Isn't Midlothian nice.

Me, Sharlene, Calvin and the dogs went for a walk to Ironmills park in Dalkeith on Sunday. Midlothian is great. You can see from the pics some views of the Watertower restaurant plus the river Esk from from a few of the bridges zig-zagging over it.

Hold the front page!

Calvin has managed to get on to the front page of the local Midlothian Advertiser. What a scoop.

It must have been a quiet day in the press room as the main story on the front page is 'Stray Dog Dies in Police Custody'.

Never mind that though, Calvin got a cool picture of himself with his toys at the recent exhibition of his work done by his school.

He gets nearly a full page article, with some sweet pictures too, under the catchy, yet wrong title 'Colin's a real model pupil'. Colin! Thankfully they only get his name wrong in the title but call him Calvin everywhere else.

Oh well, never mind. The article is really nice and his teacher is quoted saying really nice things about wee dude.

Hurray for him!

He's toys mad that kid

Here's a few pictures of some of the toys Calvin he uses for inspiration. He keeps them all in real good condition too, which is nice.

I think we need to get more shelves. These old ones are creaking a bit now!

gale FORcE!

Me, Steve and Ry played golf on Saturday morning. It was sooooo windy!

Our first round of the new year and the wind blew our golf cobwebs away. Nine holes at The Melville. Nice and easy to get us back into it.

Roll on the better weather so I can start spanking it 300-350 yards with my seven iron again.

Well done lads.

Papa's Got A Brand New Bench

At last my late Papa finally got his memorial bench installed on Friday 12th January. He now has a cool looking black bench positioned at the starters box on the 1st tee at Silverknowes Golf Club (his second home). As you can see in the pictures, my Nana brought along a wee whisky for my Papa to have whilst watching all the golfers head off on their rounds.

Lot's of the family came down to see it on the Saturday afternoon and, I think, everyone thought it was cool. My Nana even got an official certificate signed by the Lord Provost too!

Thanks to everyone who came along and thanks for all the donations given to pay for the bench. I'm sure Papa is having a wee touch of Nana's whisky and toasting us all.




Hopefully things can start to get better in the year ahead after a little bit of positivity at last.


Please.

Katherine Anne Rosemary Walsh

6th March 1973 - 7th January 2007

R.I.P.

x

The Cherry Planes

Calvin and Sharlene's wee brother Ryan had a go on all the fairground rides at the recent Christmas showground in Princes Street Gardens.

Simple Simon's birthday.

Hiccy Burpday wee bro.

The big 3-0 today. What a guy.

Happy New Year!

It's the second of January and I'm back at work. WtF!

It really sucks to be the only people in Scotland working today.

I want to go home.

Brass monkey.

Last Tuesday night I was playing fottball for 2 hours in the freezing cold wind and rain, right.
I gets home and starts to take all my kit off to get into the shower after sitting chittering with the cold on the sofa. Whilst taking the undercrackers off I thought - 'that feels a bit funny' I gives myself a wee touch to make sure everything is ok in the engine room and one of my hee-haws got sooked up inside me!

Totally shat it. It popped out after the longest 5-10 seconds of my life but for a wee while there I was only half a man.

I'm tip-top now though, dinnae worry.

Calvin's first exhibition.

Calvin's school is doing an exhibition of his work for the Christmas fete. Adults and kids donate a wee bit cash to see his work - the money goes to the school's funds. Here's some images of the box he's taking to school today (you can click on each image to see a bigger version). He's got a mixture of stuff in it including a Heffalump, Winnie the Pooh, characters from Disney's Cars, King Kong and Pingu amongst others.

If you want to see more stuff from Calvin you can click on his name here.

Marks & Spencers Christmas campaign.

I'm glad Little Richard got rid of the dopey 'tache for the filming of the M&S Christmas ad. Pictures above show rehersals and the finished thing.

Sharlene's got her jams...

... ready for the Xmas period. Cranberries and blue berries in the pot.

This is a picture before the sugar started to melt and she could give them a stir.

Sh'e got all her pots from Lakeland Plastics and is ready to roll.

Christmas Holly Ollie

Wee Ollie gets into the early Christmas spirit by wearing his new reindeer mask. He's totally up for it this year, I can tell.

Shooting star.

Cheers to Cameron for giving me a borrow of his camera. It's a Canon 300D and takes pretty sweet piccies. I'm going to have to get one and then win loads of awards taking pictures of ladies with the twins oot. Yeah!

Sharlene's got wind.

They'll talk about it in Newtongrange forever. The night the McCluskie's greenhouse got ripped up from it's plastic moorings and turned inside out. Look at the destruction in the photos - you can see the pond has three or four leaves in it. The whole place looks like hurricane Tattie has blown right through.

Public anemone number 1.*

After minutes of thinking, Sharlene and I have decided that Cameron had to go back to the shop. We took him back to The Aquatic Rooms in Leith Walk on Sunday afternoon and they'll give us something in return for him in a couple of days.

In the mean time, we bought a sweet looking Fan Worm, two little Yellow Tailed Damsels and two little Green Blue Chromis's's's. The tank looks much better now that the big white mop is no longer taking up all the space and eating all the occupants. Unfortunately he has also upset one of our corals as, on the Sunday morning, he was sitting on top of it.


*thank you ryan

Sea food and he eats it.

Jesus, this anemone is costing us a fortune. We bought a nice wee Cleaner shrimp on Saturday afternoon last week – he lasted about three hours and was gone. Gulp. Next, on Thursday night, he friggin ate the smaller Clown fish. They are meant to be mates! Cheeky get. Now only the larger Clown is swimming about but she lives in the anemone so she, fingers crossed, should be alright.

I think we are going to call him Cameron.

Doggy style.

Do you want some of this?

The terrible two's.

Here is a picture taken by Simon of wee Molly and wee-er Katie during their first day at home together.

Ain't no skool like the old skool.

Yeah, that's right, your eyes are privileged to be staring at a pair of ZX600. Sweet. Takes me way back these bad boys to when I had a pair back in the 80s. Back when I was in my pomp.

I think I might start hanging around the old Safeway up at Carmondean in Livi and maybe start drinking wee bottles of Henry Funk beers. Might start talking about the D.C.M., Grumbleweeds, Headhunters, Bushwakers and the Paninari with some top boys and that.

Katie Homes

So what if Tom 'big snozzer' Cruise is getting married to Katie Holmes today. Simon and Lorraine have brought Katie home on Friday evening. Good luck guys.

As you can see from the hospital photos, Si was so excited about the birth of his second daughter he had to squeeze a wee kick-ee out there and then.

Baby, I'm amazed!

My wee brother Simon and his wife Lorraine have just had another baby. Wee Katie was born at 2pm (ish) on November the 15th in St John's Hospital in Livingston, weighing in at 7lbs 12ozs.

Going to see her tomorrow.

Nicely done guys.

x

Blackpool!

Years ago, Sharlene and I went for a trip to Blackpool. Here's a couple of pics from the dirty weekend.

World Cup footballs

Here a picture of all the football used in the Wordl Cup from 1970 up to 2002. This pic was taken by a mobile phone camera in an adidas shop in Stuttgart.

Anema... Amenom... Anomee...

Look at this big fluffy anemone. The female clown is happy as a sand eel. All cuddled in and trippy.

Lumpy and Eeyore!

And here's Eeyore too.