Harvest Season

While Lije was bouncing away merrily, I took a look round the part finished garden and found that the year has moved on. The signs of the season were all around me.

We have apples growing on next door's tree, but leaning into our garden - yum.


We have wheat, ripening in our compost heap, no doubt leftovers from mucking out the chickens have grown.


We have blackberries in our jungle behind the chicken coop - yum yum.


Well, I picked some apples, (left the wheat) and collected some blackberries to make a crumble. I prepared the fruit and put it in the oven for stewing, in prep for the next stage of the crumble. I then forgot about the fruit in the oven and burnt it to a cinder.

Maybe I will try again tomorrow - at least the ingredients were free.

Bounce!

Well we finally did it. M has been hanging on to a pot of money to buy a trampoline for the boys and we finally got round to buying one (8ft, with enclosure, and folds away by winding a handle).

Anyway, more importantly, it's great fun, and just watching Lije's face and hearing his giggles is well worth the money.

Tinkerings

A couple of days ago we were given a petrol lawnmower via Freecycle. Freecycle is a great organisation set up to help keep unwanted but useful items out of landfill. Anyway, the mower was working when I got it, but somehow in the transportation something must have jiggled it, because when I started it at home, it ran for about one minute, and then stopped.

It turned out that the wire from the coil to the spark plug had literally snapped off right near the sparkplug. On closer inspection the copper wire had turned green and become brittle, and broke.

I went to a lawnmower dealer in Ibstock but they did not sell mowers with this type of connection to the sparkplug, however, one of the mechanics was really helpful and gave me a hint on how to fix it. Basically, cut the wire down until it was back to being copper again, then reconnect it to the metal connector that touches the spark plug. When I got back I followed the mechanic's instructions, and found that I was not the first person to "mackle" this mower. It was not a proper connector at all, someone had screwed a screw down the core of the wire to act as the connection with the spark plug, and this had reacted with the copper and made it green. So I just cut the wire down, and put a new screw in. Easy.

The mower started and ran well.

There is something satisfying about tinkering with engines and making them work.

All I need now is a new blade, a sharp one. The mower make is more common in Australia than here, good job I have relations there... ;-)

Clone Wars, Clo-o-o-one Wars, Clo-o-o-one Wars, Clo-o-one Waaaaars

The Young Men's activity tonight was a trip to the Cinema, and, being a Young Men's activity they chose to see the new Clone Wars animation, the Star Wars spin-off. And as the group were short of a leader - lucky old me got to step in, and see it too.

Actually, before I went to see it I did check the review on Common Sense Media (an excellent review site if you really want to know about the film's content, and suitability for the audience). I have to say, the review wasn't that great, and made it sound really lame. After seeing it however, I didn't notice many of the criticisms, but do agree that some of the violence, albeit animated in a cartoon-esque style, is unsuitable for younger kids.

It started off in a rather hurried way, with none of the build-up you normally get with a Star Wars movie. I was a little disappointed by this, as I like to be warmed up into the action. As it was, it took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on. But once the movie was going and the plot became a little clearer I thought the story was fair - though a little childish. Think of this as the Monsters Inc. equivalent of Star Wars, only not so fluffy.

From a technical point of view I found the animation a little disappointing. It appeared to use a lot of Motion Capture to animate the characters, which has been used successfully in such movies as Monster House and The Polar Express. However in this case the captured movement didn't appear to be fine-tuned to a great degree, and movement looked unnatural and was much like the animation in the Bionicle movies.

Motion Capture for The Polar Express

Most importantly, J enjoyed it. And surely that is the main thing.

Child Prodigy?

Coming across one of your kids reading in this house is not rare. We are all readers in our house, fiction or non-fiction, and we literally have hundreds of books (M used to have over a thousand but had to whittle them down due to lack of space). But today I was really suprised, not by the fact that our youngest was looking at a book, but by what he was reading.

I mean, Steven Hawking is hardly light reading, not your normal bedtime story shall we say. After all, when was the last time your 3 year old asked you for the one about the Black Hole and the bend in Space Time? Yet there he was, chilling out in our bed reading A Brief History of Time. OK, I can forgive him for losing my place, but when I noticed he was on the last few pages, and I am still near the beginning, that is a slap in the face I can tell you.

I can see with a child of this intellect at his age I am going to have a serious run for my money.

Return of the J

For the last 3 days J has been at Deacon's Camp, at the Church owned campground in Norfolk. Dad drove him, a friend from another ward (KB) and Nathan on Thursday and collected him today.

He had a great time, including falling in the lake twice (one of the times being when his canoe capsized). A 2 Km run was also part of the activity (impressive I thought). But I will let J fill you in on the details tomorrow. Right now he needs to get clean.

Move Along There, Nothing to See

We were slightly suprised, on our little trip to Nottingham, to run into a full size Space Marine asking for our credentials - "are we human". It was touch and go for a moment, but thankfully, since we are from the 21st century, and he was from the 41st Millenium, it turned out that we were more human than he was. Before the squad had a chance to "persuade" us to join the Chapter, we swiftly legged it into the museum...


...Which was in fact "Warhammer World" at the Games Workshop HQ in the UK. J's latest interest is collecting Eldar minatures for the Warhammer 40,000 strategy game.

Concerned that overzealous Eldar may try to take control of the house, Dad has decided that a squad of Salamander Space Marines are needed to repel any invasion, and defend the human race.

On the other hand, it could just be a great way to spend quality time together playing big, complicated, chess.

At lunch time we met up with Chris, who works here and scoffed food in Bugmans. Chris kindly lent his expertise in selecting an appropriate squad of marines and giving advice on the paints I would need. He then showed us the new miniatures gallery before having to shoot off back to work.

There are some very talented miniatures painters out there, that is all I can say.