite angel carvings. It did.

It became an Abbey in 1448 and was doing okay until Henry VIII got into a spot swapping Catherine of Aragon for Anne Boley. In 1529 (I think), he set up his own religion (CofE), stuck two fingers up at the Pope, and got married again... but not before shutting down all the catholic churches.

Much of the Abbey was demolished during this period including large sections funded by the townsfolk. Wealthy local tradesman, Robert Kett, took exception to, among other things, the King's heavy-handedness and lead his famous (well, round these parts at least) rebellion against social change in 1549 only to find himself hanging by neck of Norwich Castle by four o'clock. Probably.

The next 450 years or so was pretty quite in comparison. How could they not be?



Luke, hopefully, learned a very valuable lesson today. He had a bag of sweets and was happily muching away on his own when his little pal Daphne wandered up, feigned friendship (much to the excitement of her mum who thought it was genuine show of affection), scored a sweet and cleared off. All of life's relationships in one innocent moment. I hope he was paying attention.

Having your cake... and letting everyone else have some too

With Lukey's birthday being in the Easter holiday he didn't get to make cakes and hand them out to his nursery pals. So him and his mum decided to make a bunch of rice crispy cakes so he could hand them out today, his first day back. And very excited about it all he was too.

He was very good at handing them out - as each child left he handed over one of his cakes - no doubt in his mind crossing another that he couldn't eat himself off the list. I was surprised that he could wait until everyone had left before he had one himself. Full of surprises is our little boy.

BTW... The wife arrived home from college today looking rather sheepish. Turns out although she drove in this morning, she came home on the bus and forgot the car. We often joked when she was pregnant with Olive that we'd have to tie her to the pushchair in case she left her on the tube one day. It's a worry sometimes.

You Won eBay Item

I have been trying for an age to bag one of these handsome pieces of machinery on eBay and finally, finally, this morning I managed it. I've become very good with my bidding, I decide how much I'll pay and stick to it - no more panicing and paying hectically over the odds for me. Oh no. I am older and wiser. Being skint helps too.

So anyway, I am feeling very pleased with myself because this Topfield TF5800PVR with the 160GB hard drive, in silver, sells new for £226.96. Can't find it any cheaper than that. So you figure, used, you'd pay up to £160. Or the utterly butterly bargain price of £143.89. Ha-ha!

Mostly they go for anything in excess of £180 although recently a couple have gone for around the £150 mark. Anyone else fancies one, there's another finishing at 9pm-ish tonight and it's currently at £128.

I do love eBay. Right, off to bid on a rear, driver's side fog lamp cover for a Mitsubishi Carisma.

New car, pile of crisps, fizzy drink... must be my birthday

It's Luke's third birthday and it's been a very fine day indeed, or as Lukey sighed at bedtime like an old man, "It's been a busy day". We had trouble buying him something, he's happy choosing himself a £1 car so after visiting Toys R Us (twice), Woolworths and Halfords and collecting three new £1 cars along the way, in the end we got him a Hot Wheels track, which if you're a boy is about as good as it gets.

We had a spot of lunch which for Luke was just a huge bowl of crisps and fizzy apple drink stuff... for tea his other favourite - fish and chips. If he could live on tea, crisps and fish and chips... hang on, that's what I used to live on, but I balanced it out with beer and fags.



I really like this picture of my lovely family having birthday lunch in the outside. They are lovely, mostly.

Life On Mars - all done then

It's been a full 30 minutes since the last-ever 'Life On Mars' finished. How was it for you? Are we happy with that? I think I am. It was as good an hour of TV as I've seen for some time, but it's taking some time to sink in. And that includes what on earth I'm going to do at 9pm, Tuesdays.

Incidentally, the finale shoot-out involved the bloke off of the second best programme set in Manchester, 'Shameless', who incidentally was grassed up by the one with Tourettes from 'Shameless', names escape me. Nice touch.

Thankfully, the BBC have a spin-off, 'Ashes To Ashes', set in 1981 and starring DCI Gene Hunt as well as his sidekicks DS Ray Carling and DC Chris Skelton, but no John Simm. The series sees them transfered to the Met and is, although this sounds like a red herring, more 'Miami Vice' than 'The Sweeney'. Make of that what you will. It's due to start filming in the summer and will hit the box in 2008.

Tomorrow's Manchester Evening News site is worth keeping an eye on tomorrow because they're going 'Life On Mars' bonkers, especially Ian Wylie's blog. Poor love is getting way over-excited. And who can blame him?

I'll probably delete this...

I was just having a rummage around and found Andrew Collins' rather fine blog. His incredulity at The Apprentice made me chuckle, as does much of what he writes when indeed he does write these days.

In among some fine TV and music writing, I found the following post from March 4 which seems to sum up the sort of stuff that's filling my head as I teeter on the brink of 40.

Not that Mr Collins should be having wobbles, he's certainly filled his boots over the years. But it is quite reassuring to know that having trodden a similar path early doors it's normal to wonder what the heck the next bit of life has in store.

"Today I am the age that is also the meaning of life. This is handy. Thanks to Darren in Manchester for telling me that the popular song Happy Birthday To You was first published on March 4, 1924. This is also handy. I think it may be time for me to do or produce something profound. Having recently finished organising my working life (1988-2006) into a book for publication in May, I am more than aware of what we must call my achievements. I also know that I still haven't found what I'm looking for, jobwise. I've done quite a few things in the world of the media, most of which have been superceded by other things. At the moment I am still a DJ, albeit less of one than I was two years ago. I am, however, more of a scriptwriter than I was two years ago. The plates of my indecision constantly shift. I am an author, but not of anything made-up. I'd like to rectify that at some point in the near future. I'm not much of a journalist any more, even though that was my apprenticeship. I write occasional book reviews for the Times and at least one monthly column for Word, plus other bits and pieces when I have the time. I have just finished reading a beautifully written piece by David Denby in the New Yorker about the move from the fringes of filmmaking to the mainstream of fractured narrative. It would be lovely to write something as beautiful as pretty much anything in the New Yorker. It would also be nice to write something with a fractured narrative."

As for me, the next bit might well be starting with the launch of a brand-new, groundbreaking online-only publication - outrageous salary demands pending, natch... outrageous because of how cheap I've become in order to do some exciting work. Fingers crossed eh?

P.S. It's not the relaunch of Melody Maker as an e-zine, sadly. I did give it a punt - but there's no way IPC would go for it as it'd involve banging their own nails into the NME coffin and actually challenging NME.COM's dominance which is a bit like punching yourself in the head, thinking how much it hurts and then doing it again only harder. That said they have certainly done madder things in the past.

Where to start?

Where does time go? I've not posted since last Wednesday! I find it hard to fathom sometimes. We have been extremely busy though - I finished off recycling the decking and it's made a big and quite wonderful difference to the garden.

It's a great place to be, especially as we can actually hang the hammock Jago brought back from Thailand for us about a million years ago. Despite living in four houses since we left London not one has provided us with suitable place for a hammock. Honestly.

We also cooked outside on the fire three days in a row - a brai as it is called in South African world. I have of course studied under a charcoal grandmaster - the father-in-law - who I'm sure would be proud that I lit a fire to cook six sausages. Don't really need much of an excuse to cook sausages outside slugging on a cold beer.

We've done the obligatory outing to Wroxham Barns for the fun fair and the fantastic junior farm to feed the lambs and the donkey, and the ponies, and the cow and sheep and when the food is finished you feed the paper bag to the goat. Hilarious. You kind of have to be there.

My favourites are the huge pigs, once of which is 'visiting her boyfriend' in the hope she'll have piglets in the summer. We will be there like a shot when they're born - piglets are much cuter than lambs... which reminds me that on Saturday we had both sausages and lamb chops on the brai. Hm.

Safe and sound

So everyone got back from Dublin safely last night. It was properly nice having time to myself, but much nicer to have all my babies back home. They were stars on the flight apparently, here's my two favourite pictures from the half a million or so Caryn took in four short days.

The picture of Lukey is encouraging. A pose I found myself in at various points last century. And how beautiful is our little girl. Very. But we would say that wouldn't we... even if she wasn't... which she isn't.

Bit like a camper van - no wheels, not £4,000

I do wonder how many people actually read this stuff aside from Ben, Rob and my little sis. Hello all three of you. I know the wife, who does live here normally, likes to have a look to see what's going on in my head, but has she looked while she's away? Let's see.

I saw this ad in the paper the other day and thought why not? I'd tucked £100 away which I was hoping to spend on a Topfield PVR5800 (sigh), but now that is going to have to wait because we're going camping... oh yes. Oh. Yes.

We're always going on about buying a camper, but face it, it's never going to happen is it? It's one of those things that seems like a great idea. The reality is that a standard rusting bucket is going cost in excess of £4,000, and a slightly rusting bucket about £6,000.

So I've bought a tent for £100. It's the new rock and roll. It is. And it's almost the same thing as a camper van except we've got a car to get us to wherever we want to go. And when we're there we can sleep in the outside. And I've even got a kettle. A kettle.

Now, no more talk of camper vans.

Wifey, take a look at this...

A picture that probably won't mean anything to anyone other the wife, but she's not here to see it and would probably like to. See, what am I doing while left alone? Drinking myself insensible and undertaking general misbehavior? Erm, nope.

I am dismantling decking and moving down the garden so we can use the hard standing underneath to park the car on and the decking to sit on in the summer.

I wish I was handier with this sort of stuff than I am. Trying work out how on earth I do DIY stuff makes my head hurt, as a result it's always a slooooooow process. The only way I could figure that the decking could be moved was by dismantling it. Not as easy as you'd think, natch.

Out came the screws, one at a time - there were almost 300 of them, many so rusted that I had to set to 'em with my new favourite tool - the crowbar... and now all I've got to do rebuild the deck at the other end of the garden.

I am also ahead of myself for once and bought some new non-rusting screws. Organised or what?