David Morris – brassedoff.net

A little bit of fun in the snow this afternoon with our home made sledge

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Last night was not a good night. We got burgled at around 00:40 whilst we were in bed. Nothing was taken from the house except for my car keys. Of course, it didn’t stop there, and the delicate polite yoof then did away with my rather nice Mini Cooper S from off the drive. So, in the wee small hours of this morning, we were giving statements to the local constabulary and waiting for the boarding up service man to do his business. Kudos to both sets. The police were here promptly and the boarding up man did a stoking job on the rear patio door where the git gained access (picture here).

So now we’re in to reporting mode. Both insurance lots were notified last night, and there’ll no doubt be more phone calls to make this morning. Having lost several hours of sleep, we’re up and about. Dan is still fast asleep thankfully. He was worried in case the thieves came back for his Club Penguin collection which is clearly his (current) pride and joy. Needless to say, we offered all appropriate reassurances that we thought his collection was safe.

We decided to cook breakfast al-fresco again this morning. Daniel’s been experimenting taking video with his digital camera, and yesterday we were playing about with iVideo on my Macbook. Putting the three together, I decided to have a go at editing and uploading a video direct in to YouTube from iMovie.

The corresponding work of video art is here.

Not much to write about other than the fact we’ve had a great weekend.

It started off pretty badly with the prospect of spending the weekend car juggling because a week after its service, the clutch on Mrs Woolforbrain’s car gave up the ghost after 112,000 miles. I’d limped it to the garage last Thursday and ended up cycling all the way home (that’s a different and equally pleasant story), and wasn’t expecting seeing it back for a week because the garage was fuly booked. This is a local indie garage, not a main dealer. The main dealer wanted £560 for the replacement; our local indie was going to be around £250. No contest really.

Anyway, around noon on Saturday, my mobile chirped. It was the garage owner saying the car was done. One of his guys had stopped until 9pm the previous night to get the job done. Above and beyond the call of duty?! So, we were back to being a two car family.

Today, with the sun shining, Daniel and myself paid a visit to the leisure centre in Staveley for a swim. It’s been a few weeks since we last went. I was able to enroll Daniel in the free swimming for U16s programme which Chesterfield have bought in to. NE Derbyshire are also in this scheme, but strangely not Liberal Democrat-run Sheffield. Not that it matters much because we generally only swim at Staveley anyway!

This afternoon, we’ve been out to our favourite ice cream farm at Bothamsall – Thaymar. It’s not the first time we’ve been. It’s a long way to go for an ice cream, but it is nice! I had a double cone – elderlower / gooseberry and mint chocolate chip. Caroline had the elderflower and gooseberry and wild cherry and the young master had a couple of chocolate and toffee-related choices.

When we got back, we hit the garden again. We’ve planted lettuce and mange tout this weekend, and last weekend, I planted a load of onions. Caroline’s also planted some potatoes in planters and we’ve been discussing where to put tomatoes and chillis. It’s going to be a nice harvest if we get the weather.

Back to school for Daniel tomorrow and a busy week for me. I’ve got a meeting with the new Scimitars owners on Wednesday to discuss the web site, a canal festival meeting on Thursday, a band concert on Friday, boating on Saturday (trips for local dignitaries to mark the unveiling of some new interpretation plaques at Kiveton and a trip there and back for Dan’s scout troup), a day off on Sunday and boating again on Monday as we take the boat back home.

No doubt there’ll be ample opportunity for photographs. Watch this space.

On a different issue, I’m still loving the new Macbook. I’m getting to the stage of finding my way around it now, helped in no small part by Chuck Toporek’s Mac OS X Leopard Pocket Guide (O’Reilly).

Daniel’s got a nice piece to practice over the Easter holidays. I suspect Kathrine (his teacher) has given him something to challenge him now he’s got his Grade 4 out of the way. This time, he’s working on a piece called Cortege by Ippolitov-Ivanov from Caucasian Sketches. It’s a lovely piece of music and Daniel’s making a really nice sound with it. I’ve tried to record it but I can’t really do it justice with a cheap microphone plugged in to the laptop and GarageBand on the Mac, but here goes…!

Daniel playing Cortege

I know I’m notthe most frequent blogger in the world. These days, you’re probably just as likely to find me microblogging via my twitter account as anywhere, but there are some times when I feel the need to write an essay!

I’m in sunny Dusseldorf at the moment. The rest of the office have gone out for lunch so it’s nice and quiet and I have a few minutes to myself. When I left Sheffield yesterday, the new red wine kit was bubbling away to itself in a pleasingly regular fashion. The relocated Killamarsh Forum was working fine on its new hosting service. People have been updating it as well, so I know it’s capable of being found. I did take the liberty of putting a customised 404 error page on my home server to point people at the new location before I renamed the directory containing the forum.

I’ve had the nod to move the Seth Ellis site as well, and I’ll shift that over to wiserhosting.com as soon as I’m happy that the KF site is robust.

The Scimitars are away in Bracknell on Saturday, but I’ll be watching Daniel scuba diving. That’s after I’ve played in the 3rd Section Regional Finals (aka The Area) at Bradford on Saturday morning. We’re rehearsing at something like 8:30 in Bradford, so an early start is in order.

First, one of my dear wife taken last month when we had all the snow on the ground. We’d gone out for a walk on Westthorpe Fields with Pebble and this shot shows Pebble trying really hard to be a good dog.

Caroline and Pebble in the snow

Caroline of course would be able to wax lyrical about the hat.

The second image was one I took today which I’ll probably share with Network Rail, purely because of the idiocy of the man…

When not to cross the track

Note here that the barriers are in fact down, usually signalling the impending arrival of a train. The barriers had in fact been down for some time without a train appearing… in total a good ten minutes I’d reckon. This guy ran out of patience. It’s probably a good job the train never arrived. The barriers subsequently went back up without a train making an appearance. Once upon a time there used to be a phone number next to the crossings that you could ring for ‘large or slow moving vehicles’. Now, I assume the crossing is monitored from Worksop by CCTV so any abnormal loads will be visible on the camera.

Last night was the Cubs night hike around Rother Valley. Four or so miles, setting off at 7pm in the dark (well, it would be wouldn’t it, it being a night hike) from the Scout HQ in Killamarsh, down to the park, back to the south end of the park, up on to the TPT and back in to the village, most of it off road or on the closed park access roads.

It was a bit cloudy so the planned star gazing was out of the window, and it was cold. So cold in fact that it was starting to freeze as we were walking. The mud was getting crunchy under foot and the puddles were starting to solidify. The freezing was more advanced in some areas than others. It was particularly advanced in the area on the Park access road when I put my foot down on the far side of a speed bump. My foot shot from underneath me and I was rather unceremoniously dumped on the floor. This morning, I’ve got a bump the size of a mango on my rear end and the makings of a marvellous bruise. Funnily enough, I think I was the only casualty. It’s probably a good job I was at the back of the procession so the witnesses were fewer.

Despite that, it was a pleasant enough walk.

Daniel now has his night hike badge to go with his Scientist badge (they did things with cress seeds) and his water awareness badge. That in itself was fun because the Christmas treat for the cubs was scuba diving at Eckington pool. They did the water awareness as part of that, but the scuba diving seemed to be enjoyed by all, and as a consequence, all the kids got their PADI Bubbleblowers badge and certificate.

Tonight’s job is transferring the third lot of home brew to the keg in preparation for Christmas supping. It will keep nicely cold in the garage.  It also looks like this brew, a Canadian style lager is going to better than the last  Mexican style one. It seems to have more body and a fuller taste. Hmmm.

I think I’m destined to become a Saturday morning music school father. Dan’s half way through his first visit to Chesterfield Music Services’ Saturday morning “school”. It’s a bit too far for me to go home in between, so it’s a good job there’s somewhere for abandoned parents to sit themselves and plenty of cheap coffee on tap. Mains outlets for the laptop are in short supply, but the new Huawei 3G dongle gets me an Internet connect so it’s not too bad! Funnily enough I bumped in to old friend and fellow Chapeltown Band member Chris Davies and his son Jonathon. Jonathon’s part way through a music degree and is teaching the beginner band here, so it was nice to see at least one familiar face.

Ah well, only 15 minutes to kill now…

…well, almost :)

You may recall that Dan and I provided the seasonal entertainment for the Seth Ellis Santa Special publicity trips last Saturday? It was Dan’s first public outing playing and it went very well indeed. I was indeed the proud Dad.

I’d passed my camera to James, another crew member to get some suitable shots for publicity purposes and he managed to come up with this one as well. Well done James, and well done Daniel!