Oh no. Sometimes it's just an honest Chinky and dicking-about-with-pictures kind of evening, The maternal instinct seems to kick in pretty early. Ever since Jacob Buckfield (my nephew once-removed, or summat) was born a couple of months ago, the girls have been PLEADING to go and see him. So we did, on the way back from Pagham.
And the girls oohed and aahed and coojy-cooed at their session with a REAL, LIVE DOLLY. And KICKED and SCREAMED when it was time to go home. And have NAGGED me since ARRIVING home about when we can NEXT see Jacob, can we see Jacob TOMORROW, what ABOUT TUESDAY THEN? etc etc. I have told them they NEED TO GET OUT MORE. He is cute though. Been down the van this week, it being half-term. In a follow-on tribute to the Diamond Jubilee celebrations, 49" of rain fell from Monday-Thursday. And then the sun came out briefly, in order to give a clear view on the damage that gale-force winds might wreak on a collection of lightweight, tinfoil structures.
We didn't care. We played Uno, took refuge in pubs and donned an air of permanent stoicism. Hurrah for balmy, English summertime. timfg.com typically gets between 100 and 200 unique visits a day. A fair proportion come from links I've published somewhere - typically Facebook, sometimes Twitter, sometimes direct to someone by mail. The rest are random stalkers, a smattering of regular RSS followers or from Google searches of me or my surname. But yesterday a link to the blog (11.24am, if it doesn't jump there directly) was published on the over-by-over commentary on the 3rd Test against the West Indies, on the Guardian website. Which somewhat skewed the stats for the week. 1200 cricket-loving visitors turned up to view the picture of Abby demonstrating how to deal with the short-ball. Even if they only hung around for 5 seconds each, I reckon Abby has exceeded her 15 minutes of fame by around an hour-and-a-half.
So that's her aspirations dashed, at the tender age of nine. Shame really. On a drizzly afternoon. In a state of mild grumpiness, because I don't do drizzle, whereas Al gets all 'Come on, come on, got to get out in the fresh air' on us. So we dragged ourselves around the Uppark half-term history trail and I attempted to take photos in rubbish conditions for photography. Came home happier than I'd expected: There's nothing to beat enthusiastic, pensioner NT guides to lift the spirits. Highlight of the afternoon? Standing on the brakes on some B-road, lit momentarily by the sun, as one of these slammed into the tarmac in front of me in a fumbled attempt to catch some small, fleeing rodent. We all feel quite privileged to have seen it, POST EDIT I mailed a link to this item to the Guardian's Over-By-Over Commentary on the 3rd test match against the West Indies - and it was subsequently published, resulting in over a thousand hits in the following hour: " 11.24am: Sky are showing a repeat of an interview with Kevin Pietersen from 2005. He spends half the interview licking his teaspoon and he also thinks he can make an impact for England. I give him two Tests. "There's no reason not to play in a bit of drizzle," says Tim Featherstone-Griffin. "I took my daughters to Uppark in the rain yesterday and it's clear that Abby - age 9 - could teach Johnny Bairstow a thing or two about handling the short ball, despite the conditions..." She's not even wearing a helmet! " See the following post - The Power of Publicity - for more detail. The motivation was, of course, this picture: |
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March 2020
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