Sarah and Simons New Year Eves Party (by sarah)

On New Years Eve clair came round to where we are staying in Highgate and painted my nails for me including putting on nial gems which took a while and for me has resulted in self control in trying not to pick at them!

We then headed out to Burgess Hill for a geology party (well a party hosted by geologists). Sarah and Simon where in disgrace as they went and got marraide with out telling me! In fact scarily I realised I hadn't seen any of them since Flos wedding just before the birth 🙁

It was great catching up and their tree looked fab 🙂

Midnight came with a pop by which time me and clair where horse from having sung along to about three cds worth of power ballards

As you have probably noticed Neil sprouted some facial hair during the night! He then proceeded to dance badly 🙂

Sarah and Simon had made mulled wine with chillies in! I'd not come across this concept before - the verticts ranged from wow! To arg my mouth and throat are blistering - I was a chicken and avoided it.

Here are some general picks of party randomness 🙂

Alaric decided to a) design chocolate bars and draw pianos becuase Jules Holland was excited on TV with a piano and to general amusement he decided to do impressions of Wallace and Gromite for which he has the perfect teeth!

Some time around 3 am we decided that it was time for cups of tea having all stuffed our faces with warm minni jam filled doughnuts, chocolate brownies (made by one of the Clairs), out cookies (made by one of the Sarahs) and other sundry yummyness! Did I mention that most people at this party where called Clair (sorry probably different spellings I know!) or Sarah! this can only mean one thing! - Clearly they are the best two names in the whole universe 😉

Coming soon to a blog near you - What else we did over Christmas - as some of you may have noticed the blog was actually broken there for a while hence I am only writing the posts now. It felt disheartening to write the posts when I knew people couldnt get at them to read :/

Again Happy New Year 🙂

Jeany-bow was at a family party creating havoc with two contemperies the three of whom where dressed in identical little fairy outfits! I'm hoping someone took pictures for me 🙂

Samuel Pepys (by alaric)

I'd always been vaguely aware that Phil Gyford, an interesting fellow I had the pleasure of meeting through my time with UpMyStreet.com nearly a decade ago, ran a web site that told you what the famous diarist Samuel Pepys was doing three hundred and forty three years ago today.

However, it wasn't until I saw his blog posting about it today that I realised just how much work he's put into it.

WOW.

Well worth a visit, even if you're not into history...

Something of a shock (by alaric)

During my weeks in London, I stay in a side-room in an office.

Tonight, I went to bed at around half past midnight. I said goodnight to the two people who were still in the office, shut my door, and settled down to sleep.

Then suddenly woke up at 2am, jolted awake by the recognition of the distant sound of the burglar alarm being armed. Something in my sleeping mind recognised the sound, and realised it was a bad sound. I'm quite impressed.

I remained very, very, still, then slowly cracked my eyelids open and peered up at the motion sensor in the corner above me...

Did I imagine it? Or was I now in a building with an armed burglar alarm, complete with loud siren at 2am and a link to a remote control centre?

I considered the distance to the alarm control panel, and the fact that I was totally naked. When you unlock the door, the alarm starts beeping down a countdown before which you have to key the number in. Could I leap out of bed, grab my dressing gown, rush out, and disarm the alarm before it went off?

I carefully rotated my head to see the sensor better. It was in the corner right above the bed, looking out towards the large window. I was probably not within its field of view, but where did the field of view extend to?

I extended my left arm, the one directly beneath it, and carefully shifted my books off of the bed, then gingerly, heart pounding, slid myself out from under the duvet until I was directly beneath the sensor. I could now lift my head, and start trying to look around the room to try and find out where I'd left my dressing gown.

The alarm went off. No beeping warning that I had ten seconds to enter the code: it just went off, screaming. I lept from the bed, dived onto my dressing gown, shoved it (balled up) into my groin, and burst out of the door, along the main hall of the office, and typed the deactivation code faster than I've ever typed before.

Silence fell. Apart from the slamming of my heart pumping on overdrive, my system flooded with adrenaline.

I walked back to my room, trembling and sweating, fumbling to put the dressing gown on properly.

At which point, for some reason, the printer suddenly burst into life and printed another test page. I picked it up from the out tray and dumped it into the pile of test pages next to it, leaving smears of finger sweat on it, then went and curled up on the bed until I felt up to writing this bizarre experience up.

Now I'm going to go and make a sign to attach to the alarm control panel: "DO NOT ARM IF ALARIC IS ASLEEP".

Then try to get back to sleep, which I suspect will take me a while.

The alarm panel is showing a series of numbers on its display, rather than the usual blankness. I'm still wondering if the police are going to turn up or something, since I'm pretty sure it's linked to some remote location.

Fireworks (by alaric)

Last night, we went up to Barrow Wake Viewpoint, which looks out over Gloucester from a hill, to see all the fireworks displays (public and private!) going on over the city. Jean loved it, and called them "pretties". There were a lot of families up there - somebody even had a barbecue going...

Then the next morning, the air outside at home smelt crisply of nitrate combustion products 🙂

Stephen Hawking and Lucy Hawking (by sarah)

We really enjoyed this talk though in hind sight we wished we had perhapse taken the cubs and scouts as it was about the childrens book they've writen together - although it was for children even Alaric learnt something new (or rather understands something more now - namely how stuff Can escape blackwholes). Lucy is a very good and engaging talker too which was cool.

I have to say I didn't enjoy this as much as the Pratchett talk but I think this was due to two things - firstly the theatre was freezing and due to verious happenings I had upset my pelvis again so it was aching fourciously. I was actually shivering! Secondly when Stephen Hawking was talking I had a bit of a problem understanding - now I think most people would not have had this problem as it is due to the fact that as a small child around the point where you really start to get the hang of spoken language, I was almost completely deaf and had to have several operations to sort it out. (ok look it was server glue ear and I had several lots of gromets put in but I had other stuff done at the same time so was put under full anaesthetic). This means that I really struggly understanding people if I can't see their lips move, if I can't see that then all I get is a jumble of noise with just the odd word coming out distinctly.

Of course Stephen Hawking talks with a synthacizer so I had no lips to read (I used Als monical whilst Lucy was talking). Would would have been good for me would have been the transcript up on the great big display screen they had in there. I know that public talks can be hard to write down in a corherrent form normally but that restriction does not apply here. Obviously I do not expet things to be altered for just the small fraction of the population that has these kinds of problems but it did ruin the talk for me a bit.