funkypancake

jane took the great photo of me missing head. i love those kinds of shots.

jace took this photo and said "I'm just back from queenstown (south island nz), an infinitely beautiful place, with wild frisbees in the park, apparently"

when we were on holiday over the summer, the girls encouraged me to shoot some dry pigeons. there was something primal about shooting a gun whilst encouraged by my wife and daughters.

i got lucky with a couple of shots thankfully so didn't completely let myself down !

jane's instruction book for the marathon warned that people often drop dead on marathons, which was quite encouraging. and so was this sign.

jane ran her first half marathon yesterday. rather than doing a standard one, she chose the hilliest one possible - The Windsor Half Marathon

jane thinking about the run ahead of her

the start of the half-marathon involves a mile long run up a long straight hill (to the copper horse, if you are interested)

jane just over 1 hour in

the windsor half marathon runs a very pretty course through Windsor Park. plenty of trees to sit under for spectators

jane half way through (already declaring a victory)

a deer which ran across the marathon route

the official winner (1 mile in)

Our winner - half a marathon over

update: i forgot to mention that she did her half marathon in 2hrs 20mins !

my first two ever shots hit the clay and it went rapidly down hill from there. some of my colleagues were really caught by the shooting bug, but in the flea or flight stakes, i'm definately an insect.

jane did the windsor race for life yesterday which was jolly good. fanastic weather too.

i'm not a sports fan (other than the bingo, which isn't really a spectator sport). yesterday there was no escape from football which seemed to be playing on tellies in every cafe and bar in town. to escape the misery i took kezia on a tour of electronic shops, but it was no good as banks of televisions were tuned to the same channel and people (mostly male shopping-widows) were stood watching.

this is the 'rabbit' that the greyhounds were chasing at the dog racing. it's most peculiar (click on the picture to inspect)

jane and i went to dog racing on Saturday night. it was very good.

it was just like the blur album parklife

each race started with some laboratory technicians (in their best lab coats) walking the dogs up and down the track

the dogs seemed to enjoy this bit

then they were set lose and off they ran

and here are some people placing bets

this is a self portrait i took whilst sliding along. the camera was upsway down, rather than me (at this time)

the only sport i do is walking. and that's not particularly sporty. but when i was off at the winter olympics i got to have a go at skiing

look how relaxed and natural i looked whilst moving slowly on two pointy flat sticks

here is the steepest incline i went down. i nearly dissappeared off down that dip to the right at one point, but managed to catch hold of the rope to stop myself.

i had a great time though and would consider going on a ski holiday. so there.

we went ice skating yesterday. there was much talk amongst the children of obtaining 'the balance' like it was some skating-zen nirvana.

kezia suddenly announced she could skate on her own (after being dragged round by the grown ups for nearly 2 hours) and we didn't believe her until off she went ! she had obtained 'the balance' and all was well.

here are esther and i doing not quite as well

there's ice-skating rinks popping up all over london so it was only a matter of time before we got a ski slope too.

here's one outside the tate modern. hoorah.

the place we went curling was Fenton's Rink and it was most excellent. you must go with a group of friends and have a go.

i've put a few more photos here

i spent the day curling yesterday.

the three teachers were all olympic gold medal winners (see here).

it's a mad game of sweeping and sliding and pushing a big stone

the olympians were rhona, janice and debbie

i'm unlikely to ever own one of these:

primarily because it was won at an event in the past and was awarded for the women's curling. an event i didn't take part in:

Debbie Knox won it instead:

curling is a funkypancake sport. not because i'm good at it though, because i'm not.

look at his utility bin.

beyond brushes, which are an essential part of the game, you also get to wear the most fantastic shoes.

initially they looked like normal trainers:

but you can pull the rubber bottom off (called a 'kipper') and reveal a super-slippy teflon sole, enabling you to whizz about on the ice like a mad thing

and look at all the other gadgets and gizmos you can get:

we sat and watched people grabbing plastic cups of water from the drinks station. open cups of water for runners is a bad idea and there was much fun to be had watching water and cups going flying as the runners failed to grab them properly.

esther spotted the noise that the runners made as they ran over all the discarded cups. it was quite fantastic.

we went for a family cycle ride in Windsor Park yesterday. we didn't realise but it was also the windsor half marathon so we planned and timed our journey so we could watch the runners as we had our picnic. in reverse order:

here are the main body of runnings coming up the hill (about a mile in to the run)

here are the front runners

and here was the start an hour and a half earlier.

crazy golf is our favourite family sport. it can be quite a dangerous one too of course.

here i am going for a hole in two watched by my ever-suffering daughters.

eventually it went in the hole

and then kezia grew incredibly big on the last hole

jane and lynn completed the London to Brighton bike ride without any trouble

in reverse order - here they are coming round the final straight to the finish:

here they are setting off:

and here are the bikes loaded on the car:

click for big

i walked back from southwark bridge to paddington one evening last week as part of my marathon training (have you sponsored me yet?).

on the way i saw these people looking over the wall in to the thames. but what were they looking at ?

it was this - a swimmer in the thames. probably not a great idea

click for big

i mentioned last week about the olympic exhibition in Traf Square. i went in yesteday lunchtime whilst walking back to the office. it was quite good actually.

it's only a teeny weeny exhibition but well worth a spare 2 minutes if you are passing

there's a giant aerial map of london on the floor which is fascinating. there's also a nice wall-of-smoke to walk through:

here are hyde park and buckingham palace/westminster/london eye

click maps to inspect more detail

london is bidding for the 2012 olympics. here is part of an exhibition to celebrate the fact we're in with a chance.

it's a giant statue in trafalgar square. there's a person in the foreground in the picture which might give you some idea of the scale.

click pic for big

esther and kezia held on to their bubbles and floated up to the ceiling

we went ice-skating again yesterday. this time it was a family disco session which meant loud towny music and flashing lights.

ice skating is very much like speed walking down Oxford Street on a busy shopping day. you have to watch for people doing random things (especially suddenly stopping without warning and appearing at speed in unexpected directions).

in fact if people carried massive shopping bags and even occasionally giant suitcases then it would be exactly the same thing.

kezia seemed to get the oldest ever ice skating boots:

even though she skating for a maximum of 2 minutes over the 2 hours we were there she seemed to enjoy herself: