A Simple Life of Luxury

……no matter how much you try and downshift! Alan has mentioned that I have the ‘proper’ job in the family. This does seem to suit us all very well allowing us some security (although given recent events at work nothing is guaranteed but I’ll save that story for another day) but also flexibility and quality of life. I like the fact that I know exactly when I will be working and when I can switch off whereas Alan likes the fact he can work when the wind doesn’t blow or there’s nothing else exciting to do instead!

However, a baby changes all this! I know we should have expected things to change but I don’t think you fully realise just how much until the baby arrives and it’s far too late. We certainly wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves without Morgan now but your priorities have to change and you realise pretty quickly that he is the most important thing and everything else has to come second. Alan has even had to miss out on several windsurf sessions when he is on baby duty (he has yet to find a way to strap Morgan onto his board and take him with him …… something I am actually quite pleased about!)

Anyway, back to the point. I actually only wanted to say that despite ‘downshifting’ and making our aim in life quality rather than quantity some things never change. The shopping needs doing, husbands, babies and cats need feeding so I’ve had to rush around during my lunch hour to make sure we have enough food for the next few days. Rations were extremely short at home and I value my ‘quality’ time with Morgan too much to spend it in the supermarket with him so I’ve sacrificed my lunch hour instead. Not only that it’s pouring with rain out there and now I’m soaking wet…….Again another ‘bonus’ of our downshifted lifestyle in Mid-Wales (it rains….a lot!)

As Promised a photo of Jack Alan Cole… He makes Morgan look big now!

I know many people think we are un-conformists living out here on the edge of Wales. We don’t think so, we think we are fairly normal, but whether we confrom or not at least I can say our weblog does.

So, what does it conform to and why is it important? Well, without getting too technical (I’ll save such things for the weblog on my website design site), the xHTML coding used to build the site conforms to the standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The act of checking a document against these standards is called validation and this site now validates. Why is it important? Well, there are lots of reason, some of them technical, some of them not so technical, but for me as a freelance website designer it is the attention to detail such as writing valid code that really makes the difference. In addition to the very good and usually stated reasons for writing conformable code such as universal hardware and software compatibility, accessibility, future proofing etc. I also tend to look at it as a mark of quality. It isn’t difficult to write valid code but designers that do so prove that they are willing to go that extra step, put in that extra bit of effort and produce a quality website. The w3c have a page answering the ‘why validate?’ question, so if my reasons aren’t good enough maybe theirs will be.

If by any chance you are interested in the subject then I can whole-heartedly recommend the following book which although it does contain some coding examples, is more about the whys and wherefores of building websites that conform to standards:
Designing with web standards by Jeffrey Zeldman

As a disclaimer, I am about to encourage Anna to start posting in this weblog and she has no website design knowledge (as yet), so there may be posts that don’t conform, but I will be teaching her as we go…. I’m sure she’ll look forward to that!

As Alan has mentioned, he wants his untrained wife to have a go at this blogging thing so here goes. It’s actually quite difficult to think of things to write, afterall, who is actually interested in our little life!

Anyway since most of our life seems to revolve around Morgan at the moment (and quite rightly so) it’s easy to forget what is going on in other people’s lives. We have quite a large family and Morgan was the 6th Grandchild on Alan’s side of the family and has made the most of being the littlest with lots of attention from his grandparents and older cousins. Well, his time is up as Alan’s brother’s partner Jennie gave birth to a little boy, Jack, last night.

Welcome to the new addition and we hope mother and baby are doing well (unfortunately we don’t have much more info at the moment, probably due to the fact that Alan took the message and I was out so he didn’t ask!), and Morgan is looking forward to being a ‘big’ cousin to little Jack. (photo to follow soon we hope).

I’m on Dad duties today as the creche that Morgan goes to in Aberystwyth only has 6 places and they don’t have a place for him on a Tuesday. As Anna has a proper job at the university it is therefore my task to look after him on a Tuesday. I am in charge all evening as well now because Anna has started singing in the local Cor-y-Gors choir and has a practise every Tuesday evening.

Usually we have a great time. We go for walks on the beach, he clambers all over me, we get as messy as we want at mealtimes and its good to be able to spend some time with him. I like to think he enjoys his day with me as well. Today the weather is pretty miserable so there are unlikely to be any walks on the beach. On top of which I’m still suffering with a terrible cold. As you can tell from the photo the fact that Morgan doesn’t sit still for a second means that he can be quite a handful so there is very little chance of any rest for me.

Really I should get on with some work on the computer as I have a few website templates to build for a client. I don’t think there will be much chance of that today as I need to make the most of any time that Morgan is asleep and get some rest myself. And for those who don’t believe that I am ill, it is pretty windy out there and I don’t even feel like going windsurfing today!

Ok, I know it should be sick-bed but as we took delivery of two brand-spanking new sofas today I thought I’d spend the afternoon on one feeling sorry for myself whilst nursing a horrible cold.
I may have felt terrible but the sofa felt good - quite a relief considering that they were £400 each.

It may sound silly but buying such things makes me feel grown-up. I know I am now in my mid-thirties with a wife, a son, a mortgage and lots of responsibilities but in my own mind I don’t quite feel like a sensible, 30-something father. Maybe everyone feels like this and life and its responsibilities creep up unnoticed. All the ingredients are there and looking at it now it seems as though things are pretty much fully baked. I’m a house-owning family man, a real grown-up adult with two new sofas. I’m not sure how that happened, but it has, and come to think of it there’s nothing wrong with it.

For me there was never a recipe for success, everything just got thrown into the pot and I hoped for the best. Other people have a master plan and I wish them luck. The trouble with plans as far as I am concerned is that even the best laid plans go astray, and a plan that goes wrong can lead to bitter disappointment. I much prefer to just get on with things, take each day at a time and enjoy the moment whatever life throws at me. Today it was a stinking cold and a couple of new sofas, who knows what tomorrow will bring?

OK, so ’swell of the century’ is probably a bit of an exaggeration as I have only been here for 11 years and I’ve seen bigger swells than that, but ’swell of the last year or so’ didn’t have quite the same ring to it. Come to think of it it wasn’t even that big, but it has been a while since we had any significant waves here in Cardigan Bay so it certainly had the feel of a good swell.

Thankfully the swell arrived over the weekend so was perfect timing for the Borth Masters surf competiton held at the Lifeboat Station in Borth where the surf was small but clean. Further up the beach at Ynyslas as these photos show the surf was much bigger and with a strong NE wind on Sunday they looked spectacular.

So, what did I get up to? Well the usual crew of itinerant kitesurfers and windsurfers from the Midlands had seen the forecast of Easterly winds and headed elsewhere, most had gone to Blackrock Sands in North Wales where the winds were much lighter and one of them managed to get into a bit of an incident that ended up involving most of the North Wales emergency services by the sounds of it. For me, despite having a cold I managed to get out for a windsurf on Saturday Morning followed by a nice Surf. I then had another Surf on Saturday Afternoon and then on Sunday a very windy windsurf in the estuary at Ynyslas.

All in all an epic weekend on the beach here and I even managed to watch some of the surf contest with Anna and Morgan, chop some firewood ready for winter, clear out the shed and get rid of our old sofas ready for the new ones to arrive tomorrow.

A good question and one that is easy to answer with another question… Why Not?

There isn’t a good reason really. Some people with traditional jobs living in the city think we are mad living where we do. They simply wouldn’t be able to tolerate things like a portaloo in the back garden becasue we don’t have any drains, a 3 hour drive to the nearest Ikea and winds that can strip paint off your house. Others look at us with envy when they visit and see a life which they perceive to be lacking in stress, they smell the fresh air and stroll on the beach and wish they could have a care free life.

For us, we see it all as fairly normal, we aren’t that far removed from civilization, we do have electricity (although the suppliers do seem to turn the juice down at 9pm every night), we have broadband, we have jobs which are sometimes stressful and we have as many things going on in our family life as the city dwellers do. For us this is the perfect balance, we aren’t stuck on a remote island living off the land removed from civilisation but we can look out of the window at sand dunes, breath fresh air rather than the polluted city air, we feel the weather in full force everyday and life is all about making the most of what we have rather than working like mad just to get more.

Of course we do work, and sometimes very hard. Anna has a ‘proper’ job and I’m self-employed, we need to earn money for mundane things like food, bills and the mortgage. Life here really is very ordinary, which makes the question ‘Why a weblog?’ even more pertinent. I guess the only valid answer is ‘because we can’. I barely know what will be included in this weblog yet, I’m just going to let it develop in its own organic way and see what happens. Someone somewhere might be interested. If not, so be it, it does no harm.