Halloween Fun at Leeds Castle!

Have had a fandabidosey day at Leeds Castle with my girl taking loads of autumn photos and watching the kids enjoying Halloween fun with pumpkins dotted around the site, a word trail and lots of other fun activities. Julia even "chatted" to Barry Bones, a skeleton complete with skeleton dog sitting outside the birds of prey sanctuary ready for their Mr and Mrs Memoirs YouTube channel 😉

Boiler On The Blink!

So having used the heating on Thursday morning to warm up my clothes ready to go out, I get home and put the heating back on whilst having tea because it's feeling chilly.

In the meantime I wear a cardigan to stave off the chills and eat my tea. After a while I'm wondering why my body isn't gearing up for yet another hot flush because I'm wearing extra layers and the heating is now on...

But when I check the radiators - they aren't on, any of them :-( I call my Dad to come to my rescue and we end up refilling the tank in the loft which feeds the system because it's empty but still no heating - no nothing really. So have had to ring the insurance repair people, spend ages on the phone while they try to remember what my boiler is and more importantly how old it is. They can't locate my policy even though I've been paying for years so she goes away to  actually talk to the insurance company itself and ring me back. Yes they've located said policy and confirmed I'm a paying customer but they still want an engineer to call to maybe confirm the boiler is now DOA before they will consider paying towards a replacement.

So in the meantime I have no heating and more of a nuisance, no hot water. Have brought some old oil filled radiators down from the loft and they still work so between them and my gas fire plus copious layers of clothing I'm managing to stay warm but the loss of hot water means boiling the kettle constantly. Even had to wash my hair this morning standing up over a bowl at the kitchen sink :-(

Engineer due tomorrow, really hoping he can fix something for now whilst I shop for a new boiler - either way I think this has been a wake-up call! Hoping for a payout from said insurance especially as they've been happily taking my money every month for years given the boiler has been well past it's best before date for years. But am not looking forward to the inevitable upheaval of replacing a back boiler with something that's likely to have to be placed in the kitchen at best, extra pipework and if the old boiler cannot be decommissioned and left to allow the gas fire to continue working - or heaven forbid the gas fire is condemned then I'm facing a new fire as well and any other upheaval that requires too - not to mention the COST :'(

More Website Shenanigans

So still busy revamping the website, have spent the last couple of nights converting tables into column displays which seem to help with the mobile view of the site and have updated the colour scheme and header. It's a slow process as I'm also trying to stick to a decent night's kip given the exhausting process of jury service at the same time ;-) Still keeps my mind occupied on something that is wholly much more pleasant that what's gone on in court that day...

Am thinking the Fancy Dress section probably needs a major overhaul and maybe just pull out the more iconic images from the myriad of years that we've been dressing up once a year. Looks like this will keep me busy well into this weekend - which cannot come quick enough!

Website Overhaul

So have been busy today overhauling the website, trying to get rid some of the dross and generally tidy it up and give it a template make-over, bring it more inline with this here blog! 

Surprising just how long it takes though, been at it all day and only really just finished. Have managed to, hopefully, delete some of the no longer used images and claw back some of the 100MB they originally gave me, a pittance by today's standards but not sure there's any way to get more for free.

Was going to remove some of my old Picasa albums too but now they seem to have been sucked in, or at least managed by Google+ I've already learnt a valuable lesson about not deleting because Google+ removes your images EVERYWHERE they appear so when they are gone, they are GONE! So for now they can stay - safer that way.

Wish there was a better way of displaying images and associated text, Simon who gave us the talk on blogging at camera club on Friday said don't get hung up on trying to make everything line up because ultimately it's not worth it. Easier said than done when you are OCD like me and like everything neat and tidy. Tables are my usual GOTO format, the images and text can fit into the cells but it's table width's I struggle with afterwards and usually end up dipping into the HTML code, not that I really know what I'm doing there without copious Google searches! However for my latest page on Firework Photography I tried a different layout format and that seems to have worked quite well so might have to experiment some more with that type of thing.

I've had Elvis 30 #1 Hits on repeat all day and in between sitting at the laptop I've been bopping around the house, shaking my booty to the music, beats my usual Oldies compilation CD of all sorts of stuff downloaded off YouTube as music only, titles such as Allan Sherman - Hello Muddah Hello Faddah  (1963), Ernie The Fastest Milkman In The West - Benny Hill and all manner of old songs :-)

Right, time to go eat some tea, and have a break from the laptop by settling down in front of the TV with yet another Columbo movie - taking my mind off what will hopefully be my last week of jury service next week - joy (not).

I'm Back!!!!!

After what seems like an age I've returned to my blog having been given some renewed enthusiasm following a camera club session on creating blogs using WordPress. So I thought rather than try and migrate mine across - probably no small feat - I'd give it a bit of an overhaul. 

So have chosen a new theme - hopefully a little more modern and got rid of some of the out of date stuff at the bottom - now my girl is all grow'd up and married - Mrs Bailey no less (!) the photo of her and James when they were younger seems irrelevant ;-)

Life hasn't changed much anyway in the time I've been out of the loop as it were, still working, albeit in planning now, and enjoying (?) the single life. Julia & James are married - yay - as mentioned above, and living in their own little place so I have Chez Moi all to myself now. Have converted Julia's old room into a photo studio which is where I've spent some time today prepping for this month's camera club competition. We now have, as part of a company wellness & social endeavour, an on-site camera club where we meet once a month and chew the fat over all things photographic. All good fun and a monthly comp keeps us all on our toes and ensures the 'ol grey matter doesn't fur up too much with lack of use :-)

Anyway as I've currently spent all day on the laptop/camera it's about time I got around to having some food so signing off now but HOPEFULLY it won't be so long next time!