Today’s post to the soon to be year-old blog known as “Life and Times” marks the end of 2006, and the beginning of 2007. We have been staying with my parents in Cornwall for the New Year - just over 3 hours away as I write this - and it’s been a fantastic break so far.

Today was special for another reason. Today I met a wonderful friend and her family from “the internet” that (by complete coincidence) live about 10 miles from my parents - she write’s a blog called “Gwelva Kernewek“, and lives with her family who help run a farm in Cornwall. We all got on fantastically well, with a strange sense that we had always known each other.

This is perhaps the gift of the internet for our generation - the ability to bring people together who would otherwise never have met. It’s weird - meeting people you have known online - the whole “getting to know you” thing is removed. After fighting to get a word in edgways with the six way conversation over the dinner table, I found myself sat on the living room floor with two wonderful little girls, finding out exactly how much I didn’t know about Doctor Who, and the names of each pony in the My Little Pony wagon train.

Wendy has always been right - children are drawn to me, and I to them.

So there you go - it’s been a “different” year, but a very good one. Myself and Wendy have both made huge decisions in terms of our future this year an acted upon them in terms of the adoption. We have also made the most wonderful new friends (you know who you are), and found support and help from the most unlikely people.

There have been bad times during the year (without the bad, there could be no good), but we both think they have made us stronger, wiser and (we hope) more able to cope with the hurdles that lie just down the road.

I guess the one thing I will take from this year is the friendships. You know who you are - both old friends and new, in England, America and elsewhere. Here’s to you - you mean the world to us.

We arrived in Talland at about 5pm last night, after a day spent on the road battling driving rain and howling winds. It was great to finally arrive, sit in front of a roaring fire with my parents, and have dinner.

Today is rapidly dissappearing after getting up late, and we are deliberately trying to “slow down” to the cornish way of life. Time doesn’t seem to be in such a rush in Cornwall - people don’t rush, or get angry if things don’t happen instantly. There is a real sense that nothing is really that important - unlike London, where everybody seems to be selfish, self centred and self absorbed.

After all getting up late this morning, bacon is sizzling in the kitchen, the kettle is whistling on the Arga, and I’ve just fetched a new bucket of coal in. We have no real plans for the day, other than relaxing, eating, drinking, and maybe some board games.

Perfect.

We’ll be leaving the house mid-morning tomorrow, firstly to Heathrow to pick up family from San Francisco, and then heading west across southern England to my parents in Cornwall for New Year.

I was going to look for some poetry about “going home” to reflect visiting my parents, but all I can find on Google is the kind of rubbish god bothering bilge mentioned in Hitchhikers that competes with Vogon poetry as an instrument of torture (although I managed to leave the page before gnawing my own arm off).

Instead of that, here’s a poem by John Betjeman about a place not too far from my parent’s house…

Trebetherick
by John Betjeman

We used to picnic where the thrift
Grew deep and tufted to the edge;
We saw the yellow foam flakes drift
In trembling sponges on the ledge
Below us, till the wind would lift
Them up the cliff and o’er the hedge.
Sand in the sandwiches, wasps in the tea,
Sun on our bathing dresses heavy with the wet,
Squelch of the bladder-wrack waiting for the sea,
Fleas around the tamarisk, an early cigarette.

From where the coastguard houses stood
One used to see below the hill,
The lichened branches of a wood
In summer silver cool and still;
And there the Shade of Evil could
Stretch out at us from Shilla Mill.
Thick with sloe and blackberry, uneven in the light,
Lonely round the hedge, the heavy meadow was remote,
The oldest part of Cornwall was the wood as black as night,
And the pheasant and the rabbit lay torn open at the throat.

But when a storm was at its height,
And feathery slate was black in rain,
And tamarisks were hung with light
And golden sand was brown again,
Spring tide and blizzard would unite
And sea come flooding up the lane.
Waves full of treasure then were roaring up the beach,
Ropes round our mackintoshes, waders warm and dry,
We waited for the wreckage to come swirling into reach,
Ralph, Vasey, Alistair, Biddy, John and I.

Then roller into roller curled
And thundered down the rocky bay,
And we were in a water world
Of rain and blizzard, sea and spray,
And one against the other hurled
We struggled round to Greenaway.
Blesséd be St Enodoc, blesséd be the wave,
Blesséd be the springy turf, we pray, pray to thee,
Ask for our children all happy days you gave
To Ralph, Vasey, Alistair, Biddy, John and me.

Has anybody seen Wendy? I used to be married to this lady who knitted things, and wrote in her knitting blog. Now I live with this person who enthusiastically recounts stories of dressing Chewbacca up as a Storm Trooper, and how she “got Lando Calrissian to kiss Princess Leia”, and other such tales of daring do.

It’s all my fault. Curse my metal body (yes, the jokes have gone way below the geek level of most people). I bought Lego Star Wars 2 with the replacement Playstation last weekend. All I hear from the lounge is lazer battles, explosions, and the swoosh of lightsabers (along with the obligatory symphony orchestra belting out the Star Wars theme music).

If I had a time machine, I would go and grab George Lucas from the late 1970’s, drag him to my house this evening, and shout “DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’VE DONE!” (in a slightly mad Jim Carey manner).

I haven’t been drinking cider, honest.

Half way through reading a blog yesterday afternoon, a small red cross appeared in the Windows system tray (yes, I use a desktop computer with Microsoft Windows on it - bite me).

Okay - either Windows, or the router is on the fritz. Hmmm… disconnect and reconnect doesn’t work. Have I kicked a plug out? Nope. Oh shit - all the lights are out on the router.

(It’s worth pointing out to those who do not know, that the “router” is the piece of network hardware that goes between the cable coming into your house, and your computer. It makes the magic that is the internet happen.)

I wiggled wires. I pulled plugs out and pushed them back in. I hit the router several times. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

Silence descended.

Slightly shellshocked, I walked into the lounge, where Wendy was playing Lego Starwars 2 on the Playstation (quite possibly the funniest computer game ever created). “The internet connection is dead”. “What do you mean?”. “We have no internet connection - the router is dead.”…. “Hey - look at this bit - you can get Chewbacca to wear a stormtrooper helmet, only it doesn’t fit (lots of giggling)”

I walked back into the kitchen, and wondered what to do with myself. One moment I had been running Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, and Windows Live Messenger. I had been reading blogs, chatting with friends, reading the news, listening to podcasts and watching movies. Suddenly it was all gone.

Imagine standing in the middle of a crowd of all your friends, where you are afloat on the sea of the general hubbub. Then imagine a plug is pulled from somewhere and they are all gone. Everybody you know. Everything you can see. Everything you can hear. You are disconnected from everything.

And so, late yesterday afternoon I became disconnected from the internet. Like a lost sheep I wandered the rooms of the house looking for things to do. Suddenly television seemed like a viable option - even computer games. But they were not interactive. They were not real people. The severance of the internet from our house exposed just how much of a social animal the ‘net has caused me to become. I was lost.

As much as you may laugh (as do I) at the description of my predicament, it was a very real sense of being “cut off” from everybody I know, and everything I am interested in. Going back to “normality” for most people seemed like a strange “second choice”. Watching television that is chosen for you by the channel. Listening to radio where your only choice is to listen or not. Reading a book where you have no recourse for comment.

I survived.

After returning from work today (yes, I worked on the day after boxing day), we went to PC World and became the architects of our own resurrection to the internet. We bought a new router - and a mighty fine one it is too (check out the shiny picture to the side of this entry). It zips along at roughly double the speed the old one used to, so no more waiting for podcasts and videos to buffer anymore…

Anyway - I’ve prattled on enough.

Feel free to email me, message me, comment, or whatever. It’s great to be back. I’m off to listen to some wonderful albums my friend in Oklahoma sent me before Christmas, and to drink wine, eat rubbish, and get fat.

I will of course be back in front of this computer almost immediately to revel in my re-found geekiness.

Oh - by the way - if you didn’t get the joke from the title of this Blog entry, go watch “The Abyss”.

For Christmas this year I received the board game “Thud” from Wendy’s parents. I played Wendy last night (and got badly defeated), but still enjoyed it immensely. It’s probably difficult to describe the origins of the game myself, so I will rely on the words of Terry Pratchett…

In short, the clever dwarf who invented the game was asked by his king to name his reward. The answer was that he wanted his board filled with gold: One small gold piece on the first square, two pieces on the second, four pieces on the third, etc. Needless to say this is more than all the gold of the Disc (the world, in Discworld is “the Disc”) combined. The king then got angry and threatened to kill the dwarf who was ‘too drhg’hgin clever by half’. The inventor then hastily changed his reward to ‘as much gold as he could carry’, whereupon the king agreed and simply broke one of his arms.

The basic idea is that one side has lots of drawves, and the other side has trolls - and you try to knock the crap out of each other. There is a huge twist - you must play two games (once as dwarves and once as trolls), and aggregate the scores. I have to admit Wendy defeated me in both games we played last night - but this is typical for me.

For some reason it takes me a long time to learn new things, but I am pretty dogmatic. I will usually persevere, and end up fairing better than the person who starts well but doesn’t get much better at something.

Anyway - it’s quite expensive to buy, but if you see a box of “Thud” in a store, think very seriously about buying it. It’s great fun.

As Christmas’s go, this one was pretty good (apart from one thing that I will get to in a minute).

We got up at about 8, had breakfast, prepared vegetables, and put dinner on - then opened the mountain of presents sitting in the corner of the lounge. It was great to see Wendy open her presents from me - lots of small things this year instead of one or two big things; definitely more fun to give and receive. I got all sorts of cool stuff - books, DVDs, geeky t-shirts, and a wonderful board game called “Thud” that I have lost spectacularly at so far.

The one thing that has marred the day so far was Wendy’s brother deciding he’d had enough in the evening, and going home. I can understand that he was probably bored “doing the family thing”, but it did seem incredibly selfish (and caused a few tears).

Anyway. I’m not going to let it get to me too - there are far more important things to worry about. Wendy to be helped, the house to be kept (sort of) tidy, books to be read, DVDs to be watched, new clothes to be worn, friends to thank for presents, food to be eaten, drink to be drunk, and hangovers to be had…

Merry Christmas to you and yours. Here’s hoping that your day went off peacefully and uneventfully. I promise to write a proper blog entry when I have more time.

(p.s. Wendy bought me “The God Delusion” - it’s fantastic)

We invited friends and neighbors round last night for drinks and mince pies, and it finally feels like Christmas has arrived.

It’s rapidly turning into a tradition - on the last day of work before Christmas, we invite all our friends round (not family) for drinks and finger food. We put the Christmas music on, and spend the last evening before everything goes mad trying to relax. We also did a lucky dip sack full presents for our friends to choose from - well, three sacks really - one for children, one for the women, and one for the men. We’ve done that for several years too, and it’s always great to see just how pleased people are with the simplest things (the star last night was our Australian friend who got a pocket pen knife with a torch on it - he was SO excited about it…).

The one casualty of the evening was my old Playstation 2 - while firing it up for some of the children to play on in the front room, it refused to read any disks. I took an executive decision this morning and bought a new Playstation 2. The upside is that they now cost a third of what they did when I bought the old one, and I got a game thrown in for free - “Lego Star Wars 2″. Wendy is playing it right now, and laughing like a child.

I now have to run to the store to buy a few bits and bobs that we completely forgot (tea bags!), and then we can start to relax.

Hope you and yours are getting into the spirit of it all, and I promise to put pictures of the general lunacy up on the blog soon!

Today is the last day of work before Christmas. The office has reduced down to a skeleton staff, of which I am one.

The above photo shows the view from the end window of the office this morning. Freezing fog has been sitting on the UK for several days now - although in Marlow this morning it seems to have cleared - for the first time all week we can see the sky (visibility has been down to 50 feet or so at times). Most of the internal UK flights have been grounded for the last few days due to the fog, causing havoc at the major airports.

I don’t get why people are moaning at the airports - there is absolutely nothing anybody can do about it.

In other news, I am going down with a cold - but not if I can help it. Here’s the various things I have on my desk to combat it;

We have lucozade, special “christmas biscuits” made by Wendy, a bar of Galaxy chocolate, echinacea tablets, nurofen tablets, satsuma oranges, an apple, and sandwiches. I’ve already take the tablets and had a glass of lucozade - hopefully they will kick in and annihilate the germs that are trying to get at me.

If you’re around today, give me a shout - it’s very quiet in the office, and I could do with the company.

The idea to do this “review of the year” came from Wendy, who has done a similar thing.

The basic idea is that you post the first sentence of the first post from each month - I’ve helped things a little by linking through to each story too.

It’s been a very “different” year…

Tuesday 17th January - “A Beginning“
“All blogs have to start somewhere, and this is the start of this one.”

Thursday 2nd February - “Absolutely Knackered“
“I think I might be experiencing what some people call ‘burnout’.”

Thursday 2nd March - “It’s nearly my Birthday“
“I am going to be 33 years old tomorrow.”

Sunday 2nd April - “Working on the Blog Script“
“Over the last few days I have been working on my blogging script, and finally released an update for it.”

Monday 1st May - “Surviving the Fun Run“
“I took part in a 4.5 mile “fun run” in Oxfordshire this morning. I would like to say I did well, but that would be a bare faced lie.”

Friday 2nd June - “King of the Idiots“
“Nobody will be interested in this post apart from the geeks among you.”

Saturday 1st July - “Back On Dry Land“
“We are finally back on dry land after our adventure on the high seas.”

Wednesday 2nd August - “A Night Off“
“My cousin arrived at our house last night to stay for a couple of days, so I had a night off from the endless hours of overtime I’ve been doing recently.”

Friday 1st September - “It’s Official - I have the Lurgi“
“While stood in the bathroom brushing my teeth this morning, I noticed red weilds around my neck and thought “hmmm… that’s not right”.”

Tuesday 3rd October - “Zombies - Aim for the Head!“
“Okay - I just had to post this. It made me laugh…”

Wednesday 1st November - “Three Days in London“
“For the next three days I will be commuting into central London to work on-site on a client project.”

Friday 1st December 2006 - “November Ends“
“I have completed “National Blog Posting Month” (NaBloPoMo) successfully.”

In closing, I would just like to say thankyou to anybody who reads my little corner of the internet, and who makes the effort to comment from time to time.

I know some of you a little, and most of you less than I wished I might (that sounds suspiciously close to Mr Baggins speech at his birthday party).

As the tutor in Bill and Ted said - “Be Excellent”.