Trampoline !

My mother bought Rowan this outdoor trampoline 2 1/2 years ago. It has been fantastic. Any party we have, all the young people just end up on the trampoline together - everyone is happy. Yesterday as we neared the end of 5 days without Danielle, when Rowan popped the question "What can I do now?" in a tone of voice that meant I knew I had to have some answers, it was with great relief that I opened the side door and threw her onto the trampoline - everyone happy. In the picture Rowan is jumping in front of the three birch trees that form a circle near our drive.

Trampoline ! 

Cycling to town

It was a beautiful frosty morning today. Rowan and I did our Big Garden Birdwatch survey, http://www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch/index.asp then cycled into town. Our route takes us on the Sustrans route http://www.sustrans.org.uk/default.asp?nZoom=2&map.x=-1.084235&map.y=53.96063 across Hob Moor, then over the millennium bridge http://www.vryork.com/millennium_bridge_qtvr/ and along the River Ouse into the centre of York. It is a great route with only a small section of road. Rowan did very well, and is gradually getting used to her new bike.

Chinese New Year

Rowan and I went to a Chinese Lantern making thing at Acomb library, which is part of the York celebration of Chinese New Year http://www.ncem.co.uk/chinese . I was surprised in two ways. Firstly it was packed out with enthusiastic lantern makers. Secondly it was really good. Rowan enjoyed it and made a good lantern which is now waiting to be taken to the carnival parade next wendnesday evening.

Portrait #2

Granny. Taken in 1980, this was just about my first serious photo. It was published in Photography magazine. In it my grandmother is the age my mother will be in March of this year.

Granny 

Albany

Danielle is in Albany New York for four nights at a conference. She flew over to New York from Manchester and then took the train from Penn Station. So Rowan and I are on our own. Just cooked Quorn O'Leekie pie [a variation on a Blue Peter recipe no less] which we both really liked and demolished.

Meeting Up

One of the good things about living in York, is that there are often conferences and the like, that bring friends up from all over the country, and from abroad as well. This evening I got a call at about four from Victor who was up for a staff conference. It was great to meet up, go to a bar in town [a very rare occurence for me] have a real good talk for a couple of hours, then see him onto the 7 o'clock train back to London.

Vegetable Plot 2005

So here is how the vegetable garden stands. Leeks and Cavallo Nero [Tuscan Kale] and broccoli and Spinach are all still being picked.

Potatoes and onion sets are bought and ready to be planted. First seeds in will be tomato, spinach and beetroot. Then courgettes, lettuce, french beans, peas and pumpkin. Oh and carrots too. Usually by June it is a matter of seeing if there are any more gaps to fill and winging it.

First task is to plant out the tomato seeds this week.

Exciting times ahead. Best time of the year

Holgate Windmill

On top of the hill just behind Hob Moor stands an old windmill, http://www.holgatewindmill.org/index.htm which is a local landmark. Rowan is due to go on a class trip there tomorrow. There is a plan to get the sails put back on it, which would be great. There is believed to have been an old water mill on Hob Moor, using the beck to power the wheel.

The Palmour Venn

Spurred on by using a Venn diagram exercise in training last week, we did one for the family. If it is too hard to see, then these are the words you have to fit in: It covers Rowan, Simon, and Danielle and the categories of interest are - shopping / trains / bee-keeping / history / photography / cycling / concerts. Work it out!

The Palmour Venn 

Portraits

I am intending to start up a portrait service this year, to see what the market is like. So here are some of my past portraits, a mixture of commissions. This first is of a model Karl who used the photos to get into the business.

Portrait #1 Karl 1 

The Blue Bicycle

Urbane York folk often talk about "the lack of many good restraunts". Well, seeing as how we only get out for an evening-meal-out about once a quarter, the four or five we like are plenty. Tonight we are off for Danielle's leaving meal from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation http://www.jrf.org.uk/, at the Blue Bicycle http://trial.which.co.uk/good_food_guide.php?roi=30019110 which is one of the best. It's the Directors and partners so I have to be on good behaviour.

From South Emsall to Las Vegas

Today was the last day of this block of training. So it's goodbye to the former pit villages of South Yorkshire. It has been fun. One of the participants [the escapologist as it happens] is also a professional jazz singer from Leeds. I mentioned a band I had seen when I moved to Leeds after leaving school [30 years ago this year] at the Cherry Tree Pub. Turns out it was her father's band and the singer is now her step-mother... Small world.

Anyway Rob has persuaded a number of us to go to Las Vegas for five days in April [amazingly cheep]. I am going to combine it with seeing Derwood in Yucca Valley California, which I am really looking forward to. Vegas is probably second last on my list of must-see's [ahead of Luton] but I am going to treat it as an anthropoligal project, and hope to get some good photos. And there are mountain bikes to hire...

Icebreaker

My favorite training "game" at the moment is one that I am using as an Icebreaker on the training I am running this month. You get groups of three course participants to draw on flipchart paper a Venn Diagram http://www.venndiagram.com/ and fill in their name and job in a circle each, then find things they have in common as athree and as two's. It works really well. Last week my favourites were "we share the same cobbler" and "we have both abseiled". This week included "escapologist" [unique] and "we like Gin" [triple].

Gypsy Boy - Chapel Market - Islington 

Classic Photo #15

The last in the classic series. This is pretty self explanatory. Funny how the early 1980's, when this was taken, look so drab now. Danielle and I walked down Chapel Market when we were in London for her birthday last week. Amazingly it is pretty much the same as it ever was.

Sleepover part 2

Danielle made this! All year Rowan has been pointing out cakes in a book she has, all looked impossibley difficult, especially this one. But Danielle delivered. The final word on the sleepover. The guests were due to be picked up at 9 on the Sunday morning. At about 7 the "challenging" guest asked excitedly "Are we staying for lunch?". Danielle and I had a race to get the answer out first, our volume was probably a bit too high as wel...

7th Birthday Cake 

Sleepover

Three Reasons Not To Have a Sleepover Party

1] At 5.28am your daughter informs you that everyone is awake [having got to sleep at 10.22pm] and that is "the worst birthday ever"

2] The two boy guests come to you in forlorn mood to complain that "the girls keep hitting us"

3] One particularly perky guest makes you realise what a saint your own daughter actually is.

Actually it was pretty good, and Rowan enjoyed it more that any previous parties we've had. 364 days of relief begin here.

Seven Today 

The Piano Player

Last night we went to see Nikolai Demidenko http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/artist_page.asp?name=demidenko play a load of Beethoven. It was easy to sit back and listen. It is strange that even though you can buy a CD for the cost of two lattes and a stale brownie, the reality is we would never sit down and listen to it. So live performance is the best way to experience something new. We may never hear Beethoven's Diabelli Variations again, but we could still really enjoy it.

Crazy But True

Something we learnt of first hand from our visit to the US. Teenage school children in some parts of LA are not allowed to walk to school if they have to cross the road. It is deemed too dangerous. Even if they live only a mile away. Walking is banned. So they get driven or they take the bus. So instead of sorting out the traffic, they ban the pedestrian with knock on effects on fitness / obesity / less people on the streets so less safe / etc etc

Classic Photo #14

Moscow Station - 1986. This was taken at a bustling Moscow station as I waited to board the Trans Siberian express. It was Monday lunchtime. I would be on the train until Sunday. During the journey Reagan bombed Libya, Chernobyl happened [although undisclosed for another week] and there were free leaflets on Perestoika by Gorbachov available on the train. Things have moved on since then.

Moscow Station - 1986 

Coincidence #3

Gurmeet was a disabled film producer I worked with in Islington. He always had a light blue Morris Traveller http://www.travellertimbers.co.uk/pages/tt006.html car, with its distinctive wooden window frames.

When he died a group of us went, after his funeral, for a drink in his honour at the Kings Head Theatre Pub in Upper St Islington http://www.kingsheadtheatre.org/. Gurmeet had worked there on Saturdays in the office, and it was his local. Everyone knew him there.

We sat around a table in the early evening. I saw a light blue Morris Traveller pull up and linger outside the pub. "Look at that!" I said. Melvin and Dave turned around just in time to see the car pull away. We could not see the driver.

It was hard not to feel that Gurmeet was saying goodbye.

After the Party

This photo is from the hotel window in London. Back to normal now after the excitement of the celebrations. I was working for the first day of a new assignement in south Yorkshire. It is amazing how the whole area, made up of pit villages and small towns has had to totally re-align itself following the run down of mining. It is an amazing, and unheralded, achievement. S

London 2005 

Danielle @ 40 part two

After the party, we grabbed some sleep then all set off at 6.30 on Friday morning for the trip to Granny's. Bucks Fizz and croissant consumed, we left Rowan with Granny, soon to be re-inforced by my sister Ro and neice Sarah, and got the train to London. Friday night we saw the Brandenbeg concertos at the RFH [walking distance from our hotel]. Saturday we had a great day walking the streets of our old stomping ground [lunch in Upper St etc] then a dinner party at the Commonwealth Club with 11 friends, Sunday we went back to Westminster Meeting [where we got married] then took the train back to my Mum's where she had assembled another party of relatives [aunt, uncle, cousins etc] and we had a great cake [the second of the birthday weekend] made by my cousin Gill. Then we drove home, finally getting there at 11.00pm. A great weekend.

Danielle @ 40 part one

Surprise parties are a bit of a tradition in the family. Of course they are seldom a real surprise, it has become nicely ritualised, so that the surprise is if there isn't one - but it all adds to the excitement. I arranged a surprise drop-in drinks party here for Danielle’s 40th with York friends this evening. It went really well, very busy, kids all on the trampoline at once, and our friend Em made a great cake.

For my thirtieth I came back from playing Badminton one mid-week evening, went upstairs to have a bath. Came down later to find a room full of people waiting for me – they had had to endure a silent-ish party for half an hour whilst they waited for me to emerge. No one seemed to mind too much, they preferred clean and late to sweaty and punctual.

The Trampoline gets good use 

Danielle @ 40 

New Year New Bike

For her birthday this year, we have given Rowan a new bike. She has outgrown the one we were kindly given by some friends - the saddle was way over the safety limit. The bike is a Dutch one with all the trimmings [dynamo, rack etc] and should last a long time. Rowan is busy getting used to the back peddle brake, and the bigger frame. Good fun

New Year New Bike 

Classic Photo #13

Tunnels - Interlaken - Switzerland. This was taken on the same stroll that produced the photo of the trees, so it was a productive walk. One of my favourites, the negative got lost, so digital has come to the rescue.

Tunnels - Interlaken 

The Solar System

We had a family bike ride today to Rowan corner, a bench on the Selby to York cycle track, where it is traditonal for a story to be told. The great thing about the cycle track is the scale model of the solar system http://www.solar.york.ac.uk/index.html . This is really great and you quite often here people saying they “went to Saturn with the kids at the weekend” without batting an eyelid.

Marston Moor

The Bike Group braved the winds this morning. We had a quick spin in the beautiful sunshine to Marston Moor http://www.britainexpress.com/History/battles/marston-moor.htm . I have no particular interest in battlefields, but I always find this one moving. It does not take much imagination to think how grim it must have been to be standing there looking across the mud to the other army.

New York #2 

New Year

Happy New Year. Here is another New York shot, again taken from the Empire State Building, looking down on the blocks below. Rowan is really pleased that there is a date for the next Harry Potter book to be published http://www.halfbloodprince.info/ so she is busy getting us to finish reading book 5 to her.