Another Year Over And What Have We Done?

December 2007. Another year over and what have we done?

Robert and Melissa have been on Runescape.com* a lot. I’ve been elected to the local Council, and recently the company I work for thought I was worth a bit more than the derisory sum I was previously being paid, so things are starting to look up.

It’s just a year since I moved to my new home in Bedfordshire, so I’ve had all the usual hassle of moving in and getting a house sorted out. Double glazing was completed in the house soon after moving in and I’ve had cavity wall insulation added. When I look back to when I moved in it felt so cold. The electric and gas meters were on cards, and I had a lot of problems getting cards that worked for me. It was such a relief when the meters were changed to pay monthly.

At the beginning of the year, I rejoined the Liberal Democrats, and made a website for them – http://votelibdem.com out of the domain name I already owned. Following on from that, I became a candidate for the local town council elections in May, and was elected. In fact, the Lib Dems won all 14 seats on our Town Council, as well as all 5 of the District Council elections that were held in this town on the same day. This has meant that I’ve gained access to other local people quite quickly, learnt a fair amount about my new locality, and I don’t feel like too much of an outsider.

I joined the local Bowling Green club, but never got into it. In fact, the second time I went bowling, I ended up with a trapped nerve in my buttock for a week!

Houghton Regis Town Council organised its annual Carnival on the village green in the summer. I told everyone how it was going to be a grand affair with processions, and lots of activity. In the end, the procession turned out to be a couple of floats and a – I’d better watch my words here – a small number of walking groups. In other words, not at all what I thought it was going to be. I took a picture of my daughter with a clown on the village green, and that ended up later in one of the Town Council’s newsletters. In September the village green was also the centre for a Medieval Day, complete with Pig Roast, Jousting, bows and arrows, and a mad monk. The mad monk asked the kids if I’d done anything naughty. “He made us eat our veg” was the naughtiest thing they could come up with, (is my life really that dull?) so I think the mad monk must have been on my side on that one, so I didn’t get any punishment severe enough for me to remember.

During the summer I took the children on days out to Woburn Safari Park and Abbey, Milton Keynes’ Gullivers Eco Land, Heddingham Castle, Tring Natural History Museum, and Hampton Court.

I would have liked to have got away a bit further during the year but I had a dizziness attack at the start of the year, that took ages to shake off. Menierés syndrome was the label given to it. I had some days when I was very sick. Even now I am on medication. We’re hoping to go to Turkey at Easter 2008, so that’s something to look forward to.

*Runescape (or Run! Escape! as I call it, which winds the kids up completely, as it's rune scape to them). This interactive website does end up teaching the children, in a way, like what materials do you need to put together to make a sword? As I write my daughter is making virtual jewellery, and has to mine the gold, smelt it in a furnace, add jewels, and eventually she will sell them (virtually) and increase her “bank balance”. My son tells me they're “making” virtual Christmas presents for each other, online. Whatever next?

Life through the kitchen window is very entertaining since we look out onto an old orchard where 3 squirrels are always scampering around.




 Hampton Court 2007