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.

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.

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.