The Harland Way, site of our bike ride

We had a good weekend, with Nathan on form as ever.

We’re enjoying the joys of potty training, and overall he’s doing very well and catching on to the idea. I’m not 100% certain about him running back into rooms when we’re out in company and yelling “I’VE DONE A BIG ONE” with a big grin, but he seems to be enjoying it and it does generally get a lot of smiles!

We went out on the bikes on Sunday afternoon, Jill on hers, and Nathan and I on mine. He’s got a purpose built carrier mounted on my bike which was a kind gift from our next door neighbours when they were thinking of throwing it away because their son was too big for it. I learned a number of things about my bike, including that things get a lot easier if you have the tyres near their correct pressure. I’d always done it by hand as it has the non-car style high pressure valves and as I couldn’t find a gauge to fit it was always a bit of guesswork. Anyway, I found I was getting 30psi and it should have been 60psi. It was a bit of a struggle to get there, as the adapter for the car footpump bleeds a lot of air from 50psi on, but it made a lot of difference out in use.

We travelled for about 8 miles on the old railway track which runs from near our house to Spofforth. Nathan kept a beady eye out for tractors (none spotted) and was very pleased when he saw the windmill at the farm on the ride about Spofforth. He started to yell “Look, Windy Miller!”. If that pop culture reference passes you buy, go immediately to this page on Amazon and travel to Trumptonshire! On the way back home I felt a strange knocking on my back, looking around to find out that he had gone to sleep! In reality, he was dozing, and everytime I stopped he muttered “Ride, Daddy”, which was a bit of a change from his earlier demands of “Go Faster, Daddy”.


Having watched the first series when we were away on holiday, Jill and I got out ourcopy of “Life on Mars” Series 2 this weekend. We watched two episodes, and it’s just as good as the first series. We’re looking forward to working our way through this one.


In other film and TV news, I watched “Watchmen” this week, which was great. It kept pretty faithfully to the original graphic novel, both in plot and visuals, and was done very well. The ending was changed, but was actually improved it from my perspective, as it made it far more believeable. I can imagine that the multilayered nature of the plot would be pretty challenging to follow if you hadn’t read the original. It’s far less approachable than some of Alan Moore’s other works like “V for Vendetta”, but a worthy adaption all the same. The only criticism I could have is the level of violence, but again, that matches the source. Worth a look if you like more complex and dark stories.

Currently feeling: Tired, bad night’s sleep, but happy.
Currently listening to: Big Cook, Little Cook (CBeebies...) & Beowulf (Seamus Heaney)
Currently reading: A Most Wanted Man (John le Carré )