Proper chrsitmas weather

Last night we had an unbeleivable amount of snow as many of you in the south east will know.

It was a bit of a christmas miracle really one of those days where for once everything seems to slot into place.

Middle son (the actor) had his first night performing 'A Christmas Carol' at Hitchin, Queen Mother Theatre and apparently it was very good indeed, he plays tiny tim although at 16 he is probably a bit old for the part (he is little though), all the shows at Hitchin are always really good thanks to long term director Rory Reynolds (Ben Wishaw is one of his proteges that has gone on to great things).

So while he was doing his show the snow came down and by 10pm we had 4-5 inches and nice strong winds to blow it about. We had already arranged to decorate our tree that night so with the snow falling thats what we did and it worked out great, we got through without a single argument and no tears.

Then it was time to go out and play in the snow (note to self buy some decent gloves) , we went to the park with intention of getting into a snowball fight but no-one there so my two eldest boys started on a snowman which of course ended up as a giant snow penis, Oh teenagers what are you like!

All in all a good fun evening - lets hope the snow stays for christmas.

Chinese lanterns or fire balloons

These things have always fascinated me, I can remember being a very small child and my dad making one from tissue paper and wire with a ball of cotton wool soaked in Meths to provide the heat. I guess its the combination of flight and fire that excites (I have always had Pyro leanings in fact that was one of my nicknames as a boy).

If any of you have read Roald Dahls 'Danny champion of the world' there is a great description of the night Dannys dad makes him one of these fire balloons and they watch it dissappear into the night, one of my favourite books and definetly the best ever childrens author.

Anyway I have decided to get some of these chinese lanterns for Christmas this year, so weather permitting we will be launching five of these on boxing day which is my eldest sons eighteenth birthday - if its raining or windy then we will go for New years eve as I am fed up of listening to other peoples fireworks and never do much on that night anyway.

I have decided not to make them as I dont have enough time and they are pretty cheap to buy nowadays at about £15 for six from Night Sky Lanterns or £2.50 each from Party Packs. While I was researching this article I found some great videos on youtube of the lantern festivals they hold in china where they launch thousands of these in one go. I am wondering if they all end up in some poor chinese farmers paddy field and he has to clear them all up! Search youtube for more info.

Hopefully will publish some pics of our attempt at launching these fire balloons in the new year.

I also intend to take a flight in a real hot air balloon some time in the spring - we regularly get the Virgin ballon flying over our house on calm evenings (once so close it nearly took our chimney off) so they must launch nearby, maybe more about that in the future if it happens.

Links: Night Sky Lanterns, Party Packs, Virgin balloons

Its time to start a BLOG

Well I have finally got around to writing a BLOG, I will probably post once a week or maybe a bit more if I feel so inclined.

Never really done this before as not into social networking I find I never have that much to say and my Facebook posts normally read 'Stephen is sitting on a train' or something equally interesting.

Several of my online friends are able to produce witty one liners in their status updates on a daily basis so they are either naturally gifted at writing short and snappy comments or have too much time to think about it.

Considering I work in web development I really should have done this sooner I have lots of stuff to say but will try and keep it to specific subjects for each post.

There is an ulterior (have I spelt that correctly) motive in that I am trying to promote my website www.shopoftheworld.com that is basically a amalgamation of affiliate products - suffice to say its not easy getting traffic and every guide I read suggests getting bloggers to link to your site with 'interesting and real' content to increase your sites google ranking. So hands up I will sprinkle in a few links to my site and products from time to time, so far I have earned 29p commission and that was from a sale to myself - I will post details of my earning as well so you can all see how easy(not) it is to make money from the Internet when you don't actually have anything to sell.

At one time I did actually have products to sell online (guitars, strings and accessories) and it was all going well for a while but not easy to actually make money from. That's another story for another day.

I will save these stories for later posts but look out for some stuff about Easton Lodge which was my childhood home, The story of www.shopoftheworld.com , my life in F1 and some truck rental stories as well as the usual family,kids,dogs,cats stuff.

Well that's the end of my first ever BLOG post normally at this point I would delete it as not interesting enough (which it probably isn't) but I am going to see it through and press submit.

Thanks for reading