14th Floor open!

...and Wow!  Just need some cash on my lunch card now!



...around the corners -





- real books in the book wall!  And then outside onto the new terrace -




Astonishingly cool... ;)

Guess it must be Autumn...

...already!  Wow, where did summer go? <:s p="">

New Sennheiser Headphones...

...okay, so ditched Sony after 3 dead (but *largely* trusty - considering twice daily commute) pairs and decided, on the helpful recommendation of the guy selling me my new Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey Disney Infinity character in Game on Saturday, to try a pair of entry level Sennheisers...not quite sure how he talked me into it...but I'm pleased he did... ;)

Most important new feature - almost total external noise elimination...(yes, now I never need fear actually *hearing* that speeding truck bearing down upon me when nipping across a busy London road before I am strawberry jam, will sit around blissfully unaware of the dismal announcements of delays on the railway cheerfully watching my movie, any commuters frantically alerting me in raised voices that my bag is caught in the train door will be mere whispers...) they also seem to have lots more BOOMING BASS...oh and most important of all, I don't need to turn the volume up quite so high - so I'm actually able to follow manufacturers instructions for a change! ;)

No turning back now! ;)

Into the TENTH year?

Woah...just noticed that this month marks the start of the TENTH year of this blog...whoever would have thought?

Way back then (when I were young) we had just moved into our Earlswood house from the penthouse flat in Dorking -

- and I had been starting to play around with what gardening was all about (having only grown tomato plants on the balcony before) - the start of domestication - no kids on the scene (of course) -

- I was working in a (fairly nasty) pre-regeneration Kings Cross commuting with Thameslink (no comment), carrying an SPV-C500 in my pocket running (wow) Windows Mobile 2003 (yes, life waaaay before Android - but it could still -just about- play a converted DVD to entertain me on the train) and playing games on an original Xbox console -
 -
- on a huge cathode ray TV - HD TV broadcasts didn't even exist for another YEAR)...the very first episode of the Doctor Who reboot (with Eccleston and Piper was still around the corner)...7/7 wasn't far in the future...Flyingpops and I weren't even *married* yet for goodness sake!

What has it been?  Five(?) different jobs over that time, dragging me all over London (and New York), our perfect wedding day, amazing honeymoon in Mexico and three beautiful children later the amount of ground covered is just staggering!  Even the very act of deciding to blog strongly influenced my life - posting something every day quickly highlighted that I needed a better camera - by December that year I had the Sony Mavica, kick-starting a now almost decade-long love affair with photography (largely thanks to that love affair with my wife who spotted it and got the technology moving)...and without that how many things would have just faded into the "noise" of the past... ;)

It's proof - The human brain is just *terrible* at remembering details...Now, I just need to scrape together a couple of hours to fly my precious time machine back through the last decade to refresh things - I can already see that after the March snow in 2005 it was a rather beautiful summer (although it also looks like I have some picture links to fix that have managed to become obsolete over the years, worse luck)!  Oh well...! :)

Tiny sign at Tower Bridge...

I spotted this the other day, right down at the bottom just beyond the glass back wall of the lift, really, unless you were looking extremely hard (as I guess I do), there is no way you would ever notice it (addressing no-one in particular) tucked away in the corner with no obvious way to reach it -

- here is a view of the space it points towards (from the lift when at the top) - you can see to get to it would require you to basically tip-toe along the wall at the side of the Thames -

- and a shot from the bottom (it's pointing at two square yards of paving slabs - and a few leaves - positioned behind the metal structure of the lift machinery)...so what is so important?  It's basically saying - if - by a grand demonstration of river-side acrobatics - you have managed to actually get to the sign to read it - that you shouldn't have - these 10 paving slabs are not a public right of way...as if you needed telling...completely pointless!

Welcome Baby Annabelle!

Wow, bit of a shock to be back in town again today (facing three weeks worth of catching up to do) - that consisting of two weeks of paternity leave - starting with a world record breaking visit to the birthing centre (I think we were in there for all of 16 minutes before Annabelle was born - no time to finish running the water for a water birth!), then two weeks of voluntary isolation due to all three kids *immediately* getting chicken pox (Poppy first, then Annabelle, then finally Thomas - who thought he had got away with it by giving himself pretend "injections" from his little medical kit), a load of nights of Annabelle crying (while she is perfectly happy to sleep all day long - thanks Annabelle!) and then a week on my sickbed after managing to scratch my iris in three places and tear my eyeball by whacking it on the 'fridge door (no stitches required - thank GOD, but it was a close call!)...anyway, after a couple of weeks that could only really have happened to us, everyone seems to be on the mend and hopefully we can start to understand what the new "normal" is going to be as a happy family of *FIVE*! :)

Ghostly Twin Shard

Wow, amazing light this morning, the reflection of the sun off the shard is creating a sort of ethereal, ghost "twin tower"!


As the cloud moves so you are getting a constantly shifting picture... ;)

Last day in the office!

Loving the *free* Christmas (either Pork or Turkey) dinner with all the trimmings...if you had the time you could eat it in the canteen on a proper plate with drinks and crackers etc. but I took it back to my desk in a takeaway box (still fantastic) as it's my last day in the office this year (bar a tiny bit of working from home) so I had a few things to finish off... ;)

I feel a bit guilty talking about the *huge* giveaway in reception happening at the same time that I stumbled into...it was like a free black-friday scrum for staff...*astonishing*...Not sure how I'm going to get everything home!

In summary - *This* is how you do the week before Christmas - I've never seen anything even remotely like it anywhere else I have worked in all my long years!  So God Bless you current employer...and here's to many, many more years to come! <:0

Ho Ho Ho...Christmas Party Aftermath...

So, while all those who attended the Christmas party last night are creeping around their homes as quiet as mice (not having made it into the office as yet, if at all) - all those of us who didn't are here enjoying the *huge* free breakfast laid out (I'm guessing) *primarily* to soak up their (sadly absent) woes - a multitude of sticky cakes, croissants and pastries, a legion of bagels (largely salmon/egg/cream cheese related but some ham and cheese affairs) and a horde of *hot* muffins (sausage and egg, egg and mushroom or bacon and egg from the looks of things, but there were so many I gave up going through the piles)...yeah, I took a proper tummy-full...mountains left for the casualties (although they will probably all be congealed and cold by then - he says, licking the liquid egg yolk from his fingers)... ;)

Update - Can this be true?  A *mountain* of McDonalds has just arrived in the office also...I'm not going to need to eat for the rest of the year at this rate!!

Tower Bridge Closed to Traffic...

A very rare occurrence, unfortunately caused by a road traffic accident on the south bank (which no-one would wish for), but an unusual opportunity presented as a result, to walk across Tower Bridge, in the middle of the road, in the middle of rush hour (at the start of my commute home last night)...

The only real way to get to London Bridge (with any sense of urgency) was to walk, everywhere else was gridlock or chock-a-block...I'm pleased I took the walking option...quite beautiful... ;)

Salfords School Nativity Play!

By Order - No pictures of the kids on Social Media (of course)...!  But no harm in putting up a picture of the incredible hard work that obviously went into making the stage - and of course Thomas in his amazing star costume - The "star" of the show (geddit?)... ;)

He even had a speaking part - delivering it perfectly (and nice and loudly too)...quite how the staff managed to teach the kids all those songs and dances I will never know!  Amazing! :)

Tobacco Dock, the Tiger and the Boy

So I had a bit of a poke around Tobacco dock the other day (it doesn't look like it's actually (officially) open but no-one stopped me sneaking in)...the thing that got my feet to wander in that direction was this-

-(you might have to click to zoom in)...clearly someone was a bit annoyed about the prominent blue sign luring people in under false(?) pretences (there were clumsily arranged barriers everywhere blocking entrance) -

- the most frequent offenders almost certainly being the large number of drivers of lorries and vans taking a break in the unofficial "Pennington Street public lorry park and truck stop" (i.e. the entire street) - every cab had a snoozing person lounging in the shade...anyway, I wandered in a little further, up a flight of stairs -

- it's actually very smart in there, but has the feeling of an empty office block, or an abandoned shopping centre (just waiting for the walking dead to come stumbling around the corner)....One really cool find though, not far from there -

- a large bronze statue of a boy and a tiger -

- there to commemorate an incredible story...in the mid 1800s a German guy called Charles Jamrach was running a highly successful (in fact, the largest in the World at that time) exotic pet shop located on the "Ratcliffe Highway" (later just "The Highway" as it is known now) called "Jamrach's Animal Emporium".  On one fateful day in 1857 an adult Bengal Tiger managed to escape and (during it's bid for freedom) paused to grab a passing eight (or nine) year old boy who had spotted the animal and decided to go and give it a pat. The tiger attempted to flee with his snack (and probably would have been successful) but for the quick action of Jamrach who "came running up and, thrusting his bare hands into the tiger's throat, forced the beast to let his captive go".  The kid got £300 in damages and the tiger went on to become a star attraction of Wombwell's Travelling Menagerie (which toured the fairs of Britain - and was invited to the royal court on no less than five separate occasions - three of them before Queen Victoria)...!

Amazing...! ;)

Tonsillectomy at East Surrey Hospital

So on Monday, after repeated episodes of tonsillitis, Thomas had finally been scheduled in to have the offending tissue sliced out...(this is after -sometimes almost weekly- doctors appointments, gallons of precious antibiotics, dozens of duvet days, painful periods refusing to eat and too-frequent amounts of time off from pre-school, followed by specialist appointments, consultant appointments, follow up appointments, pre-op appointments and eventually -the official decree that maybe it was in his best interest)...

Put it this way - to get the go ahead to perform a tonsillectomy is not a decision that is taken lightly in this day and age...

The weekend before the fateful Monday we made sure Thomas had a -super- good time, eating and drinking (pretty much) what he wanted (including a McDonalds cheeseburger happy meal with Fanta - *gasp*), going out on a few fun trips -

- including (first ever trip out to the movies!) Disney's Planes in 3D (which shouldn't be mistaken for a Pixar film (it's not in the same league) but Thomas totally loved - which was the point of the exercise) and making sure to fill him up on Sunday night with his favourite food - a hearty home-made roast chicken dinner with all the trimmings to help him get through the pre-operative fast to come with minimum discomfort...

Monday morning we were up at the crack of dawn (well, about 6am) to give Thomas his last drink of water before the operation and to pack up all the electronic entertainment bits (DVD player, Kindle, Innotab and Nexus 7 plus associated chargers - it could be a long wait!) and handed baby-sitting duty for Poppy over to our kind neighbours (until my folks arrived to take over - thank you everyone!)...and then we headed over to the hospital (only 5 minutes away) and up to Outwood ward...

We were second to arrive and Thomas was told by the lovely nurse who greeted us that he could choose whichever bed he would like (which was great), he ran straight in and grabbed the bed next to the window opposite the entrance and made himself right at home (quickly finding the controls that moved the bed all over the place - to great delight)...fairly quickly the nurse came in with an instrument trolley needing to get a pulse, O2 and temperature check (which he sat perfectly still for), we then had to answer a list of questions - "Any wobbly teeth?", "Any allergies?", "Is he diabetic?", "Has he had a general anaesthetic before?", etc.) and then were told we had a bit of a wait ahead for the surgeons to come and see us.

Thomas used this time productively - first finding a huge box of Lego and building an incredibly detailed "Water Maze - with *TRAPS* that squirt you, Daddy!"-

- then a kind lady (apparently appointed by the hospital purely to help the kids enjoy themselves) paid a visit and (quite unbelievably) suggested Thomas might like to do some painting - in bed - which (of course) he agreed to wholeheartedly (Flyingpops and myself exchanging "Urm, do-they-know-what-they-are-letting-themselves-in-for?"-type looks) - before long he was wearing waterproofs, merrily slapping too much paint all over page after page of A4 (and into his hair, and onto the sheets, and onto the table) - while we were trying to carefully transfer sopping, dripping bits of rainbow coloured paper to the windowsill without causing too much additional mess and attempting vainly to suggest he switch to a smaller brush)...oh and at some stage in the middle of all this, Thomas decided that (as long as he was going to be required to lay in bed) he may as well be wearing his pyjamas...fair enough!

The doctors arrived (almost before we knew it), asked *exactly* the same stream of questions as the nurse before them, asked us if we had any questions for them (bit late for that now, I thought), asked me to sign the bright yellow-"Yes, it's okay to slice up my child" waiver sheet, smiled encouragingly, told Thomas he was being very good (and that they liked his pyjamas) and left...Next up was the anaesthetist, who asked us all the same questions *again*, told us he was happy for both of us to come and watch Thomas being drugged, told Thomas he was being very good (and that he liked his pyjamas) and then also left.  Lastly, the nurse came back, checked Thomas' O2 and pulse rate again, told Thomas she liked his pyjamas and told us we were second in the queue for Theatre (cue - "No-it's not that kind of Theatre, Thomas" - conversation)...

We waited, painted, drew, played a bit of Tiny Thief (Thomas cackling at his skill stealing some butterflies all by himself) and the new Cbeebies Android game (which is amazingly good) and then the nurse appeared to lead us (on foot) around to surgery...so far so good...

When we were called through to the anaesthetist, Thomas took the trip on his surgical bed...the crowded, tiny room was crammed with equipment and cables, just barely big enough for the bed (and all the adults involved in the process), we were asked to chat to Thomas briefly while they managed to slip the cannula into his hand totally without him noticing (which I know from experience would have taken an incredible amount of skill - so thank you to the anaesthetist for that!  He actually gazed at it in astonishment when he got his hand back) and then they put a little see-through sticker over the top to hold it in place (with a couple of teddy bear pictures on it)...a little flush with some saline and then a *huge* syringe of white goo was being pushed into his arm, the anaesthetist talking quietly to him about "sleepy cow milk making him drowsy" and in a -heartbeat- he was fast asleep, just twitching a couple of times before total unconsciousness...not even enough time for us to say "Sleep tight"...we weren't prepared for that...

It was just under two hours later that we were being called to the recovery suite to find Thomas curled up asleep, clutching his Steiff and Chick, a tiny Oxygen mask tucked over his nose and his cannula bandaged up - matching bandages, as we only noticed a little later on, having appeared during surgery both on Steiff's wrist and ear and on Chick's wing (a *very* nice touch)... ;)

When we rolled back into Outwood ward lots of nervous parents looked up and (judging by the looks on their faces) took comfort from how content Thomas looked...he was only allowed about ten minutes sleep though, before we were being told to wake him up and make sure he was able to take a drink of water okay (poor little thing - but he must have been terribly dehydrated by that point)...he came round, very floppy and heavy limbed...we managed to get some water into him okay (I had to physically hoist him up and hold him upright) and one of the doctors came and managed to get him to mutter "yes" in answer to "Are you feeling okay Thomas?"...twenty minutes later he was running up and down the ward, glugging blackcurrant squash and eating biscuits, asking the nurses for jelly and ice cream and fighting other kids for toys...

It was, quite simply, a redefinition of the phrase "he took it in his stride"...

We were allowed to leave right on (estimated departure) time (once he had satisfactorily demonstrated to the staff that he could eat, drink and go to the toilet) which annoyingly fell in the middle of him enjoying a nice macaroni cheese dinner with (further) strawberry ice cream desert (which predictably he didn't want to leave behind)...

The only complaint of the *day* from Thomas...?  About half past seven at night, chewing on some cold cuts - "Daddy, the thing is...my throat hurts a bit eating...that's the problem with this chicken leg"...we gave him a dose of paracetamol (he's up to 4 year old dose size now, which is *twice* his 3 year old amount) and popped him into bed (for the night after his operation - a snug camp with loads of cushions, on the floor in Mummy and Daddies room)...and he didn't wake up once... ;)

Broxbourne Printworks Tour

So (as I mentioned before) the other day, the office sent some of us on a little trip to see where newspapers are printed! The scale of the place is absolutely astonishing (a glimpse down one of the corridors gives you a clue) -

- suffice it to say this place is the biggest manufacturing plant in Europe (roughly the size of 23 football pitches, the amount of steel involved could have been used to build two Eiffel towers and there is enough cabling inside to circle the rings of Saturn - only once though ;) -


The whole place is completely automated, from the minute these huge reels of paper arrive on their delivery trucks there is almost no interaction from a human being, it's all conveyors, turntables and robots-


This is the ink store -

-(yellow, red, cyan and black) and the ink pipes to get it up to the massive drum printers -

-this is the paper store (there is enough paper here to last only -ONE WEEK-) a robotic lifting device shuttles the delivered paper into empty slots on the enormous shelves-

-  (this store also goes up several more stories - it is a *lot* of paper)-

- robots cut the brown paper covering off when a reel is about to be used -

- and load them onto the (many) spools -


- and yes, even here there is the occasional paper jam, but sorting that out is automated too(!) as we discovered when one happened right in front of our eyes (complete with loud klaxon alarms) -


- then we went upstairs (finding practically the only humans in the place - they were checking the print quality of the output)-

- Here are some of the plates used to do the printing (it's a four phase print run, one for each of the differently coloured inks involved - in sequence)-

- and here is one of the (house-sized) printers in full production (the paper is just a blur) -


- from there it was on to the cutting and folding -


- stacking -

- packing -


- and then down a little spiral slide, back (eventually) to ground level-


- (where they get popped into delivery trucks by fork lift truck drivers)...this plant puts out 1.5 billion newspapers a year (26 million newspapers a week)...and it's all controlled by (well, when we were there anyway) one woman in the high-tech control centre... ;)

So there you go, that's how you get your copy of The Sun, The Times, Metro, Telegraph, FT (etc. etc.) plus associated glossy magazines every day...!  More pictures over here (if you like this sort of thing)... ;)