Saturday was the usual mix of swimming, shopping and a little housework. Oh, with a certain 9-year-old’s birthday party thrown in for good measure. I’m not particularly secretive about the fact that I dislike these events, but this one wasn’t really that bad. The kids all behaved themselves, and I actually managed to learn a few of their names and have something approaching conversations with them. Well, OK, it was food time and they told me what sandwich they wanted, but that’s progress for me.

Today was time for more shopping (for Mrs H anyway, I stayed home and marshalled our little darlings), a walk, and then (a delectable) Sunday Roast with the in-laws.

Oh yes – these walks. We’re surprising ourselves with this. Since our trip to the Lake District, we’ve been taking ourselves off for weekly walks. We’ve invested in 3 Landranger OS maps (178, 179 and 189, fact fans), and spend 5 minutes on Saturday evening deciding on a suitable spot, and then 2 or 3 hours on Sunday walking. Surprisingly, we’re enjoying it. More surprisingly, with the weather not looking too promising this morning, we still headed out, and we still had fun. Who’d a thunk it?

If you want to keep tabs on where we’ve been and what we’ve seen, there’s a new link over there on the right with the oh-so-imaginative title of ‘Walks‘. It takes you to a section of this site where I’m trying to record where we go along with any notes and comments and so on. The Google maps with overlays of our routes are nothing clever on my part – they come from Everytrail.com, a site that lets you upload GPS tracks from a variety of sources (I use my lovely phone).

Now… I’m being told I’m only typing here to avoid jumping on the Wii Fit thingie to be told how fat I am.  It’s true, but I can delay no longer…

And now I sound like one of those conspiracy theory nutters.  Oh well.  I do believe the Moon landings happened though, ok?

A few people seem to agree with this theory – here’s one of them.

* Almost, kinda, mostly obvious.  I think.

Oh no!  Panic!  What should I do?  I know, I’ll click this handy ‘System Security 2009′ shortcut which just happens to have appeared on my desktop at the same time as my wallpaper changed – that sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it?

Sigh.

How hard – really – can it be, to at least make your poxy ‘shock horror’ fake warnings look like they were written by someone who speaks English?  “Your’re in danger”?  These things could “break” my life?

Sigh.

Anyway, on with life.  That diagram, by the way, was just part of an explanation of how different versions of data will relate to each other in a system which is just about to go live.  Alternatively, it was a way of saying I had nothing to blog about…  Boxes A, B and C represent 3 versions of one set of data, and boxes X, Y and Z represent 3 versions of another set of data.  Thrilling, and just a little bit obtuse.  Sorry about that.

(I didn’t really expect anyone to answer…)

What’s this all about then?

They’re even offering some sort of compensation for season ticket holders, as long as you still have the ticket that was valid at the time – another reason to always ask the nice man at the station if you can hold onto your old ticket when buying a renewal…  The form to fill in if you want compensation is here.

So, sorry to Southeastern for saying you didn’t apologise.  Your spokeswoman could probably still do with a spot of media training though…

At the scene there was no doubt about the cause, but there were no recriminations as everyone was just glad that despite one decidedly bent car with a missing wheel, and another lodged in a hedge, everybody was more or less ok.

In the following weeks I was asked to submit an independent witness statement, and I found out that the at-fault driver had subsequently decided it wasn’t her fault, and that the car which had been driving straight down the inside lane was to blame for her driving into it. Tellingly, I wasn’t asked for a witness statement to support her version of events…

Anyway… to cut a long story short, I got a letter from the other driver the other day saying that, finally, the case had been settled in his favour, and that he had been cleared of any blame. It’s nice to see that justice has been done. It’s very nice to know that the other driver took the trouble to find our address (we moved earlier this year) to let me know how things turned out, and to offer his thanks.

Here’s a picture of the victim’s car taken shortly after the crash:

Anyway, just in case, I’ve removed my entry about the incident. It’ll be back when I’ve said my bit to the companies involved. Judging by their speedy response so far that’ll be just after our sun burns out, then…

For those of you that like pretty pictures, I’ve gone from something that looked very much like this:

…to something that looks very much like this:

(different wheels, lower suspension)

Now for the review-type bit.  The different engine (non-FSI) is supposed to be less powerful, but I don’t really notice – obviously both engines are capable of way more than the national speed limit, so it’s hard to tell (officer).  I do notice that you don’t get the lump of power at about 3,500rpm in the non-FSI, but I always thought that was the FSI holding back on the lower revs rather than giving more power later.  The ‘sports’ suspension is a big plus – steering feels much more direct, although I think I am getting to know all of Kent’s shoddy roads…  All in all, I’m happy with the new car, and I’m glad I went through all the hassle of getting it changed.  Let’s hope it lasts

For my birthday, the lovely Mary took me on a trip up to London for a good old-fashioned touristy weekend. First stop was Her Majesty’s Theatre for the Saturday matinee performance of The Phantom Of The Opera. This was my very first musical, and it was absolutely fantastic. You can read the story to ‘Phantom’ in about 2 minutes from one page of A4, but we were hooked from the first chords of the overture all the way until the cast took their final bows. The songs are still going round my head even now, 2 months on, and I don’t think I’m the only one.

Next we took a walk from the theatre to the Thames, via Westminster Abbey and the Houses Of Parliament. My second treat was a ‘flight’ on the London Eye. Although slightly marred by the family from hell (who pushed in front of us in the queue for tickets and then proceeded to do that annoying thing of using other people to discipline their own children: “That man’ll hit you in a minute if you carry on…”), the trip itself was very good. London is quite impressive at night with all that well-designed lighting. I recommend a flight to anyone who doesn’t have a morbid fear of heights. And even those that do — just don’t look down, you’ll be fine.

Click the thumbnails for bigger versions, or there’s an album in the gallery.

Finally, we took the tube to Earl’s Court and amazingly found our hotel without getting lost. The hotel was lovely. Our room was a bit on the cosy side, with about half a yard’s gap between the end of the bed and wall, but its saving grace was the fantastic balcony. We supped bubbly stuff, and then, in the morning, made like good old fashioned Englanders, and insisted on breakfast out in the winter air. It was fantastic.

More than just catching up, this post is a longwinded way of saying a huge THANKYOU to Mary for spoiling me rotten for a weekend. I had a fantastic time, even if I am now stuck with that Phantom melody endlessly going round my head. When do we go again?