Wow, I haven’t posted for a while. The primary reason for this being that I have just moved house and been completely without internet for a period yet again.

This time however – it is finally into a house I own! … well actually, the bank pretty much own it, so not too different from being a renter really … except I pay much more rent … oh, and I have to fix the leaking wall myself.

There have been some interesting experiences in my new life as a own owner. One of the first was discovering a pile of Hello and OK magazines, up to my waist (and weighing a ton) dating back to 1990. Years and years worth of pages filled with nothing but the life and times of Princess Diana. What a waste of paper. Although, there could have been some money in those mags … could have been, except I never found out as I slung them in the tip.

The next exciting part to being a home-owner was the fact that I got to remove a stud wall. With a sledge hammer of course (despite the fact that the vibrations probably dislodged half of the external walls). That was fun. At that point, feeling all manly, and with adrenaline pumping through my veins – I declared that I like DIY.

Then I got onto some painting…

Boy do I hate painting. I can’t get my head round having to put second and third coats of paint on a wall when my lazy nature just wants to say bugger it and live with some patchy pattern. We could claim it was meant to be like that, couldn’t we? A new style! If everyone refused to put second and third coats on their wals, then it could become a new fashion. After all, that pretty much what a fashion is – a bunch of people all doing something at the same time.

It would also save me some bloody time and I could go climbing.

I am as proud as the next Brit of our glorious NHS. I think the model is great, it works and I would quite happily sacrifice a little more of my salary for NHS improvements (being the woolly left winger that I am).

I do, however have a bit of a bone to pick with this, most appreciated of services. The bone comes with the seeming inability of the NHS to pick the correct people for the correct job… Actually thats a lie – the real issue is that the NHS cannot remove people who are no good / bordering incompetent at their jobs.

Often I have heard the complaints of my friends and family working in the healthcare sector about poor managers and poor colleagues making unchallenged mistakes (including a 1 year epic battle to get rid of one particular member of staff) but rarely have I felt it.

This week Lucy went to the doctors to get her hearing checked out. She has always been a little hard of hearing following operations which she had as a child, she relies very heavily on lip reading and uses subtitles on the TV (which means that I always read the punch line in any comedy – before the joke happens).

In her job as an assistant psychologist in the NHS, she has been struggling recently to hear what the children she works with are trying to tell her – and in the types of consultations she is in, it doesn’t work to ask the kids to repeat themselves. The doctor told her, she has scarring in her ear and that a specialist may be able to help her.

This was so frustrating. For five years Lucy has not had her hearing checked out because one useless GP wrongly diagnosed excema and told her that there was no point seeing a specialist as if she was going deaf there is nothing she can do about it.

Thats GP interpersonal skills for you!
What do you reckon? £70k a year for a 4 day week?

Its become a new tradition amongst friends of mine in Sheffield to take to the local park on New Years eve for an epic ‘jumpers for goalposts’ football game. The game is ‘however-many-can-be-arsed-to-turn-up-a-side’ and lasts from about 1 in the afternoon to whenever the risk of leg breakage becomes too much to bear (i.e. when it is so dark that one cannot see ones opponent).

The best thing about football in New Years Eve is that both this year and last, the game was played immediately after a large snow thaw. This means two things:

The first is that the pitch we use (which isn’t actually a pitch, its just a park) is totally and utterly saturated, thus creating an uneven surface pocketed with large puddles/ponds (I clearly remember last year being tackled by a puddle – I can do without that). Last year this enabled us to clearly see the pitch as after bout an hour of play, there was a nicely marked out rectangle of brown visible against the green grass of the rest of the park.

The second is that the mud is a massive leveller on the field. Especially for me – for I am in possession of that golden item – something which is held in high esteem and regard in the world of NYE footballers. I own a pair of football boots (I think left over from my university days of inter-mural rugby).

Last year I was up against a great many regular five a side players. That is, five aside astro-turf players. And they weren’t in possession of lovely boots such as mine.

Those poor souls in trainers could barely stand up, let alone change direction or apply any skill. I, despite the fact that I am absolutely crap at football, utilised my standing up and changing direction abilities and was actually one of the better players on the field! It was a shortlived feeling, but fulfilling none the less.

So I finally moved over to WordPress – after setting up my WordPress account nearly 3 years ago. About 3 years ago I decided that WordPress was altogether too complicated for me to use, and about 1 week ago – I realised it would actually only take me around 1 hour to set the damn thing up. The most difficult thing I have struggled with is putting blooming strike-through on the text in my sidebar.

Its also taken those years for me to finally get around to changing my blog header from that old pixelised picture I took on my former travels and couldn’t be bothered to format properly.

My new header is of Charleston Lake taken during one of my solo walking adventures in Canada when worked out there in 2008. I would like to claim that there is some moving or even relevant meaning behind the header. But the reason is mainly that the header is long and thin and I needed a long / thin photo because I am completely incompetent when it comes to editing themes.

As a part of this blogger departure – I have also taken the opportunity to set up a second blog. This one entirely devoted to my favourite photo’s which I will endeavour to maintain:

www.samrihughes.wordpress.com

Who knows, one day I may even get around to hosting the site on my own proper, grown-up domain.

Lenny is a stupid cat. He doesn’t realise that cats aren’t supposed to lie on their backs.

This is pretty much the way he sleeps most of the time.

Stupid cat.

We are currently in the process of buying a house. At present my 1.5 hour commute each way is killing me, so we are moving north – back to the land of my childhood, flat-caps, wellies and middle class ladies in SUVs taking their kids to school. That the life for me!

Lucy is still holding out some hope of being in the house before Christmas, possibly because everyone we speak to in the trade tells us that ‘it should be around 4-6 weeks to get you in’. We have no chain, they have no chain.

Of course when you ask around, no-one in the history of mankind has ever actually been in their house within 4-6 weeks. I have no idea where than number has been taken from.

For a start you have to deal with inept banks. This time my frustrations are directed at NatWest who are organising the mortgage. Yes NatWest, I am naming and shaming you for all of your wrongdoings, here on the internet for all to see, on this here blog which very few people actually read! Ha!

Its a ridiculously simple thing which has been holding us up. In order to get our mortgage, I, who am not a NatWest customer need to take in my passport to my local branch and get it photocopied and stamped, with the photocopy sent through to the mortgage arm of the branch.

I took an hour off work to take my passport into the nearest branch (of course most branches only open 09.30 to 16.30 which makes this in itself a pretty difficult task). They did the required copying and sent it through to the mortgage bit. We waited…

…nothing happened. After a few days we were frustrated with the lack of news and called the mortgage centre up to find out what the delay was. They informed us that the passport hadn’t been stamped properly. They agreed to make our mortgage an urgent priority. We were annoyed but went back into our local branch on the Saturday morning to get another copy done. Then another wait…

…nothing happened. We chased the bank again and surprise, surprise they said that the passport hasn’t been stamped properly. Again they agreed to make the passport an urgent priority and this time they gave us a list of all of the things that the branch had to do in this complicated photocopying tasks.

I had to make a round trip missing a meeting at work to a branch near Bradford, outside which I had to wait for 30 mins with a huge queue for the bank to open. They all open at different times you see, obviously for lack of demand at 9 in the morning. They dont percieve a queue of 10 people outside of the bank being demand it seems. I stood there and made them do the copies properly with the two different stamps. They sent it through…

… Surprise surprise, nothing happened. We called up and they told us the passport copy was smudged so they couldn’t accept it. Lucy screamed at them, so they agreed to make our mortgage an urgent priority (again). The guy in the mortgage centre offered to put us through to the branch so we could scream at them instead. Nice of him.

At this stage we had lost around 2 weeks of time and Lucy and I wanted to get this in quick. She had to go home at lunch to pick up my passport whilst we arranged to meet at Huddersfield NatWest – somewhere we should have both been able to make within 40 mins of our workplace – meeting in the middle.

I set off from work at 3.30 (I told your they close at the extremely useful time of 16.30 didn’t I?) missing an important meeting and hightailing it to the M62. Just as I passed the last exit on the M606 heading onto M62 westbound, I hit a wall of traffic. The M62 was shut westbound and I couldn’t escape. I spent 2 hours in that traffic queue going 1 junction. I have never been so pissed off in my entire life. If there was a camera in that car – it would make some very amusing viewing.

So. I set off to work yesterday to take my passport in before work (another bit of work missed), managed to battle through the snow as far as the inner ring road when – my power steering went in my car. The lord did not want this passport photocopy!

I borrowed Lucy’s car and after dropping my car at a garage (£516 the repair is costing me!), we got to the bank and went through the whole rigmarole again. The girl in the branch couldn’t really understand why we were so adamant about checking the photocopies – but we made sure she put every stamp on perfectly.

We rang the bank in the late afternoon (it takes 8 hours for the photocopy to get onto the system – didn’t I say). It had been rejected again. this time one of the stamps wasn’t quite legible. Lucy screamed and screamed. they decided that with the 4 copies of the passport, they would probably be alright actually and actually they would accept it.

Its amazing what a bit of screaming will do.

Its amazing the rubbish you can find adorning shop windows in some of the tourist towns of this country of ours. Little metal buckets with random words daubed on them, small wooden animals, wreathes shaped like hearts with little red bows.

I know this, for I spent the majority of the weekend chaperoning Lucy through the miriad of chintz shops to be found in the towns of Grasmere and Ambleside in the Lake District. Lucy has been somewhat distracted by home and leisure type magasines of late, for we, finally are about to lay down some roots and enter the housing market. A big step for two people who haven’t lived in the same house for more than two years since leaving home.

The only problem is, that with Lucy in charge I think our house may end up looking a little like a cross between a Beatrix Potter scene and an old peoples home. Its all I can do to veto the purchase of porcelain ducks.

In between viewing tiny blue bookshelves which are not big enough nor strong enough to actually hold a book – we once more got a little walking in.

This time we were blessed with not only good weather, but excellent light for photography. I always love getting out in the winter.

Left behind!

Clucky the Chicken


Flat Light

We may have come face to face with some real ghosts this weekend. Or at least, if ghosts did exist, they would be sure to hangout at the place we stayed last night.

This weekend we went down to Lea Hall, in the heart of glorious Derbyshire. Yes, its a bit far south – but I promise you it looks a lot like the north, so it is probably worth a visit!

Lea Hall was the childhood home of Florence Nightingale and so had some proper history and that. The rooms were fantastic and Lucy got this rather shadowy shot of the bed which I like:

(the toblerone you can see was a present to me, and lasted approximately 2 hours)

The reason for this visit was the 6 year anniversary of us getting together. I didn’t reveal to Lucy where we were going until the blooming sat-nav gave the game away when we were about half a mile from the house. I probably made a mistake by hinting that passports may be required for the weekend. This may have potentially led to a problematic heightening of expectations. It was a damn good weekend though!

Lucy and I are close to making some big decisions at the moment. With my new job has come a 1 hr 20 minute each way commute and we need to figure out a way to narrow this down. We’re pretty close to actually getting off this goddam rental train and actually purchasing a place of our own. Its about time really – but we both still harbour sectret desires to sack everything off and go and live in a tent in some faraway place. Pretty difficult to do with a big fat mortgage in tow.

As we usually do when we have things to discuss, we head for the hills. I took this one in some valley I dont know the name of – while walking near Derwent reservoir. The reds of the moors are fantastic in the Autumn, and I always think you can do much better photography in the winter months than summer if you get a clear day:

I have made the decision that I really need to get back into this blogging malarkey. Its been a hectic 12 months, but hopefully some of that should be dying off and I should have some free evenings again.

That job I wasn’t sure I wanted – I took it, and we are even looking at buying a house at the moment (though a major issue is the fact that I am the crappest negotiator ever to grace this earth).

I thought that in order to get hings going again I would have delve into my Flickr account for any photos which I have stashed away and could use. Then I had a minor heart attack when I found out all of my photos were missing! Thank god it was just my account expiring and I can recover them – otherwise I may have cried.

Here’s one of the boys standing on the top of a via ferrata route we did in the Dolomites in May. A little too dark to see faces, but still I like it:

Hopefully I will be around a little more from now on!