As it happens, my Dad did a similar now-and-then comparison on his vintage bus blog, showing a photo of him as a lad in the driver’s seat of an old bus, and a more recent photo of him in the same position in a similar bus.  Actually, his blog is worth a read, in a geeky sort of way.  If you like old buses.  Or reading about my Dad.

The week before Easter we went to Torquay to visit my family.  My little brother was in the annual school musical – an adaptation of Guys And Dolls – and it was superb.  That was on the Friday evening.  We left Samuel with my parents while we went to the theatre, figuring that neither audience nor cast would appreciate the addition of his vocals to the performance.  It was only the second time we’d left him with someone else while we went out, so it was at the same time exciting and worrisome.  Thankfully my Mum has had plenty of experience of looking after children, with three of her own children and a career in childcare, so all was well!  And all of that is by way of introduction really, because I didn’t take any photos that whole day.  That started the next day.

Saturday was beautiful and sunny, so I requested a trip out to Cockington, a picturesque little village just off the coast with a manor house and gardens.  Many a happy Sunday afternoon had been spent their in my youth, and it was wonderful to be able to revisit the place as a family.  The sun shone, and I took lots of photos, some of which you can take a gander at if you happen to be a friend of mine on Facebook.  The photos I’m most pleased with include a couple taken on my phone of Ellie and Peter in a tree, a gnarled old tree next to a little church (which curiously didn’t make it into my Facebook album), some daffodils, and four people pushing a pram up a hill.  That day also saw my first experience of The Drum Inn, where we all had a scrummy late lunch.  It was also the day Samuel held a bottle all by himself.  Okay, so it was a little staged and it didn’t last long, but he held it long enough for me to grab my camera and capture the moment.

Whizzing forward a week, and we get the next instalment of family fun.  After the Good Friday service at church we loaded up the car and drove to Gloucester to see Ellie’s family and friends.  It was great to see people again, and everyone was enthralled to see how quickly Samuel is growing and developing.  In fact, at one point we went for a walk round Highnam to get Samuel to sleep (which he usually does in the pram), but that plan failed when Ellie’s Dad started knocking on doors to show off his grandson.  Later in the day some of Ellie’s school friends came to visit, and they all had a cuddle.  And yes, photos were taken there too.

Then, on Sunday, we hopped in the car again and drove down to Torquay to see my parents again.  Well, actually it was more to see my little brother Peter, who is not very little at all any more, but who was being baptised that evening.  It was such a joyous occasion, and I’m so proud of Peter.  It was wonderful to hear his testimony and learn about his journey of faith to this point, and it was such a special evening.  Photos, both dry and soggy, are now on Facebook.

Monday, being a bank holiday, found us all still in Torquay, surrounded by great grandchildren, grandchildren, children, siblings, other halves, parents, grandparents and great-grandparents (depending on your perspective and family relationship).  And what better way to enjoy being together than to pile into a couple of cars and head off to Dartmoor.  My Dad led the way to Hound Tor, where we wrapped up against the wind (thankfully it wasn’t raining or particularly cold) and climbed to the peak.  The more energetic of us, and me, even did some rock clambering.  Peter and his friend were the first to the very top I think, while the old folks wusses wiser generations stayed on firmer ground and enjoyed the view.  I took a rather nice series of photos from one elevation which I later turned into a stunning panorama (courtesy of Photoshop), and that’s viewable in full resolution on Flickr if you’re interested.  Back at the bottom of the tor we enjoyed some cups of tea and an assortment of cakes before heading back home for another cup of tea and a sit down.

And if that wasn’t enough excitement, our friends Phill and Phil came to visit us Thursday to Saturday of this week.  It was lovely to see them and catch up on news and suchlike.  On Friday, it being such a beautifully sunny day again, we took the opportunity to see the great outdoors, and found ourselves at King Alfred’s Tower.  It’s a ‘folly’, which basically means the guy who commissioned it did it for a laugh.  It’s a tower in the middle of a wood.  It serves no purpose whatsoever.  It’s not a lookout, it has no rooms, just a spiral staircase up to the top.  A status symbol of the rich of yesteryear, if you will.  But besides its being utterly unnecessary, and triangular, and being a tiresome 205 steps to the top, the view is incredible.  On a good day – and that it was on Friday – you can see three counties from the top.  Admittedly, this being the middle of the Somerset countryside, there isn’t much variety in the view, most of it being farmland and woodland, but it was stunning nonetheless.  Again, photos were taken, and the resulting panoramas are also on Flickr.

I have spent some time today going through this sudden influx of photographic memories, uploading the good stuff to the web.  If you’re lucky enough to be a friend of mine on Facebook, you may already have seen the albums.  If not, you’ll find a few in my Flickr photostream.  My camera may be a few years old now, but I’m pleased with the results of my happy-snapping.

In other news, I took advantage of the continued good weather and did a little gardening.  The first job was to try to remove the tree that fell over in high(ish) winds a few weeks ago.  Technically the landlord should be getting someone to deal with it, but we’ve not heard anything so far, so I set about it with a saw myself.  I chopped three small branches off, before realising the whole tree could be just lifted out of the ground.  As far as I can tell, there are no roots.  No wonder it fell over.  So today I plucked a whole tree out of the ground and put it on the patio.  I took a photo on my phone, and that’s now on Flickr too.

For a slightly more complete description of the above title, allow me to elucidate.  This weekend started on Friday, which was a little odd, with Phil and Esther’s wedding.  That was followed by a fairly taxing drive back home, and very little sleep that night on account of my cold.  On a lighter note, I picked up my new computer on Saturday (on which I am writing this very post), and in the evening I had a house full of people to watch the final of I’d Do Anything, Doctor Who and Pushing Daisies.  All in all, quite a busy weekend, and most of that happened without my wife – Ellie was helping out at a church weekend away, so I haven’t actually seen her since Friday afternoon.

Phil and Esther’s wedding

This one has been a long time coming.  Phil and Esther got engaged way back when they were both at uni, so it was such a delight to be able to be at their wedding on Friday.  It was in Cromer, which is north Norfolk, in the big Anglican church there.  You can’t miss it, in fact.  As you come into the town, down the hill, it’s right there looming over the rest of the small seaside town, visible from pretty much everywhere.  Unsurprisingly, we didn’t get lost, and as far as I know no one else did either.

What was most amazing though was how ‘them’ the service was.  Phil wasn’t dressed up to the nines like a traditional groom, he was just wearing a suit.  His shirt wasn’t even tucked in all day.  Very him.  I think he would have felt uncomfortable if it had been any other way.  The entrance music was an odd choice, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, a very moody, tense, almost sinister piece of organ music.  Still, it seemed to work, just about, and set the tone for a totally untraditional wedding.  There wasn’t much in the way of liturgy, there were only three hymns, but it was all very relaxed and friendly, and there was even a bit of cheesy music played over the PA while they were signing the register.

The two funnies moments were both down to Phil, no surprise there.  The first was when the vicar said “Phil, will you take Esther to be your wife…” and Phil jumped in with “I will” before the vicar could finish the rest of the passage!  Hilarious.  The vicar, poor chap, couldn’t keep a straight face through that whole section.  The other funny bit was when the vicar asked Phil and Esther to hold each others’ right hands, at which point Phil held up both and looked at them to try and work out which was his right hand.  Again, typical Phil.

The reception was held at a hotel down the road, which was very pleasant.  After a photo session and the throwing of confetti we were all ushered into a conservatory where we were served cups of tea and the wedding cake.  Yes, going against all the traditions once again, we had the wedding cake before the meal.  It worked well though, giving us something to do while we waited for stuff to happen.  And the cake came in three flavours (fruit, sponge and chocolate), and was adorned with dolly mixtures.  Nice touch.

The meal was in a big tent (posher than it sounds), and was very nice.  Not overly complicated, nothing fancy or wild, just something simple to keep us happy.  Pie and chips was an interesting choice for a main course, but it seemed to go down well.  After that came the speeches, which in Phil’s case was more like stand-up comedy.  It’s been a while since I’ve heard Phil talking in public – I’d forgotten just how funny he is.

I have plenty of photos, which I shall no doubt put online in due course.  [EDIT: photos are now online, see Media page or log onto Facebook]

More miles on the clock

Unfortunately we couldn’t stay too long into the evening, as we had a long journey back to Colchester.  Having left Ellie to go off to look after someone else’s church’s creche for the weekend, I was given the task of taking PhilB (yes, another Phil) to his parents’ house in Norwich.  That added on an extra hour to our journey time, what with the detour and a short break and a cup of tea.  Under normal circumstances it wouldn’t have been a problem, but unfortunately the driving was made harder by the fact that I had a cold.

Now, I’m not one for succumbing to the so-called “man flu”.  I don’t say I’m ill unless I really am, or at least until it’s causing me problems.  I wouldn’t have said anything on Friday were it not for the fact that it was making me unusually tired, which clearly isn’t good when you’re driving any sort of distance along unfamiliar roads.  Thankfully the tea provided by Phil’s mum was much appreciated, and kept me going a little longer, and Anne-Marie (who I was also transporting back to Colchester) kept talking to me to keep me awake.  Not that you can really fall asleep in a Mini, bouncing along the road, but it helped to keep me alert.  Thankfully we all got home safely, after a 200 mile round trip, and I was in bed by about 1:30am.

No time for dreams

Unfortunately, sleep didn’t come easily that night.  With a blocked up nose I found that I couldn’t actually breath, which caused significant problems.  In order to maintain a steady air flow I was forced to breathe through my mouth instead of my nose, which for some reason doesn’t come naturally to me.  As such, the effort of keeping my mouth open kept me awake.  The moment I relaxed and was about to fall asleep my mouth would close, and then I would be wide awake again to avoid suffocation.  Not good.  If I got 2 hours sleep that night I would be impressed.

I got up at 5:30am to get a drink to whet my dried out mouth, and at 6:30 I gave up on the idea of sleep entirely and just got up.  Somehow I managed to get through the rest of the day on very little rest.

Welcoming the heavyweight

A consequence of being in Norfolk yesterday was that I wasn’t at home to take delivery of my new computer, so I had to go and pick it up from the DHL depot on Saturday morning.  I wasn’t expecting it to be anywhere near as heavy as it was, so that was my first surprise.  Other than a little cosmetic damage (it’s second hand) it looks in fine condition.  I lugged it upstairs to the study and plugged it in, and it booted into Mac OS X Leopard – lots of fun!  Actually it doesn’t look hugely different to my old Mac as far as the desktop goes.  Sure, there are some differences, like the funky dock and the semi-transparent menu bar, but on the whole it’s still the same operating system.  Just a lot more polished and significantly faster.

First impressions are good though.  The dock reflections are cool, even if they are an unnecessary bit of bling, but I expect the novelty will wear off eventually.  The stacks are pretty neat too, visually, though they don’t really provide any additional functionality that is going to change the way I work; I could easily live without that feature, but I’m not complaining now it’s there.

I did spend some time trying to get online though, but that wasn’t the fault of the computer, I just forgot the password for our wireless network.  And it’s not like I could find out what the password was by looking at the other computers, because they wouldn’t tell me – security, eh!  I remembered in the end, thankfully, so all’s well.

I’ll probably do a proper review at some point.

I’d do anything with a Doctor who brings people back to life

In the evening I had loads of people round to watch my TV, in light of Anne-Marie having family round and hence her living room having had a prior booking.  The final of I’d Do Anything was in two parts; at the end of the first the votes were counted and three were taken down to two.  Then there was a gap of a few hours before the final votes were counted and the winner declared.  I’m not saying who the winner was just in case anyone recorded it and has yet to see it for themselves, but let’s just say I was pleased with the result.  I was also pleased that the winner was the only one to pronounce the final three words of “As long as he needs me” with the right vowel sound.  All the others – without exception – sang something more akin to “As long as hay nayds may”, which always got on my nerves.  Well done to *the winner* for being able to sing a loud and clear note without having to show off her tonsils to everyone!

Also on TV that night was Doctor Who, in the library, with a packed lunch.  Suitably random.  I’m not going to bother with a full synopsis or write-up, as Anne-Marie will no doubt do a far better job than me!  Oh, and Pushing Daisies was also good.  As always.  Good clean fun.  As long as you don’t mind the dead bodies.

In conclusion

Yes… erm… I think that’s everything.  Apologies for the longevity of this post.  I won’t apologise for the length, because I’ll no doubt write equally long posts in the future at some point.  Still, if you’ve got time to read all of this then you’ve clearly not got any work to do right now, so reading a massive blog post will give you something to do, so don’t feel too guilty.  Unless of course you have actually got work to do and have just spent far longer than you should have done reading my blog, in which case… err… thanks.  I think.

It was a superb day, bathed in glorious sunshine and with not a hitch in sight. Other than that of Ian and Lucy, of course. Getting hitched, I mean. The service at St Botolph’s church in Colchester was lovely, with plenty of warmth and a sense of the usual level of excellence that tends to follow Ian around. Everything had been intricately planned and was well executed from start to finish. Ian and his two best men looked very smart, though respectfully upstaged by Lucy’s gorgeous wedding dress, and the bridesmaids’ dresses were sumptuous too.

I actually sang in the choir too, which was good fun. In the invitation to the wedding Ian and Lucy had asked whether anyone would like to sing in the service as part of the choir, and following my offer I was sent music for the two pieces we were to sing during the communion and signing of the register. They were both beautiful pieces, though both unknown to me. Thankfully my voice was in good nick that day, and despite not sight-singing anything for years I managed to get to grips with both by singing along to YouTube the day before. The acoustics in the church are fantastic, so the choir sounded superb.

After the service we went outside on the bit of green next to the church for photos, and after that piled into cars or the coach Ian and Lucy had laid on and drove to the reception, Kersey Mill, about half an hour’s drive away in Suffolk. For those who don’t know that part of the country particularly well, it’s in the middle of nowhere, so you’re unlikely to find it unless you’re lost. Still, it’s a lovely place to get lost in, lots of windy country roads and little sign of civilisation… Anyway, I digress. The reception was very smart, and we were constantly topped up with an assortment of beverages, in varying degrees of alcoholicness.

After a while stood in the foyer we were eventually ushered upstairs to the hall, where the tables and chairs had been laid out for the wedding breakfast. And yes, they did actually refer to it as the ‘wedding breakfast’, which we thought was quite fun. The food was all very posh and tasted lovely, though there was the traditional hour’s wait between courses, which was my only complain. Then again, it wasn’t the sort of meal, or occasion, that needed to be rushed through. The food was there to be savoured, not devoured, and although there wasn’t masses of food it did adequately fill a space, especially the incredibly rich chocolate pot we had for pudding, served in a shot glass.

Then came the speeches, cake, toasts, and more chit-chat, before we were encouraged downstairs while the staff rearranged the room into a dance hall for the rest of the evening. They had a live band playing for most of the evening, playing a mix of modern and more classic hits. About half way through the band took a break and Mr Phill took over on the decks; I desperately wanted to sit down and rest my tired feet, but the tunes he brought out were just so infectious I just couldn’t stop dancing! Nice one Phill. After about 25 minutes the band got back up and started playing, and Ellie and I decided it was time to call it a night.

Oh, and we had Andy C sleeping on our floor too, which I think he appreciated. He was back off to Germany this morning though, so it was just a flying visit. It was good to see people at the wedding, although most I either didn’t know at all or saw fairly regularly anyway. The only exception there was Katie, who I shared a house with for two years and haven’t been in touch with since! It was good to see her too, though we didn’t get much chance to catch up properly.

Photos of the day are now online, so check them out if you’re interested.

The white one is Pearl, and the brown one with the white diamond on her head is… well, you work it out.  Both female, by the way.  And very sweet.

And it was on this day that I went with Colchester Mini Club to the Manningtree High School Classic Vehicle Show.  Not restricted to just Minis, there were cars of all sorts in attendance, all (or at least most) shined up and tidied to be on show.  Photos of the event are in my new Picasa album.

Vintage Classics

There were the traditional classics – Wolseleys, a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow, a lovely Bentley.  Old cars with narrow wheels and wooden brakes, with about as much horse power as… well, a couple of horses really.  These cars show us something of the origins of the motor car, how form followed function and unnecessary styling was mostly left out.  The technical simplicity (relative to today’s modern engines) is punctuated by the sublime beauty of the hand-crafted design, a remnant of the sort of creative engineering that characterised the Victorian era and the industrial revolution.  A glimpse of an old Rolls Royce engine shows it to be full of shining metal, carefully and artistically arranged to produce the desired result – a six cylinder engine made up of two cylinder blocks, each cylinder having two spark plugs.  It was amazing.  Awe-inspiring.  And I’m glad technology has moved on.

Mid-classics

That brings me to the next era of classic cars – the Jaguar E-type, Ford Cortina mk1, Morris Minor, MG Midget, Ford Consul, and of course the Mini.  These cars are not all brilliant, in fact some are downright aweful, yet they reflect the state of society at that time.  Cars were no longer for the rich and famous, but were for everyone.  Your average family could have a car.  And they did.  Function had to work its way around form, engineers having to work double-time to work out how to make the car work despite the crazy ideas the designers were passing them, all striving for cars that looked stylish and modern.

Modern classics

Finally, there is another class of classic cars, and one that in many ways is controvercial by its mere existence – the modern classics.  The Ford Capri of the 80s only just makes it into this category, being somewhat old now, alongside such cars from the 90s and 00s as the Honda Civic, Ford Sierra Cosworth, Cheverolet Corvette, Ford Mustangs.  There is no doubt that some of these cars are fantastic cars, groundbreaking, historic, gorgeous, technologically astounding.  But are they really classics?  A ‘normal’ Sierra would be more likely classed as ‘old’ rather than ‘classic’, surely?  Then again, maybe it’s the Cosworth name that gives it a reputation that is more deserving of recognition.  The same could be said for various sports cars, each with a heritage and history to back up their place in history.  These are modern classics.  The Honda Civic, as good as it is, arguably isn’t a classic.  Yet.

The Americans

Also in attendance at the show were a good selection of American cars, including several Mustangs, a couple of Corvettes, some Cobras, a Hudson pickup in need of some TLC, and a totally tricked-out Dodge pickup that had hydraulic suspension so extreme that it could sit its bodywork flat on the ground.  There is no doubting the sheer power and presence of some of these cars, exuding an American atmosphere, but in some ways they do seem somewhat out of place here on our winding country roads and miniscule car parks.  I really felt sorry for the owner of one particular car, which was so unbelieveably long that it should really have needed a ‘long vehicle’ sticker on the back – imagine trying to drive that round town, let alone trying to find a parking space for it.  They are classic cars, no doubt, but they belong in their home country where there is actually room for them.

Best of show

The winner of the ‘Best of Show’ competition turned out to be a heavily modified Ford Mustang – not an old 70s ‘Bullitt’ model, but a car that couldn’t have been more than a decade old, and looked like it had been painted last week.  It was pimped to the max, with a massive ICE install, NOS, and doors that opened upwards instead of outwards.  Very nice, and I’m sure a lot of money and effort had gone into its preparation and modification.  On the other hand, I suspect there were many hard-core classic car owners who resented the fact that a modern car won overall instead of a car that actually had a few miles on the clock.

What makes a Mini?

This brings me neatly to a conversation I was having recently about what makes the Mini so special.  It is, after all, a car that wasn’t designed to be anything more than a little runabout, practical and efficient, and in that sense much the same as any other car in production.  The New Mini, developed by BMW, is a modern take on the classic, but hasn’t seen anywhere near the same level of enthusiasm as the original.  The failing of the New Mini is that its designers only took one aspect of the original’s brilliance and replicated that – there is no doubt that BMW know what they’re doing when it comes to performance and engineering precision.  They are German, after all.  But there are several critical components of the classic Mini that are absent, and those will always mark the Mini apart from the crowd.

When the Mini first hit the roads it was revolutionary.  It was the first car to have a transversely mounted engine, saving space and giving more room inside.  In fact the Mini was quite spacious relative to the other cars of the time, and still has more room in the back seats than a New Mini.  But I think what makes the Mini an enduring marvel is that it was never finished.  By that I mean the standard production car never crammed in everything you could possibly want, even at the end of its run in the late 90s.  Sure, there were many technical improvements over the years to both the engine and the interior, eventually adding such luxuries as a multi-point injection engine that didn’t suffer from the rain, a CD player built into a proper dashboard, air bags, nice interior trim.  But there were never any cup holders.  No Minis were ever fitted with air conditioning.  Or a clock.  And most didn’t even have a rev counter.  Any way you look at it, by the time you got hold of your Mini there were already a whole load of extras you really need to add to the car to make it more complete.  And that is the genius of the car’s continual success – owners can add what they like to make it more complete in their own eyes.

Compare that with the New Mini.  The New Mini has pretty much everything you need.  You’re not expected to need anything else.  It’s good as it is.  If it’s not good enough, but something else.  With a classic Mini, if it’s not quite what you want, you can modify it to suit your needs.  Add a CD player if you like.  Add a bodykit if you’re that way inclined.  Put another engine in if you really need more power.  Bolt chromed accessories on if you want to.

The mindset is also quite different to that of other car owners who modify their cars.  Most of the time if there is any modification going on it’s to add a massive stereo system or a monstrous bodykit.  It seems the only way to modify a modern car is to pimp it up, make it into a chavmobile and race people at the traffic lights.  Minis, on the other hand, can take a considerable amount of modifying without going anywhere near the boy-racer style.  And that, ultimately, is what attracts such a diverse group of people to the Mini – we can all appreciate it and make it our own, regardless of what we actually aspire to.

When I got home I took the bike for a ride, something I’ve not done in years.  My leg muscles complained almost instantly, but thankfully I managed to ignore them long enough to get a good long ride out of them.  At first I just cycled round the block, getting used to the bike and working up some confidence.  Then I started exploring some random roads in Wivenhoe that I hadn’t been down before, found a few footpaths I never knew existed, and generally enjoyed being back on a bike again.  Then I ended up taking the bike off-road for a bit, and found some fields that I didn’t know were there.  It was hard going, and I found a fair bit of mud, but I guess if nothing else it was good for the bike to know what it was in for!  After about half an hour of cycling I came back home again, thoroughly worn out but satisfied that I had had some exercise and shown the bike who was boss.

After lunch I set about taking my old bike apart, taking off the bits I wanted to keep and putting some of them on the new bike – the bike chain, bottle holder and lights went straight on, and I’ve taken the bar extensions off the old bike to maybe put on the new bike at a later date.  The old bike looks thoroughly sorry for itself now, propped up against the garden wall with a flat rear tyre and several bits now missing.  The paint that was originally red has faded in places, so it’s looking somewhat pink now.  It’ll probably still be good enough to donate to Re~Cycle, but I won’t be able to deliver it until Tuesday.

So, new bike.  Good stuff.  Hopefully now I’ll be able to get myself into a good routine and lose some unnecessary flab.   Unfortunately I’m still a little saddle-sore from yesterday’s outing, but I’m sure that’ll pass eventually…