Jack and Emily, and a Thompson celebration.

Jack and Emily came to stay for a few days in August, which was nice. As well as being a chance to spend time with Jack and Emily, it gave me and Debbie an excuse to do lots of things like going to the pictures, going bowling, going to the seaside and playing in the park. I had to be at work quite a lot during the week, but we still seemed to fit a lot in, including a bit of trainspotting!

We combined the trainspotting with a delightful summer evening stroll with the dog and a pic-nic, but, this being England in summer 2007, it absolutely bucketed down and we had our picnic under an umberella. The brolly wasn't big enough for all of us, so some of us got pretty soggy (including Gus the doggy!)


Soggy sandwiches were replaced with sandy ones when we combined a bouncy dog with blowing sand in our beach pic-nic at West Kirby. The sandwiches were good fuel for some dune-leaping, and it was a miracle that neither children nor dog suffered any broken bones.


When the visit was over we drove Jack and Emily back to Blackburn in time for the big day when Debbie's Dad and Elaine renewed their wedding vows, 25 years after they originally got married. It was a really nice little ceremony with celebrations afterwards, and although we couldn't stay for the evening because of having to get back for Gus, we had a really nice day seeing everybody.

Facebook

I've started using Facebook. I was planning just to use it as a handy way of staying in better touch with friends and family (it does work well for that) and as a place to base an alumni contact group (it works very well for that, too: check out the "Physical Geography at Keele" group at facebook.com). Then I discovered that you could use it to play chess with your friends, and started playing with Paul Johnson, who was a postgrad here at Keele years ago and worked with me in Greenland. He keeps beating me, but I'm gradually remembering how to play! Because of the way facebook works, complete strangers have been getting in touch asking for games. I didn't join facebook to meet people I didn't already know, but it is a good way of getting to play chess with all sorts of different people. There's also a really good geographical game on there that I've been playing with colleagues and friends and might use for teaching! It's interesting how different people use facebook for different things. Like the internet as a whole it can be used in lots of different ways and the trick is just to use it in a way that suits you. If you are on facebook, look me up there and say hi!

Moving in to this new blog!

Hang on, be patient, we're just moving in!