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i had lunch with buzz yonks ago and part of his tooth fell out.



alright dave, nothing beat an icecream on a rainy day

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here's eugene and cathy eating lasagne in wellington

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i had breakfast with my good mate big nosed ugly guy last week.  it was great. here he is in his office.

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i had a rather nice lunch with buzz last week.  and again today.  making plans and stuff.  good

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here's some of the fantastical goodies brought to us from great england by our good friend ian who is visiting on business.  lovely chap.  lovely chocs.  lovely bic biros.  lovely memory card.  lovely greetings card.  lovely hamma beads.  all lovely.  lovely.

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i've got lots of chums in this new town and that's a great thing.  here's buzz, my oldest (in terms of know-age) NZ chum.

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i'm not sure who my eldest friend in NZ is.  i'll have to think about that one.

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we had lovely friends round for tea last night.  the grown ups spent most of the evening doing this devilish jigsaw whilst the various kids entertained themselves elsewhere.  lovely.

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i still don't think i quite 'get' jigsaws, although i threw myself in to the challenge on this one.  it's just a broken picture.  surely it would have been better not to cut it in to small pieces to begin with if you wanted to see the 'finished' version ?

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and the internet's big nosed ugly guy

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it's my best kiwi mate bnug

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despite it's name, some people were incredibly pleased with their unlucky dip items.

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some long lost friends phoned us up out of the blue and invited us for breakfast (at Asda) yesterday morning.  so we went and it was lovely to catch up with them before they zoomed off to legoland (hence their visit to these parts)

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monday night we went round to ruth and steve's for another last supper.  they are old family friends who knew both jane and i seperately even before we were going out (in fact ruth may have been partly responsible for us meeting as she ran the church music band where we met, and i think i remember a match-making lunch where she invited us both over ...).

they are also one set of esther and kezia's godparents, and Ruth is a proper northerner.  we'll miss them heaps.

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here is my mum with jane's parents and kezia. 

we got photos of everyone before they left (well all except one family who did a runner before I had a chance to photo them).  not sure if i'll post them on here, but it was great to see so many friends.  although the nature of a 10am to midnight party with friends throughout the day is that you don't get a huge amount of time to talk to people. 

the house was busy during the core party hours of 11am to 11pm.  everyone is now tired and speechless.  and a litle sad.

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we went out for a last supper with our lovely friends tony and tanya last night.  it was a bit of a last supper, although we're expecting to see them again before we go.  everything we do at the moment seems to end with 'oh i wish we'd done more of this'. 

T&T are among our closest friends and we will miss them.

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the picture below is the picture above shown on the back of my camera then photoed by tony's camera then photoed again on the back of his camera by me.  interesting how his camera has turned in to a big eye.

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our lovely friends andy and gill invited us round for dinner last night.  not quite a last supper, but was great to spend time with them before we go.  gill cooked us some top nosh.  sorry you missed it.

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i went out for a drink, a catchup and a bag of monster munch with my bestest mate paul last evening. 

driving back home after, it struck me that although we probably only meet up once or twice a year, it's the fact that we could do it more often which means we don't need to.  but i'll miss it when we're on the other side of the planet.

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on the way back we saw this snail.

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here's a funny thing.  on the way to my lunch yesterday i got a message from grahame who employed me when i first started at easynet (he's now moved on to greater things)

he was out shopping round the corner so we met up for a refreshing fruit juice.  he was there with his lovely wife.

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grahame was one of the early encouragers of funkypancake and is a purveyor of good quality comedy banter.

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i went to the marvellous breakfast club last friday thanks to russell reminding me it was on.  jolly good chat, although i feared for retinas sitting opposite these three t-shirts and the yellow wall.

it's interest to note your modern fashionable man has wires coming out of his shoulders.

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it's your man russell davies

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possibly one of the nicest and most laid back people on the planet

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here my fellow photoing chum richard.

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here is bnug and wife who went beyond the call of duty to make us feel welcome when we visited auckland last month.  as did their children (seen bouncing below with esther and kezia)

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great british bank holiday picnic in the chilly near-drizzle.  makes the grass look very green though.

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here matthew hear

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we've had quite a social few days - jane's sister and family stayed for a few days and last night we went to our god-daughter's birthday party at tgi friday.  very good it was too

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i had lunch with long time blog reader and international singing superstar Brad.  he was over in london for work.  We had a really great lunch and it was great to meet in real life after like 3 years or something.  i think he's in this video if you want to see him in action

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richard was our weekend host with the most

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we went on a fantastic fresh walk on saturday (just got round to sorting the pictures).  fantastic weather and company.  even a geocache (and a jolly dog)

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when mr rascle and co came to visit we played rumikub.  at the end mr rascle showed a rather excellent way of packing it all away. 



as he said at the time, "
it requires the ultimate in tidy mind and linearity".  and that was said by one who never runs out of words.

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rascle sent me this photo from his visit on saturday evening.  i've funkified it a little !

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i did another photoshoot at the weekend, although in a slightly different style to last time.  i really enjoyed it and i'm pleased with the results (as are the relatives of the little chap i photoed as he went about his business).

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let me know if you'd like the funkypancake photoshoot experience !

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we had mr rascle family round for dinner yesterday evening.  we had a great time.  here we are playing rumikub.

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there is some video footage as well which i'll share with you when i find a mo to edit it.

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they even did their own washing up !

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these are brilliant devices. you sit on them and have a row with your partner.  and the machine decides who is right.

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(the two photos above were taken by kezia who's getting a bit of a dab hand at photoing)

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what has terry seen ?

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there's a pun in here somewhere ...

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we went to a lovely 18th b-day party yesterday.  here's the birthday girl plus mum and dad inspecting some of the photos

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Here's Kate.  she's the friend i mentioned at the Interesting conference who appeared on the front of Horse magazine which lead to me having the word 'horse' stuck in my brain which when repeated for long enough starts to lose its meaning at turn back in to sounds. 

most words do that if you say them long enough and really think about them.  it's a bit like walking.  if you really think about what you are doing it all gets a bit tricky.

so there you go.  i wasn't making it up !


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our good friends dave and em came for dinner last night.  they were our first guests this year due to our domestic reshaping, which is finally nearing an end.

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it was great to catch up and also to play articulate which is a game i'd forgotten all about

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jane and i were invited out to ben and jane's house last night, and we realised we hadn't been out together for such an event with just the two of us for ages.  and it was jolly good, despite ben forgetting to bring my hot drink before we started playing a board game thus psyching me in to second place.

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fancy table set for a fancy dinner party with fancy guests.  very nice.

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seen through a christmas cracker kaleidoscope.  could you imagine if real life looked like this.

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ian and carolyn came over for dinner yesterday which was very lovely.  here is carolyn admiring our lights.

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tony's doing the take-a-photo-of-yourself everyday.  so i took a photo of him and his camera down a glass

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you can see his photos here   he took one of me with a bottle of beer here.  it was a normal sized bottle, i was just a bit smaller then.

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here's tony looking pleased with the trophy which we give each other every celebration day

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and here's how tony greated us when we arrived.  his first words were "don't talk" as he was in a particularly difficult part of a plumber based wii game

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and finally, here's tony taking a picture
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some good friends we haven't seen for a few years popped by with their reshaped accents and ex-pat stories yesterday. 

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you can see a photo not unlike this here.  Exile is better at writing real words than i am.

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it's a shame they live so far away in the modern era, although when they didn't live quite as far, we still didn't see them.  shame on us really.

We last saw them on the 11th May 2003 and here's the evidence from the funkypancake archives (which are still a bit broken, so here's the picture instead of a link.  I started doing funkypancake in April 2003 so these were early days pictures.

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in true christmas spirit we ate scrumptious deer yesterday at the vicarage, then went for a walk to find the geocache down by the old church.  nearby was a frozen pond providing some great ice fun.

here's rupert scaring (or imitating?) a giant ice butterfly

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and here he is carrying the sun
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and again, seen through the ice window
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meanwhile harriet was unabale to contain her extra limb.

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i had breakfast with russell yesterday before i went to a conference.  here he is looking at a photo he took of me taking a photo.

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and here's his polaroid pin hole of a don't walk on the grass sign

it was sophie's 30th birthday party last night.

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no smoking - does that includes hats ?

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we had ben and jane round for a cheesy fondue last night. he kindly posed for my week 3 photo course assignment photo.

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our friend pete sent me these photos from his holiday to cyprus. he wondered how well devonshire teas travelled.

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extreme sandwiches

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goat

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but who is pete you ask. well, what better excuse do i need to show you this picture i took in june of him at a church event.

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andy kindly modelled for one of my open university assignment.

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if it wasn't for the fact that it was his beer, i would suggest a good way to persuade people to pose for you to give them beer. in andy's case he had already thought of this.

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we went round to regular commenter rascle's house for sunday lunch yesterday. we had a lovely time with top notch food and conversation.

here is his front room, although i think he and his lovely wife managed to avoid being in the picture (they were out playing chicken i think). rascle's mum is the picture though.

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lucinda and her cousing katherine, and richard drummer from church came round yesterday for fun and cheese. we went for a walk in the afternoon.

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after lots of 'one two three weeeees' for kezia, katherine decided she wanted a go too.

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we were invited to a friends house yesterday for a gorgeous lunch. so we went. and it was.

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here is my dessert. strawberries in a strawberry jam tart (with obligatory cream).

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here is a different crop which i think i prefer, but i'm not sure why.

i had a day back at my old office in central london yesterday so met russell (interesting2007 organiser) for breakfast. he chose eggs bacon chips and beans which delighted me no end. i had toast.

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here is ian
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here is ian's pea patch and kezia picking peas from his pea patch
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and here is esther with a giant bunch of flowers. she emerged from ian and carolyn's garden holding this big bunch of flowers and we all thought she'd just pulled them up out of the garden. but then it emerged she had found them in their compost heap.

carolyn kindly said we could keep them. we didn't ask about the old tea bags which were also in the compost heap.
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dave and em have got a new camera. dave was using it liberally yesterday so expect photos to appear here quite soon.

he seemed very keen to get one of me looking silly, which is quite easy as my sideburns are a bit out of control at the moment

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my photography companion tony had a birthday yesterday. he's now reached an age.

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here is andy demonstrating the problems he has reading funkypancake on his pda.

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here is tony taking a photo
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and here he is taking another photo
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and here he is being worn out from taking so many photos
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and here is the opposite of this
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(more from tony here)

my work colleague toby is on this bridge. can you see him ?
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here he is
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and here he is with his cosmic head-dress
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(i'm only posting this because i know he's got a pile of very embarrassing ones of me which i'll feel honour bound to post when the time is right)

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here's a mid-key tony.

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i asked him to pose doing a yawn. although i suspect my photographists patter would be enough to send anyone to sleep. you should see the one he won't let me show you. it's brilliant !

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(photo taken by learner-gill)

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as also seen here and posted with his permission (just in case you were worried)

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here is regular commenter rascle giving instructions at a party at our house last friday evening. he'd arranged a number of excellent party contests which went down a treat.

the blur on the bottom of this photo is kezia's hair getting in the way !
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here's a better picture
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we saw our lovely friends andy, gill, adam and luke yesterday. we started off with a very wet bike ride which ended up with soggy kids sitting in our car boot (or 'trunk' for you americaners). then it was back to our house for fun and beer (dads only).

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congrats to paul and liz on the birth of amy - a little sister for dougie.
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on the first day of our holiday, which was in dorset, a few hours drive from our home, we bumped in to work colleague Mark and his family.
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and the next day we were in a traffic queue on a thin road and looked at the car next to us, only to discover my cousing chris and his family were in it. they too were on holiday so we met up with them a few days later.
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and then the next day, at slime regis beach, we made our pitch (blanket down, buckets out etc) and esther spotted sue and steve and their children sitting next to us !
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so that was three totally unrelated friends/family on three consecutive days, all a long way from home !

tony last year
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i was really pleased with this portrait. click for big (as you can do for all funkypancake pictures!)

we had a lovely afternoon with darren, miranda and rowena yesterday. top food and top company.

here's darren and rowena in some tall maize
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it got a bit rainy at andy's party yesterday afternoon so he hoisted his home made rain roof
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meanwhile richard helped shift some of the trapped rain by dropping it on the kids
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and here's andy chopping his foot off for the BBQ
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here is em posing for kezia (aged 4) who was taking her picture
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and here's another picture taken by kezia of richard, esther and me playing pick-up-sticks
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here is baby rowena who came for lunch yesterday with her mum and dad. getting to know new people is good fun. even if they're just a few weeks old (her parents are older)

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here are jacob and esther walking down a sandy beach (great photo by andy !)

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our lovely american blog friends Dan, Michele, Sophie and Susanna were in London so we were able to spend the day with them yesterday.

they were staying at an amazing residential complex in Vauxhall and had a great view from their balcony.
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we went to Tate Britain where the girls did some crafting in the galleries
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and they continued crafting in the cafe over lunch
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we had a great time and the girls did too. it really is a pity we live so far apart

em and dave came over for tea yesterday which was very nice. here they are on our sofa.

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we had lunch with some friends yesterday and it was lovely. here is their excellent little chap, called Seb, in conversation with my excellent little wife jane.

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andy and gill came for tea last night and it was lovely. a proper grown up dinner event with no children.

andy looks like he's playing charades here, but he's not. he's actually recreating the pose of a paper cut out doll in human form.

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here is our friend catherine in a mask she made. yikes.
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here's the construction kit
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great news, you may remember that Alan, was very ill over Christmas (see here), well, he made it to church yesterday and is well on the road to mends-ville.

hallelujah (in the true sense of that word)

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big eye tony and matthew.

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our good friend john was in town for 30 free minutes yesterday so i was able to have a quick drink of fruit juice in a very expensive london bar with him. here is the proof.

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here is tony teaching liz how to use a little computer game. he was telling her in a very simple way as we all know how silly girls go when they try to deal with technology.

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actually, that's not what's happening here, and tony has only the utmost respect for ladies of all genders.

after playing in the snow we went to visit ian and carolyn.

here is ian:
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and here is carolyn:
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our friend and regular commenter alan (he of the amazing insect knowledge) has been in hospital for a fortnight with inside badness. he's making a good recovery and is in good spirits, although still in a lot of discomfort.

part of his treatment involved him measuring all his liquids in and out on a little (wee) chart. he even had a tiny spitoon which needed to be measured.

anyway, all our funkypancake best wishes go to alan - hopefully he'll be out soon !

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here is richard with his camera, which is better than mine. i took this photo whilst learning how to take better, sharper photos. i like how i completely failed on this particular picture.
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here's a picture of richard from the summer using his fancy 20D with its equally fancy lense
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our friends invited us over for dinner last night and we had a lovely time.

here are the pink puddings:
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kezia and alice
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simeon at the end of the long table
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we were invited to Tim's 40th birthday party last night and had a great time.

here is the glitter ball in the outside marquee
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and here is the cake (it's tim fishing)
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paul and liz came for tea last night and we had a lovely time, but i forgot to take their photo before they left. so i ran down the street and paparatzi'd them through their car door (which is why they are looking a bit worried)

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they call him davey-drum-stool-leg (but we don't know why)

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yesterday we went to the rather lovely dyrham house with my old housemate jeremy and liz.

here is us and jeremy and liz in a ring of flowers
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yesterday was olivia's dedication.

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As i described in the comments here, a dedication is a bit like a baptism - it's a chance to say thank you to God for the child and to welcome them in to the wider church family.

Prayer parents are like god-parents and it's their duty to pray for the child and generally support them as they grow up.

when they are old enough they can then make their own decision about the Christian faith, which they believe is true.
richard and julia (below), and jane and i are olivia's prayer parents.

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The prayer we said included this phrase "May we be patient and understanding, ready to guide and to forgive, so that through our love she may come to know your love, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

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(can you spot esther and kezia in the picture above ?)

here is steve waiting by a petrol pump which ate his credit card. it turned out the petrol pump wasn't 'online' so a man came and pulled the power to reboot it. it still failed but steve got his credit card back.

our 20 minute midnight pit stop allowed me to take some trolley photos in the supermarket carpark though !

as regular readers of funkypancake will know, i'm rubbish at sleeping and sitting still. on holiday i got up at 4.30 a couple of days and went to bed around midnight most nights. there's just so much to do in life isn't there ?

anyway, if my mornings were all about taking photos, my evenings were all about chewing the cud whilst supping the crud with john. we even found a secret passage which brought us out in to the basement of a pub !

here is andy. he's 40 on friday which makes him quite old.

here is providing us with forty winks.

his party featured twin record players (probably not fair to call them 'decks', though we did sit on deck chairs). various people dj'd which involved putting records on the record deck.

at one point White Lines (grandmaster flash) was playing at the same time as Jive Talkin' (BeeGees)because someone left both faders up and walked away, and surprisingly it worked nicely.

later andy decided to play us some old cine film from when he was a wee baby.

it took a bit of time to set up

but soon we were running

and projecting on to the house wall

and then even andy could sit down in the dark and enjoy the rythmic clicking of the projector whilst watching his life flash before his eyes

tony agreed to be the official archivist for esther's birthday. about half way through the party he disappeared. i found him asleep on the sofa.

i bet spielberg never has that trouble.


here are andy and andy. andy is the one on the right.

both andies are funkypancake readers. andy reads it because i set it as his default homepage on his browser last week and now gets a daily dose.

andy, meanwhile, has been a reader for a while.

here they are with a bin bag to clear up party tea rubbish.

it was our local preschool's 40th aniversary yesterday and they had a big party where there was much fun to be had.

kezia and a decorated biscuit:
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Lynn knows her onions:
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kezia hooking a duck:
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cake:

bouncing:
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jane's been taking pictures of people we know in a fancy wig and sun glasses for a guess-who photo quiz. it proved very tricky despite most of the subjects being familiar to us.

i may post a few of the pictures as some of them are quite amusing.

here's matthew who is holding his wiggy photo. doesn't he look pleased (in both pictures) ?


[worth clicking if you want to see the smaller picture bigger]

here are two people who you'll know but won't. thanks to the power of the internet you'll have read Alan (on the left) and Rascle's comments (on the right) on funkypancake.

Alan is the nature expert and Rascle excells in the bad pun. Both excellent chaps.

well done. hoorah.

here is dougie. he came to visit for a few hours yesterday whilst his parents went off and had a posh time.

he's a very jolly sweet little chap as you can tell from this photo !

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our friend hannah has been adventuring and brought back these photos.

here's some great before and after signage of road kill (amended by the locals it seems):

here is a box on a stick marked vinegar:

and here is a drive thru bottle shop:

we went to center parcs yesterday to visit some friends who were staying there. jane stayed at home to mark exam papers.

it's quite a long way to drive and we nearly spent as much time travelling as we did having fun when we got there.

still, nothing would stop anna and kezia fearlessly running round on tree-top climbing things.


the girls and i went with andy, adam and luke to poleseden lacy for bank holiday fun.

as it traditional, it rained, but we were lucky with the weather as it also didn't rain.

here is an attempt to get luke, kezia, adam and esther in the same picture (note luke running off in the distance)

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here is adam videoing esther on a maze

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and here is esther on a ropey maze tangly thing

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and here we are picnicking in what we thought was a little barn suitable for picknicking in (but was actually a nature hide).

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on the way round we also bumped in to kezia and esther's best friends who were also visiting on the same day !

katie, kezia and esther put on a puppet show on a table. nothing much was happening from an audience point of view so i took this photo under the table.

we've reached the age of performances, but not quite reached the age of quality control

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katie and esther

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click for big

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paul and liz and wee dougie came round for lunch today. whilst visiting dougie did his first solo walking steps and learnt to wave.

i'm thinking of starting a hot-housing school for parents who want to fast-track their kids.

of course he might just have been very keen to leave our house and so was running for the door whilst waving goodbye ?

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here is liz reading 'the hungry caterpillar' to anna and kezia (who look slightly worried)

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here are esther and kezia playing ludo with their god mother ruth after a fantastic lunch. esther and kezia are wearing their ponchos.

unfortunately kezia has now stopped calling her's her 'puncture'. instead it's now her 'puntcho'.

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esther's best friend catherine had an ice skating party which was a great thing to have.

we all had great fun and esther and catherine even managed to skate on their own !

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we were invited round to some friends' house yesterday for a lovely lunch with a fantastic pudding.

esther couldn't eat all of her cheesecake so i had to finish it off which was a bit of a shame. people don't realise how tricky it is being a parent !

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we had a few friends (Ruth & Stephen and their children) round for lunch yesterday. they've reached the age of potty training for their eldest (thankfully we are through this stage ).

it's funny how potty training brings the best/worst out of people (quite literally).

Ruth said to Kezia "do you use the lavatory when you need a wee" ?

Kezia said "no i don't..." comedy pause, clearly thinking about the question "...i use the toilet".

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we're looking after our friends' children this weekend so they can go off and have a nice quiet weekend. so the question is, how do you amuse 4 children for 2 days ?

i hadn't got a clue, but luckily jane had. she suggested they all drew on a long piece of paper. which they all did, happily, for ages:
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when it was my turn to suggest a plan i chose the telly. this too proved popular (as can be seen here):
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hoorah for kids play parks and 4-way see-saws

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our friends paul, liz and little dougie came round yesterday for a lunch finding adventure. dougie is 7 months old today and is a very cute little chap.

kezia enjoyed having him to visit too.

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remember matt and nancy's wedding a couple of weeks back ?

well, you can read about it in their local paper. definately worth having a look.

it made me chuckle.

muchly.

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we went to london today and completly randomly bumped in to some old friends in covent garden. here are all the girls watching an opera singer (whilst the olds sat drinking coffee).

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we went to our friends ian and carolyn's this afternoon. here is ian giving the girls some flying lessons.

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safety notice - no children were hurt in the taking of these photos. but ian did look a bit warned (and worn) out by the time they'd finished.

here are matt and joy. except joy doesn't like her photo taken so she's exited. but i think it looks good anyway.

and i could see joy with my eyes when i took the photo. so she's there, but not quite in frame.

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our most lovely friends richard and julia have come down from hull (with hannah) as revenge for us visiting them last week. here they are dancing in the proper style.

(i don't know about you but i'm just loving the slow sync flash effect thing)

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we had to leave our friends' dr who wedding reception a little early to get to another friend's 40th birthday party. this too was fantastic with loads of friends from church.

sally has groovy dance lessons so lots of people were doing proper dancing. i prefer freestyle. so i did that in freestyle-corner.

i wore a patterned shirt with my velvet jacket (i had planned to wear my velvet dinner jacket but it had become too stinky thanks to being stored in the loft).

imagine my surprise when i noticed our friend anthony was also wearing a velvet jacket with a patterned shirt. i asked a friend what they thought it meant and she said "it means you are in sync with your local conservative councillor". for that is what he is.

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matt, my colleague and website landlord, today was also a timelord as he married his fincy, nancy (also a work colleague) in a dr who theme'd wedding. it was a fantastic thing with great people, a great place and great dr who props. we really enjoyed ourselves.

there was a police box, a dalek and K9. and people dressed up as people.

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the dalek (and K9) were remote controlled by a suspicious man who was running up and down outside the windows trying to see what was happening with his dalek which was joining in the boogying on the dancefloor.

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update: see here for newspaper coverage !

we went round to our friends andy and gill this evening and met two of their friends who were really great. we laughed 'til our faces were sore which is a great thing.

gill cooked a lovely meal. here is some of it. and my beer.

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however much fun kids have with toys, it's the adults who have the most fun.

here are russell and i having a competition to see who could build the tallest tower with esther's giant dominos.

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sunday lunches are great. today we had 10 round the table and much good food and conversation were consumed.

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we saw loads of our friends today which was great. here are a couple of them.

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we were invited to our friends craig, isobel, amy and fay (no idea of any of the spellings). a vicar also turned up for a bit (as they do). it was jolly nice.

here is the jelly with teddy biscuits:
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our friends andy, gill, adam and luke came round for the afternoon and we had a lovely time. they arrived by bike:
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andy looking like a monty python by the BBQ with his knotted hanky hat:
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here are tony, tanya, liz, jane and numberous kids as seen earlier today

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(photo by jane)

we had a nice afternoon today. elton was still here, and another friend and her two daughters came along for lunch. the children had their own picnic table for added fun and excitement.

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here is elton. he's staying with us again for the evening and we had another BBQ as this is what we do when Elton comes along.

here is elton wearing his lady-hat from New Zealand:
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a bit later on paul, liz and baby dougie joined us. paul, elton and i were all in sheffield at the same time and so it was great to have a mini reunion

here is baby dougie:
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i started up the barbeque by liberally spreading matchboxes across the top:
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when i'd lit the BBQ esther said "daddy are we having a barbeque or is that just for a photo". i think this photography thing might be having an effect on my family

here is the fruit pie:
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we found a magic shrinking machine so esther could play jenga more competitively.

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having a party ? spitting with rain ? simply send the kids out and make them sit under a gazebo. parents can stay inside the in dry and everyone's happy.

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and then when it drys up then can all sit in a row and eat their puddings:
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it's been a day of fun today. we went to esther's school's summer fayre this afternoon and this evening we went to a BBQ at our friends' house in the next village

in classic british fashion it was too cold to stand outside (we did try for 30 mins before admitting defeat) and eventually the only person outside was Steve, our host, who was doing the cooking. a most excellent evening.

tony babysitted this evening and was able to use the wifi successfully thanks to this morning's fiddling. we may have to adjust the hourly babysitting rate to take account of the added Internet access facilties available.

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we spent a very happy afternoon in the dragoon household. they've got a little kitten which kezia loved. it's called tickles

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and here's grahame and the cat:
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esther made this hat in sunday school. people were keen to try it on. i was keen to take their photo.

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it's lynda's birthday on monday so we celebrated at a music practice last night witha cake.

i've pixelated the candles so you can't see how old she is. that's not right and proper apparently. see how she points at the tea cups.

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