This morning is Elliot’s first grading at Ossett Martial Arts. He is ready to go and I doing really well. This is the first time Daddy has seen him at work in over three months – the difference is really incredible.
His Orange belt is hopefully just a few minutes away 🙂
Good luck Elliot 🙂
Daddy is trying out the EasyHotel group this week in the Earls Court area of London. From the outside the hotel looks like any ordinary London 4 storey house, but once inside, it becomes a rabbit warren of corridors and bright orange room doors. When he stepped inside his room on the top floor, (very steep steps so he was pleased he only had two small bags with him) the door opened inwards and there was just enough room to step inside. The door needed closing to be able to get into the bathroom (which is just a small plastic cubicle that has clearly been delivered in once piece and carefully placed into the room.
Basically the entire room is reminiscent of a static caravan bedroom in that it is about the same size, the bed being a 3/4 sized item fitting almost exactly to the width of the room and the bathroom adding to the length. There are just two coat hooks so daddy was pleased he took a hangar with him 🙂
Ultimately it is a £30 room so can’t complain really – but certainly wouldn’t want to stay there more than a couple of nights 🙂
Not sure if we are simply wasting money on Oliver with swimming lessons. He seems incapable of listening to his instructor and just wants to check out what everyone else is doing rather than focussing on his own stroke etc.
Funnily enough this morning it is noted that while he can kick his legs to propel himself through the water well, not while he is putting his face in the water it seems :-s So sinking quickly ensues ….
I am left wondering if we should pull him out of this lesson and get him in a 1:1 lesson somewhere – less distractions and more strictness to do what he is told…
We went out to Bradford this morning to the National Media Museum with one of Oliver’s classmates and family. We would not have thought of going there but it was a really fun trip out. Reminiscing about old tech is awesome – daddy enjoyed playing manic miner on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k like he did 30+ years ago and the kids enjoyed playing on all of the games on the 5th floor. It was a really fun couple of hours and while the boys did do a reasonable amount of complaining at times, they generally had a fun time.
Daddy had his first coffee of 2014 and four hours on he is STILL buzzing :-). Perhaps the large Costa Americano was not the best idea….
Over the last few weeks, Simon’s OWL Smart Central Heating thermostat has come under increased pressure as the house has simply not been warm enough and the device seemed (at times) incapable of firing up the boiler. So, last weekend Simon swapped out the thermostat for the original manual model to see what happened. Thankfully (for the OWL) the heating also failed to kick in on multiple times with the standard thermostat, so when British Gas came to service the boiler etc on Wednesday, they were rather quickly dispatched onto locating the problem. It transpires that a valve in the boiler was at fault along with a sensor. So the boiler believed that it had infact fulfilled the requirement for extra heat to the tank even though this was not the case. Accordingly this has probably been this way for a LONG time and we will most likely find that the hot water in the taps is now way warmer and that it will last much longer too. We have definitely complained a LOT over the last couple of years about the fact that you can fill a bath once and then have to wait 20 minutes before could use the shower (while the water heats up again) so *maybe* this will be a challenge of the past 🙂
The OWL is now back online and functional again having been absolved of blame 🙂
We were also advised that the boiler is now well and truly out of service (in the respect of you can no longer buy the boiler and that spare parts are now becoming unavailable) so there is every chance that IF we have problems with it downstream, we might need to replace it 🙁 Also, the boilermate tank in the airing cupboard is a POS and we should be more worried about it than the boiler…. Oh good…