Back to Somerset

For the moment I feel this blog may become more and activities and travel journal than I place to pontificate. I’d like to think it’s something that we will look back on years to come and remember the cool things that we did and cool places we went. My only concern is putting information on here that might compromise our security, but I’ll just have to be careful – I guess it’s impossible to live off the grid now anyway.



We’ve just come back from spending a few days in the West of England chez senior Stancombes. It’s a most wonderful part of the world and incredibly tranquil and relaxing. And this came about a bit unexpectedly after I had to go the area for a business meeting and we decided to stick around for a long week-end. My parents have now completed a big renovation and extension on the house so we all have masses of room to run around in. Not that we didn’t before, but for Meg it’s like Christmas comes around each time as she can race about to her hearts content, chase the dog and generally run off some of her energy.

Our main aims this trip were to spend time with my parents who we don’t see so often as they live a fair way from us, catch up with friends and go to Bristol Zoo. The latter was a lovely day out and was a bit of nostalgia trip for me as I hadn’t been there in probably 20 years! Can’t really remember much from back then, but I guess I was treading the same ground I had before. (Actually that puts me in a history frame of mood, but that’s for another day.) We’d been to London Zoo during the New Year so it was interesting to compare the two, and Bristol came out OK I reckon.

The zoo is quite compact, but does make for a nice day out without being too big and overwhelming. I’m not sure what it’d be like during the Summer holidays, but on a weekday in February was lovely. The Seals were cool and playful, not sure what some of the birds were, but they looked nice and the love doves were wonderful – especially on the day before Valentines Day! We also discovered that our new(-ish) little camera takes quite good photos which is pleasing.



We spent a nice amount of time with my parents without hopefully overwhelming them, and were really chuffed to spend the day with mum.

I think it’s really important to try and get Meg to spend some time with her grandparents as she doesn’t get too all that often. And whenever she does she talks about them for days afterwards which is so lovely. And it gives her a chance to do fun things like face painting and eating treats which she doesn’t do with us very often.

And being in Shipham we try and get some time for just Theresa and I, usually as a meal out or a cinema trip. They’re real treats for us as we are usually tired after long days or find it tricky to leave Meg with people. But my parents always come up trumps on that front and this was no exception. So on Valentines night we went to a lovely little pub/restaurant/hotel in the village which does good locally grown food, and which is where we had our final meal before getting married several years ago. So a wonderfully romantic night with many good memories too.

Computer Meg/Sporty Meg

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the positives and negatives of my daughter playing on a computer versus doing more physical activities. I want to start this by saying that I believe a balance between the two is the best and that is what my child gets, before anyone starts having a go!

We have not encouraged Meg to play on the computer and she hasn’t particularly been watching us when we’ve been on either our PC or something like a Nintendo DS, but she seems to have grasped the concept of both extremely quickly. She’s not up to searching for stuff online (thank goodness), but put her on Youtube with Peppa Pig selected and she’ll confidently flick between the episodes. She’s grasped what the mouse is and what buttons to press on it to make things happen. And she’s grasped this very quickly. Likewise with the DS – put her game on and she’ll navigate between little games and understand what she has to do. So I am wondering if this is normal or if I have a budding computer geek/gamer on my hands? As an aside she also loves sitting on my lap in the car and playing at driving while we are parked so maybe she’s just more like me than my wife at the moment?!

Meg can also be slightly manic and is like a midget missile when she’s let loose in fields or play areas. She has boundless energy and keeps going until she drops, and especially loves things involving footballs. She gets out of the house everyday and does plenty of walking and gets plenty of fresh air at the very least. Now, I'm the only member of family who isn't bothered about Football, but if that's her thing then I'll positively encourage it. I’m not concerned about her not doing enough exercise though.

Going forward should I be concerned about her predilection for computer based activities? I did a lot of sport when I was younger and mixed that with playing games on the computer. I feel this has helped me to have good reaction times and co-ordination, even into my thirties and despite me doing less gaming now. So I want to give her free rein, but I am also going to sort out parental controls sooner rather than later. She will also not be getting a computer in her room because there are too many dodgy people in cyberspace now to let a child go out there unsupervised. But maybe this is the next generation coming through now?

Snow and sun

Who knows what’s happening to the world climate at the moment. I’m not sure I subscribe to the Al Gore / Day After Tomorrow vision of us all spiralling into a climactic holocaust, but the weather is definitely odd. And being British it very much dominates daily life and conversation at the moment.

Here in the UK we’ve had a week of incredible amounts of snow. When I woke up on Monday morning and saw the 25cm of snow lying outside my house I had a real conflict of emotions – snowmen, snowball fights and fun / how the hell am I going to get to work. I knew that Meg was going to have a really fun day and I was kind of gutted that it was Monday and I wouldn’t be able to build my first snowman with my daughter. But I felt morally bound to have a go at getting to work, despite it going against a part of my better judgement. I think it was the wannabe adventurer in me that saw it as an interesting test of man versus snow. Riding my scooter was never going to be an option and public transport was suspended in the whole South East for a time. So like a scene out of aforementioned Day After Tomorrow film I tucked my trousers into my socks, put on my walking boots and joined the file of walkers heading for town. Three hours later and still in unexpectedly good shape I rocked up at the office to discover we were closing because hardly anyone else had managed to get in. So I went home at lunchtime feeling very much that I had the moral high ground over most of my colleagues, but also slightly irked that they were probably still tucked up in bed or out making the most of the conditions. We did all get out in the garden in the afternoon and had HUGE amounts of fun in the snow.

From that lofty start to the week the conditions have stayed icy, wet and cold and the novelty has most definitely worn off. A highlight for me has been going to Luton Airport yesterday for a meeting to discover that there were no shuttle busses or taxis from the station due to the road conditions. The only option was for everyone to walk the 2km uphill to the airport. My second Day After Tomorrow day of the week. I was sort of OK, but I did have some sympathy for the people going on holiday because they didn’t look like they were having fun dragging suitcases up the icy hill. And then to cap it the airport had to be closed due to the runways being unusable, so I guess they all had to slide back down the hill at some point later in the day.

And then today I received an e-mail from a friend in Sydney, Australia where they are having the hottest conditions for years. I guess to every equal there is an opposite and this is it. The forecast for Sydney this week-end is 47 Celsius, and it will be about the hottest populated area on Earth. She sent me a map that was posted on their news channel which makes quite stark viewing. And to make matters worse for poor Amy she is heavily pregnant. Below is the link about this story:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25015424-1242,00.html

Into 2009

Has it really been 816 days / 19,584 hours / 1,175,040 minutes since I last posted? How time flies when you’re having fun I think the saying goes! Life has changed and been lived considerably since November 13th 2006 when I last added anything to this blog. We are still a team of three, but Meg has now become a proper little girl – gorgeous, headstrong, funny and incredibly independent already despite only being 2 ½ years old.

We’ve travelled round the world on a couple of incredible holidays and also spent an increasing amount of time exploring and learning the history of our area. We spent a long time looking into a possible move away from Surrey, but then world events overtook us and we decided to stay put for a while longer. And instead have made a few changes to the house which has made our quality of life better. We’ve had friends move away and made new ones. We’ve seen births, marriages and unfortunately the deaths of two of the patriarchs of our families.

We are all well and I’m pleased to say that life is good.

Life has happened.