They've Gone :-(

One hour and thirteen minutes late, the Chappell Family has gone! (Initially to Dubai, but then on to Australia... and I suppose 1hr 13 m is not bad when the journey is 24 hours and they're staying for a year...)



This is Tina in Heathrow doing her Julie Andrews impression which, I think you will agree, is rubbish.



Tina and Chris smile after their success in taking all the unwanted (and untransportable) Christmas presents back. Smiles soon fade as they realise £217 worth of Sock Shop vouchers will be useless in Australia. Even if they need socks...



...and here they go into Departures! Having done the journey to the other side of the world and back earlier this year, I would give long odds on the smiles still being there after about India.



Bon Voyage!

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, etc

There are other advantages to being up north for Christmas (other than getting to see my niece) - one is that is snows! (Which it never does in Hampshire...)



However, taste and decency can be noticeable by their absence in all parts of the country...



This particular crime was captured by my sister in one of the rare moments she is not currently spending at the hospital.

Well, it beats going to the sales...

Well, if it's Boxing Day, it must be the Raft Races. (Actually, it might be the Raft Races - it's a sort of on-and-off family tradition...)

Here's a general view as the (not very sturdy) rafts come floating down the River Derwent at Matlock Bath.



Here are the regulation Santas...



Some people hadn't spent much time making their rafts, but had brought their lunch along with them...



Fortunately, the firemen were handy in the next raft if the barbecue got out of hand...



This was the HMS Victory - spot Nelson if you can...



Now, there is audience participation. Many of the thousands of riverbank onlookers who had braved the cold and had a bacon roll and a coffee in polystyrene cup had brought flour bombs to chuck at the rafters (not us, obviously). This is hilariously funny until they start chucking them back, not differentiating between the guilty and the innocent, and then sending oarfuls and, in some cases, bucketfuls, of water crowdwards aswell...



...and in rare cases (not joking), baked beans came our way...



...and then off they went down the river towards Cromford...



...until Boxing Day next year!

* Finished The Da Vinci Code well before the Evans Spoiler! Kept wanting Wincey Willis to appear and stop the clock. And Velma out of Scooby-Doo is a better cryptographer than Sophie Neveu.

Is it Christmas yet...?

Well, I think it might be. Here is my evidence...



Yes, it's the final candle on the Blue Peter Advent Crown.

I can hardly believe that they are still making it. But they are. I suspect the quality isn't as high as when Val, Pete and John made it, but it's nice to see these traditions continued.

Especially by my brother-in-law, Roger, who has his unique take on these things...



Despite the fact that Blue Peter is now presented (seemingly) by Poor Man's Liberty-X (three women with their midriffs out and two vacuous blokes), the Christmas episode is reassuringly timeless...

• Christmas Cards from Viewers (although I suspect as the years go by, they are showing all of them, not just a selection...)
• Brass band playing medley of carols
• Margaret Parnell Make ("I'm using double-sided sticky-tape, for speed...")

• Cast of West End musical (in this case, Mary Poppins) performing in studio, all wearing Blue Peter badges
• Presents for the pets

• Christmas Appeal Totaliser (done up like a mobile phone in a passing mention for all-things-modern...)
• Nod to religion

I think Biddy Baxter may be dead but, probably by retaining editorship from beyond the grave, still seems to be ensuring some degree of quality.

The same cannot be said for (the immediately following) Newsround, the title music of which now sounds like a bad ringtone. *

And if you're wondering how I have time to do this in-depth analysis of festive children's TV...

1. "Ah've finished all me main shoppin', ah've only bits to do..." © Peter Kay, Paul O'Grady Show tonight
2. I have started reading The Da Vinci Code because I think I should and because everyone else has, have got to page 88 and couldn't really care less about the other 504. Please can someone tell me what all the fuss is about?

* Text NEWS to 86543 for your own version. Textseses cost £1.50 each. We will send you 2 textseses a day forever and you will not be able to stop them. Please tell a parent or guardian if you are under 18, as when the bill comes through, they will want to kill you. Please also tell someone over 18 if you think the past particple of "to text" is "text".

Hello Uncle Ian...!

I finally got to meet Zoe yesterday.

Here I am, holding her hand and leering in at her (I don't think she found it too traumatic, (a) because she has to put up with everyone, including my Dad (in background), leering in at her and (b) she had her eyes shut).*



She's back on the tiniest oxygen mask in the world and has a feeding tube in, but is doing very well. She drank 13ml of milk while I was there last night - well, she had it syringed down the tube by my sister with one hand through each of the holes in the incubator like one of those games off the Crystal Maze.

She's linked up to about 20 different hospital playstations...



...which keep beeping and clicking, but within perfectly acceptable limits, apparently. If you are not used to that happening though, it's bloody scary!

Raced up north yesterday to see her, and now have several days of lying on the sofa watching naff ITV 9.25am sub-Disney cartoons about puppies or mice that save the world in a Christmassy fashion. Bliss.

*Sorry about all those embedded parentheses...

Niece to see you...

I am an uncle and I am very excited about it!

My first niece arrived a bit unexpectely at around 1.20pm on Wednesday 30 November. This was a little inconvenient of her as she was actually due on my birthday, but she obviously didn't want either (a) to share or (b) to wait until the end of February.

She was delivered by section and weighed in at (or just "weighed", as she isn't a boxer) 2lb 2oz. (Google Calculator says that's 0.963883786kg, just in case European law applies to blogs.)

Here she is...



...with Mum and Dad.

I think she looks a bit like Great Grandad Hayes did. Compare...



This would be unsurprising, as she has already demonstrated herself to be an awkward Saggitarius!

Roger (Zoe's Dad) firmly believes in his Scottish roots, thinking he is, in some way, William Wallace reincarnate...



...so it's quite fitting that she should be born on St Andrew's Day. She shares her birthday with:

• St. Gregory of Tours, chronicler/bishop (538)
• Mark Twain, author of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn (1835)
• Winston Churchill, never, in the field of human conflict, etc (1874)
• Ridley Scott, director, Alien, Blade Runner (1937)
• Billy Idol, nice day for a, white wedding (1955)
• Ben Stiller, actor (1965)
• Des'ree, rhythm and blues singer with stupid name (1970)

...and loads of other people you've never heard of, because they are American, and therefore unimportant.

She's a Rooster, according to the Chinese Calendar (Obliging, pioneering, brave... well, definitley the last one, if not the first!)

Her birthstone is Citrine (which I have never heard of, and sounds like lav cleaner...) although it might be Topaz, depending on which highly reliable, based-in-fact, scientifically accurate website you look at.

News on her birthday suggests she will have to work until she is 69...



(which at least she will get to three months before she was supposed to) and important things happened on her birthday in the past too. Madonna was number one in the singles and album charts, the moon was the last day of a waning crescent, this is what the weather was like, and no-one got voted off I'm a Celebrity.

An auspicious day indeed.

Grandad Taylor already has her driving round in this...



...and at £799, she has 17 years to save up.

I will be meeting Zoe for the first time in a couple of weeks, and won't be thinking of anything else till I do. Not even Christmas!* Until then I'm keeping up-to-date with her autobiography. She's very technologically literate already, as are we all our our family. Even Roger, who I suspect has something to do with it.

*Well, maybe Christmas a bit!