The cake Virginia did for Chris and Meredith's wedding.

Virginia and I are now using a Macbook Pro at home running Leopard (OSX 10.5.1) There were reasons for replacing the G5 iMac we had before, apart from a new toy for the boy who likes the computer kind of toys. The games I like playing are mainly to be found on Windows so dual booting the Macbook will save having two computers at home. My website to date had been done using homegrown and idiosyncratic software, which was burdensome to maintain. The plan is to convert as much as possible over to Apple's iWeb and save on effort there. This page before it was converted from iWeb was the start of that project!

Virginia and I belong to the National Trust, and one of their nearby places is Anglesey Abbey. The gardens are open in January and February to see snowdrops (they have 170 different varieties here!) There is some artifice in the gardens, the whiteness of the silver birch is apparently due to washing up liquid, but it is a very beautiful place to visit and be enchanted by. The colours and shapes and textures in the plants is intoxicating.

Virginia and I went on a retreat to Quiet Waters, which is just outside Bungay in Suffolk. We liked it so much we went on a second retreat in late August as well. A great ambience of calm. Well looked after by the amiable people who ran the place, it was good to share meals with them. One interesting session with assigning patience and other virtues to fruits, and saying why one had so assigned. Didn't see the kingfisher which was rumoured to be around though. Did see bats flying at dusk. Bungay itself has character including a ruined castle accidentally located behind a tea room, and a secondhand bookshop I had to resist buying books in.

I found myself in my firm's offices in Capelle near Rotterdam for a 3-day course this last week. A little last minute - not sure why I got sent or what that means. Decided to try with just carry on luggage, and checked in over the Internet. The resulting bits of paper worked to my surprise. I had worried about the size of my bag, but mine was small. Took plenty of reading matter with me, and that cushioned being on a plane. EasyJet I flew with have a scramble for seats like RyanAir do. Travelled from Amsterdam to Rotterdam by train, and the Dutch were very helpful. I wasn't sure I had reached Rotterdam as I found it hard to match the in the train announcements to the way place names are spelt. I also had problems leaving the train as it wasn't clear how. Happily a helpful conductor showed me a yellow button caused the door to open, and confirmed it was Rotterdam I was at. The finest city he asserted. The taxi fare from Rotterdam to my hotel was nearly four times the rail fare from Amsterdam to Rotterdam. The hotel was perfectly adequate for my needs. Enjoyed watching a family of coots in the landscaped grounds - the parents feeding the rust colour headed chicks. I do like showers which regulate the temperature for you. The course was interesting, and the people I was with fun. My firm's Capelle office is well provisioned, with snacks and drinks freely available. The snacks included a Dutch speciality - highly salted liquorice which abused my taste buds. The slow but smart drinks machine somewhat worryingly said "Your consumption is ready" when it was done. "Sterrenmunt" tea proved to be star anise.

The cake Virginia did for my sister's 50th birthday.

Virginia and I went for a themed week at "Lindors" in Gloucestershire. The theme was walking and waterways, but we didn't really do any walking meaning I didn't need my new half-price boots after all! "Lindors" is a lovely place, landscaped grounds with gentle rills running through them. We were in the Forest of Dean, before we went I wouldn't have been able to say where that was. The Forest has been a mining area since Roman times, for iron and for coke to smelt the iron. The steep one-track winding roads were not fun to drive along. A pleasant enough ride on a festooned boat "Kingfisher" beneath Symonds Yat. Yat is Yorkshire dialect for gate, and the name comes from a guy from Yorkshire who extorted tolls for boats to pass on the River Wye. We went to the top of Symonds Yat with its great views over the bend in the Wye - sadly no views of peregrine falcons that day. The RSPB had a lookout spot with telescopes trained on the cliff crevices where the falcons nest. Went down Clearwell Caves, another mine where in centuries past even young boys worked underground in appalling conditions. Before explosives they used to set fires underground to break up the rock for digging. The hosts for the week were keen on narrow boats (barges are an incorrect term apparently.) We learnt about the Falkirk Wheel, a new revolutionary (in more sense than one) lock linking two canals in Scotland. Something added to the to-see list. Had a trip on a Redline narrow boat on the Monmouth and Brecon canal. This canal has been cut in two by the canal wall collapsing, and the slowness in repairing it is really hurting boat hire and the like companies. I had some experience of plying the tiller as the narrow boat slowly threaded its way along the canal. Your turn the tiller in the opposite direction to where you want the boat to turn, the boat pivots in the middle, it takes a time to react. I never got happy at trying to shoot through the tight bridges, hitting the sides often particularly when I tried to steer under the bridge. We had a shambolic experience when we went past the winding hole we should have turned round in, and had to turn round in the normal canal. Dire really dire. A winding hole (wind as in the wind which blows) is a large area where narrow boats were turned round, the operators would use the wind to help turn the boats. A pleasant part of the week was sharing mealtimes and activities with the other people, who were mainly elderly. It's hard to accept one is older too. One or two struck me as the kind of people who borrow stories to puff themselves up, hard to prove but some people just don't feel right. I probably didn't feel right to them.

Virginia's grandmother used to run a Tufty Club (a long gone organisation for teaching children to cross the road safely, Tufty was a squirrel.) This Tufty Club had an annual outing to the seaside which kept happening even after the Club itself became moribund. Virginia's mother has kept the outing going, and I felt I should go once to experience the experience. The outing goes to "Walton on the Naze" (typical English seaside town.) Decent gently sloping beach (no treacherous undercurrents but the tide comes in surprisingly quickly.) A pier that's seen better days with an amusement arcade of dodgems and old style roller coasters. Stalls where you can buy cheap kites and postcards and inflatables and buckets and spades. We walked to the Naze Tower and tried our hand at flying kites, but the wind was spasmodic. It had been gusty enough to blow Virginia's straw hat into the sea which didn't do it any good! We had a pleasant enough lunch in a pub which wasn't as crowded as I feared. Took two hours each way travelling which wasn't so nice, it was a crawl reaching Walton itself. Also on the downside was getting the windscreen cracked on the motorway (as the crack is spreading better get that seen to!)

Virginia and I went to Elton Hall near Peterborough for another stately home. Elton Hall is still lived in by the Proby family, rather than being looked after by the National Trust. We saw the furniture, the books, the porcelain, the silverware, the paintings that the rich have - the guides were very helpful and informative - but a question for me remains. What is it like to be in that social class? How do the people who live there think?

We went to Norwich to see where I grew up, the streets that imprinted themselves on my dreams. Booked into a spanking new Holiday Inn Norwich right by Norwich City's football ground, our room even looked out over the pitch! The ground, and the immediate area, had changed from when as a schoolboy I used to go and stand on the terraces and watch matches. Now seats everywhere no standing. We walked round the football stadium and saw that Delia Smith had a restaurant there - as the price was £32 a head decided to eat in the hotel's restaurant! The staff at the hotel were friendly and helpful, our room was well laid out and well lit (unusual in a hotel room.) The bathroom had an artistic look to it with the wash basin raised proud. The prices were artistic too, and breakfast wasn't included (£12.95 each!) There was annoying piped music in the corridors, and I didn't sleep well with the noise. We also needed the air conditioning on to stay warm. On the Saturday we caught a number 35 bus from a nearby superstore up to Castle Meadow (only £1 to hop on and off a kindly bus driver told us.) Happily it stayed dry while we were walking around Norwich centre as Virginia had left her waterproof behind. Saw the Castle Mall which was new to me, a split-level celebration of shopping, then went around the Castle itself. In the Castle there was an exhibition of art by Cotman, some of which rivalled Turner in their expressiveness. A lift of metal and glass thrust itself up out of the ground by the castle, as out of place as Dr Who's Tardis inside an Aztec temple. We went to the Bridewell Museum - I like particularly seeing recreations of old shops and the Bridewell had a pawnbroker and chemists. The chemists included in its wares dried spiders. Went to Jarrolds department store for a cup and a slice of cake in the crowded cafe at the top. I remember the anxiety of getting separated from my parents in that store. Next was going to the Cathedral (taking in a bag of roasted chestnuts as it was a holiday.) My old school (the Upper School part) is right next to the Cathedral, we used to have assemblies in the Cathedral - I remember rousing renditions of "Jerusalem" at the end of terms. I sang not that confidently in the Chapel choir rather than the Cathedral choir, used to have to wear a surplice and ruff on Sundays. Once a year we would go on a trip down to London to sing at a do at the Worshipful Company of Dyers there. Had a sightseeing tour of London thrown in. A statue of Nelson (who ran away from King Edward the Sixth's grammar school) stands in the upper close - once a year we had to do a ritual round the statue. Most of the upper close hasn't changed but they are building next to the Cathedral. I paid £3 to be able to take pictures inside the Cathedral, I remember particularly being up in the galleries when a joint performance (with Norwich Girl's School) of the mediaeval mystery play "Noye's Fludde" was done in the Cathedral. We walked along winding flint walled lanes to see the Lower School - now with a security fence it didn't have in my day. It has been rebuilt too since a fire destroyed the buildings I knew. Walked back to see St. Andrews Hall Norwich where we used to have School speech days - my mother tried to stop me fidgeting during them. The last speech day I ever went to I did receive a prize! But then had to dash away as the family was unhappily moving up to Yorkshire. After St. Andrew's Hall we went on to Strangers Hall which was one of the places we had outings from school. Saw the Maddermarket Theatre on the way back to Castle Meadow too. Saturday was rounded off with a meal courtesy of room service. The restaurant was fully booked until 9pm they said, and even if we sat down at 9pm it might be 9.30pm before food might be transmitted to our table. Got home on Sunday to find Tabitha had been sick in several places. The cats do enliven our lives.

We used to go to the "Lucky Star" quite a lot, after seeing a film at what was "Cineworld" next door. For Virginia and I that makes a good start to the weekend, seeing a film then eating. "Lucky Star" was an all you can eat Chinese buffet. (It has now been replaced by "Nines"). On Saturdays at least they seemed to have coachloads of Chinese tourists calling in, guess that is good business for them. The food was different in that it was Chinese in design, and being a buffet one could get fed quite quickly. It was disconcerting one time when we were hovering, thinking about where to eat, and the manageress almost tried to drag us in physically.