Watsy's Web Site

What a cracking Christmas – I’d been absolutely flat out with work in the run up and containing a cough and cold that eventually petered out after six weeks so a restful four days down in Eastbourne was just what the family ordered.

After a safe quick journey down on Christmas Eve, we had a lovely evening meal with the whole of the enlarged Watts family (ok maybe they aren’t that large) which started off the whole relaxation – a great bit of ham. Then off to bed, but poor old Father Christmas – at 11.30 a little girl was still awake and worried he wouldn’t find us in Eastbourne even though we’d left a note at the bottom of our chimney, so we had to move the stockings to the bottom of the chimney in the lounge. Fortunately Santa had arrived and put the presents outside their doors by the time Jamie woke up at 1.30am.

As you can see, Jamie was very lucky and received a ‘rip stick‘ from Father Christmas and fortunately he went back to sleep after that, only for another outbreak of rustling and paper ripping from about 2-3am. Fortunately they went back to sleep until about 6am. If you are wondering what a rip stick is, its a bit like a skateboard, but harder – sweep stake on when he’ll be able to ride it properly on his own…

On Christmas Day and running on adrenaline, we went down to the sea front to see the band playing Christmas carols and songs – couldn’t believe the number of people who turned out for it in such blowy weather. It was pretty good as well. This is the photo of Rebecca as we walked down to the sea front.

After a delicious Christmas meal which lasted most of the afternoon we sat down for some more present opening and then tea! Then just sitting around not doing much with full bellies.

On Boxing Day we popped down to Seven Sisters to have a look at the wildlife and beautiful winding rivers there – I love going there, such a treat. Also such a shame that they are planning to flood the whole area – could be wrong but that is what my parents have told me. Managed to take some lovely photos of Jamie and Rebecca together running around having fun.

On the 27th we went to the panto (oh yes we did) and saw Robin Hood with Nasty Nick out of Eastenders and a load of other brilliant performers – extremely enjoyable as always great fun. It normally lasts all afternoon and some of the in jokes are excellent and right up my street.

Came home on the 28th and resumed work! Cleared masses of work out of the way, but still have a stack of it after Christmas and New Year too. New Year was good – popped round to the Scott’s for a few beverages.

So what’s in store for the New Year? Well loads as it happens. Picked up a couple of new customers, big big year for Cater For You, trying to get fit (if body stops breaking), jointly running the men’s 2′s hockey team with Dave, involved in a minor capacity with Newland Park development and our astro pitches, stand around Sunday mornings at Junior hockey, gardening and plenty more besides – like being 40…

An RIP to Stuart Dalrymple, 48, staunch supporter of the cricket section and I did a lot of work for him in my early years in web design – and he helped me tremendously. Condolences to his family.

Happy New Year everyone.

Just installed a WordPress to Twitter plug in which should hopefully publish this to Twitter and cascade down to Facebook and then URL back to my watsy.com web site. Interesting to see if it does. Had to do something as my rss feed to Facebook appears to have stopped again as this afternoons and last few posts haven’t appeared in FB.

Personally I think Facebook is past its peak – not nearly as much traffic / usage by my friends on there as a year ago – will be interesting to see what happens in the next year or so. Also notice a massive uplift in Twitter usage compared with just 3 months ago – seems to be replacing FB – though my Twitter doesn’t work on Chrome very well for some reason.

Anyway, here goes…

Whilst particularly liking punk / indie / 80′s music etc., I do like a good remix and a little dance music – who doesn’t? I’ve been floating over to http://www.mixcloud.com and www.soundcloud.com to find some remixes of old favourites brought back up to date. Also listening to this fine selection of dance trance I suppose you would call it – just here – http://www.mixcloud.com/Trance_Mix/tommy-urbanski-birthday-mix/ stumbled upon completely by accident from a Quietus dance review of 2011.

I’ve been tinkering around with my watsy.com web site, testing out some new features for WordPress and learning. The latest thing is a photo gallery featuring several photos of a Lesser Redpoll. When I have time in the next few months, I hope to upload a load of photos from my wildlife collection in the new bird watching section of the web site.

Became a bit bored with working for the fourth evening in a row – the snooze button was hit several times this morning so feeling rather fatigued.  So decided to pass the evening making some vanilla / almond flavoured cup cakes with orange butter icing.

Sarah and I have had one each and they are pretty tasty.  Will be taking them into work tomorrow when I pop in.

If anyone is interested, in the picture there are the cup cakes minus a couple, a Wilton no. 22 tip with disposable piping bag and football cup cake cases. All baked in a Wilton cup cake baking tray.

Saturday Night Hockey Social
Really really looking forward to Saturday, though as I type this, I haven’t yet got my costume into my possession and whether it fits over my hips or not. Shame I cannot play hockey in Newbury before the social, but i’ll be on the touchline – Hamstring is well and truly knackered still hurts just walking on it. Looking forward to seeing Nick Wilson again and then back for a curry and into the club house for 8 o’clock. Little known fact about the evening, as there was supposed to be an email, the draw for the Olympic hockey tickets that the club was given, will be made on Saturday night – all those who paid their subs before October 31st are in the hat.

Jamie was delighted recently when he had his first wobbly tooth as most of his classmates have already lost one.  So today was the day it finally dropped out – not in the middle of an apple but whilst raking some leaves up.  He was absolutely delighted – I just hope the tooth fairy remembers tonight – unlike the last tooth Rebecca lost – naughty tooth fairy probably too much wine ….

Another eventful weekend as usual. Too much hockey and unfortunately both of us were playing away – Rebecca did mutter about spending more time with us on a Saturday d’oh.  I was called up to the 1′s (yes they were desperate before you get there first) and joined Sarah in Abingdon.  Unfortunately I pulled my hamstring in the first 10 minutes – absolutely gutted as I thought I was doing ok.  So stood around in the oppositions half not moving – though still managed to score a goal standing on one leg much to my amusement.  It was so bad by the fifth goal I had an arrangement with their defence to not even bother walking back to the halfway line and just stayed in their 25.  Still we won 5-3.  The 2′s also won which brought a massive smile to my and Dave’s faces – he was also called up to the 1′s at the last minute.  The team spirit and atmosphere in the 2′s is one of the best i’ve ever know – its absolutely brilliant being a part of it – the closest I can think of was the old 1st XI Chalfont St Peter days when we were promoted and Neil Turner was Captain.

Last game before the Christmas break next Saturday – the 2′s have a massive trek over to Newbury – but I’m visiting the physio tomorrow to see how bad my leg is and whether i’ll be able to stand on the pitch by the game – been icing it all weekend.  We have a special guest star appearance or two and it is followed by the Christmas social / party – really excited by it as the team / squad have worked so hard it should be a really good laugh.

Work has been flat out as usual – loads of meetings which cuts down the actual time to do the work I say i’ll do.  Things have been hampered by the fact I’ve had a cold almost got over it and think I then caught another – so that’s been going on for two weeks now.  Ran out of drugs in the house today which was quite an achievement.  Cater For You was about 30% ahead of last November which was a great effort by the team.  Also uploaded the dedicated CSE Cables actinic ecommerce web site too on Friday.  Making good progress on the new Waggon and Horses web site – hopefully have another session with Simon this week and then start promoting properly – its a really interesting project as something slightly different from the normal and built in WordPress – hopefully made it secure and won’t be hacked like this one was …. yikes.

Listening to some great music at the moment as well – bought a load of stuff from banquet records recently and have another batch coming from Amazon this week.  Will post a dedicated music blog later this week hopefully.

After Junior hockey session first thing this morning and then after cooking the pork fillet for lunch, finally got out into the garden to do some clearing up.  Still lots to do but we cleared the leaves and I put some Autumn lawn weed and feed down – probably won’t work as too late now!  Also repaired a load of Badger holes – first time in ages they’ve been – looking for grubs under the turf.  Found quite a few caterpillars sleeping under the leaves.  Will have to do some more tidying up next weekend assuming we feel o.k. after the Saturday night social.

http://soundcloud.com/muterecords/tracks

Vince Clark and Martin Gore, original members of Depeche Mode have teamed up for the first time in 30 years – great sounding club classic in the making me thinks.

What a hockey week that was.  It never seemed to end – with each day about 30 emails and constant text messaging going back and forth to get a team out.  Dave and I thought about and tried approaching 50 people to get the team to the pitch – and when we did – what a team – one of our strongest – and thank you to those who came out of semi retirement and gave up their Saturday’s for us.

Fortunately, the effort was well worth it.  We went down 1-0 on a break away but we went up to 2-1 until the last 90 seconds when a short was given – the umpire pointed and blew for another short and as he did so they scored and he gave a goal instead.  Anyway, it was a superb team performance with great passing, movement and individual skill to earn another point.  Hopefully we’ll have good availability for next week’s game and those that played enjoyed it so much they will join us again.  I did also come away with an imprint of the ball on my arm and a damaged finger – all part of the fun.

In between getting a hockey team out its been a lot of work and more work.  I’ve got a massive stack to get through (so why am I updated my blog on a Saturday night and not working – good question) with several busy days at Cater For You – we were short on numbers as people were on holiday and we had our second highest shipment day ever – I was sat doing labels all day and actually did some packing on Friday for the first time in ages – it was good fun.

Did also manage quite a bit of Chalfont Web Design work too, doing updates to various web sites including CSE Cables and IDA Research.    British Battles is going really well at the moment with over 12,000 visitors regularly visiting each day – a phenomenal amount of traffic.  We are still adding to the battles so that will just increase.  Fasthosts have finally upgraded my control panel so I can add the cname’s for the blogs on blogger.com.  however, they seem to have done something to my reseller pricing at the same time – not down I hasten to add so hope they sort that out too soon.  Hopefully going to launch advertising on chalfontstpeter.com soon – to help fund the web site and maybe generate a load of income for local charities.

Didn’t manage to find the time to do any cakes this week, so decided instead of a fancy dress theme next week, we’ll do a cake bake off – so everyone has to bring in a cake and we’ll either let the opposition (Staines) or some other A & C teams test it to see who is the donkey and who is the best baker in the 2′s.  Any volunteers for judges welcome

Listening to a load of new music as well – favourite new music is by Pacer, The Wonder Years, The Steal and The Vaselines.  Off to see Yuck in a couple of weeks with Ben. If you want a place with some great indie punk music check out http://www.banquetrecords.com/ its where i’ve been buying things like Pacer, The Wonder Years and more.

Tomorrow is Junior hockey which will be interesting as I’m already seizing up tonight and then a roast lamb with Simon which will write off the afternoon and most of the evening – can’t wait lol.