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04 October 2015 21:27


So it’s the start of October – otherwise known as the Barefoot family birthday-fest. Though logistic and timing issues mean that it’s rare that we are able to celebrate each birthday separately, as we are doing this year. Normally we have just the one joint celebration (and have done ever since I was a kid, as Sis’s birthday is two days after mine).

By lucky coincidence, this year we were invited oop norf for a CGF family celebration to mark 100 days of the latest family sproglet. And as it also happens to be The Aged’s birthday today, we were able to visit him for lunch on our way home. We ate in-house, as our time was a bit tight for a meal out. Lovely poached salmon – a whole salmon! Luckily they have a stove big enough to put a fish kettle on.

We also stopped off overnight at The Aged’s on Friday evening. We deliberately didn’t leave until 7:00 to give the Friday evening traffic time to die down. It was a good plan, as we had a free run all the way, arriving soon after 9:30 (it would have been another 90 minutes to CGF’s bro, hence the plan to stop off).

The logistic planning reminded me of a problem I have wrestled with in the past – when I have had nothing better to do. Two people set off on the same journey; one leaves at time a and getting caught in traffic, delaying the journey by x minutes; the other leaves at time b (where b is later than a) and gets no delays. Are there any values of a, b, and x where the later departure arrives before the earlier one?

This post, of course, conforms to the OFSTED recommendation of including literacy and numeracy in everything. That was the numeracy bit; the literacy bit is yet to come.

Back to the story. The family celebration was a Saturday lunchtime do – which is why we were able to go. They normally hold them Sunday evening, which is too late to get back home from. It was a Chinese banquet, with loads of food. The dishes just kept on coming - when we thought we had had everything, more dishes arrived! It was all wonderful – and the sort of food that you don’t usually see on a Chinese menu (at least, us “white ghosts” don’t – or maybe we don’t know what to ask for!).

After the meal we had a walk round Sheffield, and took some photos of Flat Stanley, then caught the tram back to CGF’s dad’s (we had walked to the restaurant from there).

OK, I know that last sentence needs explanation. Flat Stanley is, apparently, a children’s book about a boy who is flattened by a falling noticeboard, and then posts himself around the world (or something like that). CGF’s cousin’s child is doing a “flat Stanley” project where they post Flat Stanley’s to friends and relatives and ask them to take photos of him near landmarks etc. Not that there are many landmarks in Sheffield, but we photographed him visiting the winter gardens, standing outside the crucible and the cathedral, and riding a tram.


There was a rugby game in the evening. The better team won; the team I wanted to win didn’t. The result was as expected, though the score difference was far more than I had hoped for. Farrell is a muppet, and the yellow card was justified.


The promised literacy bit.

Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds. Alliteration is the reputation of vowel sounds. But what is it called when both are repeated, with slight changes of emphasis to give different words, as in black skies / black ice / black eyes?

Oh go on then, give yourself a bonus point if you know the song lyric in which those words appear.


Good news from work is that I am not going to be made redundant. It was announced a couple of months back that about 500 posts were being removed across the company, but this week we were advised that there would be none from my area (other than those already accepted for voluntary redundancy).


My birthday later this week. A BIG one. The Ageds are coming down for a few days. I had given myself a bit of a hosting dilemma: I’d invited them to stay with me Wednesday night, but forgot that I was already committed to delivering a training course that evening, so would be leaving them alone. Luckily The Aged misheard my instructions and has booked into the Eastleigh PremierTravelLodgeInn from Wednesday. So that solves that problem. They can have a meal with me Wednesday evening, and then we can all relocate to Eastleigh for the rest of the week. I have days off Thursday and Friday, so will entertain The Aged for the day while CGF is at work (and how much will I enjoy my lie-in, knowing that everyone else in the house is getting up?) We’re going out for a family meal (at the same upmarket restaurant where I had the cufflink problem a couple of weeks ago) Thursday, and various friends are coming to Spoons on Friday for more drinks. My nephew and his gf are coming over too, so we will have a second family meal with them. And Saturday morning I will attempt to waddle round parkrun!

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