Posts Tagged ‘family’

How did my mum spend Mother’s Day this year? Mostly in the kitchen, cooking.

What can I say, she is a Worfolk, you can’t make her relax. We had family visiting from Canada, so a family party was in order. We did our best to help: my sister made breakfast and a pavlova, and I contributed a cheesecake and a tray of cup cakes, but there is only so much cooking we were allowed to do!

After the food we got together for a group photo.

After achieving my 50th Parkrun and earning my t-shirt in September, November saw my dad reach the target too. He is now hot on my heels for the 100 club. Of course, it is not a competition. Something I want to be very clear about given a man who is twice my age is a good 4 minutes faster than I am.

I went over to Temple Newsam to run it. Overall, I think it is a better Parkun course. It is up and down hills, and there is some actual countryside. In comparison, Woodhouse Moor is just running around the houses. Temple Newsam does get too muddy at some points, but Woodhouse Moor has the horrible muddy corner as well, so I hardly avoid it on my regular run. Mud is fine of course, but the possibility of slipping over and hurting myself slows me down.

My gran’s side is quite a large family and we used to get together on a regular basis. Unfortunately, as people have got older, it is become a little too much to organise a large party, so they have gradually faded away.

That is until my parents stepped up and said they would organise a summer BBQ.

We ended up taking ten dishes – four breads (bloomer, stout, focaccia, stilton and bacon rolls), two sides (coleslaw, noodle salad), two starters (tomato and goat’s cheese tart, smoked trout pâté) and two dessert (devil’s food cake and eclairs). Most of it got eaten though due to the volume of food other people also brought we ended up coming home with boxes of new things as well!

We were reasonably lucky with the weather. There was a tiny bit of rain, but not enough to drive us inside, and the night was chilly but not survivable once we had the fire put going.

While in Finland, we spent the final three days of our time in Finland with Elina’s family, in Laitila.

We tried to swim in a lake at 2pm, but it was still freezing cold at this time, so in the end we gave up and spent the day enjoying the sunshine from the bank.

This is a rose from Riitta’s garden. She has a lot of beautiful flowers.

The view from Henry’s garden.

Henry’s cat.

We spent Friday evening at a summer cottage by a lake. This is the view as the sun went down.

It was surprisingly warm when we went for a midnight swim.

This is my tenth speech from the Toastmasters Competent Communicator manual, “Inspire Your Audience”. The speech doesn’t start until a minute in to the video.

Last month, I went to Temple Newsam to see my mum perform at the Olympic torch celebration. The choir were fantastic, well done to everyone involved!

Getting in was a struggle. After the padding down and the cavity search you then have to have a long argument about whether the folding furniture you have brought counts as genuine folding furniture. No prizes for guessing who was sponsoring the event either…

It’s not often that I get kicked out of a restaurant.

But when you’re taking advantage of the early bird special and you then proceed to sit there for several hours, eventually they start moaning about having other bookings. You could blame me for turning up 7 minutes late, but I could tell from the waiter’s eyes that they were really saying “your mother is getting a little too lairy after that half a bottle of wine, sir.”

We were out celebrating my dad’s birthday and enjoyed a night of great conversation about how you won’t be around forever, so it’s important to spend your life’s savings before you die, while having picked the restaurant specifically because it represented a good compromise between great food and not having to pay Blackhouse prices.

I was very interested to try the pigeon available on the starters menu, but was somewhat worried I wouldn’t like it. Therefore, I did the only sensible thing to do – I made Elina get the pigeon and tried some of hers. Turns out, a pigeon is pretty delicious.

Of course, normally in these situations you would offer to pay, but having recently left my job, and having had our conversation earlier about making the most of your savings before your time is up, I thought it only fair to let me dad pick up the bill.

You can tell Sous le Nez is an authenticate French restaurant because they say everything in perfect English, but then add the word “monsieur” onto the end. So it’s a great to enjoy French food, particularly as if you actually go to France, you just get Greek food.

Since joining Facebook in 2006 (that’s over five years ago now – I genuinely don’t think I remember a time before Facebook), I’ve always had a policy of not accepting family members as friends.

There is good reason for this. Thanks to the innovative tagging features Facebook keeps introducing, your Facebook profile is full of photos, notes and status updates about just how drunk you where when you threw up in what you thought was a bathroom but later turned out to be something completely different. Nobody wants their family to see that side of their lives.

However, in the spirit of being more open, I’ve decided to rescind this policy. For better or for worse – I guess we’ll find out soon!

Last Tuesday, we headed over to the Brown Cow & Dragon to celebrate my dad’s birthday.

The Brown Cow & Dragon is a traditional English pub. And Thai restaurant. It’s an interesting combination with a selection of traditional Thai dishes and then bangers and mash on the menu.

Despite being determined to get some Thai food, I gave in when I saw they had BBQ ribs on the menu. They couldn’t complete with the amazing ribs I had while in Edinburgh but were never the less very enjoyable and the portion size was good – not too much, not too little.

Headed over to my parents on Monday for a big family BBQ as we had relatives over from Canada. Food was good which is the most important thing plus it was a chance to brag about how how awesome my life is. Fun times 😀 .