Post Christmas Dinner (by sarah)

Today we went to my brother David and his girlfriend Michelles house for a post christmas/new year lunch. There was lots of chopped peppers which Jean woofed down, homous and pizza!!! We were in hevean.

Then there were gifts, we handed over Jeans tea towel with her drawing on plus some bits I'd made. They did something similar and we got an old copy of one of their films as it was in a box set one of them had got for Christmas - this seems a sensible way of doing things to me. They've been having a few issues due to the credit crunch in that David lost his nice manager job just after they had sighned on the morgage. He is now temping at just about anything.

We had a lovely time, mum and dad had got them stuff for the new house which included a gravey boat - most of the pictures I took seem to contain it or David playing with it :/ Oh and yay!!!! I have a camera again!!!! Mum and Dad bought it as a joint birthday and christmas presant and it is twice the resolution of the old one though I am currently running on its internal memory which is a whole 10 pictures :/

But yay!!!! and here are the picks including lots of cute Jean ones and yes she's in her chinese outfit again. Unfortunatly last night we watched KungFu Panda so she now keeps hitting people 🙁

I had to take arty shots I just couldn't resist - sorry!

Ivan and Sam’s New Year Party (by sarah)

For this New Year we headed down to my cousins house for a party, as always we got lost on the very last bit of the journey and Ivan had to come out and find us - I was navigating but the map didn't go down to a fine enough detial ok!

There was lots of food and lots of kids! Jean had a great time as there was basically a room full of children throwing balls and things at each other and there was a mirade of pepper pig videos and the like. Ivan and Sam also have a fish tank 🙂 Jean loves fish we take to the garden centres locally just to look at 'Nemo's' (Becca and Olly have a lot to answer for!).

At mid night there was the the popping of party poppers and as always I ended up with a wig of the paper strings - this time Jean put it on my head 🙂 We all had an attempt at Auld Langs ey and by the end Jean was the only on of the 'babies' still running about full of energy but then she had had a nice long sleep all the way from Gloucestershire to Essex!

Jean was shy at first but cheered up when we changed her into her satin pink party dress - all the other kiddies were dressed up and she felt abit out of place I think - she had her sparkly silver shoes and all would have been well if she hadn't tried to walk away from me whilst I was trying to tie the bow around the waste - I stepped after her and trod on the belt and she kept going and there was an ominous ripping noise and so she ended up with her belt ribbon tied as a braclet around her wrist instead.

'Mummy you broke my dress!'

'Yes well if you won't keep still when I say things like that will happen.'

It was a good party and we even got warm mugs of tea as we stayed to help tidy up - they offered for us to stay the night but Al wanted to get back to Highgate.

(hopefully at some point I'll get the photos on here:/)

Jean’s First Christmas Play (by sarah)

I have just come back from the Snowman at Sunset which was the nativity Jean's pre-school put on and Jeany was a snow cloud.

We made her outfit last night and I'm hoping it will have survived so I take a photo of her in it when Daddy comes home on Saturday. The children all had a great time though Jean did do a lot of wide eyed staring and had to be reshuffled to the front when her snow cloud bit happened. The sun shined on her and made her sparkel.

I put hair gel glitter in her hair and then dug out the 'fairy dust' stage glitter my aunt gave me when I was little - this stuff makes you shimmer and I have used it in countless christmas plays and I even used it when going out to clubs and things at uni.

Jean was very sparkly 🙂

She run up at the end of the play and hugged me lots, she said she'd been a bit scared and I told her she did really well and was very sparkly - she even had sparkly shoes. She went off for an after show treat whilst mummy and ferfer (my dad) went for mince pies and non-alcholholic mulled wine.

When I get round to I will put the out fit up on Salaric.

Trains, Boats and Swimming (by sarah)

After the World of Beatrix Potter we went for a train ride on a narrow gauge railway - this was uphill and downdale and as the fog was coming in on root to the train station I got a bit nervous - it turned out that this was an historical trip for Lionel who has memories of his fathers car breaking down and all sorts along those roads.

We were later than we intended as Jean had thrown up earlier in the day etc... so Al and Lionel had to drive to the terminous whilst me Simon, Lynne and Jean rode in the open air carrages.

The landscape was cool but I become frustrated with the phone camera and doubt anything came out well - there just was not the right kind of lightlevel. Still we saw a buetiful black sow which reminded me of the pigs in Pigling Bland and then we saw a stolk or crain in the mudflates 🙂 There where also sheep and cows but too my suprise they where actually quiet different to what we have here. The sheep where fluffy black and white 🙂

Everytime the train whistle went Jean pretended to be scared and need a cuddle which was sweet - there was no door to the cart we were in so she was sitting firmly in the corner with Lionels waistcoat over her to keep her warm. We had a little argument about standing up and another about sticking her hands outside the cart but over all it was great with her serving me pretend tea from a pretend flask - I sort of wished it hadnt been pretend :/

We then had the most fantastic meal in a place called... Cockermouth... (yes that is actually the name :/) the resturant was called Junipers and was fantastic 🙂 And the staff were really nice.

The next morning I was dropped off ouchy early to get my ouchy priced train down to London from Pentrith. Poor Lynne had to go to a Dr as it turned out the cough she'd had all weekend had resulted in ulcers in her throat 🙁 Whilst she was sorting that out Al took Jean to the swimming pool which apparently was sweet even if Jean didn't swim - she jjust walked around in the water but enjoyed herself lots 🙂

They then spent the afternoon on a steamer - Jeany also got to watch Wallace and Gromet so I think she had a fantastic holiday - she told me all about the boat yesturday morning as we got her ready for pre-school 🙂

I like Tunnels (by sarah)

After visiting the extremely cute alpacas we headed off to the Honister Slate Mine on route Simon - Al's step brother asked me what the landscape was. I confessed I didn't actually know anything about the region but I looked at the scenes passing my window and guessed at volcanic with glacial action afterwards.

My back was in a bit of a state still and I bascially could not rotated my head but I really wanted to go in - I am from the Royal School of Mines, I am from Welsh minning stock how could I not go in? This question arose when buying the tickets as Lionel has injured his foot and was using his crutch and had sandles on.

A discuession with the lady on the desk about exactly what the mine was like had Lionel not going but me more determined to go. Jean unfortunatly was wearing sandles so would have to be carried for sections of it but would be ok as long as she was ok with the dark - we were more concerned that we wouldn't be able to keep the hard hat on her!

I have been known to go into mines on crutches - I really can not resist them!

We had to wait for our guide for a while so looked around the shop - I was I have to say impressed. They had been really ingenious with the products they where making from the mined stone - not all of it slate. I thought it all looked a bit odd though and there was definatly some interesting stuff going on in the rocks. It didn't quiet look right as slate to me and there was some interesting flow and flame structures in some of the non-slate. It is lovely stone and if I ever have enough money to do things properlly in the house I shall be getting the stone from that mine.

There is a lovely bluey/green quality to a lot of it.

The dude arrived and gave us our hard hats and battery packs which reminded me so poniantly of going caving I almost backed out but then realise what the problem was.

Jeany initial struggled over the hat until she saw that we were all wearing them - she didn't have a heavey battery pack as she had basically an LED head torch. To my suprise she noticed this - 'I have blue light, special light, you have yellow!'

We clambered into an orange landrover thing and trundled up to the mine.

Outside the entrance we stared at the landscape and low! It had once been a sea flow with volcanics going on on it and then been uplifted etc... and then had glacia's move through it all carving the characteristic u-shaped vallies - these give you a nice cross section through the formation - so in staring across the valley we basically had a mirror image of what we were standing on - this was cool and gave us a much better over veiw than was could have hoped to gain any other way.

I was just a bit chuffed that my guess had been right.

We could see the layering of the ancient lava flows and slate - the slate higher up was the greener colour. Slate normally occurs from say eustry mud which becomes mudstone - this is then folded due to tectonic action and the pressure causes changes so that you get an alinement of say mica along the fold axis - this is the cleavage and is what the slate is split down. This slate looked so odd to me becuase it was not made from mud - instead it was origonally volcanic ash!

This also means that it has more griss - this is the amount of sort of large fragments in it that stop it having a smooth break down the cleavage - therefore this slate breaks into thicker slabs compared to other slates ie welsh or scottish slates. But it also means it is stronger!

The guide dude was called Fred and he was the father-in-law of the guy who set the business up - again I was really impressed as the guy had bought the mine and re-opened it when he had initially known nothing about mining - his grandfather had asked why was the mine closed and he'd just seen the potential and gone with it!

They even went and got a special rock saw from the Itialian marble quarries - this looks like lots of lumpy beads, or sort of an articulated spine of some sort - it is beds of steel or something embadded with industrial diamonds that as Jean point out glittered.

They now mine safely off course but when the mine was origonally open (from the 1700's I think he said but am not sure) they used dangerous tequniques which have resulted in what are known as rate traps - these are rooms where so much of the slate has been removed that the overlaying rock is in danger off coming down on top of the minners if they continue - this was actaully an inefficient way to do it and they get far more out and intact than they used too. Also the range of products they offer now will hopefully buffer them from economic crisis - these are what always closes slate mines as builders stop buying the slates.

One of these rat trap chambers turns out to have great acoustics and a jazz dude has been in there recording this has given me an idea - ok Clare, Ella and Charlee what about us doing something similar - I'm thinking medeaval chants with some electric guitar thrown in would be cool - Becca could even play some flute and Carina how's your guitar playing - infact Becca you play too don't you?

I think we could call ourselves the Mining Babes?

What do you think?

Anyway cough we had a look at the history and stuff and after me rabbiting on about why I thought the cieling of the place worked so well our guide thought that we were musicians but Al and Simon blew my cover and asked me questions about the geology of the place - I was highly embarassed but then it turned out Fred was a Steel Engineer and on top of that I found out that there may be something there that will help me with my MRes project. So I may be going back there sooner than later.

I really love this and Jeany announced that she likes tunnels 🙂 Talking of which there where a few really cool tunnels there that had been in the old days, shored up with the waste stone - this is done with no key stone and is similar to the ancienct burial mounds in Scotland and places. Jean told me off for touching the walls and braeking them which I thought was sweet 🙂 Somehow she ended up getting buscuits out of the other people on the tour :/ How does she do it?

Again photos coming soon hopefully 🙂