Alice Holt, Go Ape and first BBQ of the Year - Easter Saturday

Well on Easter Saturday it was finally time for us to take Josie to Go-Ape.  She’s been wanting to go for a long time and it’s just taken a while to get the date in the diary.  We went with some friends and the girls absolutely loved it.  We went to the Go Ape in Alice Holt in Hampshire.  It was such good fun and very, very safe with no chance of falling, it’s just a case of believing that!




After Go Ape we went back to our friends place in Petersfield.  It’s there new place as they’ve downsized from a big listed country place to a more manageable brand new development.  Now lots of people go the other way but in reality owning such a property becomes your life and it can be financially tough with upkeep and fuel costs, whereas with a new place whilst sometimes the character isn’t immediately there you can build that plus you get your life back and don’t come home from work needing to do maintenance.  Well, we had the first BBQ of the year with some excellent lamb and we also took some sausages form our local sausage shop, Villagers Sausages http://www.englishsausages.com .  They were superb as always!

Check this out!

Well, a customer trip to Coventry this morning which is my 3rd day of driving for work.

Day 1 - Friday 6th Jan - I drove as I needed to leave after lunch as I was picking the little one up from school and it's easier to go directly from work to school.

Day 2 - Monday 9th Jan  - I drove as there was a tube strike plus I needed to be in the office at 0645 due to some power problems in the Park Royal area on Friday which resulted in a 2.5 hour power outage.

Day 3 - Tuesday 10th Jan - A customer trip to Coventry necessitated me driving as I didn't want to catch the train as I had quite a few calls to make and it was easier in the car as it's the day for our bi-weekly global operations call which generally takes approximately 2 hours.

So, I was in Coventry reasonably early and the easiest landmark near to where we were meeting was an small retail outlet where parking was super-easy, however the only obvious place for a coffee was a Burger King.  When ordering the coffee's I was looking down the regular menu and noticed that one of the items was super high calorie.  It was a Triple Whopper which I assume if 3 burgers in a bun with cheese etc.  Now on it's own, as you can see below, weighs in a 1070 calories which is pretty high for a single meal however swap it into a regular meal deal which I assume adds fries and a drink and it jumps to a pretty high 1510 calories.  I imagine when you order this they ask if you want to make it large meal which I guess must add around 200ish extra calories.  That's just over 1700 calories in a single meal.  Now I'm sure we've all had meals like this maybe at Burger King or elsewhere however I'd imagine that eating here would be the exception rather than the rule but I would think there are people that eat this on a more regular basis along with their other 2 meals plus snacks in a day.  This must mean that their calorie intake is pretty high and needs some adjustment back to a more level playing field.  It's good that Burger King, McDonalds display the calories and I notice that both Starbucks and Costa do too on their cakes etc. which if you take a look can add up pretty quickly too, however I wonder how many people really talk notice of them.
I'm sitting in Starbucks now and I often fancy something however when I look I notice that most of the items are pretty high and actually one of the lowest is a plain or almond croissant surprisingly.  I must admit I sometimes grab the Amoretto biscuit or whatever they are, they are usually by the cash register in a glass jar.  I don't feel too bad about this as generally I drink a black coffee or tea, or if I'm splashing out I'll have a kids size skinny hot chocolate which is more than enough as some of the cup sizes in both Costa and Starbucks is ridiculous.  I think that there are drinks combinations that can be over 1000 cal.

Burger King Menu

Check the 3rd item

On may way back I was stuck in some traffic on one of the bridges crossing the Thames and shaped a few images looking west as the sun was setting or nearly set.

Looking west from one of the bridges crossing the Thames 

Looking west from one of the bridges crossing the Thames

Wintery visit to Kelsey Park, Beckenham

Wow a crisp chilly day, Thursday 29th December 2016, and we chose to take the kids to Kelsey Park, Beckenham, Kent, UK (http://www.kelseyparkbeckenham.co.uk).

Kelsey Park is great be it a lovely sunny day or a crisp cold winters day, like today.  It was pretty brisk and the 3 of us, and my sister, her husband and her 2 kids went for a walk around the park.  The park itself it pretty big and focusses around a big lake in the middle which has any number of birds, ducks, geese, heron etc nesting on its central island.  In one corner is a children’s play area so we often park in the exact opposite corner so it necessitates a walk around the lake which is a good stretch of the legs.  Today is was especially cold so we needed to wrap up warm, actually it was the first time I had seen the whole lake frozen in a long time and I’m sure some of the birds were slightly confused.  There still seemed to be lots of other park users feeding them though, so I doubt they were too fussed.

Panto Time

In Wednesday 28th December ’16 it was time for our long anticipated visit to the Christmas Pantomime.  We had chosen to see Cinderella at The London Palladium.  Given the venue choice we were sure it would be a grand affair, and that it was.  The were flying carriages and vespa scooters that rose into the audience.

Before that though we met some friends at The Heddon Street Kitchen just off of Regent Street.  We were around 5 minutes late and the others were already there.  Well the restaurant handled our party of 8, 4 adults & 4 children, extremely well.  We were prompt served some nice wine while the children were given menu packs that doubled as enveloped housing colouring books and pencils.  The meal was superb and afterwards the kids retreated upstairs to their ice-cream bar which I must say was adequately stocked with toppings to suit any taste.  The were even good with the dairy free requirements.

We then had to leave quite quickly as we had been a little too leisurely about lunch and it was about 15 minutes to advertised curtain up.  Thankfully The Palladium is only about a 5 minute brisk walk so we made it with plenty of time to spare, not forgetting the prerequisite toilet stop before leaving the restaurant.  One think I didn’t realise was until I walked our and saw the menu on the front was that it’s a Gordon Ramsey establishment……Well Done Gordon.  

Take a look @ https://www.gordonramsayrestaurants.com/heddon-street-kitchen/

Panto Pics

Well that was Christmas

Well, that was Christmas……done.

Doesn’t it fly by?  Was very tough when the alarm went off at 0600 this morning…..almost impossible after almost 2 weeks out of the office and lazy mornings sleeping in.

It was the first Xmas in the new house and we had lots of trees……6 in total.  Yes it sounds excessive however only 1 was a big one.

 

The others were much smaller, one was probably 3 feet tall and was in the front room in there window and the other 4 were just small ones that were on sale at various places.

 

Here’s the big one again with presents around it this time!

 

And didn’t we have a lot of presents….. Well somebody, Josie, had a lot including 1 massive present, which caused us a few wrapping difficulties.

Inside it was a Barbie house which I think was quite popular this year as throughout December it was quite popular on the online retailing websites.  One word of warning though is the box is pretty big and stuck out the boot of the car when we picked it up from the collection point!

 

Christmas Dinner

Well we had 12 for lunch this Christmas which went pretty smoothly.  No staters, jus main course and dessert which was more than enough.  The main course was traditional Christmas Turkey with all the trimmings including Yorkshire pudding which the kids all devour extremely quickly.  To go with the turkey we also did a gammon which was fantastic.  It was a bit of a last minute purchase but did complemented the turkey very well plus it gives you another meat to cut of for sandwiches etc when you have guests over for the next week or so.  The turkey was crown which believe me cooks very well and makes carving very easy and I would recommend every time if you have any number of guests.

 

As you can see from the above the table looked good and easily seated all 12 of us no problems.  Below is the gammon and pigs in blankets (sausages wrapped in bacon) which always seem to go pretty quickly.

 

Here’s the cheese selection being laid out in preparation for after the meal.  The other dish is cauliflower cheese which was a main course accompniment.

 

Also for dessert we served up more traditional Christmas Pudding and also a chocolate one for those who don’t like the former.  Both of the puddings were supporting St. Dustan’s college Tanzania Project.

 

Then it was Gin and Tonic time……. As you can see a good selection of Gins were available al with Fever Tree tonic of course.