Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I do enjoy this time of year, at least the drinking and eating and present receiving part anyway, not so much the endless shopping trips and the nose dive that my bank balance is on during December.

This year is more special as there are five of us now, plus my eldest son is now of an age where I can play with his presents/watch his DVD's/eat his chocolate.

Anyway, I wish everyone a fun time and look forward to seeing you all next year.

Kind Regards

Barrie

New Arrival

I am very happy to announce the arrival of my son Elliot Jude Johnson, born on the 24th of October at 5:21pm, weighing 7lb 15oz. Mother and Baby both doing very well indeed.

He's a very heathly young boy who has put on weight already! Though he hasn't quite worked out that when it's dark you need to close your eyes and have a bit of a kip, but we're getting there.

He likes Formula one and Supercars, or will do if his dad and brother have anything to do with it (he likes Formula milk so we're half way there).

It's finally happened...

Well it finally happened, we found a suitable caravan, it's been quite a journey - 1000 miles up and down the country to be exact (I joke you not), it's been a nightmare, one example travelling up Sheffield (100 Miles) to find the caravan we wanted to view was sold!!

But finally we found one 6 miles from my house (ouch), here it is on our favourite site.

I even found someone to take our old 'van off us for a very small fee (no they paid me!!).

Trouble is now the season is almost at an end, well it is if you're a couch potato, we've only got a few weeks left now boo hoo but the weather doesn't look too bad.

Mind, it's the skiing season soon..

'Credit Crunch' goes my new Caravan...

Recently, I have been attempting to replace our ageing Avondale Caravan, it's past it's prime - the Caravan service guys advised us to have it put to sleep but we just can't do it until we really have to, it's back legs have gone yes but it still has a twinkle in it's eye. Anyway, before it gets sold to the great Caravan Breakers in the Sky, well down the road actually, we have to find a new one. Unfortunately we have come up against two major obstacles:-

1. Due to the credit crunch people are looking to holiday more in the UK (Are they mad, have you seen the prices and the weather?) As I'm sure you're aware we are a nation of 'Panic Buyers', try getting a fresh loaf of bread on Christmas eve, mix this with greedy salesmen or 'Supply and demand' as they call it and you have a problem. This will all change when the credit crunch ends, and your nice shiny caravan is worth about the same as a tin of Pilchards, negative equity in caravans tsk!

2. Another problem is towing weights, this is a whole minefield that I am now an expert in. I drive a 1.8 Vauxhall Zafira, not a small car and not an ungenerous 1300kg towing capacity, until you find out that most family caravans are around 1350kg, not a problem you think - we've all seen the video of the VW Touareg towing the Jumbo jet, right (Take a Look)? But the story changes when you're on the M5 and a lorry over takes you the same time as a gust a wind hits you on the other side suddenly, your caravan decides it likes the look of the lorry rather than your car, and guess what your car doesn't have enough weight to hold it back, kind of like an old frail granny taking a Staffordshire Bull terrier for a walk and he sees a cat. This is when you end up in the bushes pulling roadkill out from between your teeth and finding four broken flappy pieces of plyboard where your caravan used to be, plus a furious looking wife and a rather bent car.

So as you can imagine I am absorbing all the safety advise I can find.

Remember my previous post, it should have been called 'When Good caravans, go bad', lol - actually not a bad idea, might send that one to Bravo.

Laters....

Baz the whinging Yam yam/Brummie/Limey/Pom.

Oh I do like to be beside the Poolside.

Went fishing the weekend had a great time, found one of those rare Pools where the fish aren't overfed, so they were hungry, I caught about 30 fish, including Carp, Bream, Tench, Roach, and Gudgeon.

What an excellent way to spend the day, how many times have I fished a Pool and sat there wondering if it was stagnant.

Had a beautiful Bream, my biggest one ever (though it was only about 2lb and that's being generous).

Off Mackerel fishing soon, can't wait, now there's a barmy fish, BBQ at the Ready!!!

Barrie

Ode to an Avondale - RIP.

One of my favourite hobbies is caravanning, I'm fairly new to it having previously been a Camper for 20 years (no comments please).

I hate towing the thing (with good reason, see below), but once you're there and setup it's great.

I'm one of those rare Caravan towers that pull over when the queue of traffic builds up behind me, and appreciate the waves of thanks I get from other motorists.

I have stayed in my Caravan on a site only 5 miles from my house, a little weird granted but it's in the Clent Hills and it's just a beautiful place to be, just look.

Clent

Currently I am looking to buy a newer Caravan, the old one is very tired, and also prompted me by the wheel dropping off on the M5 whilst on our way
to Exmouth for a holiday (see picture taken at 7:00am M5 J10 - thanks to the Very nice man from the RAC we got back on the road within two hours!).

Fiddle Sticks!

I wouldn't normally mind (well I would really TBH) but this is the second time the wheel has dropped off, so it's time to say goodbye!!

It's been a good van, 5 years ownership, countless nights keeping mine and the families heads dry.

Anyway, we also have a new baby on it's way, due in October so we've run out of room to boot.

Happier times



Our current favourite site



Fingers crossed that we get a Summer this year!!

Barrie

Best season for 25 years.

Yes it's that time of year again, well actually it's the nearly the end of 'that time of year', but finally I'm off skiing this weekend, hoorah!! I didn't want to miss this season as the snow levels have been fantastic since the very start of the season, some say the best for a quarter of a century.

So anyway, I'm off to Italy Friday to a resort called Pila (www.pila.it - Check out the Webcams!) it's due East of Milan, where at present it's snowing and -10C, the only downside is it's only for 3 days, as you can imagine it's a lot of expense and dull travelling time for what will be the fastest 3 days ever.
We're going independent this time, first time - usually get a last minute deal, so slightly nervous that the itinerary will work. This is the first time for three years that I will have Ski's on, as the last two seasons I've been Snowboarding, I really enjoyed it but really stagnated last time, so I'm going back to Skiing. (Plus it's no fun being the oldest in the 'boarding group by 20 years, all that baggy pants, 'Dude' talking and or course the Devils horns sign..)

So come and join me and have some fun in the snow, you might just have the time of your life...

For sale Snowboarding boots Size 12, used twice, offers...

Techno house, Tech-no-notice

Our house is a very, very, very nice house as the song goes. What it fails to mention is that it is now groaning under the weight of gadgets, as most houses in the UK I have a few niceties to help while away the hours, namely:-
4 LCD TV's, 3 TFT monitors, 1 laptop, 2 PC's, 1 Gaming console,
1 Gaming chair, 2 MP3 players, 1 MP4 player, 5 digital cameras, 2 printers, 1000 DVD's and CD's, 1 TV Hard disk recorder, 1 portable DVD player, 1 Digital Camcorder, 1 scanner, 1 HD-DVD drive (now redundant - thanks Toshiba), 4 DVD players, 1 Surround sound system, 1 freeview box, 3 digital photo frames, 1 disco light ball, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc...is there no end, nope I love technology.

Modern life eh??

Name and Address NOT supplied....

Please sir, can I have one????

One news item that caught my eye this week is the announcement of the 1 Terabyte Solid State Drive.
A SSD replaces your hard disk in your PC and it uses similar technology to what is used in flash memory cards (as used in digital camera's), so there are no moving parts, no disk heads to crash, no sound at all from the drive itself when operating.
This is a 2.5" drive that will store one trillion pieces of information, or one thousand Gigabytes.
The company goes onto to say that 4 of these drives will take the same space up as one existing normal Hard disk.

The smaller drives have been around quite a while now, and you can pick them up for around £200 for a 128 Gig.

You will also be able to retro fit them into most of the latest laptops.

These drives also use a lot less power, and are blisteringly fast.

Once again Technology has amazed me with advancing way beyond anyones expectations.