Please come over and have a look at nodestone.com.

We headed down to the beach in Hove after work today and had a swim and bbq with Simon from the works with his kids and Jay popped down as well. It was a still, warm, beautiful evening,

We’re staying around the St Helens Duver in a little NT cottage. Been hacking around on foot and by bike this morning and it really is quite remote and beachy. Brilliant.

I planted two rows of spuds today, 1 ft deep, 18 inches or so apart, can’t remember the variety though. Alister or Colin must have planted the first three rows. It is getting steeper up there, each row is a little harder to get in place and there are a lot of upside-down turfy bits that make it a bit tricky.

The garlic is looking ok. Bottom of stems are going purple-ish.

To Do up there:

• Tie up the rasberry canes again. The last lot fell down an became ankle traps for those going past.
• Plant some herbs and beans and stuff.

As I said earlier, we had a nice one. Full of friends and family. We had ten adults and five kids staying over from Christmas eve to the day after boxing day, as well. That includes us. We fully filled up the house and then some.

It was great. Everybody took a turn in the kitchen cooking, and everybody jumped in to help clean up and somehow it all fell together beautifully.

Christmas day worked really well. After a fantastic pancake brekky, we assaulted the tree and opened presents. That went on for hours. Then after a long morning at it and a lot of milling around, we finally sat down the Christmas dinner about 4pm I think it was. And you know, all the toddlers and babies chose that time to be asleep, so it was a lovely sit down meal around the big table in the conservatory.

There are some photos about somewhere. We keep trying to get them up on flickr. One day soon.

It stopped raining on Boxing day and the clouds cleared, so we all set out for Cuckmere Haven for a walk. The sun shined a lot and we all got a lot of sky and air, which was a good thing after the insideness of Christmas day.

What else to say? It was a lot of fun, and pretty exhausting all around. Whose house are we going to next year? :-)

More Details on Upcoming

[Update: 7 April: not doing it this year now. Been a bit crook for a few days, and think it is pretty mad to do it and make myself sicker. Sigh. The last one was such fun.

But, rising at dawn is still possible. What shall I do with myself?]

It is raining outside.  I’ve got a sniffly nose.   But that doesn’t matter. This is huge fun.

We got a Nabaztag for Christmas.  I’ll pop a widget in so you can send us a message.  Fun!.

This bunch is called 3 seasons collection from Spalding Bulbs.

Alistair came down as well and we dug in another bed .. so they are pretty much all done now. We just need to work out what to plant. The garlic planted at the end of September has come up — about 3 inch green shoots now. Most of the 40 have come up.

• The my-poor-old-laptop saga resulted in Apple sending me a new MacBook Pro. I’ll post something about that whole process soon. In short, it was long and painful, with a (so far..) happy ending.
• Lib’s Authentic Blogging courses are off and running. She’s running three courses at the moment and the students are just making their first blogs and blog entries. Pretty exciting stuff. I’m supporting with a few questions and answers on the Authentic Blogging blog and here as well.
• We are just back from a half-term break in Brittany. Gorgeous.
• Halloween approaches. And October is at an end. The months fly by, don’t they?

I want to keep a bit of a diary here so we get a sense of what we’ve achieved and what worked and didn’t. So here’s the first bit of that. NB.. this is what we all achieve together, not just our bit.

Last weekend

• Weeding beds and around beds, removing long grass and big, weird weeds. Great big fleshing flowery things. What were they?
• Picked a few runner beans, but they were a bit woody. Inside, some beautiful coloured beans — purples and pinks and spots. They turned into an art project.

This weekend

• Dug out some not-too-bad compost and built up a bed with some top soil to plan garlic in.
• Planted about 40 garlic bulbs.
• Put topsoil around the raspberries.
• Put topsoil in other beds, more weeding of beds.
• Pulled out bean plants that are past it.
• Built a trellis for one row of raspberries. Need to build one for the other row.
• Bea found a couple of raspberrys to eat. Yum.

A lot of stuff. I’ve been really wondering why we have it all. But, you know, I like a lot of this stuff.

In the middle of all this I was taking out the trash as well.. I took a couple of lulu-van-loads of stuff to Hove recycling centre:

“Do you want this old tumble dryer?”

“Nope.”

So it gets recycled into metal and probably the plastic bits get chucked into landfill. So chucking stuff out seems bad and weird and wasteful. But I’m happy to have the experience. Next time I’ll put more effort into giving stuff away to people who really want it.

There are still a few boxes to empty and a bunch of sutff sitting in the backyard. The lovely new place is still a mess. It is a bit like living in a jigsaw, and there’s always another piece that needs to be moved to the right place.

But we’ll get over that. The new place is great. We are down towards the bottom of Havelock Road in Fiveways, closer to urban Brighton town. More street life, more walking, more kids around.

When we tidy up, I’ll pop some photos on flickr.

We applied and Bea has been offered a place at Downs Infants School, which is a short walk away. Lots of kids walk past our front door on the way to school. She starts at the new school on Monday in year 2. And she’s really excited about it, as we all are.

I’ve put a few of our Glastonbury photos (many taken by Bea) up on Flickr. There are a few more mud wrestling shots than are really representative, but that’s just how the photos worked out :-)

• We are just back from Glastonbury festival, where Lib and I were working in the Buddhafields Cafe, cooking and serving and washing dishes. Lots of fun, mud and music.
• We’ve been out and about camping on weekends a lot, with the Woodcraft folk (a cooperative/peace oriented guides equivalent) which Bea loves.
• We’ve got a few plans for summer, which include a campervan trip to Spain.
• Lib is building up her new blogging courses. Have a look at authenticblogging.com.
• I’m looking for the perfect project or short-term management role based in Brighton or close by. More about that at Presence Labs.
• Scouta is growing nicely and getting some good press.

I had the pleasure of cashing in my annual rail card yesterday, indicating the end of my daily commuting to London and a nine-to-five life, for a little while anyway.

Work-wise, I’m starting to look at new opportunities here in Brighton, put some effort into Scouta to bring it to a sustainable place, and seriously think about entering the web applications business proper with our own Presence Labs.

And there is the summer to look forward to as well.

A time for growth and change for all of us.  Today is the first of May.  There are Beltane celebrations planned for tonight and the moon is full.  Who know what magic may be out there tonight.

by Bea