funkypancake

my predictions are this:

i'm rubbish at new year's eve.

i'm much happier going to bed early and getting it all over a done with than partying like a mad thing. that said, we were invited round to a neighbour's house for a hogmany do which i quite fancied, but lack of babysitters prevented us popping out (and it would have been bad form for one of us to go and not the other).

so we sat in chatting whilst fireworks exploded around and about. we just assumed they were fireworks from all the noise. i like to think it was actually our neighbours wandering up and down with inflated crisp bags, popping them occasionally to give the impression they were having a good time and we weren't. the loud deep explosions were obviously the kettle crisp bags

hang on to the old year i say. let's have an old year non-party instead.

here is my mum and jane in conversation on new year's eve.

i've spent a fair bit of time moving davescollections over to a better/easier updatable format.

still lots of work to do. but it's a start.

here is the most recently found photo:

day 6 of the amazing hair growing cat

the fur seems to have taken on a more wirey nature. most peculiar. for the sake of variety, today's photo is from a slightly different angle

click for big version

today's been cold (but not wet) so we went for a family bike ride. kezia went in the seat on the back of my bike and esther went on the tag-a-long connected to jane's bike.

yeah for exercise & fun.

following the classic who is brother edd ? entry of a few days back, here is a Who Is Tony ? entry.

Tony often leaves comments. He's not Big Eye Tony. That's a different one.

This Tony comes round to our house with his family and looks a bit like Bill Gates. tony is a man and is married to his wife and has two girls aged the same as our two. so that's four things we have in common (note - i am married to my wife not his).

Here he is playing jane's guitar whilst listening to The Strokes' debut album. he hadn't heard their music (or album) before and so what he played did not resemble the music he heard. it was in the right key however.

this tony also plays jenga (actually our poor copy version from a high street store, but some concept)

this tony is also a very good friend. to celebrate this friendship we give each other (the same) ballerina pen holder each birthday/christmas.

so there we have it. a very quick summary of tony.

day 5 of the amazing hair growing cat

once again, incremental growth is small, but significant.

tony inspects the cat:

and here's the latest big picture (click for detail)

day 4 of the amazing hair growing cat

the growth is small, but detectable compared to yesterday

click for big version

ebony and ivory. live together in perfect harmony.

two gloves, one nature reserve. one black, one white. one rubber, one leather. both lost in a strange world.

(this should prove very popular with those who like to look at damp gloves - in particular those people who end up at this site by doing a search for 'glove wet look problem' in google.)

we had high hopes for today. we were going to walk around Windsor Great Park whilst Esther cycled and it was going to be great.

unfortunately it chucked it down with rain instead so we stayed in all morning. here is jane's reaction:

in the afternoon we braved the drizzle to go to Dinton Pastures, our local nature reserve, where esther was able to cycle through muddy puddles chased by jane.

kezia and i trundled along after with the pushchair giving a nice rear view of the proceedings

day 3 of the amazing hair growing cat

the growth continues ...

click for big version

this is a good time of year for family photography. here is a photo i took without flash (and long exposure) in a fisheye mirror near these christmas lights. i think the effect is quite good

these are the last few days to catch the christmas lights. here are some in the village where we go to church. it's just white lights which is tasteful, and all the animal shapes move which is slightly eery.

we went to see some friends today we haven't seen for a number of years. we both have children that the others have never seen and those we did know as little babies are now approaching teenage years.

it was their daughter's birthday and jane told esther it was her 9th birthday party. "oh", said Esther, "but how old is she ?"

here is esther and kezia on a wooden rocking horse. note how kezia is standing on a beeny horse. i'm sure this is signifcant, but don't know why.

my supposition is this. the world is going mad thanks to kids toys.

.

how so ?

day 2 of the amazing hair growing cat

click for big version

we had a lovely time round some friends house this morning. they have children (two boys) the same age as our girls.

esther and adam loved playing on adam's junior scaletric as the two fathers looked on, quietly itching to have a go themselves.

instead we were assigned roles of mechanics and car-replacers. a demanding job when the cars are driven by two 4 year olds who don't understand about slowing down for corners

here's a present i got from Brother Edd. It's an amazing hair-growing cat soap.

you take it out of its packet, leave it on a plate and within 12 hours it starts to grow fur, increasing in thickness over a number of days.

here it was when i opened it last night and after 12 hours:

i'll keep you updated as the fur grows. are you interested in where you can buy such an item ? do a google search

here's a nice game you can play over the festive period. it works on the principle that when families get together there are a lot of underlying 'issues' which need to be dealt with.

Rules of Play:

here's our christmas:

we went to church first thing:

Mr Party plans an explosion and Kevin wears his hat well

puddings and pie (extinguished) and kezia with fairy wings

a little wooden train

our family. me with tanktop on left.

the last and final day of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a happy christmas

here are some people having a very happy christmas

after lunch with friends (the ones who were there, not the ones who weren't) we went to the Crib service at church. jane was one of the leaders and played a mean guitar.

After that Jane went off to our sister church to do a repeat of service whilst i took the girls to the chip shop ! The chip shop wasn't open so i did what any father would do and let the kids play in a deep bubbly bath for half an hour until it was open. we went back later with the girls in their pyjamas.

After a chips and chocolate supper, we brought esther's duvet down and snuggled down to watched Chicken Run on the telly.

yeah for families and christmas !

we have some friends who seem to cancel at the last minute everytime we go to visit them. they have some good excuses, but i suspect they simply just don't like us.

in order to break the cycle of not seeing them, they invited themselves to some other friends' house so we could all meet up near where we live. unfortunately they cancelled (surprise surprise) but it was ok because we could eat more of the fantastic lunch provided by our host Tanya.

esther and catherine with the shepherds pie and profitable rolls

It was also the first opportunity to have some crackers. Tony bought them because they were half price. they were also unwrippable causing much mirth and merriment

day twenty four of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's another wise man

here is the third and final wise man. it's Alan who plays the Organ at church. he also works for a university which must make him very wise. and to prove the point he's wearing a golden crown.

happy christmas everyone !

(click for big version)

you may be wondering who brother edd is. well he's my brother and his name is edd. esther calls him brother edd too which is quite funny (in the same way that kezia calling me dave is quite funny).

here is esther and edd both wearing the blue wig. esther looks very shifty. brother edd looks normal.

well, i've opened my first christmas present and it was a good one. it's from my grandma and is a pair of my grandfather's old shoes. he never wore these shoes and one look will reveal why. they are white leather with a green and yellow trim, and a red tongue.

kezia said "look, daddy, christmas shoes" which is a nice concept. i look forward to dazzling people with them over the next few days.

a new photo for davescollections. i spent ages picking up the bits in marylebone high street yesterday evening. unfortunately i must have missed a piece !

here is kezia in her new coat, and later with an inflatable santa

day twenty three of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a pudding

here is my photo of a christmas pudding. it's a satsuma. a festive fruit eaten here as a dessert:

crackers means crazy. all we really want from a cracker is the paper hat.

the bang, joke and toy are usually a dissapointment. i think crackers might be a peculiarly british thing. perhaps people will let me know.

jane sends some to france each year so a french family somewhere can enjoy the fun UK-style. it's part of the EU's crackers-for-foreigners campaign.

there is a competitive element to crackers of course. and we can all learn from this study.

here are our christmas crackers in a box. we can only dream of what might be in them. we'll find out on thursday of course ...

day twenty two of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a penguin (or maybe a duck)

and here are the pictures of a penguin by our christmas tree. the penguin has a ball bearing under it so it can mooth (a word i invented which is a combination of smooth and move) around in a non-penguin way.

you wouldn't know to look at it which is why i mention it here.

ah - but now i discover the word mooth has already been used before

troubled with spam ? want to complain to the official body responsible for policing spam in the UK ?

if so, then you'll want to print off this massive form and post it to them.

like how long is that going to take ? good to see they've got the hang of this modern technology thing.

there were no cups in the drinks machine this morning so it wouldn't dispense. a very nice man came along and it turns out there were cups in there, but just not in the right place. these things happen occasionally apparently.

i complimented the man on his machine, because it's the first drinks machine i've found which dispenses drinks of hot water which actually tastes nice. Usually selecting 'hot water' is just a pipe cleaning option which ends up tasting like old tea/coffee.

"how so" ? i asked. "here so" he replied and pointed to the dedicated hot water pipe (the white one on the right)

pete has featured widely just recently. the reason, of course, is because he is so blog worthy. he also enjoys seeing himself on the internet (he's of that generation). hello pete !

i spotted him coming out the equipment room this morning wearing his blue house coat with pen in top pocket and a clip board. you don't get much better than that.

i'm hoping he'll get a pair of safety glasses for christmas to set the whole look off

yesterday was the shortest day. which is great if you are short. but why do we call it the shortest day ? it's because the 21st December is traditionally the coldest day of the year and, as we all know - heat expands, cold shrinks. doorways everwhere will have reduced in size favouring the smaller in stature.

here is santa in a moses basket. kezia believes that if you look after santa on the run up to christmas then he'll look after you on christmas day.

i got an email from Annie of the Going Underground Blog.

If you travel around london (or if you don't) then you might enjoy her site

here is a Venn Diagram explaining this:

where area A is those that travel around london and area B is those that don't travel around london.

i might have a new years' resolution to do more venn diagrams.

kezia (aged 1 and ten 12ths) decided she wanted to decorate her own little tree. whilst we got on doing the main tree she carefully selected and installed a small set of decorations on our cheapy tinsel tree. she was really concentrating and in her own little world. it was really very very sweet !

what a fantastic day !

we started off with an excellent service at church (we were playing and i don't think we stuffed up too much). there was a nice kids song to wig out to which is always handy for a bass player. there was also a massive party for the kids so they had a great time too (and one of our friend's children got baptised)

then we were invited round for lunch spontaneously at some friends house which was fantastic. the unplanned nature of it made it even better ! whilst there we saw some friends we see about twice a year who have just popped back to see their folks over christmas.

after that we came home, dropped off the music kit and went out to the Christingle service with some other friends. i was asked at the last minute to light a few christingles during the service and given a box of cooks matches. however, when my moment came i was trumped by a man with an automatic gas cooker lighter thing. he went whizzing up and down the church before i had even lit my first one. it was SO unfair !

after tea, coffee, cake, biscuits etc we headed off to some other friends from church's house for a party. this was really nice too. especially this table decoration which is a melting skull candle adjacent to a couple of butter knives ! very festive. they also have a knitted nativity.

finally it was back to our house to put some decorations up, kids to bed. jane's gone off to sing in another carol service and i'm about to tidy up the house !

today's been a great start to christmas, covering all the main themes. friends, family, church and melting skulls.

day twenty one of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a stocking i think

here is esther and kezia wearing their christmas stockings. they are actually bags for christmas presents, but i think that's about the same thing.

they are obviously not for wearing which makes wearing them all the more obvious (if you are a kid).

yet another photo for davescollections. we had a family outing to london today. we were very tired by the time we got to westminster, but i was keen we walked up whitehall to trafalgar square. it also meant we passed horseguard parade so i would get a photo of a horse for today's advent calendar picture.

Just next to horseguards parade, jane spotted the top of this bloke's head on a teeny piece of photo on the floor. we then spent the next five minutes on a family hunt for other bits of the photo. we only managed to find 3 pieces. I suspect they may actually belong to two seperate photos because the bottom two bits overlap slightly.

so how fantastic is that ! a family lost photo find. i would definately have walked past this one. esther was very pleased.

here is a sign of someone getting clonked by a stick. the photo didn't come out very well, so i will revisit it another day. this will do you for now.

we took esther and kezia to london today. we were going to do the george w bush memorial walk, but it was chucking it down with rain, so we went to the Tate Modern instead. After much fun there we walked down the south bank to trafalgar square via westminster (so esther could see big ben).

fun on the bakerloo line:

I've mentioned the installation before, but here are some new pictures:

sleepy kezia (and blanket) and esther

kezia looking at the ceiling and jane looking cute:

esther took this photo of me unhelped (not bad for a 4 year old):

on the way back we saw Big Ben:

day twenty of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a donkey

here is today's photo:

although the actual photo should be this one. if it hadn't been for the advent challenge we may not have found this find !

people have a lovely time at christmas. here some jolly types had, wait for it, drawn a smiley face on a transparent bag of waste paper and written 'mr snowman' at the bottom ! brilliant. i hope it made the bin men smile as much as it did me.

here we are at our office christmas party.

here is rather nice red juice stain from my sweet

day nineteen of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's another wise man

here is my photo. it's my company's CEO's mouth.

i was sitting next to him at our xmas lunch and he's obviously a very wise man. i say that not especially because he might be reading this. but he might be.

happy christmas (thanks to tony for sending me this)

christmas is all about shopping, chocolate and jesus.

the office cleaners have focussed on the chocolate element. here is a big box of chocolates they have given the office as a present to say thanks for all the mess we've left them to clean up over the last 12 months.

home made biscuit on a grafitti-ed telephone cabinet

and here is a lemon on a zebra crossing

following elton's comments on the found pound i've decide to combine the two concepts. i'll leave the money on the street, but donate my own equivalence to the needy, thus doubling the street value.

i saw very little sign of life this morning whilst walking to work. even the street cleaners were thinner on the ground (quite literally). but i did see some evidence of night-before partying.

here is an estate agents office. through the window i could see a bottle of champagne and a half empty glass on this person's desk. i assume this is from last night, but maybe it's a very bling-blingy hair-of-the-dog ?

and here is someone's bow tie. i'm sure there's a story behind it's removal. you'll have to make that up yourselves.

day eighteen of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's an angel

here is the day's photo. it's of the angel from our christmas tree which we didn't put away in the christmas decorations box in january. it's been up all year which has been nice.

hasn't she got the coolest hair and halo ?

what is this frosty item ? click to find out.

today was a good day for sunlight shining through things. here is a beam at paddington station and a beam in the wood in apsley (wherever that is).

jane has been as busy as a busy bee. i was a little busy, but only at the implimentation and printing stage. jane drove the concept, construction and dispatch phase.

"what am i on about ?" you ask. "christmas cards" i answer.

2003

i'm not going to reveal our 2003 christmas card just yet as some readers will be receiving their's by the method of her majesty's royal mail.

(others will have already seen it and are here to claim their money back guarantee).

update: you can see 2003's here

however, here are some ones of years gone by for your delight. it's interesting to see how things have progressed. my photo shop skills have improved for sure !

CLICK PHOTOS FOR BIGGER VERSIONS

2002
a paper nativity with movable characters. the first few photos are from the photo shoot. this was kezia's first appearance
.

the final card and commemorative top trump card (i went a bit photoshop mad last year):

2001
kezia hadn't been born and esther was an angel.

2000
esther as a toddler

1999
what was i thinking. it must have been the 6 months of sleepless nights with esther which made this such a poor entry. i can only apologise to anyone who received this card for the quality.

1998
this wasn't too bad - i stuck our heads on someone else's picture i think

1997
the earliest card on electronic record. we were married in 1996 and i don't think we did anything fancy card-wise that year (i don't think we even had a proper computer). but we did by 1997 and we went kerazee !

here is a photo i received on our internal post at work. last time i received such a photo it was a fake. therefore i can only assume the same here.

but i shall give the sender some pleasure by displaying the photo here anyway. i won't put it on davescollections as an official photo though !

so, you live in a first floor flat in the city, you've got no garden, but you've always hankered after a shed to keep your mower in.

so what do you do ? obviously, you put up a load of scaffolding and build your shed outside your window.

day seventeen of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a candle

and here is my photo. finding a shop in london which sold forks (so i could take a picture of their handles) was quite a challenge. see this two ronnies sketch for an explanation

it was never like this on the 3rd floor. following the american example of 'whooping up the day', pete and i did brief spot of competitive juggling. needless to say, the multi-tasking master beat me hands down.

round the corner from the pop idol bus were these two bottles of baileys (empty). i thought they looked quite nice balanced on a pavement edge opposite a pub.

i get a number of visitors to this website who are looking for Pop Idol information. I come second in Google if you do a search for 'junior pop idol' for example.

this morning, i saw the pop idol bus asking us to 'Vote Mark'. If i'd thought about it i should have knocked on the door and said "is mark in", but i didn't.

who is mark ? should he win ? i dunno nothing.

update: about 4 hours later i saw the bus again and this time they were giving out bars of chocolate. still no sign of mark (still no idea who he is).

i often see money and i rarely pick it. i prefer to leave it for those who really need it. here is £1.

rather randomly i thought i saw battersea power station across hyde park this morning. it must have been there every day, but i've just never looked down the road at this angle before. you can just see it's four jutting jutters through the trees and beyond the mist.

day sixteen of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a teddy

here are the photos. it's paddington bear as seen as paddington station in london. i go through paddington station every day. paddingston station is of course named after paddington bear.

paddington station also named after a small welsh hamlet famous for producing fluffy cotton wool (a derivation of padding-town).

all of the facts above are false (and therefore a fictions).

here is paddington with his mysterious eyes. the photos were taken nearly 10 hours apart (on the way to work, and on way back again)

another passport photo. this time found by myself at Edgware Road tube station.

i wasn't going to get off at this station (as paddington station, where i was heading, was the next stop), but found myself unmistakenly drawn to get up and walk the 10 minutes to paddington.

as i walked up the stairs which lead to the exit i found this photo for my collection

being on top of the world from such spiritual guidance i walked boldly off to paddington station. on the way a police man stopped me and said "and why do you think you can walk down here sir ?".

It turned out there was a 'suspect package' in the street and they had closed the road (though tube trains were probably running just under the road !).

If i'd be quick of thought i would have answered "because i am impervious to explosives", but you never think of these things at the time. in the end my walk took me 20 minutes instead because of the diversion, but it was worth it to find the photo.

this is my first cut-out photo.

by the way, i'm planning on a proper makeover to the davescollection website which is why i haven't updated it for a while. this will be my christmas project, and my main present to my friends and family (apologies to those expecting CDs etc) ...

here is london's newest landmark - the gherkin. i took this photo as it looked nice, but it also shows a little man in a box dangling off a very thin stick, cleaning the windows.

it was a bit chilly this morning and i spotted this holly nicely frosted up.

pity i didn't spot it in similar conditions on Advent Day 5

here are some inflatable snowmen who felt like i did yesterday.

day fifteen of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a reindeer.

here are the photos:

tacky plastic reindeer in a shop window - note how they've kept the foam pieces in their plastic bags to prevent a mess

and here is my plastic reindeer barometer dressed in a crown, hair extensions and tie. on the right is a moose with a charles and diana biscuit tin balanced on its head

my new office has a nice view of BT Tower out the window. hoorah !