Bali hi

Another quick post from Bali this time. Week one nearly over, one more to go. The sun and hot weather are wearing me out - NOT!

Lovely to see C and O. We have not been without incident - I hit the bottom of the pool, C dislocated her shoulder falling off a bike, O is sunburnt and J is a mosquito attractor.

Bali is very different from the place I visited 20 years ago, and not for the better. I'm hoping C & O might find some of that older enchantment, but no sign of that yet...

Make mine a double-single

Nice to see Phil T still reading - sorry I haven't been more regular Phil.

The intention is to show a bridge being built, so no Shermans or Churchills. Perhaps a bulldozer if the right kitset exists...

These shots show the kit panels versus the scratch-built ones - a noticable difference in size due to the incorrect height and width on the kit. Also visible (in white) are the rocking rollers, though without rollers yet.

Anyone for Baileys?

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Here's some of my latest handiwork. Like the real thing each panel joins with pins to allow easy construction/deconstruction and flexibility in the end product.

You can see progress from the 'workshop floor' with the panels being constructed, through to their connection together to make a launching-nose. Some mock up decking and then some painting complete progress so far...

Voom

OK, so we skip ahead in time. It is now November, so what else is new?

I'm a year older, my hair's a little thinner, my jowls a little thicker. Sigh.

Hockey has been fun, with a mix of wins and losses. I wasn't there this weekend when the boys went down 5-0. (Not as bad as another result this weekend: 19-0! How do you let in 19 goals in a hockey match?) I'm slowly getting some match-fitness back after 2 years of being a sloth. I haven't got my head around their formation though - supposedly a 4-4-2 like football, but really an unstructured mess as far as I can see.

x x

x x x

x

x x x

x

X

See how it crowds the centre? And if the outsides creep in as they do it is like watching junior rugby where every kid is in a mass around the ball. I'd do this:

x x x x

x x x

x x

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X

An angel. Anyway...

My birthday was nice. J took me out to a comedy club. Dinner was good - I had fat and starch with lettuce leaves followed by sugar*. She had vegetables. The comedians were pretty good. One was an Aussie who told us about making napalm as a kid. For some reason my younger bros came to mind...

J bought me a good tripod so I have no excuses for not taking a few night shots of Bath. Mum sent a rather eclectic parcel over - Gingernuts, chocolates and a hoodie. I'll be able to go to Bristol in uniform now. 8-) I got an e-card from C and phone calls from K, M and S (the latter two days early). Nice to catch up with family.

Only two weeks until we catch up with C&O in Bali. Sunshine - yeeha!

It's autumn so to catch the turn of the leaves we went to the National Arboretum. It was very colourful, particularly in the maple groves. The English countryside is beautiful at this time of year, with the last colour in the leaves, soft light and old villages in each valley. I get to see it while being driven to hockey matches. J doesn't since we have no car, but the pressure's on to change that. Third time lucky we hope. We did consider a camper van for a while, but finances dictate something a little cheaper.

Those finances are still not being boosted from my direction except in dribs and drabs from supply (relief) teaching. J wants me to retrain yet again, but the cost of courses is high, and in this climate I don't see it necessarily aiding in getting a job as there are so many others out there with experience as well as qualifications, but we'll see. In the meantime as I don't have a job, I'm still not allowed to start construction on the Bailey bridge kitset. Bummer.

The text of the book has gone to the editors. There is still one more trip to Italy to do to get final shots, but essentially it is out of our hands, for better or for worse.

Our art classes finished last night. We used a range of media from chalk and pastels to acrylic paint. I enjoyed the chalk the most, but could get into the painting with a few more lessons. I think J has posted the pick of them so I won't bother here.

I'll try to get back into a regular routine again. Anyway, thanks for reading.

*Roast pork belly with crackling and mashed spuds followed by chocolate brownie.

Parlez vous Francaise?

I don't. I probably haven't even spelt it correctly! J's already uploaded pics of the south of France but here's some more. One of them is the inspiration for a famous painting - can you guess which?

Up and running

Here's some balloons to get us going...

Wassup?

It's been a while. And things have actually happened during that time as you will see from J's blog. Unfortunately I have hit some sort of limit for the photos I can insert so until I sort that out there will be no illustrations here. J's blog can be reached by clicking on the link at top right of page.

In summary - balloons, new metal tooth, trip to south of France, badminton, hockey, pain, births and deaths, interview (unsuccesful), painting job.

What more do you need to know? 8-)

I'll flesh it out some more when I sort the pics limit.

Balloon Fiesta

Well hello again. It has been a while since I wrote so I'd better fill you in with the events of the last few weeks. I'm still unemployed, but have got two weeks cleaning the school over their holidays. And a right mess it is too. Some classrooms are absolutely filthy and one wonders what the cleaning staff have been up to. Actually I am beginning to find out: there are too many slackers there taking the pay but not putting in the work. If I ruled the world, or at least the cleaning staff, I'd be looking at contracting the work out. But I don't, so I'll just clean the walls.

It's been raining for weeks but on the weekend it came out sunny and warm. It must be autumn. It happened to be the Bristol

balloon fiesta so the timing was perfect.

We had missed it when we were living there in '07 because we went to Italy, so we were determined to see it this time. I'm glad we did. We joined several 10s of thousands on the Saturday to watch various entertainments. There were skydivers, soldiers playing at soldiering, the Red Arrows team and of course the balloons. We got some wonderful photos, some of which you can see here.

And it was a good day if long.

There was slight sour note to the finish as we missed the last train and had to pay £35 for the taxi back (on top of the train ticket we'd already paid for).

The Red Arrows are very impressive. To fly a plane so close to another at such high speeds take some concentration I am sure. To have nine planes makes it all the more complex. Those maneouvres that involve head on passes must involve some nerves.

The balloons were something else. There were so many for a start - somewhere around 90 - so to see them taking off and in the sky at the same time was 'awesome'. And of course they are all very colourful so it makes for quite a spectacle. We saw the mass launch, then hung around for the 'night glow' where they fire up the burners to a choreographed programme. Getting the photos was a bit trickier as we had no tripod and J refused to let me use her head as a support. It's so hard to get good help. The night was rounded off with some fireworks, but we have plenty of those pictures from Edinburgh. Still, there's always a little reminder of one's youthful excitement.

Walkies

We went for a stroll the other day - 4 hours including afternoon tea. It was a pleasant walk along the canal side, and would have been even better were it not raining. Yes folks, it's winter in the UK already. While Italy is sweltering in 40 deg, we have rain, rain and more bloody rain. No wonder they've colonised Spain.

We also went for a tour of the drains, sewers and loos of Bath last night. Not in 'em fortunately, but along their courses. Of course it rained then as well. You may not think that the history of drainage from Roman to Victorian times could be interesting but it was.

Lots of things that had been curious but are now explained.

The beer to finish with was pretty good too.

I'm chipping away at captions, but it is slow work. Otherwise I have nothing much to report. See J's blog for more info I guess.

Here's some pics to look at anyway.

Another family member...

Well, J and S just had a baby girl. (Does that make me an aunty?) Sky was somewhat of a surprise - not unexpected, but very quick to arrive. A 45 minute labour and she was delivered on the couch at home. J lost a bit of blood so was taken to hospital, and the couch will be a constant reminder of the event! All are well otherwise. Q and S were there to watch, fetch towels and boil water, so quite an experience for Q.

M has been made redundant so is desperately searching for work, without the backstop of a wife to keep him. I

wish him luck and hope he's successful, but GET DOWN TO THE DOLE OFFICE AND BANK! I'm currently filling in an application form for a police job - Criminal Intelligence Analyst. Sounds interesting, but will likely go into the black hole that every other application has gone into. Sigh.

I had a great find last week - a source of American photographs that will

fill a large gap in our coverage for the book IF I am able to get over there to make the matches. With no money I'm not sure how that might happen, but I'll talk to the editors. I also found the accounts of the men who actually made the link-up between the Anzio beachhead a

nd the main forces coming from the south. How lucky that those men go

t their information onto the internet. (And where would I be without the 'net?)

It has been raining a lot recently, but long term forecasts are actually for a good summer. We have had to cut our holiday time in half, but are going to the south of France for 10 days next month. Avignon, the Camargue, Nice, Aix-en-Provence, and so on. Should be great and J needs a holiday. We'll be meeting our friend SV in Nice for a day or so. Isn't that cool? We'll let you know if Nice is nice.

It was lovely to hear from RM who is well if feeling a little isolated now he has no car. We shared a book on the experiences of engineers in Italy during the war. Though it was British, it could as easily have been Kiwi or US or for that matter German. Similar jobs under very similar conditions...

We caught up with C and M the other night for dinner, some beers and a chat, and on Saturday we went to dinner at the home of one of J's workmates. Two great nights and it's good to get out of the house. We have such a limited social life at the moment. J did her Dr Doolittle impression and talked to the cats. It had an amazing effect on them - laike aural catnip - so I wonder what she was 'saying'?

Some of you may have heard that our car was recovered. It was almost intact though all the contents were gone of course (except a box of tic-tacs with 3 - count 'em - 3 tic-tacs remaining). Of course it belonged to the insurance company, who have passed it on to a storage company to dispose of. They were supposed to contact us with a price but even if they were to give it to us the expense of getting up there, driving back, fixing the ignition, re-registering it, etc, would make it uneconomic for us. We've only occasionally missed the car anyway, for weekend jaunts, and we can hire a car for the weekend for around £50 with Thrifty so that would be 12 weekends to make up the purchase price alone.

We have been for a few walks though, as Bath has plenty of things to see.

I've just been experimenting with ou suposed broadband connection. It's rubbish - avoid 3 mobile broadband like the plague. Anyway, it turns out that the booster antenna that we paid £70 for does nothing. I opened it up and it's just a brass plate in a box so I'm trying to get an expert opinion of what it should look like. Seems to me we were ripped off. Aside from that as soon as we try uploading anything the downloads come to a screaming halt. Ping times three times the recommended for gaming, 50 kbps upload and 200 kpbs download equal absolute rubbish. Looks like another fight coming up...