danieldwilliam: (machievelli)
Here follows a short and fluffy update on my holiday.

Family Visits

My sister and brother in law were in town for Easter. My youngest brother popped in for the weekend on his way to working offshore. He dropped off his dog for dad and the Captain to look after. Bluebird visisted for her last Easter holiday before the access arrangements expire. Dad had returned from Australia.

So I cooked lunch. Dad cooked lunch. Then I cooked lunch again. Lunch was eaten. One of the lunch was a pre-birthday tea for BB, who turns 18 soon.

Then BB went on a three day Introduction to Cookery course at the New Town Cookery School. It seemed to do the job of introducing her to foundational techniques so she can cook with confidence when at uni. Money well spent if it helps her manage her budget and eat properly, healthily and enjoyably. Judging by the quality of the food that came back she's learnt a lot.

Friends

Caught up with some old uni friends and their four children on Sunday. A pleasant lunch and a short walk followed by an ice cream. Four children are ruinously expensive.

Andy nearly joined us for one of the lunches after setting fire to his kitchen.

Drinking

Enjoyed some wine from Naked Wine and had a Grasshoper now that I've tracked down some white Creme de Cacao. Delicous stuff. Had a delicious bottle of Moet et Chandon 1998 to celebrate BB's birthday. Very delicious.

Modelling

Took delivery of my new painting station from Hobby Zone of Poland. The painting station itself is superb. Took about an hour to assemble with a little help from MLW. Holds all my paint. It should allow me to do painting in shorter bursts and the tidy up quickly so that I can do more in the evening without MLW feeling like she's living a Warhammer shop.

However, it doesn't fit in the box that I thought it would by about 5mm. I'd clearly measured the internal dimensions of the box incorrectly. This is a bit of a blow but good will triumph over evil. I've found an online bespoke cardboard box shop so I can have a box that fits perfectly in to the space I want to put it, which will contain the painting station and some other things and be out of the way and tiday.

Gardening

My Lovely Wife and I spent a few days in the garden. Mostly this was tidying up after the winter. The flat is on a corner over looking a park so lots of leaves get blown into it. Excellent mulch but there is a need to clear them away. A bit of pruning. Well quite a lot of pruning. MLW had stern words with the Naughty Clematis and I tackled the Excellent Good Rose. I'm redirecting its energies along the wall. I did manage to get myself entangled in it with a nasty combination of thorns under my arm and in my wrist.

Other pruning and staking and re-shaping happened. Generally the garden looks like someone cares for it now.

We got the trellis for the Corner Clematis up on the wall. This has been a job in the offing for several years. I hope the Corner Clematis now thrives in a it's blowsy purple way. Along side the Corner Clematis went a bird house. Bets are invited on how long this survives being stolen.

We also planted some plants. We have a new flowering cherry with interesting gnarly branches to replace the dead Yellow Broome. A nice white early flowering upright shrub and a striking evergreen perential with bright green and white leaves. Some new wallflowers and some bedding plants for the planters.

Board Games

With my sister and brother in law up there were board games.

I played the following

Power Grid for the first time. Long game but interesting. Put aside three hours or more to play it. We broke our session with dinner.

Blueprint - second time. A game based on architecture. Short game (30 minutes or so). Nice mechanic. Not deep. I feel it's going to be a pleasant warm up game, or one The Captain can join in with.

Camel Up - a short funny betting game based on a camel race. The Captain did really well with the betting and the counting. Particularly when the game is for 8 year olds and older.

Ticket to Ride Europe with the 1912 expansion pack. We tried one of the new sets of card. It worked well and Bluebird through a combination of luck and judgement managed the family highest ever score with a series of about a dozen new route draws towards the end of the game. For a few minutes I thought she was going to top 200 points.

Tsuro came out for some Captain gaming.

Machi Koro with the Harbour and the (new to me) Millionaire's Row Expansion Packs. The game works very well with the Harbour expansion. I consider that the base game. Millionaire's Row changes the ethos of the game. The base game doesn't have many opportunities to agrressively interfere with other players. Millionaire's Row gives you the opportunity to disrupt them in several ways. It makes the game more interactive but sneakier. I liked it, the rest of the family less so.

I return to work having had a good week off.
danieldwilliam: (machievelli)
I have a weekend of adventure.

To London!

The Captain and I went to London on the sleeping train on Thursday night to meet up with MLW on Friday morning and Bluebird on Friday afternoon.

The Captain was delighted and excited by the sleeping train. We got on at 11pm and it leaves at 11.40. He loved his bunker bed and his wee bag of toiletries. When he woke up in the morning and discovered we had a sink and window he was beside himself with delight. It was awesome.

We arrived at about 6.30, had a bacon sandwich and made our way to the house we were staying in to drop off our bags then out to the Natural History Museum. There by bus - a proper London red bus, back by tube - less exciting - it's just a train under the ground, it doesn't even have bunker beds. I'd over estimated how long it would take to travel there and back so we arrived at the museum at 9am for a 10am opening. Second breakfast in a nice cafe nearby and then back to join the queue to get in. (The queue to get in is mainly driven by bag inspection).

The Captain and I scampered round the museum for a few hours looking at dinosaurs and bugs and Jurasic marine repiles before MLW joined us to go and look at earthquakes and volcanos and a rather cool escalator followed by lunch. I was able to see some of the orginal pliosaurs and plesiosaurs from Lyme Regis as well as a moasaur which I'd not seen before. When I visited Lyme Regis we took a guided fossil walk along the cliffs and the guide, once finished, hurried off to continue digging out a sea-dragon that he'd found emerging from the cliff face.

After lunch we tried the Captain on the Victoria and Albert musuem which he enjoyed. He was very taken with the idea of statues. I think he'd about had enough when we discovered a fountain he could fall in to in the courtyard. MLW sat in the sun and ate frozen yoghurt whilst the Captain capered in the water. On the way out he and I had a good chat about a statue of Diana the Huntress.

Once we'd dried him off it was time to go and meet Bluebird in Kings Cross and go for Brazillian bbq buffet then home.

"Home" worked very well although we had to swop the Captain and Bluebird's beds around because the Captain liked elephants. The Captain was particularly excited to be able to show MLW and BB around the house.

On Saturday the four of us went to the Tower of London. Again an early start to beat the crowds (it's the only way to trackle London). I liked the Tower. Lots of interesting history and cool stuff. We saw some kids singing show tunes, halberds, some nice scuptures of animals evocking the former menagerie which was closed due the extreme danger of having dangerous animals in a non-purpose built place. The last victim was the head keeper, nearly bitten to death by a snake, at which point the Duke of Wellington called time on the whole thing. I liked the display of armour and the political role the place has played as a large armory in the centre of Britain's largest population centre. MLW liked the animal scuptures and the Captain really liked the Princes in the Tower, because they were children. He went round their bit twice and wanted to know if the bones they found were really them. Which lead to the question, if we are able to identify Richard III using DNA evidence are we able to identify the recovered bodies which are now in Westminister Abbey.

Back home for crispy duck from Waitrose.

On Sunday I left early to drop off our luggage at Kings Cross left luggage then met up with everyone at the London Eye. This was the Captain's particular thing that he wanted to do in London and he had a fab time. The Eye is nice. I've been on it twice now. It overlooks my old office in Old Scotland Yard which is nice. I think it cost us £70 for the four of us to go round the wheel. It's not something I'd do more than once every ten years. The Captain enjoyed it.

After the Eye we wondered along the Southbank, there are some play parks, we found a very large sandpit and some public art (in which the Captain injured himself in a head on collission with another lad) . We had lunch at one of the street food markets. I had a very nice Carabbean chicken curry and a pint of Meantime London Lager. MLW some sort of risotto ball with ham and cheese. After lunch the Captain discovered some Hobbit holes and then, perhaps the pick of the day, a rooftop garden on top of the Southbank Centre. We pottered a bit then pottered off to our stations to catch our trains home.

Sunday was Fathers' Day and BB gifted me an interesting book and a lovely pair of cufflinks (which I think shall live at the office for a few months as my main work cufflinks).

The train journey to Edinburgh was lovely. The Captain watched something on his iPad, I snoozed and MLW read her book until it was time for picnic team and a few board games then home.

All very lovely.

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danieldwilliam

May 2025

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