What we're watching or listening to ...

Mrs C and I have been listening to a bit more radio in the evenings,
owing to the fact that there’s not much on the TV at the moment that
we like watching. Having said that, we do enjoy watching programmes
like “Downton Abbey” and “DCI Banks”, “Mock The Week”, “Outnumbered”
and “The Great British Bake-Off”, but with the huge asset of watching
TV retrospectively, with Virgin Media’s “catch-up” service, we can
now watch most of the stuff we like in 3-4 evenings. Programmes like
Simon Cowell’s “X Factor” usually feature some brilliant new singing
talents in each episode, and with TV “catch-up” we can watch it in
about 10-15 minutes … missing all the adverts which is another huge
plus.

Mrs C introduced me to the comedian Andrew Lawrence, who appearing in
series of four shows currently on BBC Radio 4 … very funny. Here’s a
link to his most recent show, which UK listeners should be able to
hear for the next few days only.

Our old video machine is still working, which we use to record the
occasional film that we missed when it premiered, or one of the
golden oldies they broadcast from time to time.

Mrs C is having a huge cull of all our old films on video … I must
have put about 50 of them into a British Heart Foundation charity
bin (that’s close by Wimbledon Theatre) this weekend … old videos
like “South Pacific” and the BBC TV series of “Pride & Prejudice”
featuring Colin Firth as Mr Darcy. Oh, what a classic, but we’d never
have watched it again.

I kept a few of my old instructional / inspirational guitar videos
for future use … featuring folk like BB King, Gary Moore, and
Sheryl Crow … I couldn’t throw them out, but when will I get round
to watching them again … when I could watch them or other star
performers on YouTube, if I so wished?

My friend Brian.

Here's a photo of my friend, Brian, which I took in one of Nottingham's
bookshops. We met up for a coffee and a chat ... something us oldies can
do with all the spare time we've got, when we're not doing Granddad
duties and odd jobs around the house.
What a friendly face he's got, don't you think? You can see the
laughter lines on his face.

I'm very pleased with this photo, as it shows that I've mastered the
knack of locking the camera's auto-focus on Brian's face, and then
re-composing the shot, to make his face off-centre. Well it's quite
easy when you know how, like learning how to change gear while
driving a car, or learning how to sew someone up on the operating
table. OMG, I'm rambling on again.

More pics of our grandchildren

Here are two photos of our grandchildren, JJ and A., taken yesterday.
A. started school for the first time last week, and is really enjoying
it.

Here's my news, folks .....

Well as you will all know, today marked the 10th anniversary of that
terrible day in US history, 9/11. On the day in question, Mrs C and I
were on holiday in Scarborough, staying in a lovely apartment
overlooking the North Bay. We’d taken my mum with us, who was rather
frail and who was prone to falling over. We watched the bad news …
there was continuous news coverage of what was happening … it was so
appalling that we had to switch off the TV after an hour or so.

The next day, 9/12, my mum tripped over on a door step smashing her
Rt hip and shoulder. She ended up in hospital for several weeks
(following a hip replacement). 9/12 was the start of a long downward
spiral in her health, ending in her death just over a year later.

So it was bad news all round.

Other news …

I've been keeping busy with website stuff and taking more photos, plus
playing guitar with my mates.

Mrs C has been badly hit by an out-of-season spring-cleaning bug, and
has been roping me in to sort through several heaps of junk (mainly my
stuff) before binning it all. All very distracting!

Two of our granddaughters, A & M, have just started school (after
attending nurseries part-time) ... big changes for them, and changes
for us too … we’ve been enlisted in helping out with the school runs
walks and after-school care 1-2 times a week. A’s little brother JJ is
starting nursery part-time, so we won’t be asked to do full days
looking after the kids, except in the school holidays …. why do
teachers have to take holidays?

I’m pleased to say that all the kids are settling in well, into their
schools and nurseries.

We had A and JJ and their mum round at our house today, partly because
Daddy K was away on business … due back from Amsterdam early this
evening. So all that went well, though Mrs C and I weren’t feeling
our best because of insomnia last night … Mrs C woke up at 2.00am
and I woke at 4.00am … I’m still awake at this late hour (11.30pm),
though I’m feeling very tired.

I’m in the process of re-vamping our Sony Vista laptop, as various
things are wrong with it. In the past 2 weeks I’ve been sorting
through loads of photos and documents on the laptop, & today I’ve
managed to do a full back-up onto an external hard drive … my first
go at using one of these. I’ve bought from Amazon a Buffalo 1TB
MiniStation (which is 3.0/2.0 USB capable), and spent some time
today setting it up and then backing up everything onto it …
about 24GB of stuff. It took me a while to work out how to access
all the info on the drive … but now it all looks very good.

Next job: to re-install Windows Vista, if I can, using some recovery
discs I made a few years ago. If these don’t work, I plan to buy the
same from Sony. Oh what fun!