Peter

Thye DiskWarrior debacle continues... Amazon have just said that there is a delay of 1-2 weeks.. ouch ... hold on. j

Happy Birthday little sister!

Happy birthday Claire,I hope you have a wonderful day tomorrow.
I surpose you may be missing your front teeth as all six year olds are.
I do hope that you will be able to come and see us next spring if you are adventurus and come as far as Wales you will be able to sleep in Kates bedroom (if you would like that)and Edmund has a huge box of pockamon cards that he doesn't need anymore,and you may like although I think that you may well be far beond any level that we understand!love from us all xxxxxx

Thursday night snow fell,so friday morning we woke up to a white world,and joy for the children as four hundred and fifty school in the area were closed(inclueding theirs)because of bad weather,so the day was devoted to sledging and snow balls,followed by numb feet and dripping clothers,hot chocolate and soup!And it looks like they are going again today.

William,Jemma and Clive,I don't know if I have said this before(so much of my relationship with my family goes on in my head and doesn't get voiced sorry),but we would love to see you for Christmas if you felt brave enough,but no pressure I know it a long way!
Lots of love Cathy

It's Booked! Dad

The week of 22nd July (Saturday to Saturday) is booked at the Gite and we're having all four.
The Eurocamp is posh caravans normally on the beach but I've not checked. Skype say's you're busy.

Eurocamp 2006

Is this us and do we have to book separately - or have you confirmed our booking in Meze. Daddy

Nic's email

I missed out the most important two letters - sg Many thanks

Happy Thanksgiving

A month to go before Crimble.. a salient word from our sponsor
CLICK
Hmmm Paxo!

email addresses

Dear Dad

You'll find everone's addresses on the blogger dashboard.
When you sign in at http://www.blogger.com/home
go to settings
then members
and you'll see a list of everone's email...

Also if you click on any address on that page, your email application
should open and be ready to send a mail.

Or, to save typing mistakes, try cutting and pasting the address by
1) putting the cursor on the end of the last letter in the address
and hold down the mouse and move back the cursor, lighting up your text in blue.
(If you mess up click on a blank bit and start again).
2) When the address is all blue, release the mouse and then hold
down the apple key and press c for copy.
3)Release both keys.
(Up on the top bar , 'Edit' flashes as you're doing it)
The text is now saved in RAM memory.
It is saved there until you 'copy' something else.

Place the copied text (which has been temporarily saved) in your document by holding down the apple key and pressing the v key.
This works for large text files too.

Anyway, it's far too cold for plastering so am testing my brain with HTML computer language and picking Julian's brain for web-site tips.

Snowed here yesterday briefly and we're getting through the logs!

ps from google
Bounced Email and Other Errors

Sometimes an email message may not actually reach its destination because of an incorrect address or some other error. Just as postal mail may come back to you stamped "Returned to Sender," you may get a bounced message back wrapped in an error message that gives you some clues as to what went wrong. Most often the problem is something you've mistyped in the address. One common error message is User unknown: the message is received by the computer specified in the address, but the local part, or username, doesn't match any username or mailbox on the computer. Most often, the cause is a typo or a misspelling, but if you think you typed it correctly, then you should contact the person you're trying to reach by other means to find out
the correct username.
Another common error is Host unknown; in this case, the hostname is wrong. Again, check for typos first. Sometimes parts of the name are missing—for example, perhaps you forgot to include part of the domain name. Other bounced messages—such as Network unreachable, (the computer) Can't send for several days, Connection timed out or Connection refused, and Bad file number—usually have something to do with problems on the network or at the destination computer. These
problems are usually beyond your control, so you should contact your system consultants for assistance. Most of the time, if you type something wrong or have an incorrect address, you will get a bounced message. Sometimes, however, your email will simply disappear into the elusive black hole, the place where lost messages go and where they'll never be heard from again—or at least that's what it feels like. There are several possible causes of this phenomenon. The message may arrive at the intended destination, where an error is detected, but because your own return address is incorrect, the bounced message can't be sent to you. Or the message may arrive safe and sound, but your friend never reads it or decides not to respond to it. Usually, trying again, using another addressing method, or contacting your friend by other means to find out if the message was received will help you figure out what went wrong.

Email address

Can you send me an email to my merrow@wight365.net as I am having difficulties getting your pacific.net address. That will tell me if I have got it right. Love from Dad

hi folks, my email has not changed at all. Claire's at that age where she looks under the door (our mail comes under the door) each day. Last night she got a thrill because I had purchased something for her online and had asked the seller to address it to Claire Merrow-Smith, so she received a small package yesterday which she has set aside for Sunday.

Hi Cathy & family, lovely to have you back. Sorry to say your birthday falls in the school term here, so we will have to pay you an early visit in May or June next year. Dashing Dan is looking forward to having the space to chase cats, dogs, birds, etc. - been watching too much of the Incredibles

Bye Bye

Nic

Claire's birthday card

I tried to send an email to you and got a maler-daemon non delivery. Have you changed your email address as this is the 2nd or 3rd time an email has been returned to me??.
I have just found a website www.123greetings.com/birthday/kids and I wonder if I could ask you to sort out a suitable singing card for her as I don't know how to send it from here to Claire. It contains many singing birthday cards and it only needs the addition of our name.
We are sending her a card today, but in case it does not arrive in time the singing card would be a bit of fun. Love from Dad

Another lovely day.

Just a reminder that Claire will be 6 on 27th November - just one month after Nic's birthday. Daniel will be 3 on December 8th and for the record, Mum's brother Peter will be 80 on 7th December. If anyone feels like sending him congratulations his address is Dowland House, Harborough Hill Road, Messing, Colchester, Essex CO5 9TZ.
Steve tells me that he has some work to do in Provence and will travelling to Marseilles today. Julian is planning to block off the hole at the back of his kitchen cooker - I wonder if the two are related - Not Steve and Julian, but Stev, Julian and the hole. Good luck fellas. love from Dad

Wall to wall sunshine

Just like Spain only 11 degrees instead of 22. Thank you Jessica for your Blog. We miss you all too. We really enjoyed our visit to you (second in one year). We were able to do so much by hiring our own vehicle. Trouble with driving on the Island is the low sun can sometimes make driving difficult. We have turned our no. 3 bedroom into a breakfast room and now we face the same was as you with the sun coming over the horizon directly in front of us. It is lovely because we can imagine you all facing the rising sun (and getting blinded by it) just as we are. We do not have natural heat though and we sit quite close to a very hot radiator
We have been out and about this week, enjoying the sunshine. Last Saturday was Reg's 80th birthday meal in Arreton. Then on Monday Ryde, to have the films developed. They are very good. alhough we did not take many. Tuesday Newport to see Nana's Urologist. He says she is alright now and the 'down below' operation seems to have done the job. We have also seen our GP and told her about the fun we had before boarding the plane on 16th Oct. Seems that it was something to do with Nana's underactive thyroid, which caused the blackout. Anyway, we made it to the plane and to Alicante OK. Wednesday we had a lovely meal at the Woodvale in Gurnard, sitting by the window and watching the yachts on the Solent. Gurnard is a place that I would miss if we ever moved away! After lunch we sauntered through an empty Cowes. Friday we chanced on an afternoon in the cinema. The film was The Libertine, but it is not worth trying to describe it to you. It was certainly not what we expected. A very 'black' film set in Charles II reign. Friday evening we watched the Save the Children Show on the telly and that was very watchable. The BBC newsreaders did their customary act. This time it was their rendering of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody - very entertaining. We had hoped that we may see part of the Benidorm show where Amy met Pudsey Bear on stage, but there was so much to see. We appear to have a very full programme of dinners and parties before we hi-tail it for our Christmas visit to Nythfa. Hope the weather keeps reasonably drivable. Love to all LOL Dad and Mum

Air miles

First - get some airmiles. Then phone airmiles up and say I want to hire a car. They do Avis and they will debit your airmiles account (perhaps not with full balance). I hired an Opel Meriva diesel 1300hp for 23 days at 50% off full price of £361. We have a Merrow-Smith household account and I expect we could add you to it and so have a bigger balance to hire next July. If you were to get a Tesco Clubcard everything you buy with that card gets you Airmiles. Get online to Airmiles.co.uk and quote our account balance - we have only got 15 miles left. Quote our number 3081471012002324 and see if you can get on to our household account. If you come down next wekend, Steve we could talk about it. Meanwhile get a Tesco credit card. Weather here is glorious until you step outside - then brrrrrr.

yahoo

aside: (just to labour the point, this one is from my
Yahoo account)

Can Dad tell us more about getting car hire using Air Miles?

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com

proof indeed

that it can be done from gmail!
I get the bulk of my wording sorted and onto the blog, and then edit it and upload photos afterwards off my desktop or wherever you've got them from this page...

And (heaven forbid!) even if you do lose it, you've still got your original email text on your compu'a and you can go round again.... (oh brother) so there we are.
I've had my say..

haaaa Ley Lulia

great to get all the news everybody..
I was on about Windows users might like to try
Blogger for Word

Unfortunately it seems to be
a bit cr*p.
The other idea to save your blogs from crashing and getting lost, is to email your posts in.

To set this up, go go go go to this page->













and click on "Settings"













Click "email" and this page comes up!













You'll see "Mail-to-Blogger Address", and here you have the opportunity to create a unique email address to send your blogs to via Outlook Express or any mail account or even from your Yahoo account. (Don't forget to Save your Settings! hep hem....)

The advantages are that you can prepare your postings "off line", and fiddle about with them without costing your dial-up account:- then send them in when you CAN get on-line or from any other computer - in an internet cafe for instance or from someone elses even!

As we used to say in the Army..
"Are There (pause..2, 3) Any Questions?"

Back in the world of communication

Steve,i thought i would get right onto it straight away,so you will be pleased to see i have managed to get onto the blogger within the hour thanks to the new invite. but I see that you have to hit some of the keys realy hard and some more gently on this the stone-age-UPSTAIRS COMPUTER. haven't looked at the blogg since the wweeeekend so i don't know what news there is,i will look now. much love to all Cathyxxxxxxxxx

hi!

I'm on the school computer at the moment so I cant stay long. Nana and Grandad, thanks for your visit and we miss you already. I miss you all (can't wait for next summer!) LOL. miss the computer too! haha. talk again soon! xxx j

Thank you Singapore

What lovely photos of the children, Jen. You are now an expert at blog photography! Thank you so much for looking after my baby sister. I know she would have been thrilled to see you and your parents and loved meeting the children. Time for a quick view of your wonderful city. Did you go into Father Flanaghans bar in Chijmes. I expect Singapore is building up to Christmas and to hari raya also. Does that always come at the end of the year? I hope you are not both away at the same time - you in San Antonio and Nic in Shanghai. I am sure that you will have got that all sorted. Thank heavens for Mary and for parents who are not too far away. Love to you all from Hugh and Margaret Nice to hear you on the phone, Nic - I hope you get a good bonus this year.

Sunshine smiles ......

Hiya all,

After months of 'faffing' about, I've just about learnt how to take pictures with the phone, infra-red it over to computer, mess about with the dimensions and upload them onto the blog!! Here are the two terrors trying their best to smile nicely.....after countless pictures of 'monkey' faces etc!

We're fine down here..... both Claire and Dan have almost gotten over their flus etc....... we've all had the flu vaccine so they weren't too badly laid up. They're both preparing for their end of year school concert and graduating ceremony (Claire). Nic and I can't believe that she's entering primary school next year! Dan on the other hand is loving nursery (I think) and is a 'typical' boy! Nic and I have been pretty busy with work, usual rush at the end of the year. He's got another Shanghai trip coming up and I'm off to San Antonio from the 6th to 13th though I'm not looking forward to it at all. This is the first time I've been apart from the kids since they were born and my phone bills are going to be horrendous plus I'll miss Dan the man's birthday.

I had a lovely time with June. Picked her up from her hotel and we managed to fit in a visit to Chinatown, the Orchid Gardens and a city tour before she saw the kids. Had a good dinner with her and my parents later on in Chijmes. I hope she arrived safely in Australia.

Hope everyone's well and will post again.

Jen

Hello all from..

.. rainy provence, very busy trying to get the kitchen fireplace built and everything else. Cats are a joy but they don't like rain or pneumatic hammers. A belated happy birthday to Nic - what a terrifying age ;-) Pete I somehow lost my Diskwarrior CD between going to Italy for the weekend and coming back perhaps I put it on the car and drove off or something it was already to send, anyway we have ordered you one from Amazon and hopefully it will be with you this week (and do the job). Lots of love to all, j

Hello all

Yes we still exist out here but have not yet received any Disc Warrior discs to try to unscramble the Mac´s drive. I´m doing this post during a free minute at school. I´ll keep checking at the post office but am a little confused by what dad put into his blog the other day.

Glad you had a good time, mum and dad. You´ll be happy to know that the rain only came after you left. It´s been pretty poor ever since you flew out actually. All cricket was cancelled this weekend the weather was so bad. Apart from that, all is well. The house doesn´t leak and the car is still going although I had to prop the electric windows up with a bit of wood!

Love to all

Pete

Welcome to Rebecca

Had a phone call from Nic only half an hour after he had landed back in Singapore after a business trip to Shanghai. Unfortunately, he had to be away when June arrived but Jen and her parents met her at her hotel and took her out to dinner. I gather she also met Claire and Daniel, Nic and Jen's two children. You may by now have heard from June by phone. At least we know she got as far as Sg. Nice to hear from you - keep blogging with any family information. Love from Hugh and Margaret

Hello from Rebecca

Any news about the Flying Granny?

Hi Steve
I was wondering if mum caught up with Nick & Jen when in Singapore.
Turned 50 in September had a small family get together, good time was had by all or so I'm told. Ruth pushed the boat out and brought some spectacular fireworks woke the neighbourhood up.
Hope you get this fingers crossed
loads of love
Rebecca

Now we are back home

After three weeks without my Apple, I switched on last Monday night, only to read that I could not get online. Great sucking of thumb and wailing - so I rang up the man and he said they were having a bitta trouble and he would come out on Friday AM, unless I had managed to get online in the meantime. As luck would have it I came online on Friday at 3am but he turned up anyway and checked things over. I was back. I was particularly sorry as I wanted Pete to have the DiskWarrior that Julian thought might unscramble Pete's hard disc.
Back to my Blog - Lovely to read all the latest news. We hadn't realised that Steve was doing a Guy Fawkes in Wales, but glad nevertheless. We had a lovely time on the Costa Blanca, visiting all the local must - see beauty spots and partaking of the local paella and mariscos (seafoods). Also Rioja and the local brew named Sangria (cold sweet red wine). We had wall to wall sunshine for all but one (or two) mornings when spots of rain hit the windscreen of our hired 1.3cc diesel Opel Meriva - a smaller version of the Zafira. We watched Pete play cricket in hot sunshine we went to Benidorm, Benimontal and lots of other Beni's. We climbed over the Sierra Bernia - their local mountain - and had a lovely lunch in a German Restaurant way up on top of the mountain. Also went to the beautiful Guadaleste. a small town entered through a hole in the rock. We went to a concert of an English Choir from Birmingham in the local super Palais de Culture, which was super. We met Pete and Jan's friends from Church we saw Beth win the Lions International painting competition which will get her to the regional finals, then the Country finals in Madrid, then to New York and much more. She is not very hopeful of getting to Madrid??, but someone has to win. We went to a Children In Need Concert, run by the BBC in which Jessica was in the opening scene (about 20 14 year olds doing a modern dance routine.) She is so confident especially as it is her first time facing an audience of 2500 in the Benidorm Palace. Amy continues to delaight everyone with whom she comes into contact. She is such a doll.
Our flight was very easy as Southampton is only just across the water from us. Reg met us in Cowes on Monday and we were soon back home

Blogger supports Word Cathy!

Perhaps you Windows users could try Word for blogging to help avoid losing your postings.

Welcome home

Welcome Home in Welsh from Wales!
whitecoat
Originally uploaded by ezappy.

Steve & Thomas

S&Thms
Originally uploaded by ezappy.

then of to Yvonne's for a swift half!

spooky

spooky
Originally uploaded by ezappy.

poo we're looking for the sticks, which is THE best bit actually

LLandewi's alight

bonfire
Originally uploaded by ezappy.

well at least these pallets are, poo diesel fumes!

We like bonfires we do..

C&Ed
Originally uploaded by ezappy.

..especially after the young farmers have finished driving their digger into it and gone off to the pub. This, is the best bit!

kate

kate
Originally uploaded by ezappy.

Kate say's Welcome home Grandma and Grandad.. we're all going to France with Uncle Steve, are you coming too? I hope so. Did you have a lovely time? Tell us all about it, but have a cup of tea first if you want one love Kate

Gite latest..

Julian's latest.. phroar!
Originally uploaded by ezappy.

I'm booking all four Gites and so those of us going to France, I've set up to receive your Gite deposits..
acc no :- zero seven, five zero, five nine, eight five @ branch sort number eleven eighteen eleven.