Progress

People who go on diets can be immeasurably tedious. Once you start counting calories it can all get a bit obsessive. I now stand in supermarket aisles reading the small print on the back of tins and packets looking for the calories per slice, 100g, tin, pack or whatever. I've reduced whats in my fridge down to the bare minimum. For breakfast I have a small tin of sardines (200 cal) on one slice of Warburton wholemeal bread (65 cal) plus a tomato and some lettuce (hardly any cal)
The breakfast is after the morning gym work-out where I burn 300 cal on X Trainer, rowing machine and bike. When I had my Leisure Centre assessment I was 89 Kg. That was just over two weeks ago. I am now already 86 Kg. That's 1 Kg less than when I joined the gym last August.
Lunch can be salad with perhaps a one-egg omelette which will incorporate some onion and tomato. Steamed fish is very good for you and I have been taught how to chop ginger into match-stick sized pieces, slice some shallots and mushrooms, put it all into a baco-foil envelope with the whole fish plus some soy sauce a small chopped chilli and some water. Cook for 25 mins in a hot oven. All the juices and flavours trapped inside the package infuse the fish with a wonderful fragrance. Serve on a cup-sized mound of fluffly rice. I have had steamed fish at a restaurant recently and that's all they did. Steam it! It was OK I suppose. But I thought it a waste of an opportunity to make it tasty.

Six Pack

I've often wondered why I never managed to get a six-pack. I've thought about it a lot. All the time the answer was staring me in the chest. I have a hairy chest. Lucky me you might say. Have you ever seen a six pack on a hairy chest??? Be honest!! NO!!!
Chepstow Leisure Centre has a January Special Offer. You can get a personal trainer to assess you, then advise you on how to loose weight and get fit. I had my first session yesterday. I was ready to give it my all. He kept saying "slow down!" which I thought was a bit wierd. He kept saying "You've got loads of energy but save some for later". On the cross-trainer my heart-rate zipped up to 156 and when he said slow down, it quickly dropped to 125 which he said was a very good sign. On the mat exercises later he said that I was extremely flexible. I didn't tell him that I had been doing yoga for years. But I still have a "paunch" and not a 6-pack.

Walled Garden

This year I hope to start my walled garden. I might have told some of you that I would like a tranquil contemplative enclosed space behind my summerhouse. I'm not sure how many arched entranceways I want yet but the picture above shows a brick arch that I stumbled across in Chepstow recently and it pretty much ticks the boxes for me. Just down the road in Portskewett is a skip hire company and they sort out and "reclaim" old bricks at a ridiculously cheap price. Old bricks are exactly what I want; so they immediately have the look of an old Victorian or pushing it slightly, post-medieval garden. Most of the wall will be hedged which will take years to grow. Only the gateways will be brick.

MY CAR AND I

My car and I are gently growing old and gently losing our faculties bit by bit, day by day. About six months ago the windscreen wipers would only do storm-wipe or nothing. That was about the same time my hearing got so bad that I had to have my ears syringed. The central locking went at just about the same time as I strained my back (trying to do too many sit-ups at the gym). This week the heater fan packed up on the same day that I could't read the tiny script on some micro-wave instructions. We're both heading for the knackers yard. It's not worth throwing good money at a bad car. It's been good to me. Don't get me wrong. It's done over 190,000 miles and I've loved it like I love my own kin, but there comes a time every once in as while when a man has to take an old horse outside and do what has to be done in everyones best interests. A new young filly will cost a bit and strain the old coffers. Nothing lasts forever. You better believe it.

Magical Wonderful Natural World

I was born between Brixton and Clapham in South London. 3 stories up in a house with no garden. There was a tiny yard where my mother used to hang the washing on Mondays.

Everywhere around Bedford Road and Ferndale Road was brick and tarmac. The nearest greenery was Clapham Common some miles away. Hazzlerigge School was a walk away, a Victorian red-brick monstrosity with outside toilets; tarmac playground surrounded by tall vertical brick walls and a sign which said Mixed Infants under which I went. I was watching Superman and Waggon-Train on my parents first television at about the age of 5. I remember agonising and agonising over my lack of ability to fly like Superman. Why him, not me. I can't let this pass without telling you that I was the fastest runner in Hazzlerigge Infant School 1955!!

Nowadays they would not allow you to run helter-skelter, flat-out towards a brick wall!!!!! Health and Safety has put an end to that.

So at the age of 5 or 6 we moved out of London to Harlow New Town. And a whole new world of East Anglian rural life opened up before me. I can't begin to tell you !!!! New Town, modern little house but just 100 yards away was an old agricultural landscape of barley, corn-fields, ditches, dew ponds, barns, duck-ponds, woodland, canals, locks, the River Stort, Roach, Perch, Pike, Chubb and Gudgeon and plus plus and plus the numerous birds that populated the landscape and I made it a project. Boy did I make it a project!! To know just where every nest was...............made by every bird in the neighbourhood. Watched every inward flight to possible nests, watched every bird with twig or worm in it's beak for hours if not days at a time over acres of Essex countryside. The meadow pippet's ground-nest, the Bullfinch and Chaffinch nests of soft feathers, the egg decorative definition of bleeding purples, mauves, squiggles spots against a pinky creamy grey-blue background to the eggs surface made it the most tantalising and rewarding child-like pursuit of unimaginable beauty. The eggs were just so so exquisitely beautiful. Obviously now egg collecting has had its cummuppence. But when I now watch from my study window.... a bird building it's nest.....to lay it's beautiful eggs,...in a nest that it has not been taught to make....I feel a little magic of pro-creation going on here. I love it, I love it and I love it some more..................................................................

Moo-Moo

I post this picture of Moo-Moo in repose because I have just heard that poor Hester has been up nights dealing with a screaming Elodie-Rose!! We don't know if it is teething and Hester is pretty tired. I was in the John Lewis upstairs cafe today and walked past a mother with a child like Moo in a highchair. Then I saw a mother and grandparents with an older but otherwise identical curly haired brunette toddler as Moo-Moo approaching the down escalator with screams of excitement and pleasure at the sheer fun of descending one floor. Who needs Dysney Paris or Florida!!!!!

No new message

No new message

No new message

f for facebook h for hester

authorising, checking

no new message

Marites is now a friend

no new message

Precious cargo Precious cargo Precious cargo

no new message no new message

Marites is now a friend

Happy New Year

Happy New Year

No new message

There is no message

Message is there none

Message message message message is there none.............................."0"

Being a Dad

Hester is probably pleased that I can't get a sharper image. She is pictured here having her evening bath in a sink. Hester and Moo-Moo take a bath every evening in Hong Kong and I would imagine at an extremely wasteful cost of precious water resources. As eco-friendly parents, Patsy and I were not extravagant at all. We were accostomed to hose-pipe bans after all. But really I suppose was the fact that she was just the perfect size for this sink!!!