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The longest pleasure pier in the world
Southend today. Almost exactly a year - to the day - since the last time I was there. Very, very lucky with the weather.
It was bitterly cold at the end of the pier, […]

My writing quota has shot up lately, and I find it very rewarding.
After a little shuffle around at work, I’m now producing most of the content for our web site, so the stories you can see running up the right-hand margin of this blog, which are scraped directly from the MacUser news feed, will almost […]

Rich taking photos of Framlingham Castle
Saturday, unquestionably the brighter of this weekend’s two days, we went to Framlingham to walk around the edge of the castle. It’s another part of the country I’ve never seen before, and it certainly proved to be well worth a visit. Muddy, of course, but very picturesque, and the 900-year-old […]

Lots and lots and lots of things happening, including big (but good) changes at work that have made for some very busy but enjoyable days.
Last night, though, was time for a change of pace and a slow walk from the office, through the dusky and eventually dark night-time streets, along the side of Regent’s Park […]

So I exchanged contracts on the house today. That means I’m legally obliged to go through with the purchase, and she’s legally obliged to sell. Only trouble is, she wants to complete in seven weeks. Seven weeks! Normally it’s four. On the flat it was two.
Hmmm.
Well, I’ll cut her some slack. She’s lived there since […]

This weekend in Ipswich.

Looks like the forecasters were right. It took all the squirrels by surprise, of course, as they’d not been paying attention, but once they got over the shock of it they spent most of the morning either breathing on their fingers to keep them warm or throwing snowballs at each other…

…or playing hide and seek […]

The London Paper runs a column every day, where city singletons who glimpsed someone on the tube lay their hearts on the line and pop out a free ad to see if they can make something meaningful out of a chance encounter. They’re about as specific as a horoscope, so to test our theory that […]

Dear people of Suffolk
I rode the train north out of Chelmsford for the first time in 10 years at the weekend, and feel I must apologise for the mess of my county strewn along that line.
Entirely biassed, I know, but I’ve always considered Essex to be a beautiful county - in parts. Those northern fringes […]

How’s this for confusing? On the one hand (if you search long and hard enough), there are apparently grants for greening up your home by adding wind turbines of solar panels to your roof. That’s something I was hoping to do after moving, particularly when the next generation of more efficient turbines comes out later […]