Kidwelly is a lovely little coastal town, with the estuary of the River Towy providing a great habitat for the many birds living there. I caught some over the last few days - on film, of course.

Here’s a Greenshank:

A curlew in flight

a Redshank

and loads of lapwings on the beach

It’s a lovely area, one that I enjoy visiting and I recommend it to all.

www.mydavidcameron.com is a great site. Contribute your version of this ridiculous poster there.

My Auntie Lil, also known as Lila, died this week and with her, that generation of my family is no more. At 93 she’d lived through incredible times, been around the world twice, known good times and bad and was mad as a box of badgers.

She and Alice (my Mum) were incredibly competetive and to see them together in later years was to still see the sisters out-doing each other. When Alice had a stroke, Lila announced that she’d had one. No visible effects, nothing, I think she just felt Alice was getting too much attention.

Lila was a force of nature and swept all before her. I remember as a child her driving (VERY badly!)  Alice and me into London in her little green Mini and not being able to find a parking space. “Aha!” she exclaimed, “I know where we can park” and drove to Red Lion Square, straight into the American Embassy. A massive Marine peered down at two women and a little boy in a Mini as the driver explained “we’re here to see the ambassador!”. He let us through! And so we parked in the US Embassy Car Park and went shopping for the day. Strange but true, that.

She left her husband and eloped to Australia with her lover, her sons already having moved there in the late 1950’s.  Somehow it didn’t work out and she ended up back in the UK with her hubby, then went back to Australia again! She returned eventually and once more set up home with her hubby.

After my Uncle Wal died on New Years Day 1969, Lila and Alice made sure that they kept in contact with his kids and would traipse up to Leicester to see them and their mum, Sheila, on a regular basis. They both had massive hearts and loved those kids to bits.

Before the war she worked in service for one of the Princesses, Beatrice, I believe. She worked into her late 60’s, doing silver service at Ascot and waiting upon the Queen Mum in an echo of her past. She also ran the Haberdashery dept in Bentalls in Kingston for many years and built up rather a good supply of zips etc at home - I’m pretty sure that she still had a drawerful when she died!

She lived with the tragedy of one son comitting suicide amd her husband died 15 years ago. A neighbour looked after her for years until he died  in 2007 and Alice died on Lila’s birthday that year, which made her very, very low.

Alzheimer’s took it’s toll, too, but through it all her remaining son, Peter, showed remarkable fortitude and helped her stay at home to the end.

Anyone who knew Lila was witness to an extraordinary life. My condolences go out to Peter and the (sadly few, now) people that knew her.

An era has ended.

A few days after Christmas, I was in my local Tesco Metro getting some croissants and the Saturday paper, when a Tesco employee walked past me, saying “it’s fucking Easter already”. He was pushing a trolley stacked with Easter Eggs of various types and sizes.

Easter eggs were never my favourite part of that festival, Hot Cross Buns were.

When I was a kid, it was a treat beyond compare to go to the bakers on the morning of Good Friday (because, children, in those days HCB’s were only sold for a few days around Easter) with my Dad to collect a dozen HCB’s from “The Oven Door”, a baker’s shop on the Stainash Parade in Staines. These HCB’s were really the nicest I ever tasted. Apparently the baker had gone to prison for burglary at one point and the shop’s buisness had taken a dive, but when he came back, so did the customers.

 Anyhow, so, about 1960 is the first Good Friday trip - that I remember - (on a child’s seat on the back of Dad’s bike) to “The Oven Door” to get HCB’s. The queue wound out of the shop and was about 30 people long and it was the same every year until I left home in 1976. We’d take them home, still warm, slather them with Anchor butter and demolish however many were put in front of us, usually 3 or 4 each. With a warm cup of tea, they constituted one of the most fattening meals of the year and it was a family occasion with my sister and brothe, Mum and Dad and me, sitting at the dining table in the dining room with one orange wall.

This morning, almost 50 years later, I saw HCB’s in Tesco, grabbed a packet and took them home. Since cold HCB’s  are nowhere near as tasty as hot, I popped them in the oven and scoffed some with a hot cuppa char. The smell of the spice and the steam coming up as I broke the HCB’s open brought back memories of my childhood at 34 Brightside Avenue.

As I reflect upon this again, my eyes are moist and I’ve no idea why, really. Still, I enjoy memories of those days and their evocation is almost always a smell or a taste, as, I suppose, you’d expect.

So thanks, Tesco,  but I have to tell you, your HCB’s don’t compare in any way to those from my childhood and they never will. Of course, by the time we get to Easter they’ll be selling Halloween costumes anyhow….

For maybe the 5th time in my life, snow has persisted in my part of the UK beyond 5 days and it seems that no-one out there really listens when they’re told by the Police to not bloody go out unless they absolutely need to have a crash.

Silly buggers.

Last night’s Top Gear Bolivian adventure was the first episode I’ve really enjoyed this season and I would guess that most people would echo Andy Wilman’s comments that this is feeling a tired series.

With the cancellation of Fifth Gear seemingly confirmed by 5ive, perhaps now is the time to acquire some alternative presenters to the family of Mummy May, Daddy Clarkson and the cute teenager Hammond?

Not Tom Ford, Tim Shaw or Jonny Smith tho’. Please.

On the other hand, Vicky Butler Henderson was phased out of Fifth Gear, but she, Jason Plato and especially Tiff Needell, all have a professional approach with driving skills to boot. Maybe we need the current team to switch to doing 4 specials a year and get an alternative team in for the actual meat and two veg of the series - looking at (gasp) cars.

One episode to go in this series, I believe, and, wistfully, I hope they are the last in this kind of format. Change is needed and I hope it comes soon.

Scrappage: please kill off “star in a reasonably priced car”. Please do away with right-wing diatribes from “Daddy” Clarkson and giggling fawning by Hammond. James May is actually the strongest presenter for me, at the moment, and I’m glad that the “Captain Slow” persona has been allowed to slip, somewhat. Even he needs a good kick in the arse though. The Stig has had his day, Ben needs to move on and allow the aforementioned VBH/TN/JP to take a turn on the circuit. Oh, and stop killing caravans and Marinas, “boys”, it just ain’t funny any more.

In summary, let’s have shorter, sharper episodes, with less “cue giggling” scripts, the politics cut out  and a bit more about cars.

It’s that time again and we hope that you’ve had a good year. Ours has been a little mixed - on the other hand, two weeks after Christmas sees Wendy and me celebrate 33 years of marriage – you don’t get that long in an institution for murder etc etc

As usual I’ve been out with camera in had all year and taken some terrible pictures! And some good ones here - if it’s useful and you enjoy it, then I’m happy.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Now is the time to archive and/or prune your email.

For Outlook users like me, there are 4 simple components to this:

1) Look through your email. What do you want to keep? What is just noise? What attachments do you want to keep? Delete everything else.
2) Click on File > Archive and choose a date such as 1/Nov/2009 as your starting point (you can repeat this exercise for a later date any time) and create a new archive file called, let’s say, 2009Archive. Whilst it is archiving you can click on File > Open > Outlook Data File so that the archived email remains available to you.
3) To discover where your current email is kept (if you don’t know) click on File > Data File Management and look for “Default” in the Comment column - this is the file name/location you should note. When archiving has finished, exit Outlook. Then run SCANPST* to ensure the integrity of your existing file using the noted location from earlier. It will prompt you to ask if you want it to take a backup. Do it.
4) Now restart Outlook, click on File > Data File Management, click on the default file line and “Change” then select “Compact” to reduce the size of your file and speed up email processing.

I just did this exercise and reduced my mailfile from 1.9GB to 135MB. Well worth it.

*SCANPST is somewhere in c:\Program Files - do a search to find it if need be. O miy puter it’s in
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12

I don’t know who originated this, but will attribute it if someone tells me.

For the last week I’ve been on a PRINCE2© 2009 Practitioner course from Skillsolve, the lecturer being one Pete Thomson, and I have to say I learnt a lot. To say Pete knows his stuff is like saying Alex Ferguson knows about football. He has the page numbers memorised, the paragraphs and addenda all in his head. Whether that’d make him a good PM I don’t know, but he’s a great lecturer.

I’ve been Project Managing in various guises on and off for 25 years, but that isn’t enough for working in the 21st century, so I’ve been on this course and learnt a lot. Whether I learnt enough is what’s at stake and I won’t find out until just before Christmas or just after the New Year.

Nevertheless, great course, thanks Pete.

Oh and if you EVER get offered a Trevelodge room, laugh, punch the person who offered it and walk away.