New Blisstrooper demo

Trousers Down is now up on myspace.

I demand better weather

This weather is boring. Some slight hope of a bit of sunshine on Monday, but not even that warm. All I want to do is take Finlay out to some parks, beaches and countryside, but it's just cold and wet and windy. I need some quality daylight.

To new donkey, cincha yellow.

Either Google translation is not perfect, or Spanish people are crazy.

Here is wisdom

Doing my bit

Spent the day doing community project work at Wolstonbury Hill today. A bunch of us from the office spent the morning and afternoon with a South Downs Warden, carrying out a bit of Sycamore Thinning. It turns out that the natural trees in this area should be Ash and Beech, but the invasive Sycamore has been taking over. Our job was to get in there with a load of bow saws and loppers and chop down a few trees. Seems like a funny way of doing your bit for the environment, but our guide assured us it was all for the best. The trees and branches we cut down were piled up to provide future nesting and shelter for the birds and small mammals (perhaps preventing them from living in our houses instead).

It was good healthy hard work and fun. Lovely sunshine, surrounded by woodland, bluebells sprouting everywhere and the heady scent of wild garlic in the air. By the end of the day we had collected several tidy piles of Sycamore (and one or two Ash cut down by some of my over enthusiastic colleagues).

I feel very virtuous, and a bit itchy too, from all those scratches. Still, it beats sitting in the office all day.

Finlay on Flickr

A selection of Finlay pics is now available on Flickr!

Returning to normality

Some sense of routine is returning to the house now. Finlay has a fairly well established pattern of waking, sleeping, feeding, grumbling. He's growing fast and seems to be learning quickly too. He's showing signs of 'vocalising' apparently - just little noises really. Amazing how one can adapt to never having a full night's uninterrupted sleep so quickly. I've been filling in lots of forms to get our Child Benefit and Tax Credits. It's nice to get something back from the Taxman for a change. My alcohol tolerence has gone right down, due to generally drinking less and through been permanently a bit sleepy. One pint of Badger and I start talking nonsense. Off to band rehearsal later, for more recording fun and a chance to check out Warren's new outragously expensive microphone. If this doesn't make us sound good, nothing will!

Happy birthday to me!

Finlay woke me at 6am, gave me a book about coping with fatherhood, then soiled himself and gave me a big smile. Birthdays ain't what they used to be.


(still good though)