We had a trip over to London in early December to babysit our new niece Alice who was a superstar (luckily she likes Beverly Hills 90210).
It was also the leaving do of two of my best friends - the Burges (including my God-daughter) who have now moved to Hong Kong. Great to see them and other friends and party London style again.
There was a lot of love in the room and they will be missed
Workwise I have been doing a lot more climbing and am getting better and more confident every time which is great news. One thing that does not help is when your colleagues decide to fell the tree when you are still in it.
As I drive around a lot for work I get to see some interesting vehicles on the road. There is something about the Northern Irish mentality that means they sometimes lack a bit of subtlety when it comes to pimping/personalising their rides. Things like this are quite common -
I bet she does.
The "Penetration Experts"? as a company slogan? Nice.
Keeping with cars, my little Polo reached a milestone (bdumtchich) of its own recently -
I missed 123456 by 13 miles. It is going to take a lot of driving before I get another opportunity to witness something like that again.
13 incidentally is the number of the locker they gave me at work. I guess nobody else wanted it. In a job like mine you need to do everything possible to minimise the risk of injury. Luckily I am not superstitious or else I might start to worry as I am often met with unlucky numbers (as above), have my path crossed regularly by black cats in gardens and walking under ladders is a daily occurrence. I saw the dangers of tree surgery first hand the other day when my best friend (and mentor) at work decided it would be a good idea to cut through his rope 25 feet up. It wasn't and he fell onto his shoulder upside down but thankfully nothing was broken and he should be back to work soon. Lesson learned there - the easy way as far as I am concerned. He was bloody lucky and I have chosen to be extra careful from now on.
Even prior to this it had become an ongoing joke that I am the health and safety officer of the family over here, grumbling and tutting away when the nieces and nephews decide to carry out another potentially fatal activity or when the brother in law thinks his off road vehicle is the best way to test the strength of ice on a frozen lake. Health and safety seems to be frowned upon and blatantly ignored over here and never more so than at a B&Q I went to recently -
Nobody's getting out of there alive that's for sure. Maybe it is just something about B&Q customers as it was also there where I witnessed this excellent piece of parking.
With the car park virtually empty and any number of spaces to aim for the driver of the red car managed to take up not one or two, but four spaces with her (yes it was a lady, i saw her with my own eyes) dubious parking ability.
We had a great time over the Christmas/New Year period. First Christmas as a married couple meant that I spent Christmas with the in-laws which was excellent fun. It felt like it started for me at the Christmas shoot. It was a day/night of carnage that I cannot put any pictures up of, for fear of being ostracized for embarrassing my nearest and dearest. I was in bed by 9pm in all of my clothes to give you a bit of an idea.
The run up to Christmas was a blur of drinks parties and meals. When I should have been abstaining to give myself the best chance of survival I was not and this is the first year that I woke up on Christmas morning, hungover to hell and still absolutely stuffed from the three course meal we had had the night before. I was ready to go to bed at 9 again on Christmas day but managed to hold out a little bit longer - for the sake of Santa and Jesus.
After Christmas we flew to England and spent a good few days with my folks and brother's family. Unfortunately my sister's boy was ill so we did not get to see them. He is now better thank goodness and hopefully we will see all of the Gladwins soon.
We spent New Year's Eve in Newport in Wales with one of LB's best friends LW and lots of her friends. We had a 20's style party in her dad's amazing house which had been used as the dominatrix's house in the BBC series Sherlock.
Was a great party with really nice people. I borrowed some of LW's dad's fly clothes so looked the part and the journey back to Ireland on January 1st was probably one of the worst we have ever suffered. Was good to finally be home.
So far this year we have been dog-sitting Alfie, LB's parents' dog. What he lacks in brainpower he makes up for in looks. He and Pinky are usually the best of friends.
Pinky is about a quarter of the size of him but regularly lets him know who is boss especially in the car where she always gets shotgun and he has to make do with the back seat or worse.
Pinky's training is coming on nicely, in some aspects and she likes nothing better than playing fetch.
We may still make a good retriever of her yet, although she does need to learn what her limitations are.
Finally, I am sure you have heard in the news about a bit of an escalation in the troubles over here and have probably been having sleepless nights worrying about me. There have been bomb scares, bombs going off, mindless beatings of TV extras and many more besides.
I have done a good job of avoiding these things but there was one experience where I found myself exactly where I did not want to be. I found myself right in the middle of one of the most violent sectarian divides one could imagine. Forget about the Protestant/Catholic or Arab/Jew things - this one is between the Tommies from the South and the Americanos from the North. Their blood feud has been going on for generations and neither side will rest or lay down their arms until they can categorically say, once and for all, that it is them and only them who can legitimately claim to be - Simply The Best!!
Laters....
xxx
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