Mark Dalton

Christmas was a quiet affair this year with just Mum, Dad, and I sitting down for Christmas dinner. Boxing day however was anything but as Katrina, Rob, Rob”s Mum, William, and Eleanor came to visit and proved that Christmas is all about the children.

Even though I had a chest infection (read Man Flu) I still had to take my turn having invisible cups of tea and falling down when shot with either a machine gun or a ray gun. All in all it was great fun and watching the kids open there presents was priceless. They really didn”t know what to play with first. Mum and Dad, as always, were excellent hosts and ensured we all had everything we could possibly want.

All the photo”s I took are now available in the Photo Gallery and on Flickr.

Well somewhat of a different start to the holiday season this year when I decided last minute to join a bunch of online friends in Liverpool for what is affectionally known as a TweetUp. I have been chatting to most of these people for a while now and when the chance came up to meet them face to face I thought it was a great idea and a brilliant way to start of the festive season.

I worked from home on the Friday as I didn””t fancy doing the commute in and out of London to then drive up to Liverpool and it was a good job I did as I woke Friday morning to a dusting of snow. I set off late afternoon and made good time only stopping a couple of quick comfort break””s and was checked in, unpacked, and in the bar by 19:30.

The weekend was spent chatting over beer, food, and the odd cup of coffee, about a variety of subjects from emerging technologies to Christmas plans. We did manage to get out and about a little bit and see a few of Liverpool””s landmarks but it was very cold and we did tend to break the touring up with beer breaks on a regular basis, so didn””t cover quite as much as we could of, but we did make it to the Apple store.

I also managed to meet up with Don McAllister the host of ScreenCastsOnline and The Mac ScreenCast Guy. Don was just as nice in the flesh as he is online and had some great insights and views on upcoming technologies. I also manage to meet up with three of my oversea””s contacts, Jane from Australia who was visiting family in the UK for Christmas, Paul Shadwell who flew in especially from Zurich who is very knowledgeable on Virtualisation and hosted services, and David Allen who also flew in especially from Barcelona, who run””s amongst other things the Mac 20 Questions website.

A great time was had by all and I think its fair to say that some good friendships were cemented in the process. Not to mention we all got a ScreenCastsOnline cap Most people left Sunday morning but I had arranged to stay another night, which in hindsight wasn””t such a good idea, although it did allow me to do a little extra Christmas shopping and see a little more of the city.

Monday morning I checked out and headed for home and made good time until I hit Newbury where it had been snowing and snowing pretty hard. As I came down the A339 it was bumper to bumper traffic and nothing was moving. It took me 7.5 hours to get from Newbury to my home in Basingstoke, 5.5 hours of that was spent crossing Basingstoke itself. I have personally never seen anything like it, and Basingstoke made the national news with 2000-3000 people affected. It took 3-4 to clear completely but luckily I didn””t have to go further than my parents around the corner, which was safer to reach on foot. I was lucky however as poor Paul Shadwell got to Manchester airport on Sunday to find it shut down, and finally made it back to Zurich on Wednesday after travelling down to London””s Heathrow airport.

The week started out as busy as usual. All the normal escalation’s and expectations, but by the end of the week things had quietened down. The normal jesting took place as Mark R was duty manager and while there was some high profile work taking place it all had been reasoned out and confidence was pretty high.

I woke up as at 06:00 on Saturday morning, you get used to waking up at a certain time and I think the body just gets accustomed to it, but decided to go back to bed for a couple of hours as it was Saturday and Mum and Dad weren’t due until 09:00. As I lay there thinking about the day ahead the door bell went and Dad was standing on the door step. Bugger! I had set the alarm clock, I just hadn’t changed the setting that restricts it to workdays only (Blackberry). After letting him in, having a quick smoke and a glass of juice I hit the shower and was ready by 09:30. Mum had popped out for lunch provisions and had taken Dad’s work shoes with her so we weighed up what we were going to do and it what order. Time was passing by and we set about clearing the piles of branches I had built up from last weekend into the skip. Mum arrived about 15 minutes later with provisions and the missing shoes and immediately chipped in with clearing the decks.

Once all the debris was cleared we agreed that we would take one tree at a time (starting on the left of the picture). The first tree was the “test” as we hadn’t really got into any kind of pattern, but after a little trimming with the “loppers” and a “bow saw” Dad had with him we were able to get a clean cut and it came down missing our heads by at least a millimetre. We broke it down and carried it through the hallway that Dad had covered with sheets while I was in the shower and threw it into the skip trying to use the space as well as we could.

As we moved through the line of trees they got a little smaller, we all put on our expert gardener hats and summarised that these hadn’t got as much space as the ones at the ends, and coupled with a lack of sunlight hadn’t grown as much, thankfully. We worked hard bring each tree down, cutting it up and throwing it into the skip.

We were probably two-thirds of the way through the left hand row when the chain saw threw the chain and everything came to a halt. Well, not quite everything as Mum continued chopping up the last fallen tree and carried it through to the skip (My Mum’s a hero but wont admit it). Dad and I eventually took the chain saw to bits and managed to put it together again and agreed that we would need a new chain after the last tree.

So I ducked out to B&Q picked up a new chain, together with some more chain saw oil and a new set of loppers. After having the chain saw apart once it took about 5 minutes to replace the new chain and refill the oil.

We had by this time taken all the tree’s down on the left hand side and had also filled up the skip and started to pile the reminder on the drive.

At some point we had stopped for lunch and Mum as always managed to come up with some beautiful ham salad rolls that were inhaled rather than eaten.

We continued through the afternoon attacking the trees that were growing along the back fence. To start with they were pretty simple as they were quite thin.

As we got the final three trees things started to get interesting. Not quite sure why, but guessing it was due to the ground underneath, but the trees were leaning backwards and were top heavy. When I say to heavy of course they were top heavy in one direction, the wrong direction. There was a large tree that was right over a neighbours green house and the fear was that one wrong move and I would have a very expensive glass bill. There wasn’t much choice however and my Dad eventually put the ball in my court.

“We can do it but their might be some damage. Got the cheque book handy?”

Not much I could say really, they needed to come down and if they didn’t, the situation wasn’t going to get any better! So I said yes and we went for it!

The greenhouse was safe, but there was one branch that must have been seven foot long that as we took down I just couldn’t get a grip on. I yelled out to Dad and there was nothing we could do. As luck happened he (the neighbour) had some bamboo canes in to support the growing of runner beans, and the branch rested nicely on the top of the supporting structure. Dad made the final cut with the chain saw and it was free. Between the two of us we were able to wrestle the branch straight up and back into my garden. Phew!

The final tree was before us and we once again had to figure out how we were going to tackle this one. There was one “really large” branch that reached over into another neighbours garden, and there was no way the tree was coming down where we wanted it to without taking the branch off first. So we worked out our positions, I was going to take the weight and Dad was going to cut!

As the last buzz of the chain saw echoed the branch parted from the tree and I was lifted clean of the ground. I am not fat fat but it lifted my 12 stone clean. If you can, picture me holding on to a tree branch that is pivoting on the top of a fence panel with my knees bent. Dad dumped the chain saw and added his weight an between us we were able to lever the branch back over to my garden and land it.

Hell we were tired and if we weren’t so close to finishing I think we would have called it a day at that point!

Now for the final tree. We had done as much as we could but it was still going to be tough. It was leaning in the wrong direction, was heavy, and we were tired. We went for it!

As discussed Dad started a horizontal cut, starting high on my side and working down. As practised so many times before this would cause the tree to slip down where I could throw my weight behind it and direct it. As we reached the final part of the cut I called out moving stuck my weight behind it and pushed the tree in the direction we had discussed.

As the blade slipped through the last two millimetres the weight of the tree shifted and so did I automatically. I moved my right leg back to take the weight and my left leg forward straight into the path of the chain saw blade.

“STOP” I yelled, and Dad took his finger of the power. The chain saw had gone through my trousers on the inner left thigh, with my grubby hands I pulled the material out of the way. It didn’t look to bad, just a little bloody so I said let’s finish. Dad finished the cut with the chain saw and we brought the tree down. Then my leg stung!

I limped back to the house, dropped my trousers, and Mum grabbed the first aid kit. It was a messy wound but not deep so we stuck on a padded bandage and Mum went to get her car to drive me to the hospital.

I was seen my the triage nurse who said it would need cleaning out and stitches and then my the doctor who administered some local numbing magic. A nurse came in a spent 40 minutes washing it out before I was stitched up and sent home.

Mum had come back up and dropped me off at home before heading off out for a fish and ship supper. We were all to tired to cook and I don’t think any of us enjoyed it when it did arrive. We were all very tired and the adrenaline had worn off, so we had a beer and then I headed home limping.

Today I had a really long lay in and have spent the day resting with my leg up, but looking back we achieved a lot and I really am thankful for Mum & Dad’s help. The garden looks so much bigger and has really got me thinking about what I am going to do next.

But that is another story!

On the 28th May 2009 I got another year older. It comes to us all in the end, but this year there was something different, I couldn”t quite put my finger on it but then it hit me, I feel older. I don”t quite know why, maybe because last year I was partying in Thailand (A Long Story), maybe because I see my little sister with two children, maybe just because I am, but it did hit me. Now don”t worry I am not about to go all circumspect and start analysing my life, I”ll leave that for the book you can all “Pay For”, but it did make me think. It made me think what I should do to celebrate.

Well, I am not a big Birthday person, it”s just another day as far as I am concerned, but I decided to do something relaxing so I booked the Thursday & Friday off work which gave me a long weekend. Thursday I met up with “a friend” for lunch and then Thursday night met up with some of the lads for a good drinking session. This is where I was reminded that I am not 21 as after 4 or 5 drinks all I could think about was bed. The guy”s all had work the following day and had to drive so they all had to ensure they were safe, so we ended up grabbing some dinner and then heading for home. It was a good night and it was great to see them all, but we have committed to a “good drink” in the near future as we all realised that we were how do you say it “Maturing”, we will leave it at that.

Friday morning I went on a little shopping trip and treated myself to a few items, more about that later. Friday evening I met up with Dad and we went for a mini pub crawl around Basingstoke. We put the world to rights as normal and complained about the tax man, and the worked out what we would do “WHEN” we win the lottery.

Saturday and Sunday after I decided that I had spent enough time prevaricating about what I was going to do with the Garden I set to work tackling what has affectionally become known as the Jungle.

I decided that everything was to far gone to just trim and tidy up, plus the fences all need renewing and everybody that had looked was quoting silly prices, I guess because everything was such a mess. I started out trimming the bushes and hedges with the trusty flymo hedge trimmer but after an hour or so realised I wasn”t getting any where fast. Action was needed! That could only mean one thing! Power Tools!. So I headed for the local suicide store and picked myself up something that I knew would get the job done, A CHAIN SAW. Well, it didn”t let me down. It made quick work of everything it came into contact with and by the end of the weekend I felt that I had made good progress. I had to medium piles of cuttings and then realised that I needed to figure out how I was going to get rid of the stuff. At this point there really wasn”t any turning back and I needed to get my serious hat on, and decided on a skip. I started to try and break down the piles I had created, but I am just not used to this physical work and was to tired so called it a day.

I met up with Mum and Dad and after they had seen what I had done and I explained the plans the graciously volunteered to help out this Saturday. Both insisted on a early start, which generally isn”t in my nature, but I was grateful of the offer and accepted. Monday morning I ordered the skip and Thursday morning it was delivered.

Now I warned you I was getting old and this I think is a prime example of old age. I am now getting exited by buying power tools, chopping down hedges, and hiring skips.

So following on from last weeks Duty Manager shift I had this Friday off so a nice short week. Of course that is a good thing but not without its own problems, as I still have the same amount of work to get through. The evenings therefore were pretty much a write-off as I just didn’t have the energy or the inclination to do anything more then eat and vegetate in front of the TV. The thought of a long weekend however kept me going.

Thursday night I met up with Chris Scott, and Leon, part of the crowd I went to Mumbia and Goa with. We had a few beers at the Globe on London Wall. We chatted about the Mumbia and Goa trip, and the time Chris and I had spent in India. We talked about there plans to climb Kilimanjaro this year, only teasing Leon a little about some of the nasty things that could happen. The guy’s tried to persuade me to join them, but I managed to change the subject (Lucky Escape).

Friday, after a little lay in, I got on with tidying the house up a little and caught up with some paper work. I finished running the new Cat 6 cables in the study to the new Gigabit switch and finished tidying up some of the cabling, although I am still not 100% happy and will need to do this again once I have picked up some cable ties.

Saturday I had arranged to meet up with Dave Birkett for a few beers so walked into town. I have been looking for way’s to hook up with Sony SR7E HandyCam to use as a web cam with my iMac so headed into the iStore and the Sony shop to see how I could do it. The guy’s in the iStore seemed to think it could be done via a simply USB connection but didn’t know what cable I would need so I checked with the guy’s in the Sony store. They explained that the camera couldn’t be used in that way as it didn’t support it, but did say it would be possible with some form of external device that allowed you to take the feed straight off the sensor and encode it in real time. So back to the drawing board on that one. Feeling dejected I set off to meet Dave and lets just say several hours later, and a lot worse for wear I made it home.

Today is another house catch up day with a bit of relaxing mixed in before work tomorrow. Next week however I really have got to start on sorting some of the bigger jobs out at home.