A Simple Life of Luxury

As many will know, Morgan is a very bright, happy little boy but if there’s something he wants there’s not much you can put in his way to stop it. 

At the moment his favourite thing is monkeys.  I’m not really sure how it all came about but he insists that his nappies have a monkey on them.  Now, papmpers do have animal pictures on their nappies and while they vary on the front until recently they nearly all had a dancing monkey on the back (any with no monkeys on at all get sent to nursery for them to deal with!).  However, someone at Pampers, probably deliberately to annoy me, has decided that there will no longer be dancing monkeys on the backs of their nappies.  In a box of 74 nappies I bought last week only 6 had a monkey on.  My big dilema is what to do now?…..nursery certainly don’t need that many nappies!

I think we may have a solution though.  Knowing Morgan’s fondness of monkeys several of his birthday cards had monkey pictures on them so for the last couple of nappy changes I have been able to cut out the picture and sellotape it to his nappy.  This seems to suit Morgan and this morning he went off to nursery with a monkey as big as my hand (with big googly eyes) sellotaped to his nappy.  I did mean to warn the nursery staff but I forgot so they no doubt think he has very strage parents.

Unfortunately I think that was the last birthday nappy.  I have just made some monkey stickers for Morgan from images off the internet.  Fingers crossed these are acceptable or else I don’t know what we will do tonight, unless of course he has changed his mind and now like flamingoes or something equally strange!

I couldn’t help but laugh today when I saw what was making the news headlines on www.iomonline.co.im.  I try to keep up-to-date with news from the Isle of Man but this just says it all:

http://www.iomonline.co.im/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=870&ArticleID=2179352

We’ve always known this, probably because there are only about 3 roundabouts on the Island but I’m still not sure why it is headline news.  Probably just a slow news day and it gave me a laugh this morning.

Congratulation to James and Donna who have FINALLY got around to planning their wedding.

They’ve set the date (8th December) and the venue (Muncaster Castle) so it looks like plans are going well.

We’re looking forward to it already and wish them both all the best.

http://www.barefoottraveller.com/php/index.php (James & Donna’s travel info page)

http://www.create-iom.com (James’ new business venture)

British Summer Time (BST) is here and it seems as though it has brought Summer with it. Yesterday was lovely here in Borth, Wales. The sun was shining and Ivor, our local katabatic wind, put in an appearance so I could go windsurfing in the estuary at Ynyslas.

Ivor wasn’t quite up to full strength but there was plenty of wind and skimming across the water under the blue skies made it feel as though summer was here. There were lots of people on the beach too and Anna and Morgan came down for a wile as well.

All followed by lunch on the deck and a stroll around the garden. Beautiful!

The weather is warming up, the clocks have gone forward so it is time to start work in the garden again.
Morgan and I had a productive day yesterday.

• The lawns (if you can call them that) have been mowed. They’ve taken a bit of abuse over the winter from being waterlogged and from a pesky little mole and they aren’t looking great, but I’m sure they’ll recover.
• The willow and white poplar were cut right back as these will hopefully become a hedge along the edge of the garden.
• All the beds were edged, forked over and enriched with compost from our compost bins and the plants were all cut back and tidied up.
• The compost bins were forked through and sorted out.

Most things seem to have survived the winter, although the cold snap we had last week was quite a shock to the system to the already shooting Clematis and Gunnera. Now that things are tidy it is time to start getting a little creative out there. The first creative job will be to create a border around the deck out the front and fill it with bedding plants. As usual there are great plans for the garden, but no doubt it will be time-consuming enough just keeping on top of the grass!

Hopefully now that it has had some attention it will start to come to life.

Working as a freelance web designer here in deepest darkest Wales can be a fairly isolated job at times. Many of my clients keep in contact with me via email and I rarely even speak to some of them let alone meet them in person. They simply send me an email telling me what they would like me to do next, I do it and then send them an invoice. Because of this it is always good when I get feedback from my clients as it helps me improve and offer them the service they require.
I’ve recently been working for Headcandi, an online headphone and earphone shop and had an email on Friday saying that they were so pleased with my work they had sent me a present in the post… Well, it arrived yesterday, a pair of top of the range Sennheiser HD595 headphones. Now, I’m no audiophile but I can tell that this is a quality piece of equipment, excellent sound quality and very comfortable.
Of course, the fact that my clients are so pleased with my work that they took the time and thought to send these actually means more to me than the monetary value of the headphones themselves. It is always good to know that I’m doing a good job and better still to know that my clients appreciate it.

As part of a new recruitment drive for prospective students to the Institute of Biological Sciences, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, we are offering visitors a free ride in a helicopter to see the sights of Aberystwyth from the air.  They get a six minute ride and their friends and family can pay a small fee to join in as well.

This week was the first visit day with the helicopter and we couldn’t have asked for better weather, a nice sunny frosty morning with no wind……perfect.  There were a few spare places which were offered to staff and not one to turn down an oportunity I decided to have a go.

I had a few concerns: I don’t like heights and can get travel sick.  Also 6 minutes didn’t seem like a very long time for £15 (yes, it;s only the prospective students who get it ifor free!).  Anyway, off we set and after a safety talk from the friendly groundstaff we were all aboard.  They placed us in the helicopter by weight so no choice over who had the front seat….I’m glad it wasn’t me!   Then we were off, over Morrisons and around the side of Pen Dinas to the sea.  Down the coast with lovely views of Borth, the Llyn Peninsular, Ireland with snow on all the hills. Up to about 1000ft, travelling at 90 miles an hour apparently, a quick wave to Morgan at nursery by the cliff railway before we came back over the campus then to the landing site. 

6 minutes was plenty of time.  Not rushed at all and lots to see.  I was in the middle seat in the back and didn’t think I’d see much but had brilliant views on all sides.  Well worth it and a good trip had by all.

I would highly recommend it and hope the students making the trip here think it is worth it.  I’m sure once they have been to Aber there will be no keeping them away, afterall Alan and I came to Aber in 1994/1995 and we’re still here and not planning on going anywhere soon!

http://www.aber.ac.uk/biology/prospective/intro.html

http://www.helicharterwales.com/index.htm

After having a great days windsurfing on Saturday I thought it only fair that I resist the temptation to go windsurfing again on Sunday, (despite the fact that the Borth and Ynyslas Weather Station showed a max gust speed of 49.7 knots), and have a family day out instead… Well, it was Mother’s Day.

So, Anna, Morgan and I jumped in the car and headed off into Snowdownia. Morgan soon fell asleep so we decided to take the route towards Dolgellau and stop off in the Tal-y-Llyn pass to find a quick geocache that had previously eluded me. I found it this time and we were soon on our way to Dolgellau where we stopped for Sunday lunch. The food was nice, but there wasn’t much of it so rather than have pudding there and risk further small portions we decided to stop later for tea and cakes.

After Dolgellau we headed off along the Mawddach and up towards the Cregennan lakes. The road up to them was mad, narrow, winding and at times a little precarious, but it was worth the effort. The lakes themselves were lovely and the road from there towards Llywngwril was interesting! Anna was in and out of the car to open numerous gates and Morgan seemed to be enjoying the scenery. We stopped to find the ‘Marvellous Mawddach’ geocache and then headed off towards Llywngwril past some amazing views of the Mawwdach estaury and Fairbourne.

In Llywngwril we set of in search of some clues for a new cache called ‘Quakers Cache’, dodged a few torrential downpours and then found the cache only to discover that e had been narrowly beaten to a first to find.

By now Morgan was desperate for the cake we’d promised him so we headed for home with a stop in Machynlleth for cakes. Once a gain a nice day out with welsh geocaches encouraging us to go places we wouldn’t normally explore.

Just a quick congratulations for ttTom (Tom and Shirl) for getting the first to find on all 5 new geocaches that I hid at the weekend in the Watery Wales 2 series. Also, a congratulations to Gwyddno who followed them around closely and got the second to find on all 5 caches.

It sounds as though they all had a good day up in the hills and enjoyed the caches. even if they did get a little damp in the process and if the terrain between a couple of them was pretty hard work. Glad they enjoyed them though as I certainly enjoyed hiding them.

You won’t believe this… Anna did the washing today at the launderette and whilst she was doing one load she noticed my iPod earphones spinning around in the washing machine… Needless to say we were expecting them to be ruined 40 minutes on a high temp wash and a rinse cycle was bound to have stopped them working, but I attached them to my iPod and they still work perfectly… Amazing, I don’t know how all the electronics in them survived but they did!