I think it’s an interesting reflection on the times when I receive an SMS in teenage text speak from my 65 year old mum asking me if I can sell her Nintendo DSI (whatever that is!) on Ebay for her! And no, I am not being derogatory, I think it’s great!
I’ve been meaning to update this blog for some time but not managed to get around to it. Continuing poor weather has been a significant deterrent to getting on with work on the boat, of which there seems to be plenty. Hardly a day seems to go by when we don’t find another problem and each problem we start work on becomes like a domino toppling event where every few minutes you find the issue becoming bigger and bigger. The drive leg is now off and away for a complete rebuild and we’ve pulled a huge amount of the interior out as well.
Unfortunately we found the roof vents had been leaking which has all but ruined the roof lining in the front cabin. It has also made the carpet very wet and it has slowly gone rotten. No matter, we intended to replace the carpet anyway, but unfortunately a previous owner had decided to carpet all the walls and bulk heads as well as the floor. As we have gone around pulling it down we discovered practically every fixture and fitting had gone on top of the carpet meaning everything has had to be removed to get it out. As a result the interior is now almost entirely stripped out and the mess left behind by the glued carpet is something else. Bringing the interior gel coat up to spec is likely to take most of the season but, fortunately, will not prevent the boat being usable in the meantime. She won’t look very presentable though!
In amongst the snow / rain / storms we also managed a weekend in Lincoln. What a fabulous city - all the history you could want together with some well preserved old streets and buildings, plus the odd Steep Hill or two. Our hotel even had a wonderful view of the cathedral, which isn’t surprising since it was exactly opposite! I didn’t quite get the photographic opportunities I wanted, owing to the weather in Lincoln being just as bad is in Norwich, but I was sufficiently impressed that I think we will be returning when time allows. Before that, however, we’ve just got a keep cracking on with the boat if we are to have a boating season to speak of. Pictures from Lincoln are here.
Allowing myself a little time off for the evening I went out on Saturday night with a few friends to a pub in Wroxham, The Shed. Don’t be fooled by the named, it’s actually quite posh inside, but the main attraction of this place is the 50 real ales on tap. If you’re a lager drinker, this is probably one to miss - then again, you might end up drinking something decent!
Well a little over a year has passed since my accident. This time, one year ago, I was lying in intensive care in Innsbruck (Austria) unconscious, being kept alive by a machine. One year on I have pretty much a normal life again for which I have to thank Innsbruck Hospital and the excellent surgeons, anaesthetists and nurses who cared for me there and in particular Dr Manfred Waldegger who, in his longest ever operation, managed to fix a leg which it was not always clear could be saved at all. Thanks are due also to the excellent care provided by the Norfolk & Norwich Hospital on my return from Innsbruck and ever since. I’ve put an album of scans and related items on Flickr for people to see. Click here for that.
I generally only talk about the accident if asked because I don’t want to be defined by it, but I’ve quietly enjoyed the horrified looks of people when they see the scans. But I’ve had my fun with that now and I’ve got plenty of challenges ahead of me to be getting stuck into. I’m now entering the 6th month since becoming the head of department at work and much has been achieved already but there is so much more to do. Then there’s the boat, no longer named Grenick (or indeed anything at the moment) but still sitting up on the chocks awaiting a whole load of work ahead of the spring and it’s also about time we got on with the job of updating our house, work started but never finished by the previous owners. Too much to look forward to so no time to spend looking back!
Every year two things happen in January - the last week sees us head to Austria for the annual ski trip and the last weekend before we set off sees us in London for the Boat Show at Excel. After my accident the skiing entry has been removed from the calendar but the Boat Show is still a feature.
I always go for the whole weekend and stay with my friend Rick. This year was no exception except unlike before Susan was with me the whole weekend and Rick, who had a wedding to go to, was not. A few days earlier we managed to get hold of friends Daniel & Jo from Kent who jumped on a train in Ashford and headed up to the capital to spend the day with us on the Saturday. We also managed to catch up with London based friend Gail and together the five of us spent most of the day hiding from the awful weather. Last year I had the day to myself and spent most of it doing photography (albeit only with my P&S) in glorious weather. Not so this year - instead the day was spent getting to know the insides of the various Costas and Starbucks around Charing Cross with a brief trip out to find a pizza place on the South Bank. Despite the weather and the lack of sightseeing it was a great day and it was so nice to see our friends.
Sunday, naturally, saw the weather improve dramatically as we were going to be holed in up inside the Excel Conference and Exhibition Centre in the Docklands all day. A decent start ensured we got to the show far earlier than in recent years but this year I was actually looking to get some deals and nav equipment and was more interested in trawling the isles of manufacturers, wholesalers and dealers than I was in the usual exercise of “tyre kicking”. Rick was with us, as he always is, but this year we managed to catch up with boating friends Steve & Barbara and their friends Greg & Mandy, who we know well. Consequently we got into the RYA enclosure and so avoided having to fight for tables in the various public eating areas.
Deals concluded, we managed to find a bit of time at the end to go and do some tyre kicking, avoiding the Sunseeker stand which is one of the few that loudly advertises that it will let any old Tom, Dick and Harry go climbing over its boats. Many of the exhibitors no longer let the general riff raff on board but Sunseeker still do and so they attract a lot of attention because of it. Fortunately, I know from the past that some of the others also do, they just don’t let be known so widely, so avoiding the massive queues at Sunseeker we had a quiet word with the reception at Fairline and next thing we up on a nice Fairline Phantom 48 before graduating onto a 64ft Fairline Squadron. Beautiful though they are, even if I did win the lottery, I’d never entertain the idea of owning something like this.
Pictures from London here and from the Boat Show here.
My friends Richard & Sarah Marie had travelled up from Kent for an impromptu new year with friends of theirs living in Norfolk. As a result a surprise opportunity to catch up with them arose. We were meant to go out to dinner with them in December on a visit to Kent but that was cancelled. It was also nice to catch up with Helen who they were staying with, though we got some strange looks from folks in Norwich Riverside as we tried to persuade our P&S cameras to stand on a post and take a timed group shot!
A day later with Susan preparing for a series of nightshifts I grabbed the proper camera and headed on out to Horsey Gap. The beaches at Horsey host a large quantity of grey seals who come to give birth. Friends and acquaintances alike have been posting pics of the seals on a local bulletin board and I decided it was about time I took a look myself. My 70-300VR was not taken to Scotland as I did not think I would have any use for it (and I was right) but now was its turn.
The pictures were okay but circumstances and incompetence (I hadn’t realise the VR was switched off) conspired to limit my success. Even so, it was a decent trip out, a nice bit of exercise and an opportunity to shoot something I don’t normally do.
The album can be found here.
So that was the Noughties then! It hadn’t occurred to me that it was the end of an entire decade until a friend of mine texted me with “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Decade”. And that despite having watched The Gadget Show on Five do a review of the decade and try to pick the best gadget of it (my vote was for the iPhone).
Christmas was the usual affair for me - my parents and uncle came to stay, we had Christmas and then after Christmas headed north to in-law territory and did it all again. I always enjoy the run up to Scotland and this year I was particularly looking forward to it. Following my accident I have had to re-focus a few aspects of my life and my photography is one of those things which has come under the spotlight. Many other things I cannot do presently and most I will probably never be able to do again. Photography is one of those things I genuinely enjoy, even if I am nothing special at it, and in the latter half of 2009 I relied on it to help keep me sane whilst emerging from a very difficult period of my life. With my mother-in-law’s lovely cottage in Galloway sold this would be my final visit and I relished the chance to get out and get shooting. In the event the weather was not exactly amenable but I still managed to get out and press the trigger a few times.
Although we know friends who hail from the area, most of them school friends of my wife, they (like us) all now live in England and this year most of them did not return to spend Christmas with their families. We did, however, manage to catch up with Chris, who we have not seen for several years and finally got to meet his fiancée Katrin who was very nice. It has to be said, huddled up in the Harbour Lights Cafe in Kircudbright was probably the best place to be as the temperature outside never rose above freezing during our whole stay.
Driving down on New Year’s Eve and both feeling rubbish we somehow managed to find the energy to head out to a New Year’s party being thrown by friends John & Lucy, though with Susan needing to be up at 0530hrs to head to work we left pretty much straight after midnight. And that was it, goodbye to worst year of my life (displacing the previous record holder 1996 by some margin) and hello to a fresh new year and a whole new decade. My thoughts and wishes are with my friend Kirsty for whom 2009 was an order of magnitude worse than it was even for me.
At the beginning of 2009 I foolishly asked on this blog what the new year might have in store. Well I didn’t have wait long to find out. 2010? Well we’ve a boat to fix and at least one wedding to attend but other than that it’s one day at a time! Oh, and I need some filters for my camera.
Some of my pics from Christmas in Galloway are here.