Hooray for Nick!!

The Police have withdrawn their requirement for CCTV at the Drapers.

He even had Michael Nyman on the case. Also really good to see that it's already on the Harden's radar - though not sure Nick's going to love being referred to as a former city boy "Drapers Arms to rise again"

Heavenly Day

Just back from a brilliant afternoon at St Margaret's Bay with the kids. Clear blue sky and the sea looked positively Mediterranean, although I wasn't tempted to test that theory with my toes.

M and I had a cheeky night away on Friday night in a rather lovely hotel nearby, Wallets Court, and after breakfast went to the beach to walk off the Clavados/Whisky enhanced foggy heads before re-engaging with the domestic madness. When we got down there it was so picturesque and the simple cafe surrounded by families enjoying the glorious sun spurred us on to belt back home, scoop up the sprogs who were being ably and sweetly looked after by Mum and Brian, and then zoom back. Amazingly they were all rather resistant to the idea which was annoying, but we persisted and persuaded the ungrateful little scamps that it was a good idea and I think they would agree it was a blast.


The groynes there have this unusual double skinned construction, some of which are hollow, which meant the kids could climb inside and disappear from view - the boys in particular played some wonderful games, loosely based on Star wars/Pirates of the Caribbean/Thunderbird/Transformers for hours, barely stopping to guzzle the sarnies we had brought, whilst I mostly soaked up the rays, ergo as happy as a sandboy! On Friday the boys and I had spent an equally lovely day frolicking on the beach in Whitstable with Phil and Paul, so Spring must be springing.

Mouse thought we were all mad as she hates pebbly beaches and so spent most of the time up on the groyne with me


Finished up with mugs of tea and hot chocolate from the very friendly lady in the cafe, you can take your mugs down onto the beach, which pretty much perfected a top day

Nick - you have started something big

Information Commissioner's Office

The Register

Civil Liberty

I guess Nick didn't expect to be dealing with issues around civil liberty as well as choosing amongst other things, which beer to serve in his new pub, but all credit to him for tackling it head on. Keep it up big bro x

Landlord fights police plan for CCTV at pub

Check out Jon Snow and others on the subject here too.
Jon Snow
Henry Porter, comment is free
Guardian letters

Stan THE man

I needed to go to Canterbury today to get a suit for an upcoming work thing and asked Stan if he would come with me to tell me I if looked 'beautiful' or not... he went to get dressed and reappeared downstairs wearing jeans and an exceedingly dapper linen jacket from Clare's wedding - I suggested a T-shirt might be worth considering since it was icy outside. Suffice to say he looked SO handsome and we had a truly brilliant trip , everyone we met commented on how cool he looked - he couldn't decide if this was GREAT or hugely embarrassing. I think he came down on the side of great!


Even dudes need a big glass of milk before they hit the town....in fact that will hold him in good stead when he really starts to hit the town.

Another funny moment occurred when in the last shop we went to I praised him for having been such great company and well behaved, he replied "Well Mummy, at home you asked me to be nice and so of course I was", to the amusement of the lady serving us and a fellow shopper I replied that it wasn't always that reliable an indicator of success!

oops!

We woke up this morning to an unusual sight of 2 small ferries stranded on the marsh. Michael had heard some strange noises in the night which he said sounded like someone was pile-driving, which would be a bit odd on an SSI (site of special scientific interest) at the best of times, let alone after midnight!

I had the day off so when I took Mouse for a blast we found the ferries and discovered that someone had been trying to pull them off the marsh, in the middle of the night from the opposite bank.....hence the funny noises.
Anyway, it seems that all they needed was another high tide because after lunch they had gone, guess next time they will take notice of the buoys which mark the navigable channel.

Waking up the garden

Beautiful sunny day at last after all the snow and ice and fog and cold and drear! Pretty prefect Sunday in fact.
The moles have been very busy in the garden making particularly big hills and even taking over my dreams -very weird one last night with a mole as big as badger! - so I have been putting their hills to use as the base for seed compost; apparently it's really good, mixed with coir as it's really fine and free draining and also has the microbes from the garden which the seedlings will meet when they are planted out and it helps them build up resistance. Who knows, but at least the lawn looks a little more level. I also started clearing the beds of all the leaves and dead stalks from last year's perennials. All this is in preparation for the 3 tons of mushroom compost I hope to get delivered at half term to mulch with.
Also gave the chickens some attention, their house was revolting - again! and sadly the cold had got to Ginger who was under their house and somewhat rigid. Will have to go to Churchmans again as now have only 2 big ones who are laying, with the 2 bantams from the original gang, Lucy and Choc, who are very pretty but entirely useless when it comes to eggs.
After all that work we had a lovely walk to the Anchor in the sun for a couple of fine pints and jollity with the sprogs, Stan was a bit hard work on the way there but well fueled with "boys beer" and crisps plus some jelly beans he made it home again without too much trouble, Now they are all well ensconced in front of the Empire Strikes Back - Star Wars is the boys' absolute obsession at the moment -whilst a chicken roasts - not Ginger...and the papers are calling....

Wintery weather

We have had a bit of wintery weather.... the early warning message on the news at the weekend was a hilarious "moderate risk of a significant snow event" - Oh my god the world's gone mad when even the weather men speak corporate-buzzword-bingo-lingo!

So what actually happened? It snowed on Sunday evening, a bit more yesterday but not enough to shut the schools - by the afternoon it was melting and today it was icy but there were really only pockets of snow left. Kids at school again and I worked at home to get a bit of peace and quiet to write a big boring old document - oh and this....

I did however get out for a brain-refreshing walk with the hound and took these photos of some amazing ice formations in the marsh. The last one looks like a diagram of a cell or amoeba with it's nucleus.

Animated

The boys - both small and large have been making some sweet Lego animations recently which can be seen on their wonderful LEGO blogs - see links to the right