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Bedford (non) Castle

2010-09-26T21:16:00.001Z

We went to Bedford Museum this afternoon, because we hadn’t been there before, it was raining, the kids needed some kind of entertainment and they haven’t got to old that they baulk when faced with something cultural. And it was very good too, the exhibits I saw as I raced past them chasing Toby looked very interesting and Harriet only set off one alarm by invading an off limits area.

Then we left and saw what appeared to be the remains of a castle! Well, we had to investigate, so with some difficulty we got two children and a buggy up a slope that had been presumably designed about 950 years ago to be so steep as to put people off running up it.

Though, I assume the steps and hand rail are a more recent addition.

Anyway, we made it to the top and saw the castle. Or rather where it was before it was torn down several hundred years ago. Toby then ran around in a circle.

Then we found that although Bedford Castle has no castle, it has some mean conker trees. We went conkering, and found many good conkers. Then down the other side we found a bizarre tile thing – a bit like the Bayeux Tapestry but smaller and considerably younger.

But it turned out to be very good for kicking around our newly acquired conkers, so its all good.

The Concrete Elephants and Alligators of Abington

2010-09-25T13:50:00.001Z

Abington in Northampton is a nice place to live. No area is perfect of course and there is a modern-ish estate among all the Victorian terraces which is frankly a bit of a state. You would not want to walk around there at night, unless you were armed with an alligator.

Maybe its because off this that there are concrete alligators scattered about – and if you look very hard, an elephant. The local youths have of course taken the opportunity to spray paint them a bit and there used to be three elephants by the look of it, though only one remains now. Overall, you can see what the planners were aiming for, though I’ve never seen any children playing on them – except for mine.

Stuck for something to do an hour before bathtime a couple of weeks ago I suggested a safari. What’s a safari, they asked (I like to introduce new words where I can!!). They could hardly believe their eyes when they saw the almost derelict 1980s concrete based reptiles. And when I say they could not believe their eyes, I mean they were impressed!

We have been around all of them now about three times over the last fortnight – I am sure it won’t last, apart from anything else they might realise what a dodgy estate it is. We had to abort one alligator today as my eagle eyes spotted the two dodgy geezers hanging around right next to it with a beer each (at 10.30am…) and a mean looking fighting dog with no lead. Nice.

Conkers as playthings

2010-09-15T20:10:00.000Z

Wow, it seems only a week ago that it was summer (albeit a very wet summer! Does summer end in early July now?), and suddenly its properly autumn. The kids (okay, kid) being back at school, the nights drawing in, the coats coming out of the cupboards and apparently the conkers are here now too.

The kids always like a new toy, and the conkers in question are no exception. I thought I would try to document some of the things the conkers got up to this evening...

They flew a plane - "those two are the pilots!"

Got carried around in a bucket

Briefly filled a boot (I hope they are all out, that could hurt tomorrow if there's one left!)

Toby went conker shopping

The "fish" (sea-monster? It glows in the dark you know) ate one

Harriet planted some "seeds"

And Hector carried some around on the train set.

Until the high speed crash at the bridge...

Harriet’s first day at school.

2010-09-14T19:09:00.001Z

Its official, she is growing up. Harriet started school today and so far is enjoying it enormously. As is usual, it was Toby that caused all the trouble, by first insisting on running into a wall and then having a series of crises wanting to stay at school when Harriet was dropped off. He also took great interest in Harriet school shoes when we were trying to take the obligatory photos on her first morning (below). He does like a new pair of too-big shoes to walk around in.

Anyway, the “main event” of Harriet actually going to school and coming out again went very well. We are very proud, and obviously feeling rather old as well.

We have had to be careful what we said recently – phrases like “Poor child, school was awful and I was glad to leave!” would probably not do anything for her optimism!

Malmesbury Almshouse

2010-09-06T19:09:00.000Z

We were in Malmesbury visiting friends this weekend and passed lots of old buildings – including one especially old one with a nice plaque on the front. As we walked away from it one of the people I was with commented that it was a shaame it was so high up or we would be able to read it. Well, to a man with a zoom lens on his camera that sounds like a challenge…

This is my best attempt at getting the text of this odd plaque:

Memorand that Whereas King Athenfran did give into the Free School within this Burrough of Malmesbury, Ten pounds and to the poor people my Almshouse at St John's Ten pounds to be paid Yearly by y Alderm and Burgeffes of y same Borough for Ever
That now Michael Wickes Esq late of This sd Burr and now Citizen of London hath augmented & added to y afore sd gift Vis to y sd Free School Ten pounds and to y Sd Almshoufe. Ten pounds only be paid Yearly at St John's aforsd within this sd Burr & by his Trustees for Ever and hath alfo given to y Minister of this Towne For y time being 20s only by y Year For Life to preach a sermon here yearly on y 10th day of July and to his sd Trustees 20s by the Year beginning on y 25th of March
Anno Dom 1694

My days studying History are a good 10 years of fixing computers ago and to be honest the only relevant thing that can help me here is that “f” can mean “s”, so the word “alfo” is easy to translate. Oh, and that spelling used to be a bit more optional than it is now, though given the state off Facebook status updates I’ve seen recently it still is. Anyway, that explains “Burrough”. It also seems logical that “sd” is “said” (is this 17th century text speak?) and “y” is “the” (it is – maybe plaque carvers charged by the letter) so my best translation is:

Remembering that King Aethelstan gave ten pounds to this school and Almshouse, Michael Wickes (who used to live here and has since moved to London) has added to it another ten pounds a year every year and also another 20 shillings for someone to preach a sermon here each year. In 1694.

It all seems a lot of fuss over what appears to amount to just over twenty quid and a free sermon.

Everyone else is taking pictures of St Crispin's Asylum, Northampton, so why shouldn't I?

2010-07-24T20:45:00.001Z

Harriet and I hit the road today to try to track down the Moosterious lion, part of the Pride of Northampton, a bizarre but enjoyable scheme to put colourful fibreglass lion statues all over Northampton. They are all in well advertised locations, apart from the one that looks like a cow, Moosterious. He keeps moving around and was in St Crispins. Harriet is as obsessed with a cow/lion as any 4 year old (okay, probably more than average) but we were disappointed to find he had moved on.

Or "mooooooved" on as Heather put it.

Anyway, since we were by the old derelict St Crispin's Asylum and I had a camera and a zoom lens, I took the chance to take some photos. I am well aware that this subject is well covered on the Internet already but you can never have too many pictures of crumbling clock towers.

The impressive clock tower

The frozen clock faces, complete with pigeons

A door, oddly halfway up a wall

The empty windows

You can never have too many empty windows either.

Mr Tobes is (a terrible) two

2010-07-19T21:26:00.000Z

Toby has finally turned two this weekend, and we knew about it! He has been teething again for a week or two anyway, plus starting to get some rather amusing tantrums. Then on about Wednesday he got a cold, which appeared to develop into full-blown manflu within about an hour. He had a bit of a temperature and a runny nose, so reacted to this by stopping eating and sleeping and becoming very angry with the world.

Our floors have never seen so much beating of fists. At one point (protesting about something, though he quickly seems to forget specifically what once he is “in the zone”) he went halfway up the stairs, sobbing, and starting to softly bang his head on the steps. Scary.

Anyway, he had his birthday presents (I hope he doesn’t think he is being rewarded in some way for this behaviour) and loved them, especially the dinosaurs, of which there were many. Harriet thought they were great too, being a 4 and a half year old tomboy they were just up her street. Cue lots of tussling over who was going to play with the baby T-Rex.

Then we had a teddy bear’s picnic at the park which everyone enjoyed. Except Toby, who was beside himself in a tantrum haze of anger. And strapped into his Phil N Teds most of the time to avoid people getting hurt. The baby dinosaurs ate his share of the snacks.

Then more pressies, including a PlayMobil Whale (with researcher boat!), which has quickly become his Favourite Toy Ever (see below, he looks like he is about to kiss it). Trouble is, when he gets angry and is carrying the whale he is a bit more dangerous than normal, being effectively armed with a club.

I did my usual job of trying to fake a happy family event by taking pictures from the right angle. See below the front and back shots of two toddlers lying next to one another. The front one shows that the birthday boy’s emotions are not what they should be!

Clearly faked policeman seen in Raoul Moat BBC News Story

2010-07-13T21:28:00.000Z

As the tragic and disturbing news story of Raoul Moat going crazy and being on the run in the North of England came to and something even more disturbing happened. As a sign of the kind of cutbacks we can expect to see over the next few years, the BBC did not send someone so far north to actually film the police operation, but instead clearly faked the photos they used.

In this example taken from the BBC News site on the 10th July 2010 they have used a random guy told to "look like an angry policeman" and given a "gun", though in this case it seems to be a water pistol. They put a WW2 helmet on him (sprayed black, 'cos police stuff is often black) and with "police" written on it in A-team letters just in case anyone was in some doubt what they were going for.

Holiday in Highcliffe

2010-06-28T21:33:00.000Z

Just come back from a very good and very hot holiday in Dorset at the Hobourne holiday park in Highcliffe:

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&q=naish+highcliffe&ie=UTF8&ei=VU8qTNv6EdmpsQbXv7jEBA&ved=0CAoQ_AU&hq=naish&hnear=Highcliffe,+Dorset,+United+Kingdom&ll=50.740359,-1.687871&spn=0.003727,0.011319&t=h&z=17&iwloc=A

Unlike most holidays in our family we actually got good weather all week! And no-one got ill. If it wasn't for Toby the terrible nearly two year old attaining his usual quota of whinging I would have been worried something was up. This is him having a strop at the aircraft museum near Bournemouth we went to because he would not keep his hat on in the sun.

They had a very good playground outside which Harrie thought was great.

And they both enjoyed the dancing in the evening with Sammy the Seahorse! We enjoyed the attached bar.

Harrie enjoyed blowing bubbles (everyone likes bubbles)

And I got to swim in the sea for the first time in literally years!

And we took turns in the evening having walks in the evening when the kids were in bed and admiring the moon and sea and stuff.

Funnily enough after a week of playing and walking and not sleeping terribly well with the heat we had a quiet journey home. This is the last picture of Toby before we set off home - he looks lively but was asleep for three and a half hours ten minutes after this was taken!

Playing in the park while England lose at Football

2010-06-26T21:30:00.000Z

In a very sensible use of time and resources we decided to decamp to the local park and listen to the band on a nice hot, sunny and quite deserted summer Sunday afternoon – deserted because everyone else wanted to watch England getting done over 4-1 by the Germans on TV. I think we had the best idea!

We took bubbles (because everyone likes bubbles)

Harriet and Toby played football with a balloon, unaware that there were other, less interesting and certainly less successful, football games going on elsewhere…

And we admired (and climbed on) the fibreglass lions outside the Museum – part of the Pride of Northampton season apparently (whatever that is).

And then we did some running down hills too.

Mum and Dad are on a post holiday diet, so instead of a bottle of bucks fizz or some Tuborg, we made too with a flask of tea, very nice it was too. And the band on the Abington Park bandstand were marvellous.

Someone still kept coming over from the pub and updating us on the score though! I guess there’s no escape.

The Nest

2010-06-13T07:54:00.001Z

I have a hedge. A big hedge. About 4 metres tall and it appears to just about double its size every year. So, just as in any other Spring, I took my shears and a ladder last week to launch my annual assault. Harriet and Toby were happy to help of course.

Then when two thirds of the hedge had been hacked down I found a problem. A nest. I assumed this was an old abandoned thing and it was very high up, but I managed to stand on the top of my ladder and hold my camera over it…

Damn. I stopped at this point and was concerned I had disturbed the nest too much – then after some careful monitoring we got photographic evidence the nest was still occupied.

After thinking we might have thrushes, we identified them as blackbirds – blue eggs with brown speckles is right and the “mummy” is indeed brown rather than black.

Then after a couple of days we saw then Dad, getting food…

And then we saw the spadgers! Am I the only person who calls baby birds “spadgers"? There seems to be three that I can see, so there might be a couple more to hatch yet. They appear to be hungry. And not much is going on in the feather department.

Good thing I have a good zoom lens! So anyway, this is our newly resident couple of day old Blackbird, enjoying the sunlight provided by my hacking their hedge protection down.

He looks how I feel…

New word definition: Eastering

2010-04-05T21:05:00.001Z

Harriet, being 4, sometimes has difficulty with words. We then have to learn her the right ones. Sorry, TEACH her the right ones. Anyway, sometimes her new words catch on, and the current one is "Eastering" - as in "Easter" reinvented as a verb. To Easter is to look around the house/garden/park for eggs. Or indeed anything. But at Easter and with a basket. Example sentences include:

"Come on Toby, we're going eastering"
"What are we eastering for today?"
"Look at all these eggs we just eastered for"

Still not sure whether it needs to start with a capital letter - since it is based on the name of the major festival of the Christian calendar but it is (a) a verb and (b) not really a word. Harriet seems unconcerned by this, probably because she can't read and so is unaware of such grammar rules.

Heather encouraged this word creation behaviour by knitting several knitted egg holders with eyes and hats, in something she referred to for some time as "Project X" (I realised after a while that she might well be secretly saying "Project Eggs".) and we hunted (sorry, eastered) for them on at least 4 occasions over the Bank Holiday weekend.

Pictures stuck to the fridge

2010-03-23T13:01:00.003Z

Some things about parenting do change a bit - I don't think parents in the 50s needed to worry about the dangers of children being duped on a social networking site (unless some pen pal got out of hand which I am sure was more of a problem than you would think). A recurring theme of children though is their endearing though apparently poor quality artwork which is hailed as a masterpiece by the parents and publically displayed on the white goods.

Our budding 4 year old artist Harriet appears to be moving out of her inevitable toddler impressionist phase and is now producing pictures that resemble reality in some small way. We are, needless to say, astounded by her abilities. I am even more impressed as she is producing her best work in the very nice version of Paint that comes with Windows 7.

This does leave us with an issue though since we have no colour printer - pinning to the fridge is not an option (unless I tape a monitor to it, which I have considered). So its going to have to be the website.

Slide
By Harriet (aged 4)

Walking the Northampton and Lamport Railway.

2010-03-16T13:35:00.001Z

The long dark winter appears to be nearly over and so we have finally returned to the outdoors, now we can be outside for more than 10 minutes without a toddler complaining of cold hands. Since Harriet is obsessed with trains (Thomas the Tank Engine continues to exercise a thorough grip on her 4 year old imagination) the Northampton and Lamport Railway is a great place for a walk.

This would usually be a thinly disguised reason for a trip to the very nice Brampton Halt with a quick walk along the track at the back to see the trains after a pint, which would be the real reason for the trip. Still, thinking the children could do with a walk after far too long stuck inside we parked in our usual free car park (here) and did a longer trip. I even brought a ball with me to entice them out of the comfort of the double buggy, which I wasn't crazy enough to set off without.

This gave me the chance to rescue a ball from the side of train tracks without any of the usual danger this would involve!

Harriet did complain though that the trains and carriages were not in good enough condition. She said they were rusty and needed to be sent to the Sodor Steamworks to be fixed by Victor, or something like that. She had a bit of a point I suppose.

I am a Web Octopus

2010-02-28T22:25:00.001Z

We were watching a program called the Virtual Revolution on BBC1 tonight when it mentioned that on the BBC website we had the chance to do a few tests and find out what kind of we user we are and then be told what kind of web animal we were. The test is at https://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution/

Of course Heather and I both had a laptop on top of our laps at this point and the programme became a victim of its own success as we both started doing the test and completely ignored the TV.

Anyway, I am apparently a Web Octopus and Heather is a Web Leopard. The main difference appeared to be that I was better at multitasking.

I haven't looked at this on Wikipedia, but I am fairly sure that in the real world there are more fundamental differences between the leopard and the octopus than their degree of multitasking.

So thanks BBC for making my brain hurt at the end of a busy weekend with the kids by encouraging me to do a series of mind games! To thank me they produced this very complimentary summary of my personality. Incidentally, I think the reason I am described as "solitary" is I chose not to use options like Facebook and YouTube to answer a series of factual questions. Would anyone? I suppose they would, and only an Octopus like me would not understand this kind of behaviour.

Toby's Christening

2010-02-02T20:58:00.001Z

Thanks to everyone who helped us celebrate Toby's initiation into the Catholic church (I just do this to get a kick out of getting all my almost exclusively non-churchgoing friends in a church and singing All Things Bright And Beautiful - now I'm married and the kids are baptised this hobby might dry up though) at Northampton Cathedral last week, we had a great time and had lots of tasty food (not at the church you understand, I meant afterwards). Thanks to Goals Northampton as well for being a very good place for a party afterwards too.

We still had lots of cake left afterwards and a bit of spare time last weekend (and Heather knocking the head off the icing Teddy on the cake) meant I had the chance to make an extremely pointless animation.

Rice Cake eating as a social ill

2010-01-12T13:45:00.001Z

Recently I started what I thought was a commendable attempt to reduce my snacking on chocolate, sweets and (most seriously) biscuits in the office. This would have many benefits on my weight, energy levels and the number of pointless conversations in the office on which was better - Rich Tea or Digestives?

Clearly Digestives.

Anyway, after researching low calorie snack alternatives (its not realistic to just "not eat", or even simply "stop eating when no longer hungry" - that'd never work) I settled on the inoffensive rice cake. They are cheap, I think they are tasty, best of all they are virtually fat free.

After two days of this new regime I have had to abandon my new snack after what I can only describe as a vicious campaign of hatred and intimidation by my previously benign work colleagues. Little did I realise how smelly these things were! I was informed in no uncertain words that I was indulging in an anti-social activity and should stop.

Now that I am aware of the seriousness of this issue, I think action should be taken. Clearly it would be unfair to just introduce a rice cake ban, but I would like to suggest the following:

Banning of consumption of rice cakes in enclosed public spaces, including pubs and other workplaces
A labelling system on packets of rice cakes - "Rice cakes harm those around you" and "People will like you less if you buy these" should do
Raise the minimum age for buying rice cakes to 16
Provision of outdoor shelters for the eating of rice cakes near workplaces. These should be separate from smoking shelters, in order to protect the smokers.
Introduction of rice cake patches to allow addicts to reduce their cravings
Punitive taxes on all rice cake sales

Hopefully these simple measures will stop others making the same mistakes as me.

Alternative Cutlery

2010-01-09T20:49:00.001Z

Toby has continued his development from a baby into a crazy toddler with a recent bizarre trend in not wanting to use cutlery to eat with but using toys instead.

To be honest he was not very good with the whole spoons thing anyway - he had developed spoon control that was 90% perfect - it was the last 10% where the spoon was nearly at his mouth and turned upside down that was a problem.

Still, the latest issue is that he chooses something random he can see off the table and eats with that instead. It started with just the spoon the wrong way around. Then it was a favoured penguin (or "wenwin" as he says), then a more random seal - and today a small wooden church tower.

In case this wasn't immediately obvious, eating with a small wooden church tower is not efficient. I don't think its going to catch on.

Snowy Britain

2010-01-08T12:30:00.001Z

Excellent snowy picture of Britain by NASA - a very good use of the American's tax dollars.

If you zoom in a bit you can see people stuck at home, slipping about, complaining bitterly about the lack of grit and saying crazy things like how things were better during the war.

Meanwhile I've been taking slightly smaller snowy pictures than NASA.

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First attempt at pumpkin carving

2009-10-31T20:09:00.004Z

Sorry, time for some showing off (people with their own fairly pointless websites based on their name can be prone to it). I've been given a few random assignments since becoming a father, and the latest was carving a pumpkin. Being an IT sort and not being familiar with what is cool in pumpkin carving, I hit a certain well known search engine for info.

1 hour in the bathroom with two very incompetent toddler "helpers" later, I was quite impressed with my creation! Okay, so the eyes and nose were as a result of a printed out template but the mouth was all ad-libbed!

Heather suggested the picture might work better with the lights off. Fair point, really.

Naming bath ducks

2009-10-31T19:26:00.005Z

Oh, to have the imagination of a toddler. We have just bought Harriet and Toby 4 new rubber ducks for the bath, mainly to distract her from her main bathtime occupation of spinning round as fast as she can, which can get dangerous. The ducks caused great excitement, mainly because they change colour when put in hot or cold water (ooooooooohhhh! wow!).

Harriet has since started to name them. They appear to get rebranded quite often, but their initial names were:

- Golden White How
- Bhaji bhaji
- Pointless
- Mars

Toby did not join in this explosion of creativity, but then he only says about 10 words and one of them is "papple" (apple).

15 months of baby insomnia

2009-10-25T13:59:00.004Z

Well, last week Toby made it to 15 months. This is an important age as it has been previously voted (by us) as the perfect child age. They are not so old that they either stay out late, smoke, swear or talk all the time about Thomas the Tank Engine (only one of these has been achieved by our oldest, Harriet, so far), but they aren't an immobile baby either. They're walking (or crawling really well - we have a walker finally), saying some words quite badly and generally is peaking on the cuteness scale. The older children (just Harriet in our case - three and a half years of fun) are interested in chasing the newly mobile kid.

But our happy family hides a dark secret. Dark because its about the night - Toby is an insomniac.

In 65 weeks of nightly sleeping opporunties Toby has managed to sleep through on about two occasions, which given we weren't expecting it didn't help us. We have in the meantime tried just about everything, including but certainly not limited to:

Co-sleeping (baby in bed)
Banning co-sleeping (baby ushered back to cot for excessive crawling)
Feeding to sleep (works in the short term)
Banning feeding at night (since he started waking for the milk)
Controlled crying
Constant attention
Back rubbing (his, not ours - he likes it but its hard without Mr Tickle hands)
Ear plugs (us, not him)
Cuddle blankets (him, not us)
Dummies
Pleading

The main problem appears to be that he is teething more or less constantly. But basically, he appears to have raging insomnia. Maybe he has worries we're not aware of - where his next teddy is coming from perhaps.

Of course, every cloud has a silver lining and in the case of the parent with a insomniac baby its complaining. Its great to list last night's waking times to non-parents and watch their look of horror at what they might have to endure in the future. It can even get competitive with other insomniac baby parents, seeing who had the worst night last night ("Awake from 4am? That's nothing, I went to sleep at 3am and was up getting breakfast 10 minutes later!").

If we've said it once we must have said it a thousand times since last July. Its a good job he is cute...

Films with no women in.

2009-08-18T06:59:00.002Z

Dave at work (hi Dave) came up with a very good game this morning - naming films with no women in them. We did not do very well. This was the pathetic list we came up with, most of which we have since debunked ourselves. Feel free to post comments with more suggestions.

- The Thing
- Silent Running
- The Hunt For Red October (damn, forgot Jack Ryan's wife...)
- Saving Private Ryan (apart from a little girl saved from the ruins. Oh, and his whole family in the present day at the cemetary. Damn again)

That's about it. There must be more...

Toby - one year down...

2009-07-21T12:01:00.007Z

Well, its been a year since our dreams came true when our second child emerged screaming into our lives in the middle of the night.

Some things have not changed since then.

He's still the lightest sleeper ever (but better than when he was 6 months old and was virtually an insomniac) and is no stranger to 3am. He appears to have been teething more or less constantly since he was 9 weeks old but only managed to grow 6 teeth, 4 of which appeared in the same week. He's a clingy little monster as well, something of a shock after Harriet, who while fond of us appeared to only tolerate our presence rather than requiring it for at least the first two years.

He has come on since birth in some other ways though. Standing happily since 3 months and crawling very well since March, he has finally taken his first step this week, albeit reluctantly. He also appears to be moving away from his inate clingyness copying his sister in having an "adventurous spirit" - i.e. he can cover the whole staircase in under 15 seconds holding a toy car and wants to climb on the roof of the playhouse rather than just play in it.

He has accumulated an impressive vocabulary for one so young. He can now say (in order of firstwordness):

Tick tock
Bubble
Tiger
Hiya (as in hello, not a karate chop - though he does seem to like hitting, being a boy)

I'm not sure where conversations can go with just those words. We think he is trying to say "ball" and "book" as well, but they just sound a bit like "baaaa". Give him time.

And he is a cute little boy and good on the photos, which we have found is enough to get us through the bad days as we have lots of nice pictures to look at and remind us of the good bits. Especially with those scary blue eyes. My newhew Matthew told me in great detail how Heather and I (both with brown eyes) must both be "carriers", which sounded quite frightening.

So broadly speaking Toby, well done for getting through the first year, being basically good natured, friendly, interesting and happy and not being a little baby anymore.

We'll keep you after all.

Less is more- decluttering in the Internet age

2009-07-17T20:45:00.006Z

It has taken a long time to get to the point where I'm ready to acknowledge that actually its not more possessions that will make me happy but considerably less of them! Ebay is great here of course (what a good deal - lose the junk, get paid) but there is all the hassle of taking pictures, communicating, staggering to the post office and hoping you get good feedback. The tip is fine too by the hoarder in me just can't throw away things that "might be useful someday", even if they clearly won't be useful to me.

So the "third way" which we've settled on is some tipping, some ebaying and quite a lot of Freecycling. Freecycle is a site where people offer things they don't want anymore and other people ask for it for nothing. No postage, no feedback, no... okay, no money. Its like ebay where everything is collection only and goes for nothing. Anyway, the junk has gone down a lot, I can actually see the cellar now, and I don't feel like I'm wasting things. Freecycle is great and everyone should do it.

We did find that a few people on the site are, well not very clever and just after some good things without either paying for them or being arrested. We offered an old TV table and even went to the trouble of putting up a picture and someone immediately said yes. And then he contacted later and pulled out of this FREE transaction because he had previously only seen it on his damn phone and thought it was solid pine. Actually it was just some cheap MFI thing so he felt he was above it. I think he was missing the point of the site. Anyway, when a few people all ask for something we offered we choose which one to give it to based almost entirely on how good their grammar and spelling. Its eliteist, but it works...