.jpg)
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!
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!
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"
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!
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.
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?!!
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
...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
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:
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!
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!"
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.
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 -
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
Here's a little competition. Using your skill and judgement, see if you can spot the worst team on the Wirral.
