We Do Adventure

Life is full of challenges. For the past two and a half weeks one of ours has been living without a functioning shower in our house. Last week we discovered there was no problem with the outflow pipes from our house so we've got more adventurous in how we use the facilities on the non-functioning side of the house. For example, our recently replaced toilet will flush if you fill the cistern by bucket from our one working tap in the kitchen. Likewise it is perfectly possible to use the shower if you fill bottles of hot water in the kitchen and then proceed to pour them over yourself! When we were back in the UK at the beginning of this month we happened to drive by Ardingly reservoir, in West Sussex. I commented at the time it looked alarmingly low. I wasn't wrong. The reports are now out that southern England is in a state of drought . I guess that will mean hose-pipe bans and the like. For us the last few weeks have been a real eye-openner to just how much water we use, or wou...

Today is St George’s Day. For the benefit of our international audience let me clarify, St George is the Patron Saint of England. Ok, so he wasn’t English – and is also Patron Saint of a number of other places – but he is our answer to St Patrick, minus the shamrock and excessive quantities of Guinness! As celebrations go it seems England’s are always muted at best. This morning my brother Tweeted: Happy St George's Day - cue predictable lame TV news coverage of whether or not we should be allowed a bank holiday! That about sums it up. But then I logged into YouTube and noticed I had an above average number of comments. Sensing something must be causing this spike in traffic I started to investigate only to discover the UK homepage had featured a video I made a year ago today. I'll confess feeling a sense of satisfaction that mine was the only video about this auspicious day given that treatment. Now I’ve probably made over 500 online videos so it’s not surprising I can’t remem...

Some footballers suffer what you could call ‘the curse of the classic goal’. What do I mean by that? They score a goal so timely and technically superb it sets a standard they will never again equal; it becomes a monument in whose shadow they play out the rest of their career. Tonight I’m reminded of David Platt and his stroke of brilliance in the last minute of extra time for England against Belgium back Italia 90. It’s fair to say he probably never matched that moment. I’m reminded by the blaring horns, revving engines and enthusiastic singing and chanting outside that undoubtedly means Bosnia Herzegovina have beaten Belgium twice within the last week, on what could quite possibly be the road to their first Fifa World Cup. Tonight’s 2-1 triumph added to a 4-2 victory on Saturday would itself provide a comfortable goal difference but given that they dispatched Estonia 7-0 they share the same goal difference as Spain, who top the group, although Bosnia Herzegovina have scored five more...

What a disaster! I had dug through my case of thing-packed-just-on-case and so was well prepared for tonight’s trip to an indoor football pitch. I pulled on my retro, red ‘Three Lions’ shirt. It’s not normally paired with black sock and shorts but nevertheless it wasn’t a bad look. Until play started that is. In many ways I did England proud, or at least continued a long tradition of overpromising and under-delivering. I can't report one good tackle or pass, let alone a decent shot on goal that I made. I could play the blame game but it wouldn’t help. After all tonight was just play for the sake of play, with a generous side order of theatrics for the benefit of those on the sidelines. But as a trip that was intended for fifteen had snowballed to nearer thirty the fact it passed off without accident or incident must be seen as something of a success!