Back in London on Sunday

 We were in London again on Sunday.  It was my old friend Markus' 50th birthday get together at his rowing club in the afternoon, followed by walking under the Thames to Greenwich and meeting Shaheen and the kids for an early tea.

Fuck Glastonbury, Iron Maiden!

 Iron Maiden on Saturday.  Brilliant.  We randomly went with a friend from the pub and a friend's friend.

Which one shall I wear?

On the way in

360 view

West Ham

Iron Maiden buddies

New laser pointer

I bought a new infrared heat sensor for the pizza oven and it has an attached laser pointer so that you can tell where it's pointing.  The first thing I did was take the temperature of Florence's bum.  Then used it for it's most fun use.  Tormenting Arwen.

 

Flostonbury

 Having missed her singing lesson Florence decided to put on a show for us.  4 songs,  followed by an encore. She made us all tickets and we had allocated seating.

Lunch with Flo

 April took Arthur to a birthday party so I asked Flo what she wanted for lunch.  She said Thai, so I took her round the corner.  Just as the food turned up I got a call April reminding that Flo had a rearranged singing lesson.  Doh!  Oh well.

School concert

 I missed the sports day on Friday but I made the school concert.

Pizza time

The kids got back all hot and sweaty on Friday after their sports day.  I made them pizza.

Cat on a hot slate roof

 Not sure where her arms are.  She seems to have melted into the roof

Bike stand

 With a little bit of help with me, April installed two bike racks at the back of the house.  Our two bike will sit on there and the kids bikes will sit underneath once the cover is placed over them. 

New roulette dice

 A new set of dice arrived yesterday, this one is a mini roulette table.  Only one left on my kickstarter list.  The hover dice.

Two new purchases

 I've got Shaheen and his kids over next weekend for the Black Sabbath gig (streamed at home) so have bought a large metal ice bucket.  I've also got myself a replacement ramen bowl for the one that April broke...

Glad I could help

 I had a message from a my best friend from Uni this morning asking for help with excel.  It's about the 3rd or 4th time i've helped him out.

I really don't mind, as it's usually nothing complicated.  These days I generally don't get to play around with excel so much when I go to a new company, processes are usually well established so I just have to go through the motions and update the data.  Everything in theory flops out at the other end wth limited interaction.

It's nice to use parts of my brain that don't get used very often.  

Below 13.5 stone

 Lowest weight in my adult history this morning.  85.65kg!  That's just under 13.5 stone.  The most i've weighed on these scales 96.20kg.  Nearly 1.7 stone lighter!

Wobble board fun

 

Flo running

Flo does junior park run on Sunday mornings and it's my job to take her. She has to run 2k.  Not her best time (almost 2min slower than her pb), but she did ride over to the course before hand and it was bloody hot.  I think she only really wants to do it as we go to a cafe afterwards for a treat!

Double booked

With Royal Ascot earlier in the day we had to shoot back to Tonbridge for our friends Stuart and Lesley's joint birthday parties.  A combined age of 100!  They were supposed to do a 40th / 50th 5 years ago but Covid put a stop to that. 

Anyway, we made it, but didn't have time to get changed.  We walked past my pub and got a good laugh from the landlord Jon!  I like to do my bit and makes sure everybody is happy.

Royal Enclosure at Royal Ascot

 Well, that was an experience!  One of our friends at the rugby club is a member of the Royal Enclosure at Ascot and has been going for 20+ years, she's allowed to bring guests so invited another couple of couples.  Other than being insanely hot being all dressed up all day it was such good fun.

The royals were there and did a horse drawn cart parade before the racing started but we had better things to do and missed that.

The amount of money on show is ridiculous.  We're certainly not poor, but would have easily been in the bottom 1%. But, bottom 1% of the top 1% isn't bad.  If you add everything up it was probably a £600 day (each!).

Tickets £207.50

Booze £140+

Suit hire £200

Food £30

Gambling £30 (not bad considering I know nothing about it)

Child minding ?

Car park

End of the day

Winner, £30 net loss overall.  I call that a sucess!

Idiots

All dressed up

Not sure what we're laughing at

The three amigos

Our spot

Ramen

I had to drop off  my suit and hat for Ascot at the hire place on Sunday so we all went into Tunbridge Wells for the afternoon.  We went to Wagamamas for lunch.  There was an option to try a new Vietnamese place but Flo insisted.  She loves ramen!

I've made it a few times at home and have had some mixed success.  I think I just need practice.  April bought me 2 ramen bowls for Christmas a couple of years ago but then broke one a couple of days later (promising to get me a new one, never has...).  I'm fed up waiting so have ordered another today.  I'll make one during the week.

Royal sightings

 One of the group i'm going to Ascot with went earlier in the week too.  Nothing like mixing with the hoi polloi

Turns out i'm now an esquire!  "A rank in the British social hierarchy"

New additions to the garden

 We had the gardeners around this week and they've installed a bird bath and a water butt (not that we'll get any water in it anytime soon.  They put in some new plants too!

It's alive!

The juke box is finally operational again.  It's been out of action for around 6 weeks. It only cost £250 in the end so not the end of the world.  I think it's been updated to windows 10 so that might help.

Suit picked up early

 My suit was available early so decided to pick it up early whilst I was in town.

Two separate friends say I look like Phil Mitchell. 

It's safe, honest...

 Flo refused to balance the egg on her head, but did volunteer to be my beautiful assistant.  Not sure what I was expecting but a little anticlimactic. 

Artillery shell

 Someone at work appears to be using an artillery shell as a water bottle!  It's basically a magnum.

Here's another idiot back in 2019!

https://www.watdefu.com/2019/10/big-gulp.html

New bike

 With the kids both riding bikes now I can't keep up with them walking to school.  I bought my own new bike and picked it up this afternoon.  We tested all our bikes out on a family ride this afternoon.

Insect shotgun mother fucker!

 I received this father's day present from the kids (April).  It's brilliant.  We get a fair few flies in the house being so close to the river and leaving the back door open of the animals to do their business.

Cricket with Arthur

April usually takes Arthur to his cricket training on Sundays but today we had a change of plan. I took him.  He plays over in Leigh, a village about 10 mins drive away.  

Nirvana cover band

 We went to see a Nirvana cover band last night and they were a lot of fun.  Really enjoyed it!