This web page popped up on my screen and I immediately thought of Mr Barry O’Bain.

I have no idea why.

Day 2

So after that early night we woke up to the sound of rain pouring down onto the boat. One thing I should probably mention is that because we were slow in booking our hotel we didn’t get the Captain’s cabin and so had to settle for the Mate’s cabin. The only different I can work out is that the Captains cabin has a larger ‘living room’ and has windows in every room while the Mate’s cabin has a bedroom that has no windows. So we sat in bed wondering what we were going to get up to on our last day if it was raining. We’d planned the boat trip but unless it was nice weather it wasn’t really going to be worth it. I’d decided to brave the cold and got out of bed to take a peek outside only to find the boat completely surrounded by ice and it was the noise of all the shards rubbing against each that we were mistaking for rain.

We had into met a single person at the hotel that we could describe in any negative way until this morning when we went for breakfast. There is a PC that can be used for free by anyone but at busy times you only get 10 minutes before you have to let someone else on. I’ve no idea what nationality the girls were but they chatted away in thier language with Vonnie sitting at the PC at the table beside them. It wasn’t until they started moaning that they were important and had to check work emails etc that they switched to English and just generally felt it necessary to get in wee digs about having to get access to a computer as soon as possible. All they had to do was say to Vonnie that they wanted on next but instead the intermittently broke into perfect English to moan about the computer. After that we packed up quickly and checked out. With our exploration the day before we realised that if Vonnie was going to get about that day we’d have to rest her as much as possible. Cue one taxi to the Grand Hotel which cost far less that the previous one. We’d planned on going out onto the boat trip and getting the traditional hot pea soup with bread for lunch on board which was nice but certainly an acquired taste. What we hadn’t planned on was the temperature being -3C before we’d even gotten on the boat. We were heading out towards the Baltic Sea and the chef mentioned that it was -8C without taking into consideration windchill as we had lunch inside.

The boat ride was nice. Basically it took you out on a trip around the archipelago. As it was winter though the longer trips which we really fancied were not running but the one that was gave you reindeer hides to sit on and blankets to snuggle up in. Our guide for the day, like all tourist guides, was just eccentric enough to be interesting without being nuts. It was that cold though that throughout he was sipping down lots of the tradition hot drink that’s very similar to mulled wine. By the time he took his break he was plastered. We went downstairs for our soup and a taste of this wonderful hot beverage ourselves before he started on the second half of the tour. By this point the Australians we had sat beside had decided to stay downstairs in the warmth along with almost every other passenger including Vonnie. I ended back upstairs with the Cuban-American guy and an elderly gentleman that barely spoke a word the entire trip, he even spoke to his wife in grunts. We had major problems in getting a decent phone signal while we were in Stockhom. In fact the only time we managed to get a 3G signal at all was funnily enough when we were out on the boat and directly across the water from the owner of Ericsson. As soon as we were past that house we lost the signal again.

By the time we got off the boat it was only about 1-2pm but already it was starting to get dark so we went for a wander around the old town, Gamla Stan, looking for the toy shop and the chocolatier that I’d found the night before. I showed Vonnie the royal palace and eventually found the shops we were looking for but only after Vonnie spent time drooling over the wool/yarn shops she had found. The toy shop was something else though. Almost everything in it was handmade and very expensive but it wasn’t until we got home that we found out why. Women in Russia make all the toys by hand and the toy shop pays them a good price for their work to allow them to feed, cloth and house their families. Fairtrade toys if you want to describe them that way. There was some really fantastic toys in there but we just couldn’t afford them. We wandered around the town and every 15 minutes or so had to stop and get hot chocolate as we were frozen to the bone.

We stopped at another chocolate shop and had possibly the nicest hot chocolate I’ve ever had. It wasn’t one of your powdered drinks as he made it in a coffee machine from cocoa beans and it was like we were drinking smooth, hot melted chocolate. At £4 for a tiny cup I expected it to be good but I never expected it to be that good! As we wandered on again Vonnie clocked a guy talking on the phone in a suite with a bulge on his belt. He had a handgun strapped to himself. It wasn’t until we realised there were more men like him around us and that we were standing outside their parliament buildings that we clocked what he was.

Anyway after a few more stops for hot chocolate we decided it best for everyone concerned to find the bus station and maybe think about getting the next bus to the airport. We were running something like four hours early but to be honest with the cold and not being entirely sure where we were getting the bus from alongside Vonnie being pregnant it wasn’t a bad thing. As it was very late when we arrived in Stockholm we never really got to see much of the city on the way in so the journey back out at around 4pm gave us a much better look at the rest of the place.

Getting to the airport so early did mean we had to stay in on the land side for much longer than normal but they had Stargate Atlantis on the TV so time flew by relatively quickly. It wasn’t until we had landed that though that we found out that the Hudson River crash had happened 40 minutes before we were due to take off. The airport staff had went around turning off all the TV’s just as news filtered through about it. We just though they were shutting up shop that as we were the last flight out that night.

When we landed in Glasgow it turned out that the last three planes due to arrive at Prestwick had all arrived early so there were huge cues to get through passport control. I stupidly mentioned to Vonnie that now would be the perfect time for her to have one of her fainting episodes only for her to actually really feel faint about 5 minutes later. We ended up being brought through the side of the queue and the police gave Vonnie a bottle of water to help her recover. I’ll keep my mouth shut next time I think.

I’d go back. I’ve not seen anywhere near enough of the place but I think I’ll need to win the lottery to afford it again.

A strange bike advertising the Mountain Biking World in Fort William. The whole town was covered in them when we got there to pick up supplies.

This weekend I have been killing, plucking and gutting our cockerels. That’s us back down to our original bunch of hens now so no 6am wakeup calls. Never again though or at least not in that sort of number. Might do another turkey for Christmas.

And when I say back to our original number we’ve replaced the two Orps that we gave to a friend with a Maran and a Leghorn so we’ve now got hens that lay white, pale, normal, brown and blue eggs. We should have rehomed the Pekins as well today but the takers backed out at the last moment.

So all in all I’ve been up since 6am to start dealing with the cockerels and we got back from England, where we had to go for the new hens, at the back of 7. Kids are now in bed and I’m just enjoying an irn bru sorbet and a can of red kola before retiring to bed for an early night.

I say early night but I’ve got an application for a new post at work to be finished by tomorrow so my boss can go over it. I guess I’ll just take tomorrow at work to do it and go to sleep instead.

*Disclaimer - This is written for my memory in the years to come and for the nosey folk. I don’t blame you if you get bored after the first paragraph *

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In in Sweden on my ‘honeymoon’ and its damn cold at night but very nice during the day. Seems like a cross between Amsterdam, London and Moscow from what I’ve seen so far.

And another thing. I thought there was an international standard for keyboards. Well I know there wasn’t but apart from cyrilac Iäve never had to try and use another one. Alt GR + 2 for an @ symbol?

So what does this year have in store for me?

So far I have not thought of one bad thing coming up this year.So far we have:-

• We have a new addition to the family coming some time around May
• A trip to Sweden for a few days for the two of us in place of the honeymoon we never went on last year.#
• A change in jobs for myself. Whether that’s a new job within DFID or not I don’t know.
• The last instalment of Battlestar Galactica.

What’s not to look forward to?

Overall the year’s been good but I don’t think I’ve ever had such a rollercoaster of a ride in my life.

February seen the mother of my children & I say ‘I do’ in front of our family and friends in a church. The Old Parish Church in East Kilbride was the only church I would agree to be married in and we managed to have a fun day. Many folk didn’t know quite what to think when the pink hummer turned up with the bridal party in it, but it fitted the day perfectly. And beside we couldn’t fit the bridal party into anything else without breaking the bank for 3-4 cars for them. The night ended with our babysitters backing out at the last minute and my parents taking #2 son for the night leaving us with #1 daughter sharing the bridal suite with us as well as the 8-9 folk that came back for more drinks after the bar shut and everyone else went home. It was a good day.

In April I started my new job at work. With the civil service headcount cuts hitting the service sectors pretty hard we were hit bad. It was something like a 33% job cut across departments from the service staff. So effectively we ended up with something like a 40% cut from our division. After reapplying for my own job as well as several other posts I ended up with nothing. Not even a temporary post to see me through until I could find something else with DFID. Eventually after my line manager pushed for me to be reconsidered I ended up with a 12 month temp post which is almost up and yet again I have nowhere to go.

At the end of May I struggled through a chest infection which wasn’t killed off by the antibiotics I was put on. It eventually spread to the lining of my heart and on the evening of the 3rd June I spent the night in pain. It felt as though someone was sitting on my chest and I struggled to breath. After painkillers I eventually got some sleep but it came back during the bus trip to work. Thankfully/unfortunately the hospital is directly across the road from my workplace so a quick call to my office saying I may be late as i was getting it checked out in A&E was the order of the day. Two hours later I was still in the hospital high on morphine with my ECG results showing a possible minor heart attack. Turns out I had a dose of pericarditis and spent the night in the hospital. It was another 4 months before I was back at work and I’m still feeling the pain at times even now. In fact my echocardiograms and ECG’s have still been coming back with abnormalities.

Apart from a few days last December to London we have never been on holiday as a family. In July we finally managed it when we went to France on a camping trip. Health problems seen us return home a few days early but it was well needed and very much enjoyed by everyone.

In October I got a dose of the flu. you might not think that as being notable but as I had never had my bloods checked after all my problems they ran a full panel of blood tests on me. The results came back with elevated bilirubin levels which couldn’t be explained and so I was off painkillers and alcohol until very recently. Three blood tests later and the results are still elevated but dropping, and all the specific tests and ultrasound haven’t found out what’s wrong. I’m a medical conundrum.

It sounds like I’ve had a bad year but I’d disagree. I’ve enjoyed my year. 

I said it at the beginning of 2008 that I was going to seriously get my head into blogging. I meant it and despite only posting half as many entries in 2008 as I did in 2007 I’ve learned far more than I ever have on the subject.

So with that in mind 2009 is lining up to be a far more productive year. My colleagues at work have finally caught on to what I do during my lunchtimes and whilst some have been really interested others have questioned the point. It’s not as if I’m going to end up with an audience the size of say Perez Hilton or Darren Rowse over at Problogger. That’s not why I do it though. I write because I enjoy writing. I’m completely inept when it comes to written English though despite it technically being my first language. I am gradually getting better though thanks to things like this.

During my years at school I was never encouraged to write. I was told to write but thats an entirely different thing. We had the usual book reviews and structured critiques of plays but we were never encouraged to write for the sake of writing. Actually that’s a complete lie as we had a supply teacher for 3 months that did exactly that but that’s a story for another post. Other than that one teacher the only time we were allowed to just write was when it was short story time and even then we had limitations put on us. No less than 500 words and no more than 800 words put a huge limitation on anyone that wanted to just keep going with a story in their head and no matter what your chosen subject was you had to have a twist. It could be the robber getting away like Robin Hood or the unlucky gambler finally hitting big but you had to have that in. You couldn’t have more than one twist though as that wasn’t allowed and if your story didn’t have any and actually worked without it you were forced to include one or pick another subject to write about.

As the years went on I stuck to my maths, tech drawing and computing and lost almost every skill I ever gained in the English classes. So much so in fact that I had to rely on a girl in class to help me through my final round of English modules before I left school. I did the video production, editing and graphics whilst she did everything else. As it was a group mark we all passed but only just. These days though I have stories running through my heads from all the roleplay campaigns I’ve played in the past as well as those I want to play in the future. I also have the need to write on topics that interest me other than storytelling. Again it’s not my forte but I enjoy it. My wife encourages me and has gave me a huge boost by telling me exactly why she enjoys reading my writing when I put my mind to it. She says it’s like having a conversation with me as I lay things out in exactly the same way as I would when going on at length about something I care about when I talk to her. If just on person other than myself thinks that about something I’ve written then I’ve won a watch.

I don’t write for anyone but myself but I will admit to being a stat junkie but that’s more down to my years of playing computer games and having to get a higher points total than your mate. My wife has a few blogs herself so there’s a constant battle with that side of things. She has more subscribers but I get far more daily viewers… usually.

The only other piece of advice is taken from Wil Wheaton. Don’t be afraid to suck. It’s going to happen and if it does and noone reads what I have to say than so be it. As I’ve said it doesn’t get written for anyone other than myself anyway so if I get it right and people do like it then it’s something to learn from and to try and replicate in future. For every post that I get a new reader from I’ll have ten that will only ever be read by close friends and family so it’s no use it effecting my writing.

That was a bit of an aimless ramble though so I’ll leave it at that and get stuck back into tidying and coming up with a new tructure for my blogs for 2009.

I’ve neglected you for a while but I’ll be back and give you a spring clean soon enough

The reason why I’m here is that I noticed something last night that depressed me slightly. My son is no longer a baby. It’s quite obvious to see that when you look at him but you know what I mean. He’s the biggest in his nursery class despite being the youngest but he’s always been a baby. that was until last night. He’s came on in leaps and bounds since starting nursery but last night was the first time I looked at him and seen a wee boy staring back at me. You could see the intelligence working overtime behind those eyes of his.