Up, up and away

1 Dec 2006: Yay. The extension continues to soar skywards. The builders seem to be doing a great job (yeah, like I’m some sort of expert who’s qualified to judge) and they hope to be starting on the roof this weekend. Now we can see the size of the extremely large windows we specified, they’re admittedly huge, but it’ll allow us to see “through” the corner of the extension from the dining room, and I think it’ll work.

Half man, half robot

1 Dec 2006: It’s been an odd week for Alex. After the triumph of Emma’s birthday party at the weekend, where he won a certificate for his full-on, virtuoso air guitar performance (not to mention a lorryload of fatherly pride), yesterday he had to go in to Addenbrooke’s to have both his legs plastered up for a fortnight. This is in an attempt to correct a slight muscular deficiency in the lower legs which has been leading to his feet progressively turning over more. Apparently they’ve had some success with this treatment, so fingers crossed. Meanwhile, he’s being spoiled rotten by everyone, of course.

Sweetest. Note. Ever.

25 Nov 2006:

Things begin to take shape

23 Nov 2006: Well, progress might best be described as “steady” rather than sensational, but it has been raining, and the council inspectors’ lack of instant availability doesn’t help that much. However, we’ve got a lot of the brick and blockwork in place. Doesn’t it look nice? They’re going to have to leave the big gap to get the rubble out when they knock down the current kitchen wall, as the extension doesn’t have a door. With it all happening, suddenly things like getting the lighting sorted take on an additional urgency. Kitchen Extension series: Part 1 Kitchen Extension series: Part 2 Kitchen Extension series: Part 3 Kitchen Extension series: Part 4 Kitchen Extension series: Part 5 Kitchen Extension series: Part 6 Kitchen [...]

Where’s the grass gone?

8 Nov 2006: It was quite nice turf, really. But you’ll have to take our word for it. Or, if it hasn’t been updated, the evidence is at Google Maps. Now there’s just mud, glorious mud. And some nice footings. And of course “the most difficult bit of drain to move I’ve ever, ever come across in all my years”. Why of course!

Quick. Fill in the hole while nobody’s looking.

2 Nov 2006: So when the neighbours were out at work, we blocked up the road for an hour with this huge great cement mixer, which discharged about fifty wheelbarrowloads (is that an imperial or metric unit?) of wet concrete and they went straight into our footings. All that digging, and the whole thing got filled up in 45 minutes. Great fun for five year olds to watch. Alex got all the builders a beer from the fridge afterwards.

The Man from the Council he say …no.

30 Oct 2006: Well it looked pretty substantial to me, but the building inspector measured the trench for our foundations, whistled through his teeth slightly, looked at the nearby growth and said: “Oh dear no, those are cherry trees. You’ll need to dig 1.4m deep, not 1.2m”. The builders were most polite (“You have to treat him like God, because, basically, he is”) and promised to get it done straight away. Well, straight away in builders’ terms, which is tomorrow. Then we can get the cement in, so long as The Man doesn’t find anything else wrong. One week into the build and we’re already half a week late. It’s a whole new world for me.

We’re having the house extended.

28 Oct 2006: I knew it was asking for trouble: I said if I could have my new big telly, then Alex could have his trip to Disneyland and Mrs R could have something nice too. Oops. She opted for the new kitchen. And not just the new kitchen; the new extended kitchen. So here’s the house, before it all kicked off. Nice bog-standard Bryant “Victoria” design, although three years ago we knocked right through downstairs and built into the garage too. It didn’t fall down. Or at least it hasn’t yet. If you want to see the floorplan, I won’t reproduce it on this page, but click through to see it here. And here come Cambridge’s finest builders, John Fox-Teece and family, [...]

The Blog is Back!

11 Aug 2006: You’ll notice there’s a 10-week gap between this entry and the previous one. You may think the reason is probably because I couldn’t be a**ed to write anything while the sun was out. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I haven’t been able to publish anything, because as with a lot of other users, Blogger has been having problems publishing to my non-Blogspot site. I realised some weeks back that the way ahead would be to move to a better blogging platform, so I firstly had to research which one (WordPress didn’t take long to push itself to the fore) and then I had to move the whole web site away from the server of some business [...]

Gigfest!

24 May 2006: Three gigs on consecutive weekdays – something of a record, methinks. Friday, and to the Cambridge Corn Exchange for a token dose of modern pop’n'roll, with The Zutons. Their selling point is more than just the originality of a female sax player at the forefront: they’ve cracked the formula of the singalong quite comfortably, although after two albums’ worth, they may have to find a different approach to repeating the chorus several times with full backing, then stopping the music to chant the chorus (along with the audience) before crashing back in with the music again. Terrible sound (in a venue where I’ve heard good sound before) which meant that only the familiar songs were worth the admission fee. And [...]

Eurovision, so much to answer for

22 May 2006: Just when you think the Eurovision Song Contest is past its sell-by date, like every year, it comes back and provides you with some unmissable entertainment once more. Now, the idea of getting the public to vote, which has been running these past few years, is obviously stupid; if there was a slight regional bias in the voting before, now it’s set in stone. There’s simply no chance of anyone outside Scandinavia or the Balkans winning now, thanks to all the “and the 12 points goes to our lovely neighbours” stuff. But – and here’s a big but – the public are prepared to do something which the old “juries” never were: and that’s to vote for the nonsensical entries. [...]

Joe Royle leaves Ipswich.

12 May 2006: I’m delighted that Royle has gone. I didn’t want him in the first place, along with all those in the North Stand who were chanting “Royle out” before he’d even been appointed nearly four long seasons ago. In all that time, I think we’d agree he really didn’t win over many of the sceptics either. A few, maybe, and I’ll admit at times in the second and third seasons here, his gung-ho tactics were so entertaining that I wasn’t complaining. But Royle should not be blamed for being himself. He came along as Joe Royle, and he managed as Joe Royle. Good for him. The board got what they asked for. And there’s the problem, of course. It was the [...]

Restaurant 22, Cambridge has a website!

5 May 2006: Last night we ate at Restaurant 22 at 22 Chesterton Lane, Cambridge. I wouldn’t normally think this worthy of a blog entry, but there seemed to be no record of the restaurant having a website when I scoured the search engines the day before. However, when we got there, its website was mentioned on its cards and menus, and indeed it most certainly has one. So I thought a quick link might get the Googlebot visiting it ASAP! Otherwise, if this entry is still the top one on Google, here’s the Restaurant 22 website. (Oh yes, and the food is very good indeed, but I’m sure you know that. Bill for two with a pretty decent bottle of wine: £80).

She will put us all to shame…

25 Apr 2006: Mrs R is doing the Race For Life in June, committing herself to running 5km for charidee. Doesn’t sound much, 5 kilometres, but then I think: “Hang on – I’m really proud of myself for being able to run for 20 minutes on the treadmill at 10km an hour”. And by my calculations, that’s only three and a bit kilometres. So big respect to Dawn, who’s training steadily and seems very confident she’ll have it all in hand by June. I’ll report back on the big day, but in the meantime, if you know us and want to sponsor Dawn, please do so. It all goes to Cancer Research UK, and you’ll make Dawn very proud.

Cambridge Folk Festival 2006 lineup announced

24 Mar 2006: They’ve announced the lineup for this year’s Folk Festival which takes place in my back garden (-ish) and it’s an intriguing one. Nice to see they’ve continued the trend of the last few years by avoiding the pop acts (it hasn’t hurt the ticket sales, so why not?) Headlining is “a rare and exclusive UK festival appearance from the legendary Emmylou Harris” which should be interesting, and there’ll be plenty of people wanting to see the first appearance here in over 20 years of The Chieftains. I’ll be fascinated to hear if Cerys Matthews has gone folk, and artists returning who I’ve enjoyed in the past include Eddi Reader, Cara Dillon, Seth Lakeman and local faves Ezio. Also, when was [...]