Updates...

Here are some more belated updates on what I've been up to in the past month.

I've been out for a cycle ride around the Chilterns with Claire. It was quite good fun, especially the small hill that we went up near the end of the ride. Claire had a habit of managing to pick up midges in her eyes. God knows how, I tend to pick them up in my mouth while I ride along at speed. There were plenty of wide open tracks past fields but not much in the way of really exciting drops or single tracks. Still a pleasant ride non the less.

Here are a couple of photos of us just at the top of the hill, hence Claire walking up with her bike and being totally knackered, and still having a smile on her face as ever!

Claire absolutely loves the British countryside and has much more enthusiasm for anything than I do, which is really saying something. We saw a lovely sunset while on the ride and then went on to Tescos to pick up some supplies. We were both covered in splatters of mud and must have looked a bit odd walking around and shopping for food in our bike gear.

You can see me here looking a bit sweaty, muddy and very happy after the climb. Neither of us made it to the top of the Chilterns without stopping though. Next time I'll have to not give up so easily.

Deirdre, Allen and I met up with Mohamed in his hometown of Winchester over one weekend. The weather couldn't have been better that day for some sight seeing around the place.

We all arrived around lunchtime and were fed very well with a buffet lunch by Mohamed and his wife Sheila. They then took us around some local meadows and into Winchester town centre. We saw the usual tourist sites and also had a good few beers in some great pubs. I do miss a decent pint of Guinness.

Unfortunately there was a £5 charge to enter the cathedral on a Saturday and the great hall had closed early so we couldn't see King Arthur's round table either.

Deirdre and Allen came down to see me in Bristol one weekend. I showed them around the usual tourist sites and pubs around the place.

Here they are walking along the Clifton suspension bridge. Something quite funny was when they set off from Oxford to get to Bristol. I got a phone call from Allen asking for directions to Bristol as they were lost. They had apparently set off from Oxford only worrying about how to get to my place once they got to Bristol, but didn't really think about what direction to head when they immediately left Oxford!

When they called me they were along the A34 heading south near Winchester. They totally missed the M4 towards Bristol and didn't really think about what direction they were heading. Something I'll never let them forget as they'll never let me forget not showing them the world's longest escalator when we were in Hong Kong. Honesty it's only an escalator.

Here's a view of the Bristol Observatory with a camera obscura in the tower. I never knew of the Bristol camera obscura till today. It's basically a Victorian one with a lens on top of the tower that projects an image onto a large 5 feet white concave table. There is a small darkened room in the tower where you can see the image and rotate the lens around to get a 360-degree view of the surrounding scenery.

The quality of the image produced was really good and we felt as if we were voyeurs looking at people along the suspension bridge and on the Clifton downs. It also made us feel like ancient Greek gods looking down at people in a film or computer game. You could almost imagine picking up the people and playing with them as toys.

Here's the view of the suspension bridge from the observatory.

We had a quite a good time doing some tourist things and also doing some window shopping around some of the great Bristol streets. It all made me realise why I like Bristol so much and what a great city it is. Not quite on the same scale of Sydney, more of a mini Sydney with a small smelly harbour, famous much smaller bridge and Hippodrome theatre. Well not quite the Opera House, but it'll have to do for now.


Lola is getting much better these days. She will regularly come indoors now and even demand to be stroked and rubbed on the belly. She still likes to sit on my car in the garage as it is very warm after I've been using it, or is it the car fumes that she likes to smell in the garage?

She also likes to dab her paws in puddles and then walk all over my car leaving muddy paw prints on it. More so when I've just given the car a good clean. I wonder if you can train a cat to wear socks when they come indoors or to wash their paws first?

We suspect that Deirdre is a part time cat whisperer. When she was in the living room Lola just came indoors and saw us in the living room. She didn't bolt off, as she would normally do with guests. Instead she walked into the living room and wanted to be stroked, something that she never did before. She then jumped onto Deirdre's lap and lapped up some affection from her.

We first suspected that Lola must be a racist cat, a logical conclusion by all accounts as she would never do this with Naheed or me. But then later on in the week she did the same to me and now regularly likes to come into the living room to have some attention.

Allen and Deirdre also took a quick spin in my car. Allen went out in it when we were in Winchester and this weekend in Bristol it was Deirdre's turn.

Can you see the look of fear in my face, as Deirdre is about to try to reverse my car out of the drive. She was in 6th gear at the time so didn't really get very far. Fortunately she didn't really thrash it at all or spin it either. Her 'broom broom' noises when going around the roundabout were very impressive though!