Before Christmas, I found an online supplier of lab chemicals and bought some copper sulphate to do a couple of experiments with my children. We used a car battery charger to do some electroplating, mentioned in this blog and two weeks ago, we managed to do the next experiment with copper sulphate...growing crystals. Here's the photo.

Three children, three ramikin dishes. Two were full of micro-crystals at the end but the one shown above has some real beauties, up to a centimeter in length! I rememeber doing this experiment at school, oh about 500 years ago and my attempt was a dismal failure, so this was a great result. Just done by dissolving the powder in tap water boiled in a kettle and allowing to sit on a high shelf for several days.

Wooo-hooo! I am now officially qualified as a Prince 2 Practitioner (Project Management). I sat the exam back in November but it takes about 10 weeks to get the results through.

"What does that mean?" I hear you ask...

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...you're asking the wrong person.

Thank goodness for that! I'm getting more and more excited about the upcoming skiing trip I'm taking the family on, the one I had to sell this to pay for. It's been worrying that there's been very little snow in the alps though.

Fortunately, I've just checked the webcams and weather forecast for the area we're going to and this is what I found.

Great news! Let's have some more of that. As it's the first skiing holiday my wife and children have been on, the last thing they need is crap or non-existent snow or icy conditions.

Sheesh, what a weekend! It took less than 6 hours from putting our house on the market to getting an offer! Now all we need to do is find a house we want to buy, a job which would be much easier if we won the lottery.

My first attendance at the book club is worth reporting on. There were six of us in total, the two of us who were new, Net and I, helping to make up the numbers as there were three no-shows. Net is absolutely lovely and I will have to attend future sessions if for no other reason than to see her smile again.

The way this book club works is that the person who proposed the book provides the food too, which is supposed to be themed, so what with Alan Bennett's northern roots, we were treated to chip butties which were fabulous! I can't remember the last time I had chip butties, but it's definately been too long!

The hosts are J and N. J is a bright, affable person, a top character who exudes self-confidence which I'm sure some might mistake for arrogance. I've always had a soft spot for J ever since I met him at work 11 years ago. His wife N is pettite, with dark hair and good looking, managing to keep her glow, in spite of the 4 kids and one of those direct people who just cut the bullshit and get straight to the question they have in mind which I think is good and I'm often accused of the same.

N's sister S is the only one besides me who finished the book. She obviously loves reading and seems to devour books of every genre. M is a young (24) year old author who works at the local bookshop. He's clearly a character and although he didn't finish the book (tsk!), he did write a short review of the book as though by Alan Bennett himself which was a good parody of Alan's lugubrious style and it made us all laugh. L, whose idea the book was seems really nice too although I've only ever exchanged a few words with her in the past. I should know more about her and family as her daughter is one of my youngest daughter's best friends. She was apologetic about 'Untold Stories', but she shouldn't have been. Book clubs should encourage breadth and diversity without blame, otherwise the members will become unadventurous!

Then there's Net. She's lovely...did I mention that? Dark hair, cropped short, slender, perhaps too much so. Confesses to never having been much of a reader as she was sporty when younger. leaving the books to her sister. Apparently the book club is an attempt to make up time. I wonder how old she is, 22, 23?

Everyone panned the book, with only two if us managing to read it cover-to-cover. It was mooted that this was probably a book inspired by Mr. Bennett's agent. Got home at 11 o'clock, but it's obvious that some sessions may last well into the early hours of Monday mornings! Next book: '1984' by George Orwell.

It was T's 5th birthday party today and all went well, apart from the fact that I was attacked and assulted by a marauding band of 5 year olds. Still, they had fun! T's good friend A was there, fresh back from her diagnosis of Wilm's tumour that has spread (see previous post). Her dad K was pretty upbeat about it and although she faces chemo and surgery, apparently the survival rates are high. Strength and love to them!

Also, we dropped our agreement off at the estate agent this morning and by the time we returned from the party at 6pm, there had been three viewings and slightly later, news (verbal only) of a probable full-price offer! Blimey! All we've got to do now is find somewhere to live.

So, it's been an eventful day, and I've even managed to finish 'Untold Stories' in readiness for the book club tomorrow night. As promised, here is my review (begun here) of the rest of Alan Bennett's doorstop... mildly diverting, with a few touches of brilliance. There. Sorry Alan!

I wanted to write a poem that summed up this blog "Make the Most", but found my sentiments best expressed in Dylan Thomas's famous poem.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

by Dylan Thomas

We are here for a short time and must cherish every moment. Nor should we moan and curse our luck knowing how so many suffer so much more than we.

A view of Tower 42 from Throgmorten St. showing the dark canyons that we work in.

Today, hopefully, the various cats I am trying to herd at work will move in the same direction, if only for an hour or two!

Today I'm pleased to present a cartoon. A shameless copy of Gary Larsen's style (although nothing like as good). I hope you like it. This is in response to the news that the Doomsday Clock is moving on to 6 minutes to midnight, the supposed doomsday 'predicted' by scientists watching the whole nuclear thing.

It's almost three years since my own narrow escape from cancer (Time to die). Now D and I have learned that our daughter's best friend, a lovely little 5 year old girl has cancer in her kidney(s). Little people shouldn't get sick like this. It's not fair on them.

I'll make a short prayer to the god I don't have for her swift recovery.

...and I don't mean the kind of Seasonal Affective Disorder that people get either. I'm talking about how daft it is when stores are stocking summer clothing already, just as the really cold part of winter is about to set in! It's utter nonsense.

I bought D a lovely winter coat from Next for Christmas. Unfortunately, I got a size 10 and after she tried it on, she decided that 12 would be better. Of course Next's racks are groaning with sale rubbish or summer stock, the winter coats long since departed. We're facing three months of really cold weather culminating with snow in April! What on earth are the shops playing at? The upshot is that Next have lost a sale. They refunded the coat and I went to M&S who have got the sense to be still selling garments appropriate for the season. D now has a beautiful green Per Una coat, or at least will have when I get it home tonight. I hope she likes it!

For some strange reason, I've allowed myself to be invited to a book club. Perhaps I thought, as Otherphil did, that it was a front for a swingers club. I was even less overjoyed to find that not only was the book one that I would never, in a million years have picked off the shelf (which I suppose is the whole point of book clubs), but I had a little over three weeks to read it!

Alan Bennett must be a very intersting person and I think I was aware of his early involvement with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and John Cleese in "Beyond the Fringe". The trouble is, I've always been turned off by the snippets of his work I've heard before. They always seem to be about mundane upbringings and uninspiring characters (often himself). So it was with mixed feelings that I picked up my copy of "Untold Stories" and began to read.

The first one hundred or so pages relate some of the characters and his family during his formative years, but in essence, they are entirely about death; the death, one-by-one of his parents and aunts, or at least the relentless progress towards their death. Perhaps this is why the vibes Alan gives off are so gloomy! To be fair, his use of language is good (although not as good as Wodehouse) and he did make me laugh out loud while on the 17:52 from London Bridge. Any book that makes me chortle on a packed commuter train deserves some pluadits as I feel that it makes others think that I am either having a far more enjoyable life than they are, or am completely mad, both of which are preferable to the tedium of the rat race.

After that, the middle part of the book is devoted to extracts from his diaries which don't seem to have any overriding theme other than a passion for visiting churches and name dropping. Unfortunately I'm not well enough read to make sense of his more intellectual observations about Wittgenstien or Harold Pinter etc. I suppose the name dropping is excusable as the general audience for a book by Alan Bennett is likely to be the sycophantic, pseudo-intellectual crowd who'll want his place among the greats validated. Of course my own 'diaries', namely this blog, aren't exactly going to set the world alight, but then I don't make my living doing this kind of stuff!

If the last third of the book has anything worthy, I'll be sure to mention it. In the meantime, I wonder if Alan, having achieved the kind of noteriety and social position that his parents secretly dreamed of (but would have been too shy to embrace), has discovered that it does not make life any more meaningful than the humdrum existence experienced by the rest of us.

My boy R, aged 7 rushed in last Saturday wanting to appropriate an old canvas that I'd started some rubbish on. He'd seen 'Smart' on CBBC and wanted to reproduce somthing. After he'd whitewashed my useless attempt, he sketched out some rectangles on the canvas and showed me.

"Ahhh, so you want to do a Mondrian," I said, shocked that my usually sluggish memory actually managed to recall this information from across the years. Anyway, he did, and this is it.

That boy! Bless him.

I thought you might like to see a few pictures of the house.

And here is the beautiful extension, designed by Harple!

About 1 mile from Horsham station, 8 minutes walk into town centre, close to great schools.

We all went mob-handed to see the property on Saturday and it was a bit of a washout in the end, not just because of the weather.

In fact, there was nothing major wrong with the house itself. Extra bedroom, garden as big as the one we have now and a garage, but...you know what it's like when something isn't quite right. It was cramped into the corner of an estate rather than being quite open (as seemed in the cleverly shot estate agent's photo) and whilst it would have been possible to cycle to the station in the mornings, it would have been just a bit too nasty, especisally in the winter. Dark, muddy, country lanes and at least twice as far as I cycle now. No. And...you should have seen the hideous pink bathroom!

However, we have been persuaded to put our house on the market. So now we've joined the greedy throng who are advertising their houses for more than you can possibly conceive. It seems to make sense selling before you really need or want to. It means you can command a higher price than if you're desperate to get out (in theory).

First, here's a typical view from London Bridge...

Secondly, why are house prices so mad? D and I have fallen in love with a house that we saw on rightmove.co.uk. We're going to view it on Saturday and if we like it, and we're foolish enough to put in an offer that's accepted, we'll have to live on rice and water for the next few years just to be able to pay the mortgage!

Whilst commuting yesterday I spotted several people who might have been lugubrious, a couple of folk who were soporific, still suffering no doubt from the delayed effects of the New Year celebration, and one person who looked a bit peeved, but I completely failed to spot anyone who looked remotely furious.

Keen to establish the extent of the financial ruin that was sure to be mine when my new monthly pass has to be renewed, I stopped at the ticket office in my home station last night.

"How much will my ticket renewal be?" I politely inquired, holding back a flood of righteous outrage.
"Two-hundred and seventy-three pounds," came the answer. There was a slight pause while my brain stalled the outpouring of vitreol in order for thought processes to engage briefly.
"That's ten pounds cheaper than last month!" I pointed out.
"That's right sir," rejoined the man in the ticket office, "some prices have gone down whilst many have gone up."

You could clearly hear the hiss of escaping bile from the collapsing balloon of my wrath. One less furious person for the newspaper headlines.