Mark Dalton

Okay so after being Duty Manager last weekend I was due to be off Friday, but I had arranged a meeting and felt it ride to cancel so switched my day off to today. I thought I’d pop into town, do a little clothes shopping and pay some cheques into the bank.

Well, curve ball! I woke up about 05:00 must be getting old as this is becoming a regular habit and thought it was a little cold. The heating was just coming on so I didn’t think anything of it. I returned to bed knowing that I didn’t need to get up and promptly fell right back off to sleep.

08:00 I woke up again, why is it when I have time off I can’t lay in? Any how I thought Mmmm that’s cold, so did the scientific test to confirm. Foot out of the duvet and Brrrrrr cold status confirmed. Stretched my foot to the radiator, OUCH HOT!

Something was obviously wrong. So I had to investigate.

So plans out of the window I settled on the sofa, turning the heating up (bugger the cost, I don’t do cold) and commenced watching unemployed TV. Twenty minutes later, mind suitably numb I settled on getting on with some paperwork.

About 15:00 I wandered (read stumbled trying to look dignified) up to Mum & Dad’s house to find Mum, Dad, Katrina, and the kids all snuggled up in the lounge. Nobody had been able to get to where they needed to be.

You can check out the rest of the pictures over at http://www.flickr.com/photos/markdalton/

Well a little while ago I was contacted by Schmap an online guide/map site, asking if they could use a picture I took at the Southampton Boat Show in September 2008.

Well they emailed me this week to say that they had used it and that it could be seen at there site here.

The Original photo can be seen over on Flickr by following this Link.

So another year and another Christmas Hangover. This year we all spent Christmas day at Katrina & Rob’s which was nice as we got to see Eleanor and William open there Christmas Presents.

Mum & Dad went down Christmas Eve and I drove down Christmas morning just in time for breakfast. William and Eleanor had been up since 06:00 and had already opened all there presents from Santa, but there were still plenty of presents under the Christmas tree.

William was very excited and really didn’t know what to play with first. Katrina cooked a wonderful Christmas dinner with all the trimmings and we all ate far to much as usual.

After dinner Rob played Santa and handed out the Presents from around the tree and in traditional fashion we took it in turns to open them. William was exhausted by about 17:30 and headed off to bed. We eventually finished up about 19:00.

After supper we sat around talking and drinking until about midnight. William slept right through until 08:00 Boxing day morning and was almost the last one up.

Boxing day was an opportunity for William and Eleanor to open the remaining presents. William was still very tired, but so were the rest of us. We all enjoyed the traditional Boxing day dinner before heading home. Check out the rest of the photo’s here.

Okay the problems with Permalinks and WordPress 2.7 continue to annoy me. I have scoured the WordPress forums and it would seem that I am not the only person suffering, but there doesn’t appear to be a solution, well that I can find, at present.

Playing around I have found that the default permalinks setting allows everything to function correctly, it just doesn’t look very pretty. It also means that the gallery doesn’t work as the plugin requires anything but the default permalinks setting to function. So for now I have disabled the Photo Gallery. If you are looking for my photo’s you can still find them over at Flickr.

So on the 25th November the youngest member of the family, Eleanor, reached the grand old age of 1. As her birthday was mid week it was decided to get together on Sunday for a family meal at Mum and Dad’s ane celebrate the occasion. Lisa and Andy came down with the “bump” and after watching Eleanor assisted by William (well mainly William) open presents, we all enjoyed a nice roast beef Sunday lunch.

It was a really nice day as we all got to catch up and everybody got to tell me off for not updating my blog.

Anyway the photo’s are currently uploading to Flickr and should be available in my photo stream or via the gallery by the time you read this.

[Updated] Photo’s now in the Gallery and on Flickr