While Octavia was writing her novel in November, I decided to take up a challenge of my own – 30 pictures in 30 days. I’ve been trying to learn to draw for a few months now, and I’m still enjoying it. The results are very hit and miss, but it’s all part of the learning [...]
My sister Octavia has been taking part in this year’s NaNoWriMo, the challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in a month, and she’s done it! She is a NaNoWriMo winner! Her novel came in at 50,250 words (but, for some reason the NaNoWriMo word count squeaked her in with a word count of 50,080), [...]
On Sunday, Sarah and I had our first tae kwon do grading. Strictly speaking it wasn’t Sarah’s first grading at all, since she did lots of tae kwon do when she was a kid, but it was my absolute first experience of such a thing. It was fantastic! I’ve been going to tae kwon do [...]
Sarah and I got back last night from a couple of weeks in France with our surfboards. We had a great time, of course. We booked very last minute, driving a Streetcar down to Newhaven, taking a ferry over to Dieppe overnight, and driving down for a few days in Ollone Sur Mer. We stayed [...]
I’ve noticed something clever that my brain seems to do. When I return to a book I’ve been reading, and open the book at the page I’ve marked, 90% of the time my eyes go right to the point I left off. I made no conscious effort to remember the paragraph I finished at, but [...]
I was chatting to Céline the other day when she told me that her life had just been changed by a piece of technology. There followed a good 15 minutes of enthusiastic information about the joy of owning a hard disc television recorder, or PVR. I didn’t believe it: I mean, what could be so [...]
Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed some taekwondo-related links appearing in my link log over the past few weeks. The reason for this is that I’ve been trying to find a sport to keep me happy, fit and occupied while I’m in London. Surfing and snowboarding are great, but not very easy where I live. I’ve [...]
Last weekend, Sarah and I took my sister surfing in Devon. We were nervous: Devon is cold and wet this time of year and we feared my sister wouldn’t like surfing enough to make up for the elements. We needn’t have worried. Octavia very boldly booked in for two surf lessons, knowing that she’d be [...]
Last weekend Sarah, I, and some friends of ours headed down to Devon for fresh air and the hope of some surfing. On Friday night we borrowed a car, strapped our surfboards to the roof, loaded up with food, sleeping bags and friends and headed out of town. It didn’t take long to notice how [...]
I had a great experience with the NHS today, and thought it worthy of mention since I’d certainly have moaned if it hadn’t gone well. I’ve got an ongoing problem with my ankle since a hard day’s snowboarding about two years ago. My GP suggested I see an osteopath, which I have been doing, but [...]