ianbee: this is instead of getting a dog

High chance of rain

I've been sending off a friend who is heading to Canada for a while, hopefully to work on exhibitions involving dinosaurs. We'd heard that they can have wet winters so we looked up the rainfall data. The Rough Guide to Vancouver said that in December they have an average of 36 rainy days. That's the average. In a month that has 31 days. Based on this data I calculate a 116% chance of rain on a December day. That's a high chance of rain, better take a brolly.

We were in Buxton, Derbyshire, home of Buxton spring water. It flows out of the wells slightly warm (and uncarbonated!) It was the time of year for well dressings. Each well was first covered in clay, then petals and leaves were pressed into the mud to form patterns and scenes. I liked this scary castle monster.

Wedding in Hobbiton

Sure Kate, I'll write about your wedding. I used to share a house with Kate in Leeds. Dan appeared occasionally, in a VW Beetle, to sweep her off her feet. We weren't sure we approved. Then I shared a house with both of them in London, and when they emigrated to Wellington, New Zealand, I kept in touch in case of holidays. It turned out there was a lot of holiday potential in Wellington, and I saw a fair bit of them while I was in Australia. It was a bit surreal because they had shipped the contents of our London house half-way around the world, so sitting on their sofa in their front room was a very comfortable and familiar experience. There was just a different view out of the window; instead of the North London bench where the tramps sat, there was the rolling suburban hills of Wellington.

They got married in April. I was still living in Sydney, so it wasn't really that far to go. The service was in a tiny chapel that held about twenty people. The four-year-old niece ran down the aisle ahead of the bride shouting "She's coming! She's coming!" I was asked to read from a first-edition Winnie the Pooh book during the service. The passage was called "Us Two" and there was a bit in it about dragons. The four-year-old was sitting right in front of me, and was a fierce critic.

The reception was on a cliff over looking the sea, the venue a small chalet perched on the slope, the ground precariously dropping away just past the canapés. The sky was pure blue, the grass vivid green. There were drinks and games and puddings.

 

When the sun set, the air was so clear and unpolluted we could see the mountainous profile of the South Island across the strait.

We danced and chatted and gazed out over the water. In British weddings the parents slip away with their children as they begin to get tired. Kiwi weddings are different; as the children fall asleep, the parents wrap them in blankets and leave them outside, or under tables, while the party continues.

At the end of the night we were bused back into the city. Kate and Dan stood on the street corner and hailed a taxi home, Kate still in her wedding dress.

 

Ian the cat

I was visiting a friend in Auckland last week and I had a unique and slightly bizarre surprise. My friend, who I hadn't seen in almost three years, came into the room holding a cat and said: "I have a confession to make. Meet Ian, we named him after you."

Apparently the cat used to be named Roy, but she knew a Roy at work who wasn't very nice and so renamed the cat Ian because he's "... dependable and has good bone structure" ! ! ! Cool.

I thought it was all a wind-up until her housemate came home from work; as she was being introduced to me she said "oh, you must be the guy we named the cat after."

So I then had to suffer several days of jumping out of my skin as people yelled for Ian to get in from the garden, or get off the bed, or get down off the sofa. Oh, hang on, that was actually me on the sofa. See? It was very confusing.

Quality Journalism

Mark would like to share his example of quality journalism under pressure, whilst filming at T in the Park. Watch out for the bit where he gets punched in the face by a girl.

Australian journalism is of a comparably high standard. I woke up this morning to the following exchange ...
(Presenter on national radio, taking to a sports journalist.)
"Did you mention the Tour De France? I didn't hear you, I dropped my pen."
"Yes, I did mention the Tour De France."
"Oh, okay. Now over to the weather bitch ..."

Surfer's Paradise and a dinosaur's tail

It was great to see Jaq and her family in Brisbane. For those of you who know her, she hasn't changed that much. She is still noisy, busy, bossy and brilliant. She has managed to pop out two gorgeous children though. And find time to win the Australian Event Manager of the Year Award for the second year in a row. You'd have thought that having an award winning event manager plan your trip away was an asset, but I think the pressure and the weather got too great and we spent most of the week in coffee shops sheltering from the rain. I still had a great time.

We spent our one dry day down on the Gold Coast, on the beach at Surfer's Paradise. It was the baby's first proper sand experience. He coped very well, despite his older sister trying to bury him.

The height of fashion if you are two years old is a stick-on dinosaur tail.

'Two year old' gets her first ever cup of tea: "It's too hot!"

The baby has the sharpest teeth I have ever seen, they are like surgical blades. Once clamped around something (a shoe, hand, pen, etc.) it's not easy to get him to let go. One tactic is to switch on the washing machine; he loves watching it go round and round - especially the bits where it stops and starts again.

A funny story about a dog

My colleague at work has a dog, who injured his paw. She thinks he might have burnt it on something, she's not sure. Anyway it looked sore enough to warrant a trip to the vet. The vet had a good look, bandaged it up and asked to see it again in a week. Being a scrabbly, snuffly, curious sort of dog the bandage was off by the time they returned home, so my friend found an old sock and put it over the sore paw using a rubber band to hold it in place.

A week later and it was time to return to the vets. My friend, being a nurse, decided to redo the bandage to give at the very least the impression that this dog was being reasonably well looked after. She got out some gauze and tape and made a pretty good job of it, by her own admission. At the vets the dog was lifted onto the examination table and the bandage was carefully removed. My friend, her daughter and the vet studied the paw. "It looks like it has healed remarkably well" said the vet. "Er, Mum," said the daughter, "I think you've bandaged the wrong paw."

Garden tools

It was Ben's birthday on Monday. A group of us went out for a meal at the best-Scottish-pub-food-of-the-year pub in Leith. It was like a normal pub meal but with more ingredients. I'd brought Ben a trowel and fork for his garden, and I had this idea that I'd like to get them engraved. It's harder than you'd think to get garden tools engraved, and I eventually persuaded a guy in the pet shop to do it. I imagine he thought that the garden tools were for my dog. He charged a pound per word, so really I'd have got better value if I'd asked for 'Benjamin' but I didn't think it would fit on.

Anyway, I have rarely, if ever, been so excited about giving a present to someone:

'They are very nice Ian, thank you.'

'But look at the handles! Look at the handles!!!'

Babies in snow

Back in January I spent a few days in the Lake District with my friends Penny and Andy, who run an outdoor center there. Penny and I tried to see how far we could get up Skidaw with a buggy containing her son.

Not very far actually. We abandoned the buggy and carried him for a bit, but went back after worrying what people would think if they found his empty pushchair on the mountainside.

The poor kid is the proud owner of the world's worst baby-grow outfit. A clash of Hippy and Inca civilistations, its basically a big square with a hole at the top and another at each corner. You could fit four babies in it. And loads of other stuff, like nappies and cots and pets.

It also turns out that Penny is the owner of the world's most boring book: "Bicarbonate of Soda, a very versatile natural substance." In hardback. Available from Amazon.

Nice view

A few weeks ago I went to stay with a friend in London who had just moved into his new apartment.  This is one half of Tower Bridge viewed from his <cough> balcony.

Nice.

He can also see the Gherkin and the London Eye.

All he needs now is furniture.

Sparkler debate

Nic had a birthday last week. We went round her house and had a bonfire, with sparklers and baked potatoes and chocolate brownies. The sparklers prompted an interesting debate. Ben told us to save our sparklers because we could use them to toast marshmallows. Many or us looked at him blankly. He explained that you could turn the sparkler round, and skewer the marshmallow on the metal bit whilst holding the burnt-out sparkler bit. The group was instantly split into two vocal camps. Half of us had grown up with the idea that used sparklers remained burning hot for several days afterwards and should not be touched under any circumstances. My parents always made me put them in a soil-filled plant pot where they remained untouched, but gently radioactive, until at least the following tuesday. The other half were happy with the idea of grasping molten metal in their bare hands and wondered what all the fuss was about. They would no doubt approve of toasting babies in the fire too.

It turns out that you can touch the business end of a sparkler within minutes of it going out. I wonder what else I've been lied to about? Just wait there while I return to that lit firework ...