Tales from SE23

Springing forward

2009-03-30T21:46:00.005Z

We're still here!

Dave has nearly, nearly finished his MSc degreee (here's the post from 2006 when he started it all). Just polishing and fine-tuning the dissertation now which is the main reason for the lack of bloggage since January.

We've been enjoying the sunshine. Dave took Owen to Mayow Park on Saturday and they played a bit of football. Owen kept trying to join the boys who have a football training session there every Saturday morning, but he's just a little bit too young for that at the moment. Here's the proof he loves football:

On Sunday (lovely weather) we went to the Horniman Museum a real gem of a place right here in SE23. The views from the gardens are stunning. Here's a picture I took from there last year:

When we get a free evening and haven't fallen already asleep we try to watch an episode of 'Brothers and Sisters.' (we were given the DVDs as a present from Davina and Kevin who are Owen's godparents). It's a really good show, superbly acted and written. Recommended!

Patrick McGoohan

2009-01-16T22:58:00.006Z

Back in 2006 I blogged about the 60s TV show The Prisoner and how much I have always loved it. It's one of THE greatest shows ever.

So I was very saddened to hear that Patrick McGoohan, The Prisoner's creator and star, died this week. Like the Prisoner himself Patrick was a true individual who passionately believed in the right of the individual to refuse to conform to what passes for 'normal' and I suppose that made him a bit of an inspiration to me.

RIP Patrick, be seeing you...

The View from the Hill

2008-11-23T22:58:00.004Z

There really is a hill in Forest Hill. Here's a piccie I took today of the view of north London. The white semi-circle on the horizon is the Wembley Stadium Arch - 12 miles away!

And this is the Crystal Palace transmitter which is about 2 miles away. It was very sunny after a long period of rain - the wet tarmac almost make the spicture seem black and white.

By contrast, here is the transmitter mast as seen from our local park, Mayow Park (on a nice sunny day!).

Make an appointment to see The Doctor

2008-11-23T22:43:00.004Z

If you have any interest in Doctor Who then you really should visit the Dr Who exhibition at Earl's Court. They have a fanstastic collection of props, costumes and monsters from the new series. We went along with Gareth and Jo and their two sons befopre they - sadly - emigrate to Oz!

So, this is of course the Tardis:

Owen met the Face of Boe:

And Dave had a close encounter with a Weeping Angel!

And we said a quick hello to the Dalek creator himself, Davros:

Walking in Joyden's Woods

2008-11-23T22:32:00.004Z

We took Owen for a walk in Joyden's Woods, Kent in his backpack. The wood is officially ancient woodland and is at least 400 years old.

We started off with Owen wide awake:

But by the end the walk had obviously been too exhausting for him!

A Day out in Dulwich Park

2008-09-01T21:48:00.010Z

One of the great things about SE23 is that we have lots of lovely places on our doorstep (almost). One of them is Dulwich Park. We went there on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon recently. The direct way to walk there is along the dreaded South Circular but after consulting an A-Z I saw that we could in fact cut through Sydenham Hill Wood to get there and almost completely avoid roads!

This is Cox's Walk which goes all the way from Sydenham Hill down (and it is indeed steep in places) to Dulwich Park. Wikipedia tells me it was cut/laid out by Francis Cox in the 1740's purely for the purpose of getting to the pub at the bottom more quickly!

We walked past this cricket match in Dulwich cricket ground:

Then past this old church:

And onto Dulwich Park. Owen had a great time, and so did mum and dad!

Les Codys dans Le France

2008-08-03T22:38:00.007Z

A few piccies from our recent holiday in the Loire Valley. This was the lovely house where we stayed:

Dave and Owen in the grounds of Angers castle.

Chateau Mont Geoffrey where we got our own personalised tour in English as nobody else had turned up!

The return across the English channel (or La Manche if you're Francais).

This is my new car

2008-07-27T23:15:00.006Z

If only! Actually, this is a Porsche Turbo that I drove around the Elvington air field / race track outisde York recently, inspired by watching too many episodes of Top Gear and their 'Star in a Reasonably Priced Car. It was a gorgeous hot day, perfect driving conditions and the Porsche is a fantastic little car. I think I managed to get her up to 100mph at one point...it was of course all over too soon but the accompanying instructor let me stay on for an extra lap as he was about to go on his lunch break and was feeling in a good mood!

There were a lot more supercars at Elvington that day:

They look good, but I genuinley thought the Porsche has a more classic, timeless look. But then I would, wouldn't I?

Next door to the airfield is the Yorkshire Air Museum which we (me, Sara and her dad) mooched around. The biggest plane there, in fact the biggest plane I've ever seen anywhere, was this WWII Halifax bomber ominously named Friday the Thirteenth:

There's some more pictures we took at Elvington and the museum over on our Flickr page.

I mentioned in my last post there's lots of news. Briefly Dave now has a new job as an HR adviser with a local authority....he also successfully passed the 2nd year of his Masters degree course, only the dissertation to go now!....most important of all we now have a new patio and garden! Piccies to follow....

Normality has been resumed (sort of)

2008-07-16T22:38:00.006Z

OK, where have we been? Well, now that Owen has reached five months old (yes, five months!) and we're starting to get a little bit of normality back into our lives, then hopefully we'll be blogging a bit more frequently from now on.

Here's a recent piccie of Owen which I absolutley love. It kind of sums up his attitude to life!

And he's now starting to eat his (liquified) solids. Rice, apple and carrots are his favourites.

There's some more pics of Owen on Flickr and I'll upload some more over the next week so take a look.

Also we have finally given up our luddite fight against social networking and have put ourselves on Facebook. Look us up under Dave's name and you'll find us lurking over there too...

Lots of news to tell you but as there's quite a lot I'll save it until the next post. In the meantime, here's a treat for our foreign readers. Despite being tales from SE23, I have posted precious little about Forest Hill itself. So, here's a little flavour of what you're missing:

Forest Hill Day at the Horniman Museum - lovely!

Power sub-station fire at the end of our road - no electricity all morning!

London Mayor Elections - the candidates show their true colours

2008-04-28T17:18:00.002Z

This was on Have I Got News For You last week - hilarious!

Owen and Dad chilling out

2008-03-05T23:33:00.002Z

Owen Cody!

2008-02-26T00:03:00.005Z

Only one piece of news really - Owen Samuel David Cody was born on 14 February (Valentines Day!) at Lewisham Hospital weighing in at 7lb 7oz (only 6 days late in the end). Samuel means "God has listened" and we do believe he is the answer to many prayers and a real gift from God. David is a bit of a family name, but we chose the name particularly thinking of Dave's grandfather who he was named after.

Unfortunatley the labour didn't go entirely to plan so Sara ended up having an emergency c-section. They were both in hospital until a few days later but we're all home now and enjoying our new life as a family.

Many, many thanks to all of you who have already sent cards and prezzies - Owen loves them!

By any other name...

2007-11-29T21:42:00.000Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7114699.stm

Wow...will this ruin the tear-jerking end of series 2 or not?

Ah, who cares, Billie's coming back! Yay!!

California Dreamin'

2007-10-24T22:20:00.000Z

I have uploaded onto Flickr a job-lot of photos from our American holiday. For most of the two weeks we stayed with Sara's wonderful American cousins and other family members.

Take a look!

Southend Awayday

2007-10-07T22:22:00.001Z

Look who's top of the League! I went to Southend yesterday to watch a thrilling match that Tranmere won 2-1 taking us to the top of League 1. The atmosphere was great and of course it was lovely to be beside the seaside...

Southend's ground, Roots Hall, is a bit old and small but it has quite a lovely charm that many modern stadiums lack. Nevertheless, I was very envious of Sara who went to Barcelona last week for a work conference and managed to squeeze in a trip to Barcelona's Nou Camp ground! As you can see, it's a bit bigger than Roots Hall...

Between us, we've both now been to the two biggest football stadiums in Europe (the other being Wembley), something that I'm tragically quite proud about!

Moving On

2007-10-04T22:23:00.001Z

We've moved house! This was our really big summer project and we needed the big truck in the above picture, which somehow managed to squeeze into our old cul-de-sac in Camberwell, to do it. It was hard to leave SE5, but now we're living in sunny Forest Hill and it's terrific.

Of course, the only problem with this is that Forest Hill is in SE23 - I need to change the title of this blog!

Our new house has been pretty chaotic over the last few weeks as we've had windows replaced, new doors put in and even a brand new staircase built. But the end of the building tunnel is now in sight, we love the house and hope to see you here soon!

Checking in!

2007-09-30T22:25:00.000Z

We're still here, just been too busy to post. Lots of things are happening, I hope to post some more details later this week.

In the meantime here's a couple of piccies from one of the things that we've been up to - two weeks on the west coast of America!

San Francisco...

Seattle...

More to follow soon!

An evening at the BBC

2007-08-06T21:36:00.000Z

Last week we went along to the BBC TV Centre in West London with Kevin and Davina to be part of the audience for an episode of the comedy series 'That Mitchell and Webb Look.' It was good fun - the show is very funny! - and a fascinating glimpse into how sketch shows are recorded. They had four sets in the studio although we, the audience, could only see two of them so we had to watch the sketches in those sets on a monitor. We were sitting opposite a Newsnight-type set which they got round to last and used for three different sketches.

The series will probably be transmitted around autumn. Look out for the Welsh padlock art show in particular!

Here's me at the BBC:

and here's a rather random picture of me and Kevin with a Dalek. You never know who you'll bump into at TV Centre!

So long Harry!

2007-07-25T21:13:00.000Z

Sara and I have both avidly followed the Harry Potter saga and so at midnight on Friday, along with our friends Emma and Will, we went along to the bookshop in Dulwich Village to buy our copy of the final book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

We arrived at 11.30 but the queue already very loooooongggg....the shop opened up at midnight (prompting cheers from some people in the queue) but we didn't get into the shop until nearly 1am with so many people ahead of us. Despite the long-ish wait, it was actually good fun. Lots of kids were dressed up as wizards and witches and we had to cover our ears as people would lean out of passing cars and shout out the ending! But we eventually bought our copies and Emma read the first page out loud to us as we drove back home.

Sara finished reading the book on Saturday evening and approves ;-) I'm still in the early chapters so don't tell me what happens!

By the way, Will's wife Clare went to the Natural History Museum in the early hours to get her copy and meet JK Rowling herself. Cool, huh? But that's another story...

Excuse the mess...

2007-07-03T21:13:00.000Z

No doubt you will have noticed we've revamped the look and layout of the blog. Still a few things to work on, especially the picture at the top - St Pauls' isn't in actually in SE5, but it's close and anyway I took the picture and wanted to show it off! It'll do for now...

What do you think so far?

Edit: Obviously, I've now changed the picture from St Paul's to a new piccie of Ruskin Park which really is in SE5. Hurrah!

Saxon Is Your Man!

2007-06-26T16:16:00.000Z

Because what this country really needs right now is a Doctor... ;-)

A busy summer

2007-06-20T22:11:00.001Z

Been a bit slack on the blogging front recently, we have been busy, honest!

Our big summer project is we're in the middle of moving home. We've found a buyer for our flat and have found a home we like in Forest Hill ( a few miles from where we live now, but still in south east London). So far things are going well, but we'll post more details when things become more definite, you know how these things can turn out...

Dave has now finished the first year of his MSc Human Resources degree, his last exam of the year was at the beginning of June. He's waiting for the results to arrive, but in the meantime enjoying having free time again!

Sara managed to obtain a discount voucher to the new Skylon restauarant at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank so went along with some friends. It's very swanky and stylish! How did we get in?

Our cats Poppy and Tilly are doing very well and are quite used to us now! They're very active and love running around the flat which is usually OK except when they do it at two in the morning. Here's a recent piccie of them in/on their 'tower' (a sort of bunk bed for cats):

Fancy a punt?

2007-06-20T21:52:00.000Z

We went up to Cambridge to see Tori and Andy for a weekend recently. Sara was one of Tori's bridesmaids. It was a gorgeous sunny day so it seemed only right to try out a but of punting on the river Cam. Dave and Andy took turns at the punting although Andy had done it before which frankly was cheating!

Up in the Lake District

2007-05-13T20:21:00.000Z

We had a great holiday in the Lake District last month (above is a piccie of us on top of Hellvelyn). It was terrific to spend time off just climbing a few mountains and enjoying the scenery. Dave learned how to use his GPS (thanks mum!) and now has a new favourite toy.

Here's a view of where we stayed:

And here's a road sign we came across that you don't usually see in Peckham!

This was a non-league ground for the day...

2007-05-13T20:02:00.000Z

Dave went to the new Wembley stadium this weekend with a couple of friends to watch the FA Trophy final (Kidderminster v Stevenage), the first cup final at the stadium. Although it was a non-league game, 53,000 people attended! And the game turned out to be a bit of a classic. Kiddermister led 2-0 at half time, but Stevenage got two goals back in the second half and the winning goal in the 88th minute. The stadium is very impressive, apprently the second largest in Europe only Bracelona's ground being bigger.

How will 'Life on Mars' end?

2007-04-08T22:33:00.000Z

We love Life on Mars. Along with 'Doctor Who', it's been appointment-TV that we'll stay in to watch each week. And on Tuesday it finishes, it will be the last episode. And the big question is - how will it end? Has Sam been in a coma or has he really travelled back in time? I suspect the answer isn't going to be quite that simple...

Although we'll be glad to finally find out what happens to Sam, we're going to miss the show. For once, this is a drama show that really is quitting while it's at the top of it's game.

Meet Poppy and Tilly

2007-03-21T19:30:00.000Z

The latest additions to our household - Poppy is the one on the left and Tilly on the right. We found them thrugh the Celia Hammond Trust. They had previously been living with around sixty other cats (yes, sixty!) in an old lady's house and CHT persuaded her that she needed to give some of them away. Tilly has a bit of a gammy eye which will hopefully clear up soon. They are still very timid but we're spending lots of time with them and reassuring them we're friendly.

ps - there's lots of new pictures on Flickr of family, friends and places we've been recently. Just click on the Flickr pictures on the right to see them all.

Comics are a boy's best friend

2007-02-10T18:24:00.000Z

This is a picture of a pile of old 2000AD comics I found in my mum's attic over Christmas. I bought them all in the mid-80s and there's about three year's worth there!

You often hear a lot about the problems of getting boys to read and their subsequent poor literacy standards. Personally, I loved reading as a kid and comics played a big part in helping me learn to read as I absolutely devoured them. I remember reading the Star Wars comics in the late 70's and trying to understand the words in the speech balloons (which will be a big shock to my mum who always thought I only looked at the pictures!). I think it's a shame when kids are discouraged from reading comics, especially boys.

In case you were wondering, yes, I've just re-read all those 2000ADs and they were great! Now what do I do them? Anyone out there fancy taking them off my hands?!

Begone, the lot of you!

2007-02-02T00:45:00.000Z

I have decided to delete the links to local councillor's blogs that I used to include under 'local issues' (on the right-hand menu). All of them, to a greater or lesser extent, were regularly posting entries that were nothing more than petty point-scoring over other local councillors and politcal parties. There were some genuinely interesting posts about local issues, but I was getting increasingly fed up with their misguided belief that we the 'ordinary' voters give two hoots about how they are so much better than that lot over there. So I have expunged them from SE5 (ha, if only!). Oh, I also expunged a Peckham blog because the author only ever writes scare-strories about the proposed tram link and frankly it was getting boring.

I can't say I have a very high opinion of the calibre of politicians and councillors in our local area. Our MP is none other than Culture Minister Tessa Jowell who is rather infamous for not having a home in the constituency or even in south London. I went along to one of her surgeries in the summer to ask her about the never-ending saga that is phase 2 of the east London Line. (I had to take a day off work as she doesn't hold surgeries outside working hours). Delivery of phase 2 would finally bring the tube to the Camberwell / Peckham area which has long been badly-served by public transport. I was amazed to discover that I knew far more about the latest status of the project than she did, although I had to show her a Hansard transcript of the Transport Minister's question time (2nd question) to prove her information was wrong. She promised to write to Ken Livingstone to share my concerns. A couple of months later, her office sent me a copy of Ken's reply which simply confirmed phase 2 has no funding, and they hoped this addressed my concerns. I gave up.

Now I certainly wouldn't advocate not voting. I think we all have a moral duty to use our vote. But the health of our local democratic politics depends upon how much we trust our politicians to have our best interests at heart, irrespective of which party they belong to. Unfortunately I think the Southwark political scene is far too bogged down with petty feuding and cross-party fighting to inspire this trust. Perhaps the way out of this mess is for more independent councillors and MPs? I'm not sure, but given the current mess I think it's worth a try.

Better late than never

2007-02-01T23:51:00.000Z

January was busy month which is why we haven't been blogging recently!

Dave completed his MSc exams and is now awaiting the dreaded results...

We spent Christmas in Leeds and Warrington and were back in London for the new year. The big Christmas event was the wedding of Sara's brother Chris and Gillie. You can see some pictures from the wedding at the official photographer's website here. Incidentally, this is the same photogropher whom we hired for our own wedding!

Belated happy new year to everyone.

Rockin' around the Christmas tree

2006-12-17T16:17:00.000Z

Yes, our Christmas tree is now up! We debated whether to get a real or plastic tree considering the eco-benefits of each. Eventually the real tree choice won, probably only because it was my job to go out and bring a tree home while Sara went out ice-skating at Tower Hill. Now all we have to do is open the presents... :-)

I paid £19 for this view

2006-12-17T16:01:00.000Z

Another Tranmere away day with Matt last week. We went to Brentford which is the nearest League 1 ground to where I live. Griffin Park is quite famous among away fans for being the only football league ground to have a pub at every corner, although technically this isn't really correct as a couple of the pubs are opposite the relevant corner, but really, who cares? We felt duty-bound to try out a couple of the pubs which were OK but hardly the kind of places you would choose as your regular.

Griffin Park is a relic of the so called "good-old days" when football grounds were architectural disasters. Here's a pic I took. Note the charming pillar-blocking-my-view feature:

Final score was 1-1. Every game I go to now seems to finish 1-1!

A Weekend in Prague

2006-12-17T15:34:00.000Z

We went to chilly Prague earlier this month for James and Almut's wedding. (congratulations guys!) The wedding was certainly the most international we've been to with English, German and Czech all used and translated accordingly- at times it reminded us a little of the Eurovision Song Contest!

We decided to catch a late Sunday flight back from Prague so that we could see a little of the city before we left. We walked around the old town and nosied around the Christmas fair in the town sqaure. In Where's Wally style, can you spot Sara somewhere below in the fair? ;-)

Our decision to get a later flight cost us dear though. Scheduled to take off 7.45pm we didn't eventually leave until nearly 11pm...eventually getting back home at 2.30am. Urgh.

Overdue football post

2006-11-10T18:32:00.000Z

I went to watch Aston Villa v Tottenham recently with my Best Man, Mark (his dad used to play for Villa). As a neutral I very much enjoyed the game and Martin O' Neill has really shaped Villa into a tighter and more attacking side than they were under David O'Leary. The big talking point was when Juan Pablo Angel - Villa's main striker - missed a penalty and then scored an own goal all within a couple of minutes!

The final score was 1-1 . Here's a couple of pics I took at Villa Park:

"What I reckon is..."

2006-10-26T16:30:00.000Z

Here's a couple of great articles I read on t'internet recently:

John Nicholson on how lower league football offers something better than the Champions League

Stephen Tompkins says that Richard Dawkins' book 'The God Delusion' has got it half-right

Party Part 3

2006-10-11T22:08:00.000Z

And finally...

We booked the upper floor of 'The Phoenix' pub in Camberwell to round off the birthday celebrations.

Party Part 2

2006-10-08T23:35:00.000Z

More piccies from Sara's 30th....

Loads and loads of thanks to Ellie (below) who helped Sara bake all the cakes for the afternoon tea party. (Look at the state of that kitchen!) It was a bit of a squeeze, but we somehow managed to cram in several families including a dozen kids into the flat!

More party shenanigans to follow...

Mmmm, jazz.....

2006-10-04T21:56:00.000Z

As most of you will know, Sara celebrated her 30th birthday on the 25th September! We had quite a few events and things going so we could celebrate with as many folk as possible - piccies to follow!

First up were Dave's mum and his youngest sister Colette who popped down a few days before the birthday itself. We went to a fabulous local restaurant in Camberwell, 'Buddah Jazz'. The theme is Vietnamese, but the food is a broad mix of dishes from across Asia.

University Challenge

2006-10-04T21:43:00.000Z

Wow, it's been a really busy September! We'll try and post all the news over the next few days.

To kick off, Dave is a student again. He's started a 2-year part-time course for a Masters degree (MSc) in Human Resources at South Bank University. So far, after three weeks, things are going well although it is strange to be back on a campus again and makes you feel old! Juggling the studying with Dave's full-time job is going to be the biggest challenge...

Cornwall

2006-09-17T18:05:00.000Z

We're now back from a week's holiday in Cornwall. We stayed in Boscastle and had a great time walking around the spectacular Cornish coastline. You can see some pictures on our Flickr page.

Things to Make and Do in Leeds

2006-08-29T22:23:00.000Z

When we were back in Leeds recently (see post below) we stayed over with Sara's auntie Jan and uncle Richard. They have a wonderful dog called Logan and Dave in particular looks forward to seeing him whenever we're up that way!

We had a free day before the wedding so we spent the morning ski-ing at the Xscape snow dome which was great fun and had us pining for the alpine slopes again...

In the evening the four of us went out to a terrific old country pub, 'The Chequers', (this is a review from the BBC Leeds site). It doesn't seem to have changed at all in the last few hundred years, it's a real warren of nooks and crannies inside and has lots of character. They also served free non-alcoholic lager to drivers which was a nice touch.

...And the Weddings Keep on Coming

2006-08-29T22:11:00.000Z

It was Jo and Garath's turn recently. Another trip up to Leeds!

Here's the happy couple:

Chris had an excuse to carry a sword in public:

A very tired-out Rhys by the end of the day!

The garden could do with a tidy...

2006-08-09T23:50:00.000Z

Sorry for the light bloggage recently. 'Tales' is on its' own summer holiday at the moment ;-)

We were helping out last week with our church's social/community action project 'God Loves Peckham'. We got stuck into a neglected community centre in North Peckham, the Bradfield Club, mainly painting and general decoration. Around the back of the centre it has it's own garden but as the piccie above shows nobody has looked after it for some time! Fortunately the jungle of weeds, bushes and triffids has now been hacked away. By the way, none of this is a criticism of the Club's fabulous caretaker, Tigah, the first rastafarian caretaker we've met! He really looked after us and was so pleased to see the Club looking good again.

There's some more photos of what we and our team were doing at the Bradfield Club on our Flickr page, plus some other new pics of things we've been up to.

You can read more about what the project was doing across Peckam on our vicar's blog.

The Great World Cup Adventure

2006-07-09T17:18:00.000Z

The World Cup comes to an end tonight...

We went over to Germany for the first week of it and it was terrific. We saw a few games at the 'Fanfest' in Frankfurt - above is a piccie of us at the screening of the England v Trinidad game. There were thousands of fans from countries all over the world and everything was good-natured. We also took the opportunity to explore some of the Rhineland, a beautiful part of the country. We've put some pictures of the holiday on Flickr and you can see them by clicking on the nifty little 'badge' on the right.

A Weekend with the Roberts (and a spooky story...)

2006-06-11T17:33:00.000Z

Sara's cousin Garath, his fiancee Jo and their lovely boy Rhys popped down for a weekend in SE5 recently. It was so cool to see them and we're really looking forward to their wedding in August.

On the Saturday we had a day out in central London starting with a picnic lunch on Hyde Park. Actually, we were joining Tim Mungeam and a cast of thousands to celebrate Tim's 40th birthday (congratulations, Tim!) and despite the rain we had a great time and managed to stay mostly dry by camping under a large tree.

Here's Tim himself celebrating with a bottle of champagne!

Afterwards, we moved on to the Natural History Museum. Somehow we had never been there before, but it's a fantastic monument to the Victorians' commitment to providing free public museums. Here's a pic of the Roberts clan studying a bizarre giant bear-creature from South America:

And here's the famous dinosaur skeleton in the main entrance hall:

After that, we went round the corner to the wonderful Science Museum. We went to see the Pixar Animation Exhibition. It featured an amazing '21st century zoetrope' in which physical moulded Pixar characters on a carousel appeared to come to life, jumping and dancing before our very eyes! It would take too long to describe how this animation marvel was achieved so you'll just have to go and see it for yourself!

Finally, we uncovered an amazing coincidence as we chatted with Garath and Jo. Dave's mum booked a mini-break at the Manchester Hilton hotel for Katrina and Dave's honeymoon last April. And who was the very friendly girl from Q Hotels she chatted away with on the phone as she booked it? Yes, it was Jo!

Be seeing you...40 years later

2006-05-30T00:48:00.000Z

One of my all-time favourite TV shows, The Prisoner, is to be remade for Sky. The latest rumours are that none other than Christopher Eccleston will play No.6 this time around...if they do it right, I'm convinced this will be the best thing on TV.

The 1990's wasn't a good decade for quality UK TV drama - only a fews dramas such as Our Friends in the North and Pride and Prejudice (as Sara reminded me!) stick in the mind. However, the 2000's (or whatever you call this decade) has produced some amazing shows such as Spooks, Bleak House, Life on Mars and the new Doctor Who. Will the new Prisoner join the list?

The 1960's version of The Prisoner was filmed in Portmeirion in North Wales and we visited it a couple of years ago as you can see above. Needless to say, Patrick McGoohan is one in the top picture!

Another Brick Out of the Wall

2006-05-21T22:50:00.000Z

We popped up to Leeds last week to visit Sara's parents and had lots of fun demolishing their kitchen wall! Due to a rather unfortunate blaze, they're having a new kitchen put in a bit earlier than originally planned...so the wall had to come down.

ps - smashing things up with a heavy mallet is a good way of releasing tension!

A Very Warrington Wedding

2006-05-04T22:54:00.000Z

Congratulations to Katrina (Dave's sister) and Dave who got married on the 21st April - now Mr and Mrs Taylor!

The wedding was in Warrington and the reception was at the fantastic Statham Lodge hotel in the Cheshire countryside. Dave was an usher and said a reading at the church service(his second wedding reading in a month!) and Sara got to look after our gorgoeus nephew Leo. Will post some more pictures when we get the photos developed but here's a few we already have.

The happy couple, plus chief bridesmaid, Dave's little sister, Colette:

Dave and Leo, who looked very smart in his waistcoat (Leo that is):

Leo being well looked after by his big sister Rosa!

Passing Out with the Queen

2006-05-04T19:48:00.000Z

Just before Easter, we attended Chris's graduation ceremony at Sandhurst (above, he's the one in the middle!). Needeless to say, it was a big day for everyone, not least because the Queen, Charles and Camilla also popped in to have a gander...

The main event was some impressive marching around the parade ground by newly-commissioned officers and the Queen "took the salute" ie watched and then inspected them.

It was a great day and we're very proud of Chris or 2nd Lieutenant Wilcock, to give him his proper name!

Here's some more piccies. Chris with mum and dad...

with granny and grandad...

and the paparazzi!

This season, success was just staying up

2006-05-03T11:29:00.000Z

I've not written much about Tranmere this season because: a) there's been very little worth writing about; and b) there's very few people who want to read about Tranmere anyway. However I ought to make a passsing mention to the dramatic relegation dogfight match last Saturday with the accursed Milton Keynes Football Franchise. Tranmere's winning goal (scored in the injury-time of injury-time) had the marvellous double-benefit of not only guaranteeing our survival in League 1 but also probably condemning Franchise FC to League 2. I'm not sure which of those two I feel more happy about to be honest....

But Saturday aside though, it's been an awful season. The quality of the top teams in League 1 was well below normal (how can teams like Southend and Colchester be promoted to the Championship?!!) and we should have been at least challenging them if not beating them week in, week out. We need a big clear-out of players and manager this summer to make a fresh start next season.

You're a Philosopher, Charlie Brown

2006-04-10T22:32:00.000Z

I've always had a soft spot for Peanuts' Charlie Brown. I loved the comic strips when he and his best friend Linus would sit under a tree and discuss the mysteries of life.

Most comic strips are, of course, about superheroes but Charlie Brown is one of life's losers, perpetually insecure and always having to pick himself up from the latest disappointment that life has served up for him.

I recently stumbled on this article about the philosophy of Charlie Brown. It's an interesting read although I don't agree with it's opinion that Peanuts was about coping with the meaninglessness of life. I think Charlie's Wikipedia entry puts it better:

"It could be considered a metaphor about God; The other characters have given up on the idea of his actual existence (and Snoopy has stopped caring altogether, indulging in pilot fantasies), but Linus and Charlie Brown haven't stopped hoping that he is out there. When Charlie Brown insanely continues to play ball on a rainy day, he is essentially declaring his hope for God, and a determination to find God"

Wheel Changes and Wedding Bells

2006-04-02T22:25:00.000Z

We drove down to Chichester in West Sussex yesterday for the wedding of our friends Colin and Victoria. We almost didn't make it...

We had just started to get some speed up along the A3 out of London when we heard a a strange flapping noise coming from the back of the car. We were driving to a wedding, Dave was to deliver one of the readings in the sevice, so of course it had to be a flat tyre. Fortunately we were able to get off the road quickly and call out the breakdown service. We feared we'd miss the wedding and called Colin to advise he put someone on standby to do the reading but amazingly, the breakdown truck got to us in only 15 minutes and 10 minutes later we were on our way again!

Thanks to some brilliant map-reading by Sara we got to the church with 15 minutes to spare. The church, by the way, was very old - part of it dates back to 800AD!

It was a gloriously sunny day and the reception was held at a stunning hotel in the country. We seriously thought of selling up our London flat there and then and moving out to Sussex!

Sara pretended she was in a Jane Austen novel...

Congratulations guys!

Celebrating Nigel Williams

2006-04-02T20:30:00.000Z

We were very sad to hear of the death of Nigel Williams last week. Nigel used to be a member of All Saints church before moving to Northern Ireland and although we only knew him for a short time we were really struck by his friendly nature and wisdom. A website to celebrate his life has been set up and even if you did not know Nigel, it is well worth looking at it to see the astonishing impact this humble man of God had on so many lives.

News in brief

2006-03-17T13:05:00.000Z

Amazingly, it will be our 2nd wedding anniversary on Monday! We're popping down for a meal at 'Ganapati', our terrific local Indian restaurant, to celebrate. This positive review describes typical customers as 'people on dates' so I guess they'll let us in!

Katrina (one of Dave's sisters) and Dave (another Dave, just to confuse you) are getting married in a few weeks time in Warrington - we're really looking forward to it.

We've finally booked a week's holiday in Germany during the World Cup. We'll be staying near Frankfurt and we're going with Sara's mum and dad! Anyone out there got any spare match tickets?!!

Private on Parade

2006-03-02T00:09:00.000Z

You've probably noticed a few design changes to 'Tales from SE5'... I thought the blog could use a little spring-clean, plus a more relaxing Header picture without the violent colour clashes of the old SE5 map. (I took it at Camber Sands in Kent - sounds like it should be Camberwell-on-Sea!)

We visited Chris at Sandhurst a couple of weekends ago for his New College open day. It was great to see him and we enjoyed the day very much, despite the commanding officer bod telling us we should be very proud of our son!

Cadet Officer Wilcock - off duty!

On duty. He's in that crowd somewhere...

We were treated to a 20 minute display (in the freezing cold and rain!) by these bandsmen. They look very familiar, sure I've seen them somewhere before...

"The Biggest Dump in English Football"

2006-02-12T23:01:00.000Z

Another Tranmere awayday yesterday - I went with Matt Holsgrove to delightful Gillingham which was recently voted by The Observer readers as the worst football ground in the country.

It actually doesn't look too bad from the above photo, but bear in mind I took it from the uncovered away end which is a temporary stand (although as there are no plans to replace it, it seems quite permanent) piled on top of a large amount of scaffolding... A welcoming sign at the Away Fans entrance stated: "No tools, knives, bottles or wrenches allowed." They obviously forgot to add "pool cues" to that list.

The game was fairly awful (rather than horrendously awful) and we found the verbal exchanges between a section of Tranmere supporters just below us and Gillingham fans just above us far more diverting than the game itself.

Final score: Gillingham 1 Tranmere 1
(which was at least an improvement on Matt's prediction after the first 10 minutes that "this game has got 0-0 written all over it.")

Dave

Our Friends in the North

2006-02-12T22:47:00.000Z

...well, family really. My mum and sister Colette popped down for a few days. It was Colette's birthday on Thursday (she looks 27 but is really 48!) so for a surprise birthday present we took her to see The Lion King musical. If you're in Warrington you probably got a text from Colette in the interval telling you where she was!

On Friday myself and mum visited the British Museum. The incentive for this was to find out what benefits Mum was entitled to for being a paid-up Friend of the British Museum, specifically what the 'Friends Room' was like. But our dreams of a Pall Mall Gentleman's Club-type lounge with plush red leather seats were dashed when we discovered the room was more like a dentists' waiting room and about the same size. However, the Museum are hoping to buy some curtains for the Room soon...

So we decamped to the famous Reading Room instead:

Mother and daughter have now been safely returned to Warrington.

Dave

Been There, Skied That

2006-02-12T22:29:00.000Z

At the end of January we spent a week skiing in La Tania in the French Alps with our friends Andrew and Liz . Sara has now been on a few skiing holidays and is getting quite good on the red runs and was disappointed not to graduate to a black! Dave however was a 'debutante' and spent most of the week either snow-ploughing or falling down mountains. However, by the end of the week he was getting to grips with the green runs and even tried out a couple of blues.

Here's a few pics....

Apres ski with Andrew and Liz:

Evening colours over La Tania - that's mist in the valley....

Doing the Rounds

2006-01-13T07:52:00.000Z

We had a great Christmas.

We spent Christmas Day itself in Leeds and went over to Warrington for a couple of days too, so we got see prety much all the families. Some of the highlights were:

- Playing the 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' DVD on Christmas Day which starred 4 couples, The Wilcock Seniors, The Wilcock Juniors, The Thorntons and The Codys! The Wilcock Seniors won and The Codys came last :-(

- Watching Tranmere v Yeovil at Prenton Park with our old friend Darren Moore and seeing Tranmere come back from 1-0 down to win 4-1!

- Seeing our lovely nephews Rhys and Leo and niece Rosa - they are all completely gorgeous!

And, of course, seeing so many lovely friends and family too. We miss you all!

Finally - those kitchen photos

2006-01-13T07:34:00.000Z

Old kitchen...

...to no kitchen...

...to new kitchen!

Driving and Dickens

2005-12-22T18:29:00.000Z

Well, despite the last post we DID get the new kitchen fitted. I'll try and post some pics soon - aren't you people lucky!

Sara had a 'refresher' driving lesson last week. (She hasn't driven a car for about 10 years). To her amazement, she didn't crash! She has another lesson in the new year, but it'lll be a little while yet before she's bombing down the M1...

Holiday news - we've booked a ski-ing holiday for next year which is cool (in fact very cool in the Alps) and a little daunting for Dave who's never been ski-ing before. He's looking forward to the apres-ski though.

Finally, seeing as this blog comes from the chilly streets of Camberwell, a few choice words from London's greatest writer, Dickens:

"It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that truly be said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless us, every one!"

Wave Goodbye, Say Hello

2005-11-15T02:25:00.000Z

Sara finished her job on Friday. She's now on holiday for this week and loving it!

We seem to be spending most of our free time on 'housey stuff'. We've got a new fridge arriving tomorrow which meant we spent this afternoon defrosting the old one (the new one is frost-free, definetly the way to go). We're aiming to get a new kitchen fitted before Christmas, but that may be a bit ambitious...

Meanwhile, Dave is finally getting round to looking for places to stay in Germany for a week next summer. Why? Because of this.

Birthday Girl

2005-10-26T23:20:00.000Z

Some more recent piccies:

We went to The Oxo Tower Restaurant for Sara's birthday. This really is a stunning restaurant and as it's situated on the fifth floor of the old Oxo Tower on the South Bank, it has fantastic views over the Thames, like this one for instance -

When the Northerners visited Snowdonia...

2005-10-26T04:35:00.000Z

We finally sorted out a big digital camera problem at the weekend, so to prove it now works here's some sort-of-recent piccies of us on the Snowdon Horseshoe taken during our walking holiday in Wales last June.

You can see the peak of Snowdon itself to the left of Dave. This is unquestionably one of the best walks in Britain and best done on a clear, sunny day like the day we did it. But as it's North Wales we're talking about here, don't count on it even staying dry! By the way, this pic was taken near the beginning of the walk, before the really hard climbing began...

Here's Sara on the infamous Crib Goch ridge:

And here's from the top of Snowdon itself looking back at Crib Goch (the jagged pointy ridge in the upper left) - not a bad view eh!

Anyone who has ever done this walk will tell you there's only place to go afterwards - Pete's Eats, probably the best cafe in the world

Yep, we're all rubbish!

2005-10-08T14:48:00.000Z

Final score:

Tranmere 0 Scunthorpe 2

Wirral Rubbish?

2005-10-07T06:15:00.000Z

Here's a little competition. Using your skill and judgement, see if you can spot the worst team on the Wirral.

Tonight's episode of Mike Bassett:
"Two months into the season and Wirral are languishing at the foot of the table. It’s got so bad the team is chased away from the football ground by an angry mob of their own fans!"

Meanwhile over at Prenton Park:
"[Brian] Little is experiencing the first seriously difficult spell of his time in charge. A smaller, younger squad is struggling to adjust to the losses of a Ryan Taylor, Iain Hume and Paul Hall, the first two sold in big-money deals to Wigan and Leicester, the third a summer departure on a free transfer to Chesterfield.
A run of six games without a win has left Tranmere in 20th spot in the table - just one place better off than that lowly starting point for Little of two years ago."
(from the Liverpool Echo site)

Oh, it's depressing...Nobody, including a lot of opposition fans, can really understand why we're doing so badly. Despite the departures of Humey and Taylor we've got a very good squad. It's worrying that Brian Little, who seems like a genuinely good bloke, doesn't seem to know how to get the best out of the players. In that respect he reminds me of Eriksson who is also a decent enough manager but who can't seem to get his team to reach the full potential they're capable of. (Now imagine if Murinho was in charge of England...)

Still, early doors and all that. Scunthorpe tomorrow night at Prenton Park and bizarrely we are the only team in the league not to have lost at home yet. We need three points - COME ON YOU WHITES!!!!

France and wolly mammoths

2005-09-22T21:50:00.000Z

We were on holiday in south west France last week. It was a terrific break and we both felt very refreshed (at least until we returned to work). We stayed in a gorgeous 'gite' in a quiet valley and the weather was superb - I think it was sunny every day! Here's the gite:

On the Sunday morning we drove out to the nearest market. It was interesting trying to buy the weekly shop at a market, but Sara was in heaven! This pic at the market shows Sara on the right with Andrew and Liz next to her (the couple we were holidaying with):

One of the places we visited was the site of the prehistoric cave paintings at Grotte du Perc Merle. Dave particularly liked the woolly mammoth!

Searching for God Knows What

2005-09-08T08:14:00.000Z

This is a superb book which I've (almost) finished reading now. It's a refreshing reminder that the message of Jesus is first and foremost that we need to be in a right relationship with God and all the other junk that comes with 'religion' - superior morality, comparing ourselves to others, trying to force others to be more like us - is just that. Junk.

Donald Miller describes how humans, without God, have a 'lifeboat' mentality. We're all stuck in the lifeboat, desperately trying to persuade the rest of the lifeboat we're valuable and shouldn't be thrown overboard. As long as there's someone else in the lifeboat who's lesser than me, further down the worthiness scale, then I can feel safe and derive some pride. The problem is this isn't how we we 'wired' by God. We should be depending on him for our feeling of self-worth. But we don't and consequently we're never completely fulfilled and will envy others...

This is a thought-provoking book that asks questions like: "When did you last see an ugly person on the cover of a worship CD?" I bought it at a CLC bookshop and it's available through Amazon too.

N Ireland 1 England 0

2005-09-08T06:10:00.000Z

Oh dear, that was painful wasn't it?

Feel too depressed to write anything other than repeat what Alan Hansen said - in the past they said England couldn't win a world cup becasue they didn't have world-class players. Now we have Ferdinand, Terry, Gerrard, Beckaham, Lampard, Owen, Rooney...that excuse doesn't wash anymore!

I still think England will qualify for Germany 2006 but does anyone really think anymore that England will win it with Eriksson in charge?

Birthday Boy

2005-01-02T18:03:00.000Z

Today is Dave's 31st birthday!

Some random things that happened to us over Christmas...

We talked to Sara's relatives in the States on Christmas day on a sort of video-conference thing using webcams. Although the camera kept going down at the American end (makes a change to things going wrong at the Brit end!) it was an amazing experience and makes you marvel at how quickly this sort of technology has become available to us in our homes. A great experience and a great way of keeping in touch with folks a long, long way away.

We went to Prenton Park to see Tranmere v Barnsley on Boxing Day. We sat quite close to the away end so enjoyed the barnsley fans singing "Feed the scousers, let them know it's Christmas", what a rib-tickler! Sara confessed to divided loyalties as the Barnsley fans also chanted "Yorkshire!" Great to see the ground packed - 11,500. Not so great to see us throw away 3 points when Barnsley equalised deep into injury time which sent the away fans into heaven. Although it finished a draw, it felt like we'd lost the game. Dave met an old school friend after the game who's recently moved back to the Wirral from London and is loving it. Dave felt a twang of envy...

We went out to Lyme Park where some of the BBC's Pride and Prejudice was shot and set off on a country ramble. Alas, we miscalculated how much daylight we would have and were only half way through the walk when we realised it was getting dark very quickly! We pretty much ran the second half and scrambled down a hill somehow finding our way back to the car park in the darkness. Next time we're definetly taking a torch.

The tsunami disaster has had added resonance for us as we were were on honeymoon in one of the places that was hit - Penang in Malaysia -only last March. We haven't yet seen any pictures of what it looks like now but have read that our resort was badly affected. Things like this make you put your own problems into some sort of perspective.

'Twas the night before Christmas...

2004-12-25T02:02:00.000Z

...and I finally got around to writing my first blog!

Off to a midnight carol concert tonight at the church where we got married - first time back there since we tied the knot!