May - half way through

It's been a busy week.  On Monday Beccy and I attended the Creative Writing Awards evening at the University of Kent.  Beccy had sent in a poem which was being judged against poems written by adults.  Entries had to be about childhood and Beccy wrote a poem about her relationship with football and how she sees it as part of her childhood, not envisaging it to be part of her adulthood.  It's difficult to imagine Beccy without football but it might happen.  Her poem wasn't shortlisted (she didn't expect it to be) and the standard of what was read out from the winning entries was very high.  I think it was a good experience for her, even though she also doesn't see writing as part of her adulthood.  I thought her poem was well written and written from the heart, I hope she writes some more.

I have started working almost full-time for the next 6 weeks at least.  Ben prepared by buying in stuff for the freezer that he can cook if he has to wait too long for his dinner or if he needs to eat early because he is going out.

I decided to start rowing again and arranged to meet Josie at the rowing club.  I had planned to start with a leisurely row in a double but there was a scratch race in the run up to the universities boat race and I put my name in the pot.  My scratch crew lost the first heat (I caught a few crabs, probably helping us to lose the race) and then in the second race (for third and fourth place) the bow rower lost his oar down the side of the boat and, as we were travelling too fast, he couldn't free it, we had to stop rowing to allow him to sort it out and we lost our lead.  I had caught a couple of crabs as well in that race but was quite pleased that mine wasn't the worst!  This was my first row for over nine months and I was very out of practice.  I stayed around for a while to help out at the boat race.  One thing that made the races really special was the seal who bobbed its head up out of the river and watched us turn the boats round ready for the start of the first race, then again watched us leave the boathouse to head for the start of the second race.

On Sunday 16th, Beccy and I ran the Race for Life, the tenth year running for me and the sixth year for her.  we ran with Helen, Mum, Natalie and Izzy.  Beccy ran it in 30 minutes and I ran it in 38 - not particularly good for me but I had thought that with a dodgy knee and two rowing races the day before it might have taken longer.

After the race we went to the Bull on Penenden Heath for lunch.  Alexander was obsessed by going up and down steps and I held his hand so that he could keep his balance.  He was trying to count with me when we were playing with his stacking cups.  It definitely sounded a bit like one-two-three!

Ben and Jenni came along to watch and, after they had eaten, went bag packing with the Explorers at Tesco to raise funds for their South Africa trip.

In the afternoon, we went to Cobdown Sports Ground to watch Beccy's football team collect the trophy for winning their league division and the trophy for the Fair Play award.

May - 2nd post

Ben and I visited Dan and Helen for lunch on Saturday 8th.  Lunch was to celebrate Helen' birthday the day before and we had home made courgette and cream cheese bread, homemade quiche and homemade birthday cake (made by Dan - Helen made the quiche).  All was delicious.  Mum and Sue went along as well but Brian needed to take Beccy and her friend Abby to a football match in Ramsgate.  As it was nearly the end of the season, Beccy didn't want to miss any matches.  They drew the match in Ramsgate and then won their match on Sunday which meant that they had won the league.  Parents and supporters were very pleased, more so than the girls, I think.

I sent a photo to the home exchange company we are registered with to give permission for journalists to contact us about exchanging for the Olympics.  We have tentatively agreed to an exchange (non-simultaneous) with two American couples.  The children and I have volunteered for the Olympics and so we will be staying around here for some of the time (possibly camping).  The exchange means that we can ski in the US, which Brian and Ben are very keen to do.  Let's hope it all goes ahead and that we are able to  go to the ski resort.

Our purchase of a flat for renting out is progressing amazingly slowly.  It seems to be incredibly difficult to get information from the property management company to whom we would need to pay our service charge and we can't go ahead without the information.  Hopefully it will be sorted soon.  We've probably missed the boat for renting it out to a teacher this term but might have some luck with other local large employers.  Otherwise, we might be able to rent it out for short lets during the holiday season (although that would then mean getting it furnished).  We will have to see.

May - first week

Sunday 2nd, after a visit to Sue's for Amelie's 2nd birthday, Brian, Ben and I went to Maidstone to see 'The Lovedays' again.  Ben's friend Jenni came with us and so did Claire and her new man, Lee.  When we arrived at the Babylon Live Lounge in Maidstone another band was preparing to go on stage. The published time for 'The Lovedays' was 8pm and so we asked if they were going on late, only to be told that they were on at 5pm due to a last minute programme change.

After one drink we headed back to Rochester and the Sweeps Festival where we ended up at the Gordon Hotel listening to a band with a similar style to 'The Pogues'.  We knew this time to try some different ales.  The band were worth listening to and we had a really good time.

Thursday 6th, Brian and I walked to the polling station to find a queue.  We only needed to queue for 10 minutes before we got in but it was encouraging to see that there enough people to form a queue, the turnout must have been reasonably good, we didn't remember queuing before.  We got some fish and chips on the way home and had them with a glass of beer for dinner.  Both children were out so we had a very quiet dinner.  Brian said his fish tasted bad and didn't eat it all.  Unfortunately, he chose to give what he didn't eat to the cats.  I fell asleep watching the first election results on the TV and he went up to bed.  At 2.15am I woke up to a really nasty smell.  I spent a little time looking around to see where it was coming from but didn't see anything immediately.  I put the cats out and then I found it, in the hall (the smell had been strongest in the lounge so I had been looking in the wrong place).  One of them had been sick on Beccy's shoes, had diarrhoea and had pee-ed on Beccy's bag (she needs to learn not to leave her things lying about).  By the time I had cleaned everything it was nearly 3am and I had to be up at 6.30am!  Needless to say I was tired the next day.  Brian also had a bad stomach.  Luckily my fish had been fine but I think I suffered enough of the effects.  We'll stick to our normal fish and chip shop in the future.