Merry Christmas to you all

I should really start by wishing Peter a Happy Belated Birthday, so from Nic Jen Daniel and Claire, a jolly happy birthday to you.

We have finished the turkey, the mince pies and the presents only leaving the cold ham, fine wines, cigars. We arrived back from Malaysia on Friday and managed to miss all the traffic, spent Saturday doing some last minute shopping and seem to have been eating eversince. The kids all had a great time in the Highlands where the daytime temperature is only about 19-21 degrees, a good 10 degrees cooler than here, I managed to very poor rounds of golf.

We had dinner in Dublin Road tonight where there was quite a crowd. We have skipped the Orchard Road Parade and come striaght home.

Alas we don't dseem to have Cathy's telephone number so on the off chance you may be reading this or may have the insight to ring, I will stay up for a few hours.

Happy Anniversary to Mum and Dad, fantastic and keep it up. And to kate , a happy birthday too for the 27th.

P.S our number is (065) 67373753

Hope to hear from someone soon.

Love Nic, Jen and Claire and Daniel.

Merry Christmas Ever-ree one!

Greetings from a bright and warm afternoon on the beach at Rock.

Gems and Clivo and Will arrived last night in the black bee em and today we all went for a blow about setting off towards Damar Bay.
We're having Christmas dinner tomorrow cooking a full meal for the first time on the Aga.
The plan is for us all to arrive in Wales for Kates birthday so we'll see everyone in Llandewi Breffi then.
Love to all the Bloggers and Happy Holidays to all our readers!

Hello in Welsh

Well, we have arrived in LLanddewi after an easy trip down on Saturday. To make things easy we stayed at a Holiday Inn in Eastleigh and set off just after 0900. we had trouble with the car the day after Julian and Ruth left on Monday and it was running very lumpy. I took it to Harwoods and they finally fixed it at 10.30am on Friady which was the time we had booked to get to Portsmouth to do some shopping. The trouble was not so bad as I had feared - a leaking rocker-box cover which was spilling oil into the spark plugs, thus causing poor firing. a new gasket was installed but the supplier had only sent one (instead of four) seals for the spark plugs. Panic over and we caught the 2.30pm ferry and went straight to the hotel, instead of shopping in the increasing gloom at 3.30pm. The hotel was full of office workers having theirChristmas dinner and it was very noisy. After posting some cards and present for Pete's birhday, we hi-tailed it for Cardiff.
Next day we went towards Carmarthen as we had an invite to see an old friend of mine, John Partridge, who moved down there in 1997. He is very deaf and his wife, Joan is suffering from osophagus? cancer, meaning that she could only receive food via a drip. Very sad, but they were pleased to see us. Since then we have done some shopping, bought a Roberts DAB radio(for me) and a Practica digital camera (for Mum)and spent up. The children have broken up and they are busy putting up the decorations. We are all looking forward to sharing a turkey and a bottle or two on Sunday. We hope to see something of you, Steve as Kate is expecting visitors for her birthday on 27th. We hope the weather stays fine for your travels. Love to all Dad and Mum Love from CathyJohn, Edmund, Thomas and Kate

Which way are we going then?

THE QUICK WAY is a 1500 mile return trip. I've got some new wheels so we could go via the Millau Bridge
Anyone see the episode in which theTopgear guys drove over it? Canary Wharf fits under it and it's on OUR way!











Topgear wanted to celebrate the single greatest supercar of today, but our presenters couldn't agree what that was. Eventually, we decided to let them bring one each.

May brings the Ferrari 430, Hammond picks the Pagani Zonda, and Jeremy just has to plump for the Ford GT. Well, he has bought one. Twice.

Our celebration takes us through France until we reach another example of mankind creating splendour just for the sake of it - the epic Millau Bridge. Prepare for one of the most stunning items Top Gear has ever made. And the shock of James May driving like his brogues are on fire.

Texed Mexed and homeward bound

Jen is winging her way back at this very moment from USA, having survived over a week without her children. I had the honour of looking after them all on my own for the whole of Sunday, we spent the afternoon on the beach, weather was just right, not hot, not cold, not sunny, not cloudy, not bright, not dull. Just perfect.

Daniel says thank you Uncle Steve and Grandad for sending birthday cards. Sorry to say that I have still not gotten around to producing a christmas card list, that will be my New Years resolution.

We are going off to Malaysia on Friday and we should be home on Christmas Eve, probably get delayed by Santa Claus at the Immigration Check Point as we should be arriving back in Singapore about the time he visits.

Hindsight . . . Tiger would...ssss

SHaZZam!

There's a one time free trial pdf link but you just have to loook for it!

A quick visit to the asylum -Sorry meant to read quick visit by the asylum!! Beam me up scottie... Ruth appears miraculously in the new breakfast room

Keep watching this space...

Sorry to say that DiskWarrior was attacking the problem when it decided to hang. Nothing would progress and the keys all went dead for many minutes. I left it going but 9 hours later called it a day. A repeat performance was seen second time around. A quick survey of the manual suggests that I no longer have, or have never had, the correct drivers in the machine. I have tried reloading Tiger from the discs Steve sent but when asked to select a drive to put it on there are no drives available. My hard drive doesn´t appear in the window.

Strangely enough the internal diagnostics say the drive is functioning normally.

It seems I am left with only two alternatives. Find another Mac and try to operate my drive from that using the firewire, or else just erase the disc and loose everything, then rebuild from scratch. I am loathed to do the later until I have exhausted the former as I have very useful files I´d like to keep and photos too on the hard drive...but then there are not many people with Macs around here...at least, none that I know. I will wait until the holidays and then take the machine to a Mac shop that has recently started up in Alicante.

So, until then I don´t expect to send many posts and sorry if I missed your birthdays Steve, Nic, Daniel, Claire et al.

Love to all and Merry Christmas...

Pete

ezappy's Christmas wish list

A Solid Gold Football
A Trip to Venus
Ten Tickets to the World Series
Frank Sinatra's old Address Book


DRUMKIT

and

SPEEDBOAT




but get in quick! . . . . . .
only 2 and a half hours to go!

Snow Globe time....

CLICK

!Happy Birthday Dan the Man!

and here's the Incredibles gang & especially Dash to say 'Happy Birthday Citizen!" Have a great day.
love Gem, Will, Uncle Steve & Clive xxxx




"A Bach Christmas"

Saw this trailered on the beeb and thought it may be of interest to some especially Ruth I think!
Radio 3 will be celebrating Christmas by broadcasting continously over 10 days the complete works of JS Bach. The composer's entire surviving body of work will be performed by some of the world's greatest musicians including specially recorded performances by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Angela Hewitt, Philippe Herreweghe & Tom Koopman.

Full details at http://bbc.co.uk/radio3/bach/

ps Ruth -have recorded you a cd (Seth Lakeman) & will post it shortly. Sorry forgot to leave you a copy at the time.

love G xxx

Ho, Ho, Oh what a naughty boy

What a naughty boy you are Steve, but not as naughty as Ronnie.
Congratulations on your new toy, Clive. We will expect high things from you.

It is Desperate Dan's birthday today (8th December in Singapore) It is now 11.am GMT 12 noon cet and 1900 on 7th December Sg time, so get sending.
Sorry, I got that wrong - at the moment Dan is fast aleep as it is 1300 gmt plus 7 hours = 2000 (8pm). His birthday is tomorrow!!!

Can we be in your Mac gang?

Well exciting news from OX4 is that Clive's iBook G4 has arrived today! Ordered Saturday night, delivered by 10am today & now blogging. And we got it up & running with 10 mins!! It's beautiful....Ta v.much to Steve & Julian's valuable advice for the inside track about which one to get. Um now can't think of anything to put...

Other news...is that after thinking the goldfish were soon off to the big goldfish bowl in the sky what with Kenny changing colour and all, the www has reassured us that it is just old age as he has turned from his usual coppery orange to a distinguished silvery grey. Clive reckons that they are pushing 12 years old since bought at Tesco in Abingdon...is that a good age for goldfish?

The Christmas tree has now gone up at work bit- bit too early? I like the ole week before Christmas tradition myself, but then its just over a week till the office Christmas lunch in Sandford. Ah the office Christmas lunch I bet you homeworkers really miss those - not.

love Gem & Clive

and it's Good Night from HIM!

Well it is Panto Season, and Ronnie Barker was part of Christmas for ages, so when I got this email... see if anyone can read it through without cracking up! This was originally shown on BBC TV, back in the seventies. Ronnie Barker could say all this without a snigger (though god knows how many takes) The irony is that the BBC received not one complaint. Must have been the speed of delivery was too much for the whining herds. Try getting through it without converting the spoonerisms as you read; -- -- --

The sugly isters were right bugly astards. One was called Mary Hinge,and the other was called Betty Swallocks; they were really forrible huckers; they had fetty sweet and fetty swannies.

The sugly isters had tickets to go to the ball, but the cotton runtswould not let Rindercella go. Suddenly there was a bucking fang, and her gairy fodmother appeared. Her name was Shairy Hithole and she was a light rucking fesbian.She turned a pumpkin and six mite wice into a hucking cuge farriage with six dandy ronkeys who had buge hollocks and dig bicks The gairy fodmother told Rindercella to be back by dimnlight otherwise, there would be a cucking falamity.

At the ball, Rindercella was dancing with the prandsome hince when suddenly the clock struck twelve."Mist all chucking frighty!!!" said Rindercella, and she ran outtripping barse over ollocks, so dropping her slass glipper.

The very next day the prandsome hince knocked on Rindercella's door and the sugly isters let him in. Suddenly, Betty Swallocks lifted her leg and let off a fig bart. "Who's ust jarted??" asked the prandsome hince. "Blame that fugly ucker over there!!" said Mary Hinge. When the stinking brown cloud had lifted, he tried the slass glipper on both the sugly isters without success and their feet stucking funk.Betty Swallocks was ducking fisgusted and gave the prandsome hince a knack in the kickers. This was not difficult as he had bucking fuge halls and a hig bard on. He tried the slass glipper on Rindercella and it fitted pucking ferfectly. Rindercella and the prandsome hince were married. The pransome hince lived his life in lucking fuxury, and Rindercella lived hers with a follen swanny.

tiny little Wood-henge

tiny little woodenhenge
Originally uploaded by ezappy.

we had tears running down our faces trying to perform this flukey trick. What a laugh!

Marseille Bouillabais for Hughie

We've tried it so now we can make it!

Gite Deposit

Cheque for €1000 sent today so we're going!

I want to do it!

Good Game

Dad......!
yeah..
you know canvases....?
eh?
for paintings?
yeah..
Well you know the corners?
yeah..
those little wedges?
...yeah..
well...
...yeah...
Look!

Diskwarrior arrives!

Cheers Julian, the disk warrior arrived today by a convoluted route. I shall set it in motion and see what comes of it. What are you doing new year? Shall I bring the disc to you personally? The kids want some snow to go skiing. We have the coolth but not the snow. Also finding wood doesn´t last very long!

Also got some cds from you Dad so thanks for that although I have yet to play them. Once the Mac is back up and running I will enjoy some music. Playing through the TV speaker is still my only option at present and that doesn´t do the Beatles justice.

Saying that, I watched the George Harrison memorial concert at the Albert Hall the other night on Spanish TV. No doubt you all saw it ages ago but these things take time to come round. What a great show. If anyone wants to get a DVD for Christmas for their beloved brother, that´s the one! I was quite moved by it all. Dhani Harrison is the spitting image of his Dad. Funny old world.

I´ll blog again soon, assuming the warrior is on my side!

DiskWarrior part umpteen

Your disc has been dispatched Pete, good luck. J