Well I'm now on holiday for Christmas - Yippee!

As the traffic would probably be really bad to travel down to Devon if we left it till after I finished work at lunchtime, so instead we decided to head down to Okehampton early this morning - leaving Portsmouth at 4.30am! This plan worked well as the traffic was fairly sparse on the roads at that time in the morning and we made probably the best time ever for the journey, arriving at about 7.30 in time for coffee and breakfast :). I quite like travelling at the early hours of the morning, but it was surprising today how late it was before it started to get lighter.

So that's the first leg of our mammoth Christmas journey taken care of - the next leg will be on Thursday when we head up to Nottingham to see my family, via Burnham-on-Sea to visit my Grandma on the way.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to anyone who reads this!

Ka Ho sent me this game today - it can get frustrating but it feels quite an achievement when you finally manage! The instructions are as follows:

• Only Mum Dad, or Policeman can operate the raft

• Robber cannot be left alone with family

• Girls cannot be left alone with dad

• Boys cannot be left alone with mum

• Select two people onto the raft, click red lever to operate

Just a quick note about some useful HTML tags that have been around for a long time, but I've found particularly useful recently:

<del cite="url" datetime="YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssTZD>

Mark text that has been deleted, optionally citing a URL for more details and a date and time of change. Useful for marking alterations to posts.

<del>Example deleted text</del>

< ins cite="url" datetime="date of change >

Mark text that has been inserted, optionally citing a URL for more details and a date and time of change. Useful for marking alterations to posts.

Example inserted text

_Term_

_Definition_

Definition list - example is this list of tags

Last week on the vue mailing list, Laura got an invitation for free tickets to the preview of "Kinky Boots", so on Wednesday we both went to see it:

Kinky Boots (12A)

Ricky Moorhouse 22nd September 2005

Rating: 5 out of 5

Brilliant northern comedy based on the true story of a Northampton shoe factory, suffering because of cheap imports from abroad; and their efforts to save the factory by making kinky boots for drag queens.

It was excellent and really funny - well worth watching!

*[22nd September 2005]: 20050922

When we got there, we started off by heading into Le Havre for breakfast, and found a little cafe along the seafront where we had croissant and coffee. We then headed back into town to have a look round but unfortunatly it seemed to be mostly closed at that time in the morning and then it started raining. We headed back to the car (particularly thankful that we'd got it with us) and looked at the map to decide what to do. We then headed to a supermarket so we could dry off and sort something out for lunch - which we ended up having there. In the afternoon we headed across to Rouens which was a lovely place to look round and would be nice to explore a bit more another time - hopefully when it's not raining at all!. In the evening it brightened up though - so we headed up to Etretat and had a picnic overlooking the beach

It's our anniversary! - The last 3 years have past quickly in some ways, but it also seems like we've been together forever! As 3 years is supposed to be leather and Laura had been wanting some boots I decided that I'd get her them as an anniversary present, but when I went to get them I found it would be much easier to go there together and get them after our anniversary. (The boots she got in the end weren't leather, but they're lovely and warm!).

We were going to go away for the weekend up to Essex to see what else we could find for our family history research, but as there was no space in the B&Bs that we phoned, I decided to look to see where else we could go for an anniversary break. In the end we decided to go to France on a special deal that P&O were running that meant we could travel out overnight on Friday, come back on the overnight ferry on Saturday, take the car and have a cabin each way for only £49 (about the price of 1 night in the B&B!) so thats what we did!

I just searched for H&B on google and it gave me this result which appears to have the results in three groups, firstly results for H&B, then for B&H and then at the bottom some others. Is this new?

Once we take off, we'll be heading in a North Easterly direction .. No .. a North Westerly direction - I just got distracted by a plane taking off as you do.

We're now over France and should be coming in in about ... erm ... let me see ...

Both of which we heard on our way back from Kefalonia

We left Shepton Mallett early in the morning as we had to get up to Heathrow 2 hours before our flight at 10. We had quite a good drive up and there wasn't too much traffic. We dropped the car off at the airport parking and were taken by minibus to the airport. Check in was amazingly quick and easy with the e-tickets and we could do it all ourselves on the machine (apart from it failed to print the baggage label for some reason - but it was still quicker than queuing). As we were waiting we heard some other people talking about a Wedding, but didn't realise until we got to Stavanger just how many there were on the same flight going to the same wedding!

We checked into the hotel, which was a really nice balance between modern and traditional. It even had it's own bakery and coffee bean roaster. We had a fresh orange juice at the bar and were suddenly hit by how expensive things in Norway are as it cost us about £8 for the two drinks. We then went for a look round the town to see what food we could find for lunch and to see where the church was. Sandnes itself seemed very laid back and pleasant and it was easy to find the church, although for finding food we initially went the wrong way for find supermarkets but eventually we came across the shopping centre and supermarket.

This year we went to New Wine for the first time as we were invited to go and help man the SAMS stand in the marketplace there. We went up to Bath and West on the Friday before things started in order to get the tent up and meet up with Richard. It was surprising how many people there were there already especially as it was only exhibitors and people working there at that point.

We had a good week there despite the weather (lots of rain and towards the end of the week high winds, not the best when you're camping but we survived). My particular favourites were the morning series on Ezekiel (which have prompted me to read through the book fully) and the evening talks in 'Venue 2' by Matt Redman and David & Carrie Grant.

I also enjoyed the manning of the stand much more than I had anticipated, as it was interesting speaking to the different people who came to the stand and watching our neighbours stand grow as they added more balloons to it throughout the week. Although unfortunatley we missed their balloon stomp on the Friday as we had to leave for Norway.