Post op

Drain in right ear and ear drum unstuck from the bone underneath. Now the important ice lolly

Lisbon colours

Jeep jeep

Big monument and my new Panama

Fish and frogs

WTF

Happened to my jeans tonight?

Caernarfon castle

Who's the bald bloke?

On the wall

The inspiration

Bespoke furniture

Clashes with the floor but it will be hung on the wall when I have a minute.

Need a rest

It's been a long start to the year and I'm really looking forward to a break for Easter.

Happy birthday to Ben and Rose

Success

Belt test

Will he be a yellow belt later?

Jaaags

Despite not having convinced Mrs M that I deserve a new car, I am still looking for one. I had my first test drive yesterday in a Jaguar S-type R which is a 400BHP supercharged V8 monster that goes from 0-60 in under 6 seconds. I fell immediately in love with it.

Apparently the 8 km per l is not practical and we don't need another family car. All I can hear is the whining of the super charger drowning out the sensible part of me saying that it is a monumentally silly idea to buy a jag.

Anyway, there are a few more to consider yet and maybe I can manage without the supercharged version...

Poorly DK

He hasn't moved all day :-(

New hall floor

A couple of days work but the results are quite good by my standards.

Middle class holiday activities

Painting our own Royal Copenhagen plates.

Jeep jeep

Whilst I am looking at pictures on my phone. Here is the jeep that made me and the kids very happy and MKS less impressed at Christmas

Extreme tree felling

Not that extreme but funny anyway

Still alive

It's been an insane start to the year with jet lag, a new job and lots of things to do for the whole family. As usual, MK is taking up the slack on the home front (where as I have found a tailor to take up my trousers). We have also re-hired the cleaner to give us some more time to work at the weekends!

The painters arrived at 7 this morning to take over my decorating duties in the hall and I have a suspicion that MK will find someone else to lay the floor before I get around to it.

Next is to get the furniture back there so that we have less crap lying on the floor and get somehow back to normal.

New glasses

Apparently I need reading glasses now that I am over 40.

Bad blogging

I suspect that this blog is slowly dying as I don't have the time to write anything and I can't write about the things that are keeping me busy as they are 99% work related.

I may be changing job internally or externally - TBD

In the meantime, I am very happy with my new hat, a Christy's crushable fedora in dark green which is rather smart and somewhat Paddington like when paired with my duffle coat. I was happy to find that hats are still made in the UK and that I don't look (or feel) like a total tool when I am wearing it.

You may not agree, but I don't care.

Offal Day

I'm in Paris at the moment.

We arrived on Monday night and I had a big block of fois gras for supper.

Yesterday I had a day of risky food choices. First came the Plat du jour at the local restaurant for lunch, it was a burito or boudin noir - blood sausage. I opted for the boudin noir which was deliscious. In the evening Thomas and I went to a very nice little restaurant that we found on trip adviser. I started with pan fried fois gras on brioche with raspberry sauce followed by veal kidneys which were also delicious.

All in all, a good day with great food.

Sailing injury.

It's sore

Swimmers

J has been promoted to the Dolphin team in the swimming club which means that he now trains twice a week and will be taking part in competitions. He is really excited about it all and it's great to see him so enthusiastic about a sport as he didn't really seem to be into floorball or gymnastics too much recently.
He celebrated by buying a new pair of swimming trunks with a voucher that he got for his birthday but I'm not posting a picture since I remember how many hits there were on the shot of him in pink tights...

Manifesto

I enjoyed reading John Durant's book about the paleo manifesto recently and it got me thinking about a personal manifesto based on the increasingly eccentric way that I live my life. Maybe one of the points on the list should be to embrace eccentricity without disappearing up ones own orifice and being straightforward weird.

One of my new ideas is to make a big effort to take a step back from being such a consumer. As stuff gets cheaper, then the lifespan of said stuff seems to get shorter and shorter. Maybe I can get more satisfaction out of owning things and appreciating them as the weather and get a patina rather than always wanting something shiny and new. I was stuck by the thought reading a book recently when the character was quite unhappy and uncomfortable having had to buy a new hat having lost his old one.

So my first step is going to be to concentrate on only buying things that I need rather than want and concentrating on buying quality things, preferably made either locally or by companies who look after their workforce in a way that I would like to be looked after as an employee.

Example 1 - my new Chapman Bags holdall that was made in Cumbria (except I didn't need it as such...)

Quiet times

There is a LOT going on at the moment in the world of work so there isn't much going on in blog land.  Maybe more to follow...

Make a little pot of sauerkraut

Where do we start on this one?

A week of early mornings

According to my fitbit (fantastic birthday present) I slept for 4½ hours last night out of the 5½ hours I was in bed.

I got up at 3:40 because I wasn't going to sleep any more before my alarm went off. I cut my hair, showered and left the house at 4:10 to go to the airport. I'm in Holland now and I'll be home again at 11ish tonight before leaving again at 6 tomorrow morning to go to Manchester and then a final 4:00 start on Friday to come back to Holland for another workshop.

I'm shattered already and need some healthy food for the rest of the week after having to give in to the sandwiches for lunch. Damn it.

Climbing and bouldering

Yes, there is a difference. As far as I can see, when you're climbing, you go higher up so you use ropes, harnesses and the like. Bouldering is more technical and closer to the ground so you just hang on as long as you can and when you fall, it's not far and there's a very soft floor awaiting your arrival.

We all went to CPH Boulders for a spot of the latter on Saturday afternoon. It was intended as a dry run for J's birthday party, but as they won't accept kids birthday parties, it turned out to be simply a family trip. We all really enjoyed it, there were easy and hard routes and plenty of space for the kids to play between climbs (or problems as they are apparently called when you're bouldering)

CPH Boulders is in the process of moving into this new location so it was a bit of a building site, but there was a really friendly atmosphere and we'll be back again. One of the consequences of that last statement is that I just ordered a pair of climbing shoes today because I had the largest pair they rent out and found them crippling so I found a bargain pair online and they're on their way to me as I write this.

A sign of autumn

When MK gets the tea lights going at breakfast, then you know that the summer is over.

Bouldering in Copenhagen

We had a family trip to Copenhagen today to see what the place was like. Fun was had by all.

MKs fantastic running shoes

Mallorca

We had a compant trip to Palma de Mallorca last week from Thursday morning to Sunday afternoon. The sun shone, it was hot and we ate good food and drank good wine without being stretched too far in terms of work. All in all a great trip and once again, I was reminded how good the Spanish are as hosts and how well they make food and wine.

Mallorca was a very pleasant surprise for me, I am sure that there are some grotty parts of it, but what we saw was nice and rather like Provence.

View from the terrace

Big palm

Sign on the hotel terrace

UN City stairs

I am working at the UN ion Copenhagen at the moment. The building is quite nice, if not too exciting. However the staircases are fantastic and I am having quite a lot of success making my colleagues use them too.

Ready for winter and skiing

First real school day

We were sailing...

The weekend's sailing activities were more or less a success. Nothing broken and I wasn't last. I would have liked to finish higher than 45th out of 50, but I didn't and that is probably because I have hardly sailed this year for one reason or another (illness chiefly).

Not much activity

Danish championships

I'm sitting in a tent on my own whilst it rains outside. I should be out sailing in the nationals but after a short trip out in the boats this morning, we were sent in because of thunder storms and circling winds. It looks like there will be ok sailing today and tomorrow looks like being flat too. Saturday is promising very strong winds so there is a risk that we don't really get any sailing done at all.
In the plus side, it's a nice place to be.

All set for the nationals

Holiday Snaps

Concert in Durango

Mesa Verde ancient cliff dwellings

Somebodies Arch near Moab, UT

Under the Arch

Hiking in Eldorado Canyon

Climbing kids

DK on his way up