Hi Honey I'm home

Yeah I'm back, muchos time with with family and friends. The Bratii are still annoying. Who's eaten Minor's Maltesers - Major; where have half the sweets gone from Mum and Dad's tin - Major; who practically ripped Minor's new book out of his hands so he could read it - Major; say are you noticing a theme here? Devil Child approaching the age of two is loving the sound of her own voice and is happily babbling away to all and sundry, and due to the repeated use by the nursery is calling her milk bottle a 'bot-bot' much to the annoyance of her mother who is trying to get her to say milk or bottle. Seriously people we're trying to teach the kid to talk, how does blathering on about moo-moos, baa-baas, woof-woofs, and bot-bots help?

Not drinking has the downside of being the default designated driver, but the upside is that I demand all my drinks are paid for by the people I'm ferrying around; well have you seen the cost of petrol?

Managed second and third place in a couple of rounds of skittles, which is about right. I'm not a regular in this crowd and basically turning up once a year at the behest of someone else just to scoop the two top prizes does not a popular person make so I keep a good eye on the scores; besides the prizes are normally bottles of wine.

Dank and dismal weather has also prompted some stay-at-home gaming so I'm going through Half Life ² again, a bit of heavy Oblivion-time and I picked up TimeShift cheap which I'm glad about (the cheap bit that is). Full reviews on the first and last to follow.

Dad decided to put up a shelf over the washing stuff now they've got their first tumble-dryer in place. "I measured it three times" he told me "and it was 190cm long". Default lengths being 183cm or 240cm he had to buy the longer and have the place cut it down for him. Getting it home he found it was too long. One more measure later and it turned out the gap was 183cm long. <sigh>

Some post-Christmas shopping resulted in a combined 10" screen+DVD player for my father so he doesn't have to keep annoying my mum by turning off something she's in the middle of watching when she's left the room in order to stick one of his railway films on. Materially though that's been about it, the kids all got stuff of course, but we adults decided simply to enjoy one another's company. Worst Christmas Ever! :-)

On a local note the scaffolding came down of the bridge just before Christmas and someone said that it looks like some of the ironwork hasn't gone back up; heading down there and comparing with Don's close-up of Stourport Bridge taken in 2006 I can't see a difference. I'll upload my photo later.