back of a spreadsheet; back of the net

1) Quite a productive week at work. The new To Do list software is working well so far and I've been more focused of late. We have some interesting projects in the bidding stage. That is good.

2) MLW was in Poland this week with work. The Captain and I hung out. He's been really lovely company these last few months and in particular whilst his mum was away. I got some great chat. He told me he is learning Viking songs as part of his project at work. He even sung some of them to me. We did some homework.   I saw a little bit of him doing judo. We saw Grandad. Mostly we watched Ultimate Beastmaster which is an obstacle race programe.

According to the Captain "that guy from Ultimate Beastmaster" did Blue Planet and not David Attenburgh. "That guy" turns out to be Sylvester Stallone who adds a lifetime of natural history broadcasting to his Oscar for Best Actor.

3) This week at Games I have been teaching Hanabi. Hanabi is a co-operative game where you try to work out what cards or tiles you have from clues given by your team-mates adn then play them in the right order. It is a game that encourages card counting and waggling eye-brows. Good fun in a serious sort of way.

4) This weekend brings the Calcutta Cup to town. MLW, her nephew and I are off to Murrayfield to see which form of false dawn the current Scotland team will be delivering. MLW's friend's son is on the bench. He might play. He might not. There might be beer. There might not. The nephew might introduce his (status undetermined) lady friend to his aunty. He might not.

5) I have finished watching Brooklyn 99 and have given myself a television dilemma by watching the Good Place. I think MLW might like it but I'm not sure. Engaging her would mean going back a few episodes - not a huge problem but I have a bit of a fix to get.

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.

I've had a rather lovely weekend. MLW was away for some it so the Captain and I had some time together.

On Friday MLW and I watched the Wales vs France rugby match. It wasn't a classic but, as Wales are my second favourite Northern Hemisphere team it was good to see them win.

I also managed to slip in a quick call with my mum who is freshly returned from volunteering at Care4Calais. At first I was a bit worried about her. Her voice sounded slurred but once she told me that I'd just woken her up from a nap I relaxed. She sounded tired. I think she's had a rewarding and productive time of it but, as expected, hard work.

MLW left on Saturday morning to visit her aged mother. The Captain and got a lift to Rugbytots with Grandad and Harvey the dog. Harvey loves the Captain. The Captain loves Harvey. Rugbytots went well. Just the one sin-binning for the Captain after he became involved in an over vigorous tagging. The usual tag rugby game was played 8 on 8 and across the width of the long axis of the sports hall. The coach had an emphasis on running straight and passing in to space which the Captain picked up on. Several times I saw him eye up the state of play and then shift himself across in to space. Space was theme of the weekend.

I fancied making a lamb tagine for dinner on Sunday for MLW and I. Grandad dropped us off by the butcher but we'd just missed him. However Co-op had everything we needed, expect dried apricots. The Captain was on good form, pulling along the basket and picking up some hotdogs for his own lunch. He and I had a good conversation about saffron. My claim that is was the most expensive foodstuff in the world was greeted with sceptisim and demand to know how much all the other things we had bought cost. Price per gram is a concept that will have to wait for another day I think.

Grandad took himself off to return Harvey to my brother and then pick up my step-mum to begin their journey to Australia to see my family out there.


We got home just in time for the Scotland vs Italy game. I'd pre-warned the Captain that I would be watching this on the big television and charged up his iPad. He watched the first twenty minutes. We talked about passing in to space. Then he tucked himself up with Beettleborg.

A good game. Some excellent individual efforts from Laidlaw, Seymour, WP Nel and Hogg. Good team effort and some good game management to ensure the win and to score the final try to make the win emphatic. We've been here before, with a Scotland team that promises much, doesn't quite deliver, had a good game and then continues to not deliver but this felt a bit more focused than usual and based on a whole team performance rather than just a few flashes of invidual good play.

The Captain continued to watch Beetleborgs whilst I watched the England vs Ireland game. My two least favourite teams. Unfortunately the hoped for low scoring draw didn't materialise and the wrong team won and the mathematical possibility of Scotland winning the Six Nations disappeared. Hey ho.

Sunday was a cracking day. The Captain had a lie in until 7.30 (compared to his usual 5.30) and then I got to got to go back to bed until 9.00. He was to have a play date with his best nursery friend in the morning but his friend was poorly so it was postponed until the afternoon. The Captain and I walked down to the shops to buy a toy and some apricots (which, according to the Captain, is mostly what Waitrose is all about, he's been there before and I should prepare myself for disapppointment, in case they didn't have any as mostly that's what people buy there.) We stopped to look at the crocuses and discuss bees and saffron. He spent his pocket money on some goodies. I got some dried apricots (and a lecture about how I shouldn't buy a large packet if I was planning on making my tummy smaller.)

It was a lovely day for a walk. Bright, cold, clear and dry. We walked down the hil and took the bus home.

I dropped the Captain off at his friend's and then returned to make tagine. It was very nice but I'd added one half a teaspoon of harissa paste too much and it was a little spicey. Delcious but perhaps a little hot.

MLW returned mid-afternoon. The Captain likewise. He and I made a large train track in the Train Track Room and then had a bath together.

I slipped in the now traditional few episodes of How I Met Your Mother. I'm now up to Season 5 Episode 10 - so more than halfway through.

Not an epic weekend but a very nice one.

The Capt has broken my glasses. I’m not quite sure how he did it. One second I was wearing them, the next he had them in his hands, a second later he had twisted one arm back on itself, popped the screw holding the frames together and the lens was out.

This is going to be inconvenient. My other glasses are sunglasses or six years old.

I am currently wearing contact lens. They are not working so well in the air conditioned office in which I spend most of my day looking at small numbers on VDU.


I'm already struggling to see and it's only ten o'clock.