As the New Year approaches and the rain cascades down on Basingstoke once again, I find myself in the unique position of spending the evening at home with my youngest son as the elder one gets pissed somewhere in Kempshott; it appears that the baton of partying and wholesale enjoyment has been well and truly passed over to the younger, fitter and better looking man. Not that I am bitter at the passing of youth of course.
2012 has been a funny ...
As a modern wannabee middle class housing estate on the outskirts of Basingstoke, Hatch Warren sometimes feels like it has little appeal. However, as the rain once again cascades across this green and tarmacked land, living over six hundred feet above sea level and looking down on the rest of Hampshire all of a sudden seems more appealing than it once did. Because this area is essentially houses and a retail park it really doesn't feel like it ...
Us Brits have a real fascination with the white stuff that graces our temperate shores for a couple of days a year each winter; Facebook was full of comments this morning saying things like "Snow", "OMG it's Snowing" and "Snowing outside!!!" It appeared to be that everyone temporarily forgot how inane these comments were as the excitement of a pitiful flurry of the white stuff got the better of all rational thinking.
It's understandable ...
A strange thing is happening to me this autumn and that is that I am enjoying it immensely. This is something of a revelation for me as I normally spend the months of September, October and November in a thoroughly depressed state of mind courtesy of lack of daylight and falling temperatures.
There may well be several contributing factors to this unusually positive state of mind and I have counted three so far.
I have stuck to my plan of ...
We arrived back from Spain late on Sunday night and if I have learnt one thing, it is that my body is no longer built with the physical strength to drink alcohol and eat red meat on three consecutive days, which is perhaps, no bad thing.
Fuengirola as a resort is a funny old place really, much of it is an architectural disaster that was constructed in I would guess, the sixties and seventies, to satisfy the demand from northern Europe and in ...