Spent the October half term holidays in Sorrento, Italy. The week before we went, temperatures were in the mid 20s, people were swimming, sunbathing, having fun. We arrived on the Friday evening descending through the clouds (luckily we were on a plane at the time). By Sunday it was windy, rainy, sleet was falling and on Mount Vesuvius snow had fallen and covered the top!

Despite the weather we had a great time, visiting Herculaneum, Pompeii, climbing Vesuvius, going on a bus trip round the Amalfi coast etc. (By the way best way to do all this is via the very reasonable public transport system - 5 euros for a 24hour bus ticket for the Amalfi coast and 3.70 euros to take the train to Pompeii, Herculaneum etc. Good fun too.

Now it's back to work tomorrow, then teaching on a Tuesday night again - got a nice class this term though.

Okay enough waffle from me.

Here's some questions for all of you...

1. What's the worst weather you've ever had on holiday?

2. If you could visit any place on earth that you haven't visited yet where would you go?

3. The Amalfi drive is an amazing cliff top road full of hair pin bends, if you were to drive it, what vehicle would you like to use?

Have a great week, take care. Sorry I've been slow responding - life is so busy at the moment, thank you all for your friendship though.

Mark

Clubs:

The last few months have been quite busy and creative - filming and editing a dvd for our friends who live away; at work using illustrator to document our new computer room, and now my latest and biggest project - to set up an arts group in our area. This will cover as many types of art as I can get interest in - in fact just been talking with my son about the possibility of a trash percussion band! Loadsa fun.

Anyway, no doubt tell you more as things progress.


22/1/2007

Just spent the evening trying to paint a watercolour and failing miserably! Think I need to get a little more practice - warmed up with a nice little autumnal tree - no problem, but I seem to have forgotten how to paint skies - oh no! Maybe I should just pretend that the dreadful efforts I've produced tonight are actually abstracts!

Perhaps the fact that I've got the absolutely perfect DVD of Queen with Paul Rodgers on has distracted me, or somehow sapped all my strength, or maybe drumming along to "Hammer to Fall" with a pair of wet brushes isn't such a good idea.

Of course it could just simply be that I've become talentless

Take care

Have fun

Clubs:

After decades of hiding behind facial hair, I've finally done the unthinkable, my beard is no more - I am now a fully paid up member of the clean-shaven members of the human race.

This is not without its problems, my favourite hat now makes me look like Boy George, my face is full of little cuts and I have to get up half an hour earlier to get a shave.

So where did my beard go?

Has it been abducted by aliens - taken up into one of their spaceships and made to undergo bizarre experimentation?

Has it been burnt up in a forest fire? Did it get caught in the toaster? Or how about a freak accident with a lawn mower?

My boss suggests that it may have been eaten in the night by beard termites or that possibly lightning could have struck the Immac factory spraying hair remover over my face.

Time Team may have conducted a dig to look for an early 1960s face under there.

Or it could have been freed by militant "Beard-Rights Activists".

No, the truth is much simpler, I've been on the beard donor register for the past ten years, beard donors are people who provide facial hair for those people who need a disguise as part of their job but cannot grow their own - secret agents, tax collectors and England Football managers being among the common recipients.

Last Friday an urgent request for a full but shot grey and ginger beard came through, my beard was a perfect match, and so now I must remain clean shaven for the good of national security or football or tax or something like that.



Clubs:

Congratulations to my son and his friends for doing so well in their GCSE exams - got the results yesterday and he did incredibly well (6 A*, 5 A and a B)

I know that a number of the people who watch me are friends of his from school, so to all of you Caistor Grammar students who've just got your results, congratulations to you all, hope you got the results you were looking for.

It's also a holiday weekend over here in the UK, the last before Christmas.



Oh and I've just spotted this BBC search for unsung landmarks in the UK - two of which are close to where I live - why not vote for your favourite - here's my pics of the Humber Bridge just to give you an idea of its beauty [link] [link]

BBC Link: [link]

Got back at 3am on Monday morning from a couple of wonderful weeks exploring the South West of England around Bath and Bristol, stayed near a small and very beautiful town called Bradford-on-Avon.

Got lots of photos, but at the moment time is scarce again, so please bear with me till I get chance to submit some more pics and catch up on what the rest of you have been up to in the last few weeks.

Thanks for all your support, take care.