Archive for December, 2006
I’m told that I shouldn’t write too many posts, otherwise you lovely readers won’t be able to keep up.
However, we did manage a family get together recently, and have another one to come, so I think they’re worth a mention.
Last weekend saw us meeting up with my parents, plus my brother John and his girlfriend Sarah. John and Sarah are both teachers in Leeds, and had just finished term, so were pretty weary on the Friday night. However, they perked up a bit the next day, and we all headed into Edinburgh on the Saturday afternoon, including spending some time at the German Christmas Market in the centre of town.
The stall holders who sell Gluhwein (mulled wine) kindly use special mugs with Christmas scenes on, to get you in the mood. As Friday was the first time it had stopped raining for a week, we attempted to feel more Christmassy…[Today, it’s been bright and also frosty in Edinburgh, so it does feel a bit more like December.]
We head down to London this Saturday [23rd], to spend time with Dan’s mum Jen and his granny Viv. Jen’s brother Nigel and family will also come to meet us a few days later. We’ve not had a bigger Frydman gathering for a while, so it’s good to manage both sides of the family in the same month.
Chatting to friends, you become aware how we have a sense of a shared Christmas, yet people have such different experiences. One of my former colleagues, from New Zealand but temping in Edinburgh, is part of a big family, and Christmas isn’t Christmas unless 30 people are sitting down together…I don’t think we’ll ever emulate that, but it’s great to spend time withe people you love, however many of you there are together.
December 18th, 2006
A thought on phone calls this time.
We’ve had some special conversations recently with friends far and wide. For all of the benefits of email etc, there is something about being able to chat to people too.
So it’s been great to catch up with:
Karen in the States
Rachel who’s been teaching in Asia
and Graeme and Shona in Musselburgh, up the road from Edinburgh!
I’m not very good at picking up the phone, I have to admit, so I’ve been grateful where others have pre-empted. It’s particularly good to chat near to Christmas time, and look at what’s been happening for each other over the year.
We noticed that some of the first people to respond to our email about the blog were those who were outside the UK, so there is something about keeping in touch long-distance. We hope we can keep it up via the blog at least in the coming year, and hopefully add in some phone calls too.
December 18th, 2006
So, we’re getting into writing this blog a bit more, we’ve had some comments back, and Dan is starting to even up the score a little more with writing more posts.
But for those who want less of the new, here’s some of the continuity business:
- Yes, we both still go to work too…Dan continues to be able to walk to work, and I head off on the bus. It’s fair to say that I’m probably out of the office more often than he is, with visits to schools or briefings etc, but he’s also out around the city meeting clients. Sometimes we even get a week where we are both in the office every day, which is actually quite nice.
It’s easy to stay late at work, and we have over the years. We’re now trying to work more regular hours, and for Dan to work less at home during evenings and weekends. Even though Dan’s business has been going for a few years now, it’s still quite a breakthrough to manage more free time outside working hours.
- We continue to be part of a church small group, meeting once a week in each other’s homes. There’s a lot of mutual support, prayer for each other and for additional people who’ve previously been part of the group, often internationals who are back home in e.g. America, Australia etc, plus other church friends working abroad.
This term we’ve been looking at different psalms. Each person has taken it in turns to choose a psalm that we discuss together. We’ve also had some different approaches, including writing our own. It’s been fun to see which ones people have chosen, and why.
- I’m part of the worship team at church, and get the chance to sing as part of the team around once a month. Dan also does some web work for the Africa Fund, and occasionally advises for the church website. So, if it gains a blog, you may have a guess where the idea came from…
- We continue to see my parents regularly, and tend to meet up every two or three weeks. As they’re up the road in Peebles, about an hour away from Edinburgh, we’re able to see each other fairly straight forwardly. You can read about some of our time together in Out and about, or Family.
The discovery of our thirties: how much of what we describe is more of the same, one way or another. But we’re still grateful to be who we are, where we are, and with a few new things thrown in too, hence all the topics in Out and about etc.
December 17th, 2006
Today we had our friends Jan and Paul round for the first time in ages. In fact it was Paul’s first time to our new flat [and we’ve been here over two years], so a special time. We had lunch, walked by the sea and then came back and played Mah Jong. Or at least they showed us the basics.
It seems to be a very deep game - like a cross between chess and dominoes but with lots of nuances. All the tiles in Jan and Paul’s set were bamboo and plastic - historically they were bamboo and ivory - and there are a mix of types. There are the special tiles: winds, blessing and dragons. Then there are normal numbered tiles (1-9): bamboo, wheels and Chinese characters.
The experience was a bit like like playing poker for the first time, but having to learn how to count and what the cards mean.
A proper Mah Jong game takes sixteen rounds. We managed three. One practice game and we were told how it worked. Two extra games and Jan won one and I won one too. I think if we had been playing proper rules Jan would have won easily the second time too, but they were both very gracious and explained the game to us. They seem pretty good at it, but informed us that friends David and Maggie have been playing for many years and are very, very good. I think we’ll stay out of their way!
For those of you who are interested, we warmed up with a game of Star Wars Top Trumps [subject of a future post] and the proceedings were helped along with music from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, chocolate Lebekuchen and an enormous pot of tea.
December 17th, 2006
So, thanks for clicking the link and coming to have a quick read. In the past we published our Christmas newsletter online, but this time we’ve extended the experience a little.
The 2006 newsletter is here in the form of a blog. Alison in particular has written lots of mini articles (over 70 delights to choose from) to keep you up to date with what we did this year.
Can we recommend the Travel section (there was quite a lot of it in ‘06) and the Out and About section?
For those who are coming here via a written link in a card, don’t forget the Africa Fund - you don’t have to buy a whole goat - any donation welcome. We’re donating the money we would have spent on cards to help publicise the Africa Fund - you can donate here.
PS You may notice one or two articles mentioning photos that don’t seem to be there. They aren’t. But they will be . . .
December 14th, 2006
Confession time: I’m not very good at reading newspapers. I’m sure I should. But I’m always more interested in the supplement sections, especially on a Saturday.
Buying the Saturday Times has been a bit of a ritual for some time, and I won’t write at length about it here. But I guess one of the reasons we keep buying it is to see what the various columnists have been up to that week.
So, in the spirit of sharing our favourites, here are some of the columnists who write (and have written) well:
Kate Muir: the original. Kate has kept our attention for nearly 10 years now, writing from Paris, then Washington DC (lots on politics there), and now back to London. Kate is a Scot from Glasgow, so there are occasional comments from a Scottish perspective on some feature of England.
Kate’s topics: wide-ranging. There is quite a lot on bringing up a family in London, and dealing with yummy mummies there; the attempts to get an allotment; occasional pieces on feminism. And from time to time, she goes on holiday to Argyll, and we can read about descriptions of places that are near our holiday haunt, the Isle of Jura. Her main achievement in this respect was tipping us off to the burger bar at the top of the hill the Rest and Be Thankful. It’s a glorious drive, and can be made even more so by a high-quality bacon roll.
Robert Crampton: otherwise known as Beta Male. While Kate is situated near the front of the Saturday Times magazine, Robert is on the back page, making a career out of not quite getting it right. Robert’s subjects tend to be reasonably domestic, sometimes sport-driven, often with the option for him to record statistics along the way. We learn about the satisfaction of ‘getting a [washing] load on’, of local cycle paths, of the savage tendencies of his children’s hamsters. Robert also shares some of the games he comes up with along with fellow columnist Alan Franks: try for yourself, although you may need to improve your knowledge of football and sub-Saharan African leaders.
Peter Paphides: now no longer writing his own column, Peter used to have the front page of the Knowledge, the entertainment section of the paper. Peter also tended to write about family but also music, his main area of knowledge. Some of the best pieces involved him trying to encourage his daughter Dora to say what she thought of bands like the Clash. Dora was generally more interested in Dora the Explorer - if you have a television show apparently named after you, there’s no real substitute.
That’s enough for now. Just remember that most of these are available online now. No excuses!
December 10th, 2006
Discovered yesterday that someone has put a poem on each door of the women’s loos at church. A different poem for each door - and for reading from the inside.
I’m not here to comment on the rights or wrongs of reading on the loo, or even any differences between men and women in this regard. (I’ll have to ask Dan to check if there’s an equivalent in the men’s loos.) But I happened to see the one with Ted Hughes’ poem The Thought-Fox, which I know and like.
It was great to take an extra minute or so to think about something other than the session I’d come from, and I went back feeling a bit more in touch with the wider world.
It reminded me of seeing poems in other public places. The Poems on the [London] Underground are one well-known option, but there was also a set of poems on the buses in Edinburgh for a while, with one in Scots about the noises different things make, like fireworks, or snow under a sledge.
It seems like newspapers are equally publishing poems more regularly, sometimes with comments, sometimes without.
So here’s to poems in public places - start your own series somewhere and see who notices!
December 10th, 2006
Hoping that we can get on this ride after Christmas with my mum and Alison at the Turbine Hall at the Tate.
Will edit this report if we get on it.
December 9th, 2006
I’ve finally taken the plunge back to my roots and bought a Mac. Okay, the company will be paying for it, but I ordered it and use it and get most of the benefit. It’s very sweet, cool and dare I say it, sexy. It’s quiet, quick, light it gets things to work so much easier.
It’s not all plain sailing as I’m having to learn all the little Mac bits and pieces that I’ve missed in the ten years since I stopped using Macs. I used to use them at university, but moved entirely to PCs in 1995 when my flatmate [Adam Park for those of you who remember him] bought a PC. It was a Pentium 133 with a 1.2Gb hard drive and 256Mb Ram. Can you believe it that I remember that kind of thing?! My camera has more storage capacity than that now . . .
I’m determined not to turn into a Mac geek [like my Inigo colleague Colin], as I know that the reset of the world is PC-based and will continue to be for a long time to come. I’ve been telling our team that we have to design for the real world - those people still limited to Microsoft, Windows and Internet Explorer - but I have seen the light with MacBook, OSX and of course the massively popular and wonderful Firefox.
The new Mac [not given it a name yet] is Intel based, which allows me to run PC applications in a window run by software called Parallels. This allows me to run software [albeit fairly slowly] that I used to use and doesn’t put me just in the Mac camp.
So here’s looking forward to being efficient, flexible and funky in 2007.
December 9th, 2006
Inigo has grown a bit in the last eighteen months. In early October 2005 there were two of us full time and one part time. Now there are four full time and one part time.
Turnover from 2004 to 2005 was 42% and 2005 to 2006 was 35%. So things are on the up. We’re not seeking investment, we’ve never been in debt to the bank and most of the growth is from referral and repeat business.
2007 is going to be the year that we really have to grow up. To keep growing at the same rate we’ll need to be even more technology driven, step up our already high levels of design, but most of all more focussed on our customers. Take care of your customers and they take care of you. Sometimes it’s a challenge, but I think it’s worth it.
December 9th, 2006
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