Happy New Year!

As you will know, we spent Xmas with our daughter L and her family in London
... I've put a few photos up on my Flickr site taken during our stay there,
and since ... as we all decamped to Nottingham last Tuesday. With young
children around, we decided to take down our Xmas tree down fairly quickly
as it was festooned with lots of glass baubles, so the house is looking less
Xmassy now.

We've got bigger family gatherings coming up ... one in Leicester for Mrs C's
side of the family, and one at our house (next Monday), to which we've invited
all our daughters, and their partners and children (plus one of our nieces and
her son). We'll keep the food for this fairly simple ... lots of jacket
potatoes, with various toppings and a green salad ... mmm... I'm feeling
hungry just thinking about the food.

We haven't watched much telly over Xmas, partly because most of the good
films on were ones we'd already seen, and partly to fit in with what our
guests wanted to watch (mainly news and comedy). We did re-watch part of the
Beatrix Potter movie, which has some gorgeous views of the Lake District in
it .... we didn't see any rain, however, in the part we saw (which is odd
considering it's the wettest part of England)... just glorious sunshine.

Happy New Year!

Getting ready for Xmas.

Yes, we're all ready for spending Xmas with our daughter L and her family
in London ... we're setting off early tomorrow morning, despite the snow
and ice ... but with London daytime temperatures forecast at 2 deg C. for
the next 2 days, hopefully a slow thaw should be occurring.

We'll be setting off in our car with lots of food and pressies on board ...
I should really get a Santa outfit, and shout out a few "Ho, Ho, Hos" on
the way. Mrs C has been cooking in the past few days, so we taking with us
a fish pie (made with mixed sea food), a veggie loaf and some of Mrs C's
special gravy, with the end of a bottle of red wine poured into the mix ...
de-eelicious.

We're even taking our Remoska electric oven with us, to help L out with
extra oven space ... we'll be cooking Aunt Bessie's roast potatoes in that,
on Xmas Day, for a large family gathering.

I've been fairly busy in the past few days ... playing guitar with a couple
of mates, putting yet more photos onto Flickr, preparing a talk (for my
local U3A) on how to create a simple website, and spending 2-3 hours a day
updating the U3A website (with the contents of our latest newsletter). As
I've got editorial control over this website, I've started putting some of my
my photos up on it (one per month) to brighten it up ... you might recognize
the current photo I've put on the home page.

We tend to keep our house on the cool side during the day, partly due to
Mrs C's thermostat being set rather high (much higher than mine) and also to
save some dosh (and help conserve our fossil fuels, of course). Whereas
Mrs C tends to be lightly dressed, my usual daily attire at present consists
of 2 vests, a fairly thick cotton shirt, a thicker cotton sweater (with a
high collar), a woollen jumper, and a fleecy jacket. On my lower half,
thermal leggings, undies and socks ... and in the evenings when the heating
is off, we snuggle under blankets while watching TV ... I sometimes wear a
thick cotton dressing gown in addition to all the above, and sometimes a hat
... so all I need are a white nightcap and a pair of fingerless gloves to
complete my Ebenezer Scrooge appearance.

Season's Greetings from sunny Nottingham

Happy Xmas to you all!



I spent some time this afternoon updating my Flickr site with my latest photos
(there's a link to this in the sidebar, if you'd like to see more) ...

The Sky Mirror outside the Nottingham Playhouse ...



A café scene nearby ...



The New Nottingham Train ...



New hats for sale ...



Lots of lovely food … here’s an Italian stall



JJ with teddies ...

New exercise regime for the over-50s

A good friend of mine sent me a new exercise regime, which I thought was
very kind of him, even though I do keep reasonable fit. I’m posting it just
in case any of you wish to lose a bit of weight in the next few weeks
(excluding Xmas Day of course) ...


The new regime is as follows …

Begin by standing on a comfortable surface, where you have plenty of room
at each side.

With a 5kg potato bag in each hand, extend your arms straight out from your
sides and hold them there as long as you can.

Try to reach a full minute, and then relax.

Each day you'll find that you can hold this position for just a bit longer.

After a couple of weeks, move up to 10 kg potato bags.

Then try 25 kg potato bags and then eventually try to get to where you can
lift a 50 kg potato bag in each hand and hold your arms straight for
more than a full minute. (My friend is at this level ... I'm not)


After you feel confident at that level, put a potato in each bag.

Nighty-nighty

Just a quick note ... as my alarm clock is set for 5.45am tomorrow morning,
so I can get over to the other side of the city to look after Little JJ ....
I've spent the past 5 days painting our kitchen and dining room, interspersed
with several outings to buy food and pressies, and to take some photos of
Nottm's Christmas Fair ... I'll post a few photos onto this blogsite and my
Flickr site this coming week.

It's 11.20pm now, so I'm off to bed. Night-night.

A treat for the grandchildren

Little A's other grandparents (P and I) treated her and JJ to a meal out at
McDonald's this week. Little A was initially puzzled .... she asked them:
"Where's the farm?"

There’s been more snow (as if you didn't already know)

There’s been more snow everywhere today, though here in Nottingham we only
had small amounts compared with other parts of the UK.



Mrs C and I went into town this lunchtime, with Little JJ, on the bus, to
show him the Xmas decorations in the Victoria Centre (and to do a little food
shopping). JJ was very excited to see all the moving snowmen, and Santa with
his reindeer. It's funny that we deceive our little ones into thinking there's
an overweight old man who dispenses presents to children every Xmas ... a view
propped up by big business who see it as a big marketing opportunity.

The teddies are suffering with bad hang-overs, after riotous living last night ...