So much to tell you, ever so quickly….
Rightnow we are in North Wales, at the foot of Mt Snowdon, having rented a little cottage for a few days. The reason being is Hannah’s birthday today and we wanted to come over to see her. The view above is from the cottage, pretty cool eh?
A week ago I bought us a new car, well not quite new. In fact it’s 12 years old and I hope it will keep going in a truly frugal way for the next 8 to 10 years. The car is yet another Toyota Avensis. Naturally I did my best to get a good price, it has a full Toyota service history and is low mileage. So far, so good.
As usual Rachel sees a huge car boot and fills it “you never know, this might be handy so I might as well bring it along”. Besides, she always points out how I will forget to bring something or simply not realise. So far it has been pointed out how I have forgotten to bring shampoo, shower gel, anything to make coffee in and undoubtedly other things as well. A shopping trip is in the pipeline.
The world of blogging is nice right now. Recently I have been trying out the innovative Halfbike on behalf the manufacturers who have given me one. They had spotted me talking about the Halfbike on my cycling blog and got in touch. With the Halfbike, it forces you to learn a new way of balancing and moving, using different cycling muscles. I do like it, although I’m still getting the hang of it. I will be posting specifically about this in the near future. Hannah has had some fun trying it out, I haven’t yet persuaded Rachel to have a go.
I have also been filmed for the Unretired website, talking about a few thoughts on retirementb Again, this has come about through this blog being noticed.
With my arty farty things in mind, I have joined a life drawing course at Bedford College. I can tell you this has caused some hilarity in our house, though I’m keeping a fairly low profile at church about this. Raised eyebrows at the very least would be in store for me and yet it’s art, not pornography. I like drawing people. If I can train my brain to really understand what my eyeballs are seeing and then translate that through my fingers holding a pencil, that will be a good step.
I showed my mother-in-law the sketch below of her. Now it’s true she is almost blind but she didn’t know who it was. She certainly wasn’t impressed by the hair or even with ME when I told her SHE was the subject.
Yesterday as we were heading here, we stopped off in Wrexham to see my friend Neil who I knew in college days. Now we have seen each other much over the years but it’s still nice to keep in touch. He sounded exactly the same but, like me, has aged a little. You know how it goes, the odd glint of greying air, glasses and so on. Having friends who I first knew almost 40 years ago is wonderful. Hardly any of us have carried on in our intended profession and it’s so nice knowing each other through the twists and turns of life.