FORGIVE ME INTERNET FOR I HAVE SINNED................

I am mostly guilty of the sin of SLOTH. It has been over 5 years since my last post which if I'm honest is both surprising and disappointing. I have been residing in the 'Where are they now?' file. Well I am - like what Baby got in Sir Mixalot's classic - "Back". And this time I won't be leaving it quite as long between now and the next one. Famous last words.

I have also been guilty of LUST. Three kids worth of it. In fact doing the maths I have worked out that only a month or two after my last post was when Florence was conceived. This I believe contributed greatly to my Blog-sloth as any woman who has ever been pregnant, and any man who has been with a pregnant woman knows, there are plenty of better - better is probably not the right word - plenty of "other", more important things to be doing that are not writing blogs, or generally having any fun.

This is the current state of affairs in the Bayley household with a dog and a cat thrown in for good measure - they took the photo so couldn't be in it. I am amazed that such good looking children could have been produced from my genes. Flo is Little Miss Photogenic, Baz is already throwing out rapper signals and we have already enrolled Eliza at our local Shaolin Temple. PRIDE.

ENVY and GREED often go hand in hand and for me I was envious of both the bosses of the company I was working for - bleeding their employees (that's me that is) to the bone for little monetary recompense - and all those people living in big ass houses while we were living in a granny style bungalow.

So I started a company with Tristan (the other guy from the Cregagh Glen post) called Treeple - The Tree People, and we have been going well for over four years now. We also extended the shit out of our bungalow, giving us loads more living space and comfort, and on the whole making home life more enjoyable. Thanks to the in-laws for putting us up for eight months while the building works were going on, just after Baz had been born and we were trying to get Flo out of nappies - perfect timing.

The rest of my time has mostly been spent indulging in my favourite of the sins - GLUTTONY, and plenty of it. During these five years I have probably eaten an entire one of these dexter cows from the father in law's herd.

We also decided to raise a couple of pigs - Rodney and Del Boy (Trotter) - so we would have large amounts of free-range, non-abused pork and I had big ideas about home smoking meats and making great sausages and bacon and other yummies. Sloth had something to say about that and although we didn't get all that, we did get two pigs worth of delicious pork to put in the industrial chest freezer Laura managed to get through Gumtree.

Unfortunately one day when Laura was showing the progress of the building work to her Godfather, they noticed a bad smell. Upon further investigation it became apparent that one of the builders had managed to unplug the freezer, many days before, and everything had gone rancid. Laura came back to tell us the good news and your's truly was duly dispatched to deal with the mess. We burned all of the rotten meat and other ruined foodstuffs and I spent a retch-filled hour or so cleaning out and disinfecting the freezer, which I then left in our yard to drain and dry out. The next day another of the builders got to work, saw the freezer outside and decided to assume (and we all know what to assume does to you and me) that we must want to get rid of it. So he picked it up with a digger and smashed it into a skip, thus topping off a particularly disgusting cake with a ridiculously annoying cherry and in so doing inciting the seventh and final of the cardinal sins - WRATH.

Tune in next week for the next instalment - 'How I have been a Saint instead of a Sinner'. Come to think of it, we may well be waiting even longer than we did for this one if I go ahead with that as a topic.

What's been happening over the last few months.....

.......its been quite a mild Winter so far which has been a blessing. Going out and climbing trees in heavy rain and and gale (or some days storm) force winds is one thing but mixing that with -15c temperatures is something I am happy to wait to endure.


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.

Was that a hand me down number plate from his mama do you think?

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

Autumnal activities...

....as with last year Autumn has so far been pretty nice here in NI. 


We have been going for walks with the dawg and on one of them I took a picture of the back of LB and SM, walking off ahead as usual, and in it I was amazed to see -

The Lough Ness Monster, Nessie herself, there in the water for all to see (if you look carefully). Far from home but that would explain why nobody has been able to find her in Scotland for ages. I will be doing guided tours once I can get my hands on a world War 2 amphibious landing craft and get some mugs and t-shirts printed up. 


Being a bit further North than London I have noticed the sun seeming lower in the sky and it also gets dark very early so is usually pitch black when I get home from work. Call me paranoid if you will but I think that this has given the farm animals the cover they need to plot the takeover of the human realm. It is like Charlotte's Web meets Chicken Run meets Babe Pig in the City. I was driving along our road one evening and saw this shocking and frightening sight of a chicken and cow in mid conversation. 

I had to stop the car and reverse to make sure I was not seeing things. The cow has camouflaged itself but you can just see it there to the right of the gate. They shut up as soon as I shone the light on them and waited until I had gone before they continued their scheming. It is true I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough? 


I also spent 7 days over the last two weeks on a tree climbing course, learning how to climb, rescue people from trees and how to use a chainsaw in a tree. Today at work I was able to climb into, dismantle and take down my first tree. The X marks the condemned tree - 

  
Luckily there were not any photos or video of me getting into the tree in the first place as it was neither impressive nor pretty but I got up there in the end and lopped off the branches one by one, carefully avoiding the heads of my colleagues below - 

And once it was small enough I felled it.

 
First with the chainsaw and then to finish it off with a mix of pure brawn and raw power - 

Here with his well defeated foe is the great white hunter (of trees) - 

After all of this hard walking, hard work and hardcore livestock suspicion nobody would deny me the occasional afternoon siesta would they? 

Didn't think so (thanks a lot Andreas). 


Sweet dreams everyone!!

Update time.....

.......it's been a while so thought I would write a bit about what has been going on recently.


We have been busy busy busy and seemingly away most weekends, mainly celebrating the marriages of some of our friends. LB and I have been to Kent, Northumberland and France, as well as to a few here in NI including our own. Congrats to all of our newlywed friends but thank God the wedding season has finally finished.


As well as singing hymns horrendously out of key, eating and drinking too much and dancing like an ass I have been developing my climbing skills - 

  
and my shooting skills - 

and my Viking boat racing skills. 

Myself and some mates were the core of our local pub's team - The Smugglers - and we got to the semi finals where we let the army boys beat us. They were off to Afghanistan soon and we thought we'd give them something to celebrate before they do. 


Have been hiding from the dog but she has a way of sniffing me out - 

I did a bit of stand up. 

Sitting down.


We went on a friend's folk's boats to celebrate her birthday around Lough Erne. These were the boats - 

The birthday girl (sporting her versatile changeable necklace/glasses thingy) -

  LB - 

Your hero (with a magic laser ring) - 

I have been working down south and having to leave earlier than usual. One of the people on the roads at that time of the morning seemed to be mocking me - 

We have also come into contact with one of the more unusual hazards when working in the tree surgery business. Nothing that a chainsaw cannot solve though - 

One other thing I did was go back through some of my old photos, trying to clear a bit of space on the computer, and I found an amazing photo of LB and CK and if you look really carefully you can also see a cheeky little leprechaun sneaking in on the photo - 

Got three days of non-stop torrential rain on the way. Woohoo!!

Fishy fishy fishy fish.

I have been living in Ireland for almost a year now (how time flies) and realised the other day that I had not been proper fishing yet. A couple of times I have put out a line behind a boat that the mackerel have chosen not to bite at (bastards), but I had not been fishing with a rod.


This situation needed an immediate remedy and I managed to persuade my friend FF to take me out today with his girlfriend ER (royal dont you know?).


I got to Seaforde just before 5 and we went out in a rowing boat. FF showed me the basics and we started casting away hoping to catch some fish. 

FF was using what looked like a small fish with hooks attached and I was using what is known as a spoon bait which looks like a table spoon with a three pronged hook on the end. 


We were out there for about an hour before one of us got a bite. Just my luck it was FF who got the first one. After a battle of 5 or so minutes he successfully hauled in a 10 pound pike - a veritable monster.

I felt like it would soon be my time and it was only a matter of minutes after FF had put his pike back into the lake that I got what felt like a bite, quickly followed by confirmation that I had a fish on my hook - Woohoo! Get in there my son! Heave it in.


My battle with the fish was over a lot quicker than FF's and I initially put this down to my superior strength. After only a minute I had landed my fish onto the boat and it soon became apparent that my muscle power had nothing to do with it. FF's fish had definitely been trying to eat his fish-like bait. My fish had other ideas and must instead have been trying to make sweet fish love with my spoon-like one.

We're definitely not gonna need a bigger boat!!

Easily excitable Karl?

.....I was over in England last weekend for my sister's son Jacob's christening which was an absolute blast - great to see lots of friends and family over an action packed weekend.


As I was going straight from work on Friday I had to do one of the most uninspiring activities known to man - choosing between various options for airport parking.


At Belfast International airport you have a lot of choice. There is Cosmo, BCP, Killead Airlodge, Mccausland and Karl to name but a few.


In the end I went with Mccausland as I could book online and it is very close so you do not have to wait very long at all however on the way to the airport I drove past a sign for the Karl carpark that caught my eye. 

    

I was very happy that I had not chosen this option. There was something about it that I found a bit depressing for some reason. 

It was on the way back home on Sunday evening that I went past Karl again, from the other side this time, and I realised that actually Karl is the most exciting of all the airport carparks and the one I will be using from now on. 

Bar Bar Barber, have you any skills?

....I went to the barbers this week.

Called Shear Madness it is one of the many in Ireland where the name seems to be more important than the standard of cutting (another notable being "Curl up and Dye".


I asked them for a bit of a trim and thought I was happy with the results until I got home and had a better look which was when I realised that she had left me with a patch of longer hair at the back.

The plan was to get LB to cut it down to the length of the rest of the hair until I realised that instead of being a bit scatty and also a bit unprofessional, the barber was actually doing me a big favour and starting me off with the foundations for a comb-over. I will now be cultivating this patch for my hair-swirl of the future. Hopefully Northern Ireland will become wind free or I may be in trouble.