I was the proud attendee of a 2-day conference in London that started on Tuesday at 10:30, so I booked the first train from the Lake District, the 06:22.

Obviously, having to get up at 05:15 to get ready and drive to the station to catch the first train is not pleasant, but I figured I’d be able to snooze most of the way down. So I went to bed the night before all set to get up a few hours later in the pitch black of early morning.

My alarm went off, I got out of bed and looked out the window.

Shit! I got ready as quickly as possible: I’d not allowed enough time for a 10 mile drive to the station in the snow.

The snow was fresh and crunchy and I drove very, very slowly along the little road, anxious not to skid into a ditch. After 10 minutes I got to the foot of the hill that leads out of Sedbergh. I put my foot down, got about 10 metres up the hill and then skidded back down. I was snowed in, there was absolutely no way out, so I turned around, drove slowly home, went back to bed and waited till the plough had cleared the way.

I finally got to London at around 16:00 and arrived at the hotel about an hour later. Here’s the view from outside the front door:

The rest of the conference was uneventful, except that I got a cold.

I’ve finally plucked up the courage to sell my beloved Orange mountain bike. I’ve had it since my 2nd year at uni when I sold my beautiful black Cannondale M600 for £400 and saved up the extra £800 to place my custom order at my local Orange bike shop: titanium seat post and saddle, Pace forks, clipless pedals, Mavic rims…. I got my first parking ticket when I went to pick that bike up.

It was an awesome bike and I must have ridden thousands of miles on it. I took it to France for my year there, riding round the Parc Regional du Pilat, started my cross-Pyrenean adventure on it (which I abandoned after just a few days), blasted round the forests near my mum and dad’s house on it, rode home from work down the Taff trail on it, and generally had a great time on it. However, it was from a time before suspension and it was out of its league on anything but the most gentle of off-road paths so I bought a newer bike about a year ago and it’s been sitting unused ever since (along with the newer bike, but that’s because I’m lazy).

I tried to turn it into a road bike with slicks and a riser bar but even then it wasn’t as nice to ride as my new bike, so rather than see it do nothing, I thought I’d sell it to someone who would love it again.

I’ll be sad to see it go though.

Yesterday’s figures were ok but not brilliant really, but then I hadn’t appreciated the extra amount of fuel needed to go at around 70 mph. So this morning I stuck to around 60 mph on the way in, which, as I explained yesterday, has more downhill bits than on the way home. It’s still got some vicious uphill sections though, so I fear I’ll never attain the 80 mpg on this particular route.

So, 48 miles sticking to around 60 mph… 68.8 mpg! It did get to 70.1 mpg but the last 3 miles were in a crawling traffic jam and that scuppered things slightly.

It’s nice traveling at this speed. And I’m saving a huge amount of fuel.

But I was 20 minutes late for work.

After last night’s ‘Top Gear’ in which the three presenters drove from Switzerland to Blackpool on one tank of fuel, I thought I’d give it a go on the drive to work this morning. It’s 48 miles, the first 5 are on twisty uphill lanes, the next 39 are on the motorway, and the last 4 are on slow roads with roundabouts. I’ve got a very lightweight aluminium car with a 3 cylinder diesel engine so I’ve got all the ingredients for success.

I never revved much over 3000 rpm and never went over 70 mph and achieved… 63.5 mpg.

Due to the weird nature of junction 31a of the M6, the journey home is longer than the journey to work. So whilst it’s 48 miles down, it’s 51 miles back Plus it’s uphill most of the way. Even so, I managed 63.7 mpg by not going much over 60 mph.

This is pretty good I reckon although still a way off Toyota’s 84.66 mpg. I’m going to leave earlier tomorrow morning and not go over 60 mph.

I know, I know, you can’t wait for the results.

It’s been a bad month. Not for Soren - he’s continuing to hone his skills such as walking and ‘talking’ and flinging food as far from his face as possible the second it approaches his mouth. No, it’s been a bad month for me as a parent intent on recording as much of his young life as possible.

In preparing this month’s edition I realised I only had 5 decent pictures. Considering how significant 1 month is when you’re only 16 months old, I’m rather ashamed. Plus I can’t really remember anything particular other than he’s started to do a huge amount of drawer emptying recently, taking everything out and transferring it into another room… and leaving it there. He often gets his fingers trapped in the drawer and just stands there quietly whimpering, fingers wedged, waiting for one of us to come and rescue him.

What else? He likes McDonald’s fries. I never thought he wouldn’t to be honest but then again I never thought we’d be feeding him such things. Still, they’re only potatoes, right?

And that’s all I can remember. I’m a bad dad, I know. Lucky for Soren it’s not me who looks after him most of the time.

Chuck Norris has already been to Mars; that’s why there are no signs of life there.

Chuck Norris CAN believe it’s not butter.

Chuck Norris once ate a whole cake before his friends could tell him there was a stripper in it.

Chuck Norris has his own HTML code. It is < roundhouse kick="in your face" >

I’m an inspirational blogger. In my time I’ve turned lives around, saved people from depressions, motivated people to achieve great things, helped losers become winners… all with the power of my blogging.*

And now look at me.

I’m a blogging failure, a barely pulsating creature gasping for breath on the ever-growing stinking heap of discarded blogs. Those who still visit often leave feeling dirty, infected somehow. Just click on a couple of the fellow bloggers’ links down there on the right - many are floundering too. What’s going on!?

I’ll tell you what’s going on - it’s the blogging crunch. Bloggers borrowed more than they could handle in the early days, fooled into thinking they’d be able to pay it all back. Those with original content lent it out at exorbitant rates knowing full well most people would never be able to return the favour. And now we’re all suffering: there’s a lack of confidence out there, blogs are being abandoned and their authors are turning to doing things like ‘their jobs’. Some blogs are even being bought out by the government and merged into huge multinational blogs.

This is wrong, just plain and simple wrong.**

It’s time to take a stand, time to stand up and take time to stand for what we believe in again. It’s about blogging at least once a week on trivial, silly things that you’ve done in your life, perhaps with a few photos to brighten things up. It’s about thinking something on the way to the shops and remembering to post it when you get back to your computer. Above all it’s about being an inspirational blogger!

Come on people, what do you say?

* Maybe.

** It’s wrong because I made it up.

I’ve never been a fan of personalised number plates. Tarting up your car in this way is the reserve of morons with a lack of imagination. Surely it would be better to give that money to charity, use it as toilet paper, or burn it for a bit of winter warmth rather than spend it on a collection of numbers and letters that do absolutely nothing, serve no purpose, improve nothing at all. A car with a personalised plate should automatically be towed and cubed.

At least this was my view until today.

Today I was behind a car that totally changed my mind. In fact I’m now pining after one myself.

In slanty writing on a black Porsche was written B1C3P.

How cool is that!?

Well, it’s all over: Derek O’Bama has won the vote and will be the first Irish President of the United States of Americans.

I for one am delighted and think he’ll do a good job. His victory speech in Colorado, in front of 250 people, was disappointing and his numerous slips and mumbles were a bit embarrassing especially since someone actually recorded the whole thing and put it on YouTube, but he’s never been about public talking, he’s all about the war in Iraq and sending more and more troops over there. Go Derek!

I feel sorry for John McClane because he’s useless, but that’s irrelevant now that the voting’s all finished. He’ll fade into the background and hopefully leave Michael Palin’s wife Sarah to go back to England to live with the ex-Python star.

Derek, if you’re reading this, congratulations!

Normally it’s only citizens of a country who can vote in their elections, but since the US president impacts on all our lives, the US government has officially asked me to gather the votes of the British people. Don’t let this opportunity slip by - make sure your voice is heard!

There’s a shortage of people volunteering to be part of the police force in the South West, so the local councils have gone out into the circus community to ‘recruit under-represented minorities’. One section of the community that hitherto had not really featured in the force but is now taking a greater interest is midgets: there are now entire towns patrolled by small police men and women.

“I’m delighted that midgets now form a large part of our police force,” said Chief Inspector Wexford, “but unfortunately they’re not meeting performance targets just yet. Between me and you, they’re just not much cop.”

Eunoia - ‘beautiful thinking’ - is the shortest word in the English language containing all five vowels. It’s the title of Canadian poet Christian Bok’s book in which each chapter uses only one vowel.

Here’s an extract from chapter 3.

“Hiking in British districts, I picnic in virgin firths, grinning in mirth with misfit whims, smiling if I find birch twigs, smirking if I find mint sprigs.

Midspring brings with it singing birds, six kinds, (finch, siskin, ibis, tit, pipit, swift), whistling shrill chirps, trilling chirr chirr in high pitch. Kingbirds flit in gliding flight, skimming limpid springs, dipping wingtips in rills which brim with living things: krill, shrimp, brill - fish with gilt fins, which swim in flitting zigs. Might Virgil find bliss implicit in this primitivism? Might I mimic him in print if I find his writings inspiring?”

Pretty awesome I reckon! I shan’t be reading it though: I’ve already not read a shelfful of experimental post-modern books. Plus I heard him read from his book on the ‘Today’ programme this morning on Radio 4 and he sounds punch-in-the-face annoying.

After a hard day at work I like to kick back and watch a bit of television. In the old days this meant flopping on the sofa around 6pm and getting off it around 11pm. It’s different now that Soren’s here - I only sit down around 9:15pm after he’s gone to bed.

This is obviously much better as I no longer waste huge chunks of life on Hollyoaks, Emmerdale etc and instead spend time with my family. However, I still get a bit of time to watch something and actually the 9pm slot usually has something interesting. And thanks to Sky+ 9:15pm can be 9pm if I need it to be.

So last night I watched Marcus du Sautoy’s The Story of Maths on BBC4. Even before I pressed ‘play’ I had realised that a hip young dude shouldn’t be watching such a dorky programme but I didn’t care. And the reasons I didn’t care were that 1)I’m not a hip young dude and haven’t been for a very long time (and arguably never was), and 2)this was really interesting!

This was the last episode and dealt with 20th century maths, in particular infinity. Apparently there are different kinds of infinity and some are bigger than others - it was Georg Cantor who figured that out. So an infinity made of ‘natural’ numbers - 1, 2, 3, 4 etc - is unbounded and infinite in size, but is actually smaller than an infinity made of ‘real’ numbers or numbers that can be represented as a decimal - 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 etc. Huh? Cantor proved this by pairing up the 2 infinities and it sounded very clever!

I get it but I don’t understand it. I love trying to understand stuff like this because it makes me feel like I’m getting a glimpse of what those brain boxes see when they glimpse the truth that lies beneath our universe. And although I don’t have the capacity to understand it, I like to imagine that if I weren’t so busy I could give it a go. My next project therefore is to crack Hilbert’s 23 problems.

Or maybe I’ll just start recording Hollyoaks and Emmerdale and calm down a bit.

Once again I’m a couple of weeks late posting your monthly update. Sorry about that

This month started in France, in the Pyrenees and by the sea. I said it as part of last month’s update but boy did you love splashing in the sea! On our last day we went for one last swim and it was very cold, but you didn’t care at all, bravely taking a tiny shell for a swim in the icy waters.

Since we’ve been back you’ve been swimming a few times with mummy at the pool and have been going to Tumble Tots where you apparently have so much fun you go a little bit mental. It’s also there that you pick up a variety of colds which you kindly share with us both.

The big news should really have been that you’re now walking but you’ve actually been able to walk for a while now; it’s only now that you’ve bothered to do it by yourself so it’s not such a big deal. Except that you’re really good at it! You’re also very good at brushing your teeth (by putting the toothbrush in your mouth and moving your head side to side), clapping, making a bee’s ‘bzzz’ noise (which actually comes out as ‘bvvv’), poking our noses, dancing to the ‘Do your bedtime business’ song and learning new things without us teaching you them. It’s all very exciting, but we’ve realised that we should perhaps stop swearing in front of you in case you learn a new word and shout out “fucker!” whilst picking out a new baby book at the library.