Happy Birthday Zoe

To celebrate Zoe's birthday we went to London for the day which great apart from the behaviours of some of the other visitors to Madame Tussauds
1) Queue dodging by joining the fast track queue when they didn't have a valid ticket for that entrance and bullied the steward to letting them in.
2) Dodging any of the queues by claiming a disability by waving a walking stick so the "disabled" male with a bad leg/hip, plus several other members of the family joining him with the quick entrance, he then ran up the stairs quicker than I could manage, proud that he had beaten the system!
3) No respect for queues or other people in the experience wishing to take photo's including jumping front of official photographers

All these people appeared by their dress and language to come from the same area of the world.
The day included a visit to Diana's memorial fountain, the science museum, Covent Garden, Regent Street, Buckingham Palace and the Hard Rock Cafe including the vaults.

We ended the day with a meal at Hammersmith.
Highlight of the day was Zoe's chance meeting with the ex England manager

See Jon's blog for video of the day

All the fun of the fayre

It's school fete time and we visited 2 in one day. Liden started at 11.00 then Abbey Meads at 2.00.
The tombola's of the day were the Girl Guides general items at Liden where we won Quality Street and Cadbury Chocolate Snaps, at Abbey Meads it was a bottle stall and we won half a dozen assorted fizzy drinks. Jordan achieved the near impossible ball in a bucket thus winning a BB gun and again at Liden the trampolines were very popular with Megan achieving knee and bum drops but Jordan couldn't read the do not signs and performed a sumersault!

Later in the day we went for a walk along the canal at Wootton Bassett swans, ducks a stray greyhound and waves from the passing train drivers. Highlight was a enforced swim for Lennon who tried a valient escape and a run for Zoe and myself. The day was concluded with a fine steak etc at the Churchill.

Givers & Takers

Last weekend through swindon freecycle , one of the many groups freecycle.org banner who have been set up to avoid throwing things in the bin or landfill but to pass them onto others.
We have given away various items from the garage including beds, tiles, children's toys, car colour magic. On this occasion it was an electric guitar, amplifier, and mike stand that Jon's now has thanks to very generous donors John & Denise Giles.

How different to the experience after the England game last Saturday when Jordans new bike was stolen. He was out playing in the back ally with his friends, he put his bike down for two minutes to pop in the house while his friends stood around it, some on their bikes. Two youths swaggered along beer in one hand and took it. Steves & his mates rushed out to find the thieves and when they caught up with them a knife was pulled to warn them off!

The story had a happy ending, as after a poker evening Steve was driving home in the early hours and saw the bike against the Kebab shop window, but as there was a gang nearby he didn't recover it until the thief was on his own with the bike. He screeched to a stop out they jumped and confronted the low life who just dropped the bike and ran!!

Then again on the following Monday Jordan & Megan took their bikes to school and locked them to each other, after a visit to the dentist they went to collect them the chain had been broken and Jordans bike taken!! idbi

Perhaps I've found the reason for Jordan's bad luck, when spell checking this entry his name comes up as "joyriding"