creamed-coconut.org

I’ve been home from my holiday for over a week, but as I’ve been so busy catching up on things it’s only now that I have some free time to update my blog.

This is actually the 4th time that I’ve been on holiday to the Lake District, although this time my 2 nieces Anya and Emily came as well. (Last year they stayed with us for a few days, but not for the full holiday, as they had other things planned).  There was no mobile phone reception available in the holiday cottage where we were staying, so I kept a paper diary instead of using Twitter.  At first I was a bit disappointed about that, but at least it meant there were less distractions.

At the beginning of the holiday (Saturday 7th August), we arrived at the cottage in Grasmere just after 3pm.  Much of the evening was spent unpacking, although we did go for a short walk by the local rock stream.  I had a nice big bedroom at the cottage – in fact I think it’s the biggest bedroom I’ve ever stayed in! The following morning, we went for a walk up to Easedale Tarn.  We do this walk every year, but on the first full day of the holiday I’m not usually very fit and it takes me a couple of days to get used to all the climbing, especially as we live in an area with no hills at all! Therefore I was dreading going to Easedale Tarn on the first day, as there are some steep climbs involved.  At one point during the walk I thought that I was going to be sick and I felt dizzy and light-headed, so I had to stop and drink some water.  Luckily I felt better once we’d reached the top of the mountain (where the tarn/lake is).  I never had any more of those dizzy feelings during the holiday.  Later that afternoon, we went to the Cumbria Carvery (which is favourite restaurant in Grasmere) for a meal.  I had a Yorkshire pudding filled with Cumberland sausage, chips and gravy.  That is a typical local meal in the Lake District.

On the first Monday it rained heavily, so we didn’t go on any proper walks.  Instead we visited a village called Hawkshead and we went to the Beatrix Potter Gallery.  There wasn’t that much to see, so we walked round it fairly quickly.  We also looked round some of the local shops and had some sandwiches and a piece of cake in one of the cafes.  On Tuesday we walked round Rydal lake – this was a walk that I’d done 5 years ago, but I still enjoyed it.  Luckily I didn’t get too worn out this time!  The first part of the walk is all uphill and quite tiring, but after that it is OK and the scenery is very good, and you get a nice aerial view of the lake.  On the higher path, there is a big cave – I’d actually forgotten just how big the cave is, since the last time I’d been there!  It started raining really heavily and all our clothes were soaked right through.  At the end of the walk we went to the Rydal cafe and had a quick walk around the Rydal gardens.  On Wednesday we went for a walk at Thirlmere, which is a reservoir near Coniston.  There was also a woodland walk where we saw a waterfall and a really big old tree (European Silver Fir), which was about 200 years old.  Later that afternoon, we went to an internet cafe in Grasmere, but there was only one (really slow) computer, so I didn’t have a chance to do much with it.  I just checked my email and that was about it

Thursday was Mum’s birthday so we all gave her birthday cards in the morning.  We spent most of the day in Ambleside, which is a town near Grasmere.  We walked to a waterfall and we had lunch in a pub.  When I’m on holiday, I always miss my weekly takeaways, but this pub served chicken makhani curry with rice and naan bread, so I had that and I enjoyed it.  After dinner, Emily and I played on one of the quiz machines.  We walked around the town and we went to a chocolate shop where I bought some chocolate truffles and some jelly beans.  On Friday we went for a really long walk up to Codale Tarn (which is the second tarn after Easedale Tarn).  We’d been there 5 years ago, but this time we took a different route.  It took much longer than I thought it would – in fact we were walking for over 6 hours, making it the longest walk of the holiday.  We saw many streams and waterfalls along the way, and it was a very pretty walk, even though it was steep and slippery in parts.

On Saturday we went to Coniston for the day.  We hired out a motor boat for an hour on the lake and we had a meal at Harry’s restaurant afterwards.  There was a meteor shower that evening, and as there was a clear sky, we were able to see the shooting stars.  It looked very pretty and I took several photos of the stars.  When we are at home, we can’t see the stars so well in the city due to the light pollution.  On Sunday we did another steep walk – this time to the Lionhead and Lamb in Easedale.  We did this walk 5 or 6 years ago and the path at the start is very steep and not very well laid out.  However it was all worth it in the end, as we had lovely views all over Easedale and Grasmere.  From the top, we could see Easedale Tarn and Grasmere lake, along with Windemere and Coniston lakes.  On Monday, we got up early to go to Aira Force, which is one of my favourite walks in the Lake District.  We walked amongst the waterfalls and woods for 2 and a half hours and had a picnic at the top of the waterfalls.

On Tuesday we went back to the cafe in Rydal but this time I had a white hot chocolate with cream, marshmallows and a flake.  It was one of the nicest hot chocolates I’ve ever had in my life!  We parked at the cafe and walked into Ambleside.  I bought everyone a meal at the pub, where I had the same chicken makhani meal as before.  On Wednesday we went to Derwentwater and had cream scones and milkshakes at The Grange cafe.  Afterwards we walked around the village.  On Thursday we visited John Ruskin’s house at Brantwood, which was very interesting.  We walked round the gardens as well.  On Friday – our last full day – it rained very heavily so we didn’t do much.  We had been planning to walk up to Easedale Tarn again but it was too wet.  We had a meal at the Cumbria Carvery, bought some gingerbread at the Sarah Nelson gingerbread shop and then we walked to the top of Sour Milk Gill (the waterfall leading up to Easedale Tarn).

Several exciting things have been happening since we arrived back from our holiday.  On Tuesday last week, Anya received her GCSE exam results.  She did very well and she got 8 Grade A’s and a Distinction for ICT.  We went out for a meal at The Oaklands in the evening to celebrate.  It was a really nice carvery.  On Friday evening Mum and I saw Toy Story 3 at the cinema – unfortunately it wasn’t being shown in 3D, but we still really enjoyed it.  Afterwards we had a meal at Malaysian Delights.  On Saturday night I went clubbing with my friend Kay.  Today Terry and I went to Norfolk Lavender.  Disappointingly, the lavender fields weren’t open (as they’d already been ploughed) but we still walked around the gardens and farmyard, and we also had a snack in the cafe and I bought some lavender oils.  I also had a piece of lavender cake and a little tub of lavender ice cream, which was nice as lavender ice cream is very rare.

For the last month or so, we’ve been having a heatwave!  It hasn’t been quite so warm for the last 7 days, but before that it was very hot, with temperatures frequently reaching 30 degrees C.  Late last month, we went for a walk at Hoveton Hall Gardens, which was a nice way to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon.  One evening a couple of weeks ago, I bought Mum and Terry a meal at Malaysian Delights.

Last Sunday (probably the hottest day of the year so far) we went to the beach at Sheringham.  We sat on the beach for a while, but the tide soon came in, so we couldn’t sit there for too long.  It was amazing how quickly the tide came in!  We had a lovely walk around the town too.

The good thing is that it won’t be long until we go on holiday to the Lake District.  We will be staying at a holiday cottage in Grasmere.  We have stayed in Grasmere before (in 2004 and 2005) but this time we are staying in a larger cottage as my nieces Anya and Emily will be coming as well.  Near Sour Milk Ghyll there are 2 cottages side-by-side, and this year we will be staying in the larger of the two.

This week (on Wednesday evening) I went round my friend Naomi’s house.  We had an Indian takeaway and we watched the film Van Wilder.  The film was very funny and I enjoyed the evening.  Naomi’s sister Sarah was also there, as she is currently on holiday from university.  It was good to see them both again.

A few really bad things happened this week.  Firstly, our cat Holly has fleas, so we’ve had to spray the house to try and get rid of them.  Also, my step-dad Terry has really bad back pain.  It first started a few weeks ago when he was leaning over to cut the hedge.  He had back pain for a few days, but it wasn’t too bad and it soon went away.  However, on Thursday morning the pain came back with a vengeance. On Friday he could hardly move – he couldn’t walk very far and he couldn’t drive either.  As he can’t drive, he hasn’t been able to visit a chiropractor.  On Friday evening we looked through the Yellow Pages and Terry phoned a chiropractor and he was told to use a hot water bottle and an ice-pack on his back (alternating between them every few minutes).  The chiropractor said that eventually Terry should feel well enough to be able to drive their practice.

Late last week we heard the news that our local woodland could be cut down by property developers.  There is a link to an article about this in the local newspaper here.  If you scroll to the bottom of the article, you will see that I’ve added a comment of my own.  Everyone in my family is very upset and angry about the proposals, particularly my grandmother as she often walks her dog there.  Last Saturday we went for a walk through the woods – this could be our last chance to do so before the houses are built.  Fortunately, the proposals haven’t actually been given the go-ahead yet, and we are hopeful that the local planning authority will reject the plans.  Here is a link to some photos I took of the woods last week.

Work is still going well – I am currently working on new websites for several weekly London newspapers.

This has been one action packed month! So many things have happened that I’m not sure where to start!

On the 13th of May I attended the Norwich City football club victory parade with Mum, my sister Suzanne and my nieces Anya and Emily.  Norwich City came top of Division 1 and they are being promoted to the Championship for the new season.  I’m not really a football fan, but I like the atmosphere of the victory parades – the last one was in 2004.  We all had a good time.

The following weekend, we went on a bluebell walk at Blickling Hall.  I always enjoy going on bluebell walks and I took many photos.  A week later we spent an afternoon at Redwings Horse Sanctuary.  The weather has been nice and sunny recently, so we have been going out more frequently at the weekend.

Towards the end of May, I received some good news at work.  My manager told me that I’d successfully completed my 3-month probationary period and that from then on I would be officially treated as a permanent member of staff.  I was so happy!  In general, work is going very well.  In the last few weeks, I have been studying more JavaScript and jQuery.  I think I’m getting the hang of jQuery – some of the things you can do with it are very effective.

I’ve been out clubbing with my friend Kay twice in the last 2 weeks.  I really enjoyed going clubbing last week – I felt as if I was in an extra good mood and I enjoyed it more than I normally do.  Yesterday I went with Kay and some of our other friends to watch the England match at The Woolpack pub.  There was a photographer from the local newspaper, the Evening News and they took a photo of us in our England T-shirts.  This afternoon I got a call from Suzanne saying that she’d seen the photo on the Evening News website.  I was so happy when I found out that our photo had been used!  It will probably be published in the paper version of the Evening News tomorrow, so I will have to remember to buy a copy.

On Wednesday evening I went to the cinema with Mum and Anya to see Streetdance 3D.  It’s one of the best films I have seen for a long time.  It featured a lot of famous street dance acts from shows such as Britain’s Got Talent and Got To Dance, including Diversity, Flawless, George Sampson and Akai.  The soundtrack was very good and I enjoyed the story as well.

Overall, it’s been a very exciting month!

I’ve been feeling very cheerful recently, because of my new job and also because the weather has become warmer and sunnier over the last few days.   Following our long cold winter, all the snowdrops and crocuses are out, and it won’t be long until the daffodils are out too.   Last year, I felt that I couldn’t enjoy spring properly because so many bad things happened in March 2009.

Last week I had my Polopoly CMS training course at work, which went really well.  I also had my official corporate induction session where I learnt more about the history of the company and the staff benefits etc.  After my training, I was then allowed to start setting up websites on the live server (previously I was only allowed to work on the test server).  I’ve also been editing stylesheets for several of the new websites, which has been fun and it has given me the chance to improve my CSS skills.

A couple of weeks ago I bought some books about XHTML, JavaScript, Photoshop and using WordPress as a CMS.   I’ve been reading through these in the evenings and at weekends.  I feel like I’m learning something new every day, which is good as I love learning.  Tomorrow I start a training course on another system called Prestige, which is used for publishing news articles to websites.

As mentioned in my previous blog post, I’ve applied to do a Photoshop evening course at my local college.  I sent off my application form just over 2 weeks ago, but I haven’t heard anything yet.  I just hope that the course will still be running, as it said that it’s subject to demand.  Anyway, it doesn’t start until the end of April, so there’s still hope!

Last Thursday I attended a quiz and chips night with the IVC social club.  It was good fun – there were 10 separate rounds and I had chicken and chips for my meal.  One of the people on my table kept cracking funny jokes which made me laugh.  It’s one of the best quiz nights I’ve ever been to.  My team didn’t win anything (there were prizes for the top 3 teams, and there must have been at least 30 tables as the quiz night was held in a big school hall), but I think we finished somewhere in the middle.

Talking of the IVC, over the last few weeks I’ve been building a new website for the club.  I’ve pretty much finished it now and it’s currently on a test server, so I’m just waiting for the chairman to give me the go-ahead to transfer it to the live server.  The new site will use WordPress as a content management system, so it will be much easier to edit and maintain than the existing site, which is all hard-coded in HTML.  I’ve enjoyed doing that and it will also be a good thing to add to my portfolio.

For Mother’s Day (well, the Saturday evening before Mother’s Day) I bought Mum and Terry a meal at Malaysian Delights.  We hadn’t been there for several months, so it was good to go back again.  On Mother’s Day itself, my grandmother came round for tea (we had roast beef) and my sisters visited us to give Mum her cards and presents.

This weekend has been very quiet and I haven’t really done that much, but I’m hoping to go on some walks round some local gardens next weekend.

I’ve been through a rollercoaster of emotions over the past couple of weeks. The main events that have taken place were my 26th birthday and my leaving date for my old job.

My 26th birthday took place on Monday and I had the day off work. I went for a walk in Wymondham, where we visited the Creme Cafe for a milkshake and cake. I then bought a book of facts (well, questions and answers) from one of the local book shops. In the evening, we went out for a family meal at Mambo Jambos, which is one of my favourite restaurants in Norwich. The food was served very quickly and the meal was good – the only bad point was that the chicken was a bit chewier than normal.

My main birthday present this year was a Nintendo Wii, which came with a Mario Kart game and Wii Sports. I played the Mario Kart game round my sister Suzanne’s house during the Christmas holidays and I enjoyed it, so that’s why I wanted to get my own Nintendo Wii. Other presents included a new silver necklace from my Mum, a Lady Gaga CD from Suzanne and a book about the weather from my sister Sarah.

It was my last day of my old job yesterday. It felt really weird walking out of the office for the last time, knowing that I’d probably never walk through that doorway again. After nearly 5 years, leaving your employer behind is a big thing. I had mixed feelings about leaving, especially as I had been there for such a long time, and when I first started working there I thought that I would stay there for most of my career. I never realised that the industry/economy would change so much and that so many people would have to leave. I worked in several different departments while I was there, picking up lots of varied experience and meeting many nice co-workers along the way. I always felt well-respected by my peers and I received good feedback from my managers and internal customers. Overall, I think it was a good place to work, it was just a shame about the instability and the fact that there were so many re-structures. I felt sad to be leaving my colleagues behind, although nowadays it is much easier to stay in contact with people using sites such as Facebook and Linked In.

Having said that, I’m really looking forward to my new job, especially as it’s been my dream for many years to become a web developer. It will be a great new opportunity to me, and I’m pleased that I’ll be able to undertake more training.

On my penultimate day, my manager presented me with a leaving card signed by the whole department, and they had also organised a collection for me. My leaving present was a £30 Chapelfield gift card. I didn’t have one of those large presentations where all your colleagues gather around your desk and you have to make a leaving speech. My manager thought I’d find that too intimidating, so he took me to one side for 5 minutes and gave me the card and present privately. I was surprised, but in some ways I was relieved as I was worried that I might feel upset doing a big presentation. I remember my Mum saying that she had a big presentation when she retired from her typing job a couple of years ago, and she felt a bit tearful.
I spent my £30 gift card on a Super Mario game for my Nintendo Wii. It brought back memories of when I used to play Super Mario games 20 years ago – a lot of the characters and music are still the same.

On Friday 5th February, I went out for a big family meal at Zaks restaurant, to celebrate being offered my new job. I know that seems like quite late considering I was offered the job in early January, but that was the only date when the whole family was available and not working.

You may remember that last year I had my blog turned into a book by a company called Blurb. I decided to re-do it so that I could include all my blog entries from January 2005 up until December 2009, so that it would cover a full 5 years’ worth of blog entries. This time, I had 3 copies of the book printed, so that I could give copies to my sisters. I handed out the copies at our Zaks meal. Sarah has already read her copy from cover to cover – she said that she couldn’t put it down and she also said that I should be very proud of it.

On Sunday, I went on a snowdrop walk in the woods around Morton Hall. I had never been on that particular snowdrop walk before, and I really enjoyed it. I took a lot of photos which I have uploaded to my Flickr page. As it’s been very cold this winter, some of the snowdrops weren’t yet fully open, but it still looked pretty. I love the flowers of spring, especially daffodils, snowdrops, crocuses and bluebells.

It’s taken me a while to get round to updating my blog, and I’ve already mentioned this on my Twitter and Facebook updates, but I’ve found a new job! And I’ve fulfilled my dream of becoming a full-time web developer!

It was Monday night 3 weeks ago that I received a call from the interviewer, to say that I’d got the job. I was delighted, especially as it was a challenging recruitment process – in total there were 3 rounds of interviews and I also completed a programming test. The first interview was fairly generic, whereas the second interview focused on my ideas for the company’s website. The third interview was shorter – the interviewers asked me to talk them through my online portfolio, to explain how I built each of the websites I’d developed. At the end of the third interview, they set me the programming test. I was asked to do the test in my own time – it consisted of 7 pages of programming code in the Velocity content management system, and my task was to identify the error which was causing an image to appear in the wrong position on the website. I determined that the problem was due to an error in a loop. I emailed the answer to the interviewers and it was just a couple of days later that I received the phone call offering me the job.

I was so happy that I called all family and friends to tell them about my new job. They were all pleased for me. That night, I slept better than I had done for ages – I felt so happy that I had fulfilled one of my dreams, that I would no longer have to worry about searching for jobs, and that I would be working for a company which is (hopefully) more stable, so I won’t have to go through restructures every couple of years. Hopefully I will be more settled and happier in this new job.

I then faced a nerve-wracking wait for my offer letter and my contract to arrive through the post. Once I received my offer letter, I handed in my leaving letter to my existing employer. I say “leaving letter” because I’m not actually resigning, I’m just taking my redundancy a couple of months earlier than my agreed redundancy date. My manager was happy for me, although he was sad that I would be leaving. I sent out an email to all the people with whom I’ve worked over the last 4 and a half years, to let them know I’d be leaving the company. My manager and my co-workers wished me well in my new career. I received lots of nice emails, even from people I hadn’t worked with for over 3 years. It’s good to know they still remember me and that they still care. I plan to arrange a leaving party for my co-workers on the Friday after I leave the company.

As I was required to give 4 weeks’ notice, I won’t be leaving my current job until Wednesday 17th February, and then I will start my new job on the following Monday.

In the new job, I will be working for a local newspaper publisher, developing and maintaining their websites. My late grandfather (on my mother’s side of the family) used to work for that company, working on the printing presses, so it is good that I am following in his footsteps. I’ve always been interested in newspapers, and I never imagined I’d end up working for a newspaper publisher.

I will be having a celebration meal at Zaks with my family on Friday evening, and I’m really looking forward to that. I’ve also had more copies of my blog book printed (covering January 2005 to December 2009) and I will give these to my sisters on Friday evening, as they asked for copies of their own. These arrived today and I’m pleased with how they turned out.

This has been one of my favourite Christmas weeks for several years! There are several reasons for this: last year the whole family was ill so I couldn’t enjoy myself properly and this made me more determined to enjoy Christmas this year. It was also good to be able to chill out after all that’s been going on over the last few weeks.

On Christmas Day I stayed at home with Mum and Terry and we had our turkey meal at home. In the morning, my sisters came round to bring their presents.

My main present this year was a new MP3 player. I actually already knew this before Christmas Day, as I went to the shop to help choose which one I wanted. I had outgrown my old 1gb MP3 player, so I wanted one which would hold more songs. My new one is 32gb and can hold 16,000 songs as well as videos! It is a Creative Zen, just like my previous one. I’ve already transferred a lot of my old songs and CDs to my new MP3 player.

My other presents included several CDs and DVDs, a couple of books, new earrings, a new winter coat, a new umbrella, a coffee mug and some chocolate. One of my new DVDs was the film Ice Age 3, so we watched that in the afternoon after dinner. I never had a chance to see it at the cinema, but I thought it was a good film even though I slightly preferred the first 2 films.

Boxing Day was fun, too. We spent most of the day at my sister Suzanne’s house, where we had roast beef for dinner. For dessert, I had chocolate cheesecake that Suzanne’s husband Paul had made. After dinner, we played on the Nintendo Wii. My niece Emily had a Mario Kart game and a Wii Fit. I’d never played the Mario Kart game before and it was really funny because I kept crashing into things (especially towards the beginning, before I got used to it) and I came last in a lot of the races! The Wii Fit was funny too – I’ve played some of the games before round my friend Naomi’s house. The step aerobics game was the funniest, as I found it difficult to keep up with all the moves, especially towards the end when it got faster. Everyone in the room was laughing, and the time went really fast because I was enjoying myself so much! I’m now hoping to get a Wii for my birthday!

I am off work until the 4th of January, so tomorrow morning I will visit Wymondham with Terry and my niece Anya. We will go for a walk round the town, take some photos and visit the local cafe for a milkshake.

The last few days have been very exciting, with several good things happening. Firstly, my Dad and step family have come over to visit from Thailand. They originally moved to Thailand in April 2006, as mentioned in my old blog entries here and here. Until last week, I hadn’t seen them for 2 years, so I was very pleased to see them all again. I was on holiday from work last week, so I was able to go out with my Dad and step family – on Tuesday we visited some friends and relatives, on Wednesday we went to Yarmouth and on Thursday we went to Sheringham and Hemsby. I like being by the coast, although it was too cold to sit on the beach. On Sunday we had a carvery at a restaurant in Hethersett, with Dad’s friend Alan and his wife. I went back to work yesterday, and fortunately there wasn’t too much of a backlog. My Dad and step family won’t go back to Thailand until Monday though, so I will still be able to see them this weekend.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been hard at work on my new online portfolio. Yes, I’m still a bit worried about what I will be doing in terms of a job next year, as there’s a chance my secondment will end in April and as my previous department was involved in a re-structure, I have no other job to return to. So I thought it would be a good idea to get my portfolio sorted out early. My online portfolio is mainly focussed on my web development and programming work, although I also have my CV and testimonials from co-workers on there, so I can mention it in just about any job application.
The website is almost complete now, in fact all I have left to do is finish the testing. During my testing I discovered that the layout doesn’t work well in Internet Explorer 6 – in fact it looked completely ridiculous in IE6! This created extra work for me, as I had to set the site up so that the default WordPress theme is displayed for IE6 users. The default WordPress theme (Kubrick) is very boring, but at least it seems to display correctly in all major browsers. Some people may say “Why bother catering for IE6 users at all, if they can’t be bothered to upgrade?”. Unfortunately, many internet users are forced to use IE6 and they have no choice in the matter – for example, where I work, everyone has to use IE6 on their office PC and we’re not allowed to install any other software. Of course, on my home PC I can install whatever I want. I imagine the situation is the same at many other major companies. Therefore, I have to be careful to ensure that my site is accessible for everyone. Once the site is fully tested and I’m happy with everything, I will put the link on a Twitter update.

On Monday my step-dad Terry bought a new LCD TV for the lounge. It is an LG with a 37-inch screen and built-in Freeview. It’s much bigger than the old CRT screen we used to have and the picture is clearer too.

I arrived home from my holiday on Saturday. I had a really good time in the Lake District with my family and I was sad when it was time to go home. As you will see from my previous blog entries, I was able to update my Twitter status whilst on holiday, so I’ve got a record of what I did each day.

We stayed in a holiday cottage in Torver, a small village near Coniston. The weather was rather wet for the first week of the holiday, but the second week wasn’t quite so bad. We spent most of the holiday going on long walks rather than visiting indoor attractions such as stately homes/halls and castles etc. There were 2 walks which I particularly enjoyed – there were some woods not far from the cottage where we were staying which led down to Coniston Water, the local lake. We went on that walk several times and we also hired a boat for a couple of hours. My favourite walk of all was in the area surrounding Aira Force – this was a very beautiful area full of trees, streams and waterfalls. I’ve been to many places in the Lake District, but Aira Force seemed extra special. We also visited several nice restaurants and cafes during the course of the holiday.

One thing which made this holiday different to my previous holidays was that other members of the family came to stay with us as well, so it wasn’t just me, Mum and Terry. It was just us 3 for the first few days of the holiday but on the first Wednesday, Suzanne and her husband Paul and my nieces Anya and Emily came to stay. There was a large open loft area above the dining room, and Suzanne and Paul slept there on an airbed. Anya and Emily slept in a bedroom with twin beds. The cottage had 3 bedrooms in total, plus the loft area. Suzanne, Paul and Anya had to go home on Sunday due to other commitments, but Emily stayed with us until the end.

Several funny things happened on this holiday:
1. When Suzanne and Paul were on their way to stay with us, their satnav misdirected them to the entrance to the Coniston ferry. Once you are in the queue, you can’t turn round, so they had to pay to use the ferry.
2. One day we got up at 6am to go on the walk from Grasmere up to the Easdale Tarn, but when we arrived at the Grasmere car park it started raining really heavily, so we ended up sitting in the car for over an hour! We didn’t actually start the walk until 10am.
3. When we arrived at Easedale Tarn, Emily was holding one of the large umbrellas. All of a sudden, there was a really strong gust of wind and Emily nearly got blown into the tarn as she was holding on to the umbrella! The spokes of the umbrella ended up broken.
4. On the way back down from Easedale Tarn, Suzanne and Anya both fell into some water at the bottom of the mountain, in front of other people who were waiting to go through the gate.
5. Just as we were about to go through the gate near the entrance to the farm at Easedale, the grumpy farmer told us off! He said to Terry, “Are you having difficulty in reading? Do you think you own the Lake District and you can walk anywhere you like?” Because of this, we couldn’t walk past the farm and we had to walk by the stream instead, which was badly flooded. People kept falling in the water and at one point Paul was holding onto a branch of a tree. Anya was really grumpy as she fell in the water a couple of times, and she had a really fed-up look on her face. Luckily I didn’t fall in, although my walking boots were very wet after having to wade through the stream.
6. Mum bought a big bag of nuts for the birds outside our cottage. We kept the bag of nuts on the windowsill in the lounge. One morning when we woke up, there were nuts in our walking boots and some of them were scattered on the floor in the lounge. No one knows how they got there, so we think it must have been someone sleepwalking.
7. Mum fell asleep in the lounge while we were all watching the X Factor. She had a really miserable look on her face. Everyone was laughing but she didn’t hear us. Then Terry tapped her on the shoulder and she awoke with a start and she shrieked really loudly. This made everyone laugh even more.
8. One day we went for a walk near Torver Beck. There were some sheep on the other side of the hedge and we could hear one of them baaing in a weird way. It sounded like a bit like a gurgling noise. I’d never heard a sheep make a noise like that before and it made me laugh. Mum said it was probably trying to eat at the same time.
9. The power shower in the bathroom at the cottage made a strange humming noise whenever anyone used it.
10. One evening we went to the pub in Coniston for a meal, and a large group of old men (they were mainly men, but there were a few women as well) came in. They were very noisy and they were congregating all around the bar area. They were all wearing T shirts with strange slogans on them, such as “hasher with large weapon”.
11. Emily and I had profiteroles for dessert at the pub. They were served in a tall sundae glass rather than a bowl, which made them more difficult to eat. So we both ended up getting the chocolate sauce on our chins.

You can see photos of my holiday on my Flickr page.

Overall, July was a pretty good month. I’m feeling a lot more settled and happier in my job now, especially now that we’ve had a few team social events, so I feel that I know the other members of the team better. In May I was feeling enthusiastic about starting my new job as it was a fresh start and a chance to try something new, but in June I have to admit I did start to miss my old job and my old department. During June, there were even some moments where I wished I could go back to my old job. In July we had a team evening out at the local bowling alley, and we also went out for lunch together one Friday. I really enjoyed that.

I also feel more confident about the work itself, and I’ve been given the opportunity to work on projects I enjoy, such as helping to develop the team’s intranet site and building self-service reports in Oracle Discoverer, in addition to the normal monthly and ad-hoc reports. I had my mid-year appraisal recently and I received positive feedback, so I’m happy about that. For all the above reasons, I feel happier now and the negative feelings I had in June have disappeared. Most of the people in my old department who were made redundant have now actually left, so even if I could go back to my old job, it would never be the same again anyway as a lot of my favourite people are no longer there.

A couple of weeks ago, I was scared that there might be a re-structure in my new department later this year, so I started looking for other jobs. I found a few internal jobs that interested me and I was thinking of applying for them. I even started filling in the application form for one of them. I also found an online advert for an entry-level web developer job (via an employment agency) and I submitted my CV. However, a few days later I was relieved when we had a team meeting and the manager said that even if there was a re-structure, it probably wouldn’t be until the end of 2010. My secondment contract ends in April 2010 anyway. Because of that, I decided not to apply for any of the internal jobs. As for the web developer job, nothing came of it anyway – I think that might be because I mentioned in my covering email that I wouldn’t be able to start until September, and the agency probably wanted someone who could start immediately. I never actually heard anything from the agency, other than an automated email to say that they’d received my application.

As for all the other things I’ve been up to during July, they’re mentioned in my weekly Twitter update posts, so there’s no point in me going through them all again, especially as that would take me a very long time.

Yesterday I bought a new mobile phone – a Nokia XpressMusic 5800. I can safely say it’s the best phone I’ve ever had – it has a touch-screen and it can hold 8GB of music and other files. I now no longer need to have a separate MP3 player, as I can listen to music on my phone instead. My old MP3 player could only hold 1GB worth of songs anyway! It is also WiFi enabled so I should be able to connect to the internet in cafes and other similar public places. At other times, I can use the standard 3G connection.

It’s now less than 2 weeks until my holiday in the Lake District! I’m getting really excited! This time, the whole family is coming – in addition to Mum and Terry, my sister Suzanne, her husband Paul and my nieces Anya and Emily will all be coming to stay over in the holiday cottage for a few days.