Moltres Day

Today, my son and I went out for a long walk.  Since he has been playing this, he has started to walk a lot more.  Before we played this, we did not walk that much, in fact, he would always do his best not to walk.  While I credit PokémonGO with encouraging him to walk a lot, he has improved when it comes to exercise in many ways, an example being how he is playing cricket.

Anyway, this was something that we had been looking forwards to for a while, as we had missed the previous days which dealt with two other legendary Pokémon.  My son called a friend, whom we had been out with on another day before, and he in turn woke up his mother and dragged her out of bed (she had the option to have her first lie in for a while due to her work) to take part in this.  Anyway, we all had fun catching them and he was amazing with how far we walked.

Afterwards, we had lunch near Ipswich, bought some non-alcoholic beer and on getting home relaxed watching Strictly Come Dancing, and we watched the end of a disappointing episode of the X factor.  While it may not look like we did much, I do think that it was an enjoyable day for all, it just does not appear so when I type it up!

   

Invasion Colchester 2018

My son and I had a good weekend together. On Saturday, an event called Invasion Colchester occurred.  We enjoyed the event last year, my daughter seeing part of it. But that was not the case this year and while she stayed at home, my son and I walked in to Colchester. We had a great time, he had his picture taken with an Ewok and Doctor Who. He got to learn how guns were fired during the English Civil War, and, much to the annoyance of his sister, he got to have fun on the boating lake.  It was not as good as he hoped as his boat was not working as well as he liked, but the staff changed it and he got to try a different one.

It was great seeing Stormtroopers in town along with other characters from science fiction and fantasy.  What was nice was seeing that most of the princesses that came to town were Belle's.  I love Belle as she is a princess who advocates reading, though I do like the later princesses as well, notably Elsa.  Seeing some of the cars reminded me of seeing Bumblebee in Sri Lanka on Christmas Day (ish).

On Sunday, we had dinner in Levington, a place we have not been back to in ten years.  The setting was lovely but the food did not compare to what we remembered in the past.  But my daughter wants to go for a walk there, so we may return.

Hotel Transylvania

I am very tired, so a quick post about the Bank Holiday weekend.

Saturday took us to the Brightlingsea Food Festival where we enjoyed the view from the beach hut of a friend, and I went for walks with my son and daughter, and threw the hard ball we have with my son.

On Sunday, when I went into work to catch up, my son was taken to Maldon to play cricket where he met Alastair Cook.  My daughter got to spend time with a friend, and her dogs, before rain stopped play.  We travelled to Lakeside to watch Hotel Transylvania, a film that was fun most of the time, though predictable. The other two films are better, but it is not the main characters that make this film for me.

And today, I got to finally mow the wilderness that is our lawn and later went for a walk with my daughter.

I have just watched Arsenal win, but I think that the focus on attack means that we are going to let in even more goals than we have before!

And last of all, chess.  Two tournaments have been completed, the 40th Chess.com Quick Knockouts 1201-1400 with a respectable placing of 262nd, and the 35th Chess.com Tournament (1401-1600) where I finished 418th!

At least there is no table

When I found out who Arsenal were to face in our first three games, I had a feeling of dread.  I was aware that we may have ended up with no points after them.  I was hoping to have one point at home by now and I am also hoping to get three in the derby game against West Ham next weekend, but we could be at the bottom of the table when the first official one is published.

I have not watched any of the highlights, or in my case low lights, of the game against the Team that rhymes with City, but it was painful to watch the game against Chelski.  It was great how the team came back from two goals down to get the score back to two all, but our defence for the first two goals was terrible.  I was appalled by the way Sokratis left Shkodran Mustafi alone for the second goal and it was our inability to defend which destroyed any potential of the team to build on our impressive home performance last season.  All Arsenal fans were hoping that a new manager and new blood would correct the issues with defence that have plagued our team in the last decade.  But there still is time.  

I am not looking forwards to tomorrow when the manager at work will want to talk about football.  A lot... 

Ocean's 8 as well as Love and Other Drugs

My wife and I had some time away from the kids as we travelled into London to have a meal together.

We went shopping at first, nothing too fancy, but my wife bought something simple and flattering to wear.  We had a sit down in the M&S cafe on the outside terrace and then made our way to the restaurant. Ember Yard is near where my wife and I went to one of our first dates, a location I almost remember as it was the first time that I had eaten meat in a year (it was chicken kiev, though the actual restaurant has since closed down).  My wife had arranged for us to go there and I have to admit that I was not too keen on this at first, as having had Tapas in the past, I was not a big fan.  I was very wrong.

The service was a bit frosty at first, though it was attentive and could not be faulted.  But it became warmer.  The food however was outstanding.  It had a good selection of beer and my wife loved the cocktails, but the food was amazing.  While I have had some excellent meals recently, this was the best of the best for at least a few months, with nothing as good as this eaten since we ate at Grain, and possibly before then.

After this, we watched a film, Ocean's 8.  My wife liked it more than I did.  I did like it, but it lacked the character development of Ocean's Eleven.  Also, as enjoyable as it was, there were a few loose ends, such as why the insurance company settled for part of the haul, and the morality of planting the decoy. I am glad I watched it, and it is hard for any film to follow Ocean's Eleven.

Anyway, now everyone else is in bed and I am watching Love and Other Drugs while they sleep.  While it is a very amusing film, it is also very sad.  But any film dealing with Parkinsonism is going to be so.  Rude and certainly not suitable for children (they observed a few things in it and my son is now asking awkward questions).  Ocean's 8 is an okay film, Love and Other Drugs is better.  It was a bit disjointed at times, but I was watching a television version of the film.  And as enjoyable as the film was, it reminded me just how lucky we are in the UK to have the NHS (despite the faults that it has due to the way the Conservatives have not funded or staffed it properly) and it amazes me that the Americans continue to have the healthcare system that the have, and fight for it.  We do not see bus loads of pensioners travelling across borders for medicines.  Well, we may do after Brexit, but that is a different matter!

And now for some pictures from our meal...

A trip across the channel

We woke up early today for a trip abroad again.  This time, it was a quick dash across the channel.  Many years ago, when we had returned from one holiday, instead of heading home, we surprised the children with a trip to France.  Then, they were very excited to drive onto a train.  Since then, we have done this on a few more occasions, and I actually think that they are bored with this!  But, we decided to just go for the day, and having booked this at the last moment, we had to travel early in the morning to get on the train.  We made good time and in fact, it was good that we travelled so early as when we arrived at the Eurotunnel terminal, it was quite empty and was filling up when we left.  When in France, we did shop for some wine, but also cheese and yoghurt.  It was an expensive day out, but it did expose the children to French, which my daughter will be learning more about in the upcoming academic year.  What was interesting was the queues to get back into the UK, and I cannot but think that if a hard Brexit occurs, that this will result in longer queues on both sides, and a lot of economic damage to Calais as well.  My daughter is keen to travel by ferry next time, and while it may take longer, this is something I think we should consider as it will be cheaper if we do this again in the future.

PokémonGO in Madeira

This is one of my sad posts on PokémonGO.  When in Madeira, my son and I played is, but before we went, my limited searches found little information on this game there.  For those who do travel to Madeira, enjoy the climate, sights, wine, food and history. But for some, like my son and me, we can enjoy catching Pokémon! And for us, we were able to catch two Pokémon that we could not find otherwise. Tropius and Illumise.  In addition to this, Seviper can be found here, which was present in the UK a while ago.  I had tried to see if any regional specific Pokémon could be found there, but had no luck. Hopefully this will be useful to any who do play there.

We found that the best hunting was in the centre of Funchal, around the fort and the gardens.  There are lots of Pokéstops and a few Pokégyms there as well as plenty of things to look at in the real world.

Last of all, I just thought that I would add that I still have a Pokémon in Sri Lanka!