My folded Brompton

The new cool is not a new car, it’s a new bike.

I have one. Actually I now have three!

One is just a ‘pub bike’, though. My second one is the ‘real’ workhorse, taking me around town and across the BMX track with the family. I bought from our local dealer, North Hants Bikes.

My coolest bike, though, has to be my new Brompton. It’s a foldable bike that is easy to travel on the train with. Brompton is building a strong international reputation for their strong UK bicycle.

(Aside: my friend John, also a “Bromie” owner, told me n = b + 1, where n is the number of bikes you need, and b is the number of bikes you have – I am starting to prove his theorem)

So keen was I for it, that I set up the Cycle Scheme at work so all our employees could benefit from tax breaks to get a new bike for nearly 50% off, financed at 0% for a year through monthly deductions from the paycheck. Thanks taxman!

Canadian flag inspired, and UK built, Brompton

I picked up my “M6L” Brompton from Stonehenge Cycles in Salisbury, as it was my closest Brompton dealer, this past Saturday. Both my kids wanted to ride it; so I lowered the seat and let them take a turn riding it “Easy-Rider” style from the shop to the boot of the car.

My first chance to ride it came later that Saturday evening, during the first World-Cup match between England and the USA. The streets of Whitchurch were quiet and I had free reign to zoom down London Street and then use the lowest gear to get back up Newbury hill. I was back home in time to see the 1-1 draw concluded.

I adorned it tastefully with maple leaf stickers to reflect the Canadian colour theme. I couldn’t find a red seat, so settled for a white ‘Regal’ from San Marco and put a sticker on the back of it. Conveniently, the red and white colours also match the England flag colours, recently hijacked by footy fans and bollard painters.

My travel time to work was cut dramatically, but a loose rail slowed the train between Basingstoke and Hook, so I ended up arriving at work at the same time this morning. The folded bike is sitting beside my desk, and many coworkers have come by to lift it up to see how portable it is. Me thinks there might be a few more that sign up for Cycle Scheme now.

Next up: a Brompton brigade with my fellow “Bromies” in the upcoming Whitchurch carnival procession!

Its time to ride, baby. Ding Ding.

Tosha swings over the mighty River Test

Skittles for skittles

Skittles, skittles and more skittles.  That’s all our boys wanted to play at this year’s Church Parish Fête on The Lawn. Eventually, they branched out to other fun things before they had spent all their (actually Granny’s) money!

Tolii carefully calculated that he would get more sweets by spending his money on the games than to get his face painted. Tosha opted for the face painting (and then borrowed – ha! – money for the games).

Tolii swings over the River Test

Tiger Tosha

One of the free things that both Tolii and Tosha absolutely loved again this year was swinging across the River Test.

Tasty hamburgers and sausages were devoured, but it was too chilly and drizzly to have a craving for ice cream.

Thankfully the rain held off during the afternoon (it came down in the morning and evening).

Tolii "Muscles" Reeves-Hall launches a rocket towards an unsuspecting balloon

I guess the people who went over to Twangfest at Testbourne school got a tad wet!

Family and friends get ready to find some bunny nests on the Meadow!

It has become a tradition for us to head down to the Millennium Meadow to meet with other families on Easter weekend. Katya organizes an Easter Egg hunt which gets more challenging every year!

This year, she built lovely Easter bunny “nests” and put the chocolates in them; the nests were then spread around the meadow, near the stream. More nests were put in trees nearby.

Tristans gets some advice on where to find bunny nests.

Then, the kids were let loose to try to find all the nests – and the chocolates in them.

Strategizing on how to collect the most chocolate eggs.

After all the eggs were found, another game was added this year: orientation. All the kids were given a paper with a set of steps; and a compass. Each step sent them off in a particular direction – using their compasses, the kids zigged and zagged their way around the Meadow until arriving at the last step’s destination.

There is always time to be silly!

But what then?

It was time to dig for burried treasure, of course!

Bella was quite sharp and noticed that a bit of the ground had been disturbed and so started digging there.

Digging up the buried treasure.

Sure enough, her shovel hit something solid! She popped the metal tin up to the surface and took off the lid while all the other kids tried to help her (actually, they were helping themselves to the extra batch of chocolates inside the tin!).

Winners and loosers in the Meadow races.

By this time, everyone was really wound up with energy – chocolate does do that. So, more running was needed! Races were organized and soon all the kids were darting about the Meadow again. Whew!

Some families said their good-byes and headed for home.

Paula bites off more than she can chew!

Tolii and Tosha wanted to swing on the Oak Tree and so we set the seat up for them.

Jump, Rachel, jump! That cardigan is just too white!

Their friends Rachel, Hanna, and Josh hadn’t yet experieced the thrill of oak tree swinging…!

Try as Tosha might, though, he couldn’t convince Josh to have a go. So, Tosha just kept swinging with his sisters instead. That is, until Tolii booted him off and swung with them instead!

Fuzzy grandpa.

While waiting their turn on the swings, the kids dashed off to the pond and pulled out some reeds.  They then had great fun in waving them about until Grandpa was covered in furry seeds!

Tosha and Hanna swing about the old Oak tree.

Alas, it was time to pack up the things and make our way home.  Thankfully, Tosha and Tolii weren’t too tire (or were still wound up enough) to ride their bikes back while we carried all the gear.  Ah, life without a push-chair…

Rachel has a swing with acrobat Tolii

On the way home, we passed by the back garden of a house on The Weir which has been transformed into a set for a movie!

But it was almost not to be.

Tubin' Tolii

5 stops to go!

The day started fine; with a walk up to nursery to drop off Tosha – who definitely did not like being left behind. As soon as he’s four, like Tolii was last year, then he gets to come too. Logic doesn’t matter. Lots of tears and fuss (and rightly so, he’d say) – luckily, his best friend Josh was already at nursery.

Tolii and I walked over to the train station to catch the 10:12 departure – we had 10 minutes to get our tickets. Some fuss with the (new) station ticket guy who took his time selling the “Friends and Family” card and our tickets.

Luckily, I had already filled in the form for the discount card. Even so, I had to egg him along to take my money (£24 for the card and £28 for the journey) while Tolii stood on the platform saying, “Daddy, I see the train’s light – its coming!!”.  A mad dash, up and over the bridge to the other platform and whew! we were on the train.

We played Rush Hour all the way past Farnborough. Tolii asked for a drink and I got one from the ruck sack.

That’s when I noticed that the folder with the tube map and, most importantly, the show’s tickets was not there! Time to PANIC!

Ice rink at Natural History Museum

By a very lucky coincidence, the Southwest train guard was just coming through the carriage to check our tickets. I told him that I left the folder at the ticket counter in my rush to catch the train. The guard said he would see what he could do – he went to the end of the train and somehow managed to reach the ticket man at the Whitchurch station.

The guard said the ticket man would have to ring his manager to see what he could do (!). The guard wasn’t too impressed (sounds like a jobsworth situation). He rang him back after we stopped at our penultimate station (“should we get off and return to Whitchurch?”, I asked. “No,” the guard said, “the station will be closed by the time you get back.” — more panic sets in, and a touch of dispair).

Again, the ticket man said he would have to talk to his manager. A third call was placed.

Tolii skating for the first time!

Success!

The ticket man gave the folder to the guard on the train behind us, which was just leaving Whitchurch station! We could pick it up at Waterloo station in one hour!  RELIEF!

I had to walk up and down Waterloo station about 3 times to calm down.  Thankfully, Tolii is used to daddy’s wanderings and enjoyed the escapade. We popped into the ticket office and I filled in a “Any Complains?” form, changing the title to “Any thanks?” and filled in a thank you note for our train’s guard.

A nice cup of cappuccino and a lemon/orange muffin later, and we had the folder from the next train’s guard. It was finally time to set off!

Wipeout!

We took the tube to South Kensington station (Tolii loves all the escalators in the tube). We walked over to towards the museums – not quite sure where to spend the time before our show, or where to get lunch.

There were posters up for 3D Imax movies about space (and dinosaurs) at the Science Museum. Perhaps that’s what we could do?

What a fast learner!

We came out of the subway tunnel at the Natural History museum. That’s when we saw it. “Tolii,” I said, “will it be that or the space movie?”. “That,” he said, “’cause we see lots of space movies and we have never been ice skating before!”.

Yes, we went ice skating!

It was Tolii’s first time; and the first time for me in a couple of years (or was it just one year since Katya and I went to Winchester Cathedral’s rink?). Darn if it wasn’t expensive (just shy of £20, but that did include skate rental for the hour and a bit).

Tolii holds daddy up!

I taught Tolii the trick of looking straight ahead and keeping one skate pointed to what he’s looking at. Then I said to push, push, push with the other foot.

He did it!

Ya, there were a few wipeouts but that became part of the fun. There was a lovely little practice rink where we spent most of the time, and we did venture out onto the big rink to do a few laps near the end of the hour.

Time for some lunch!

Ring of light at the Science Museum

We stuck our head into the Science Museum’s cafeteria but didn’t like the look of the chicken pie or curry. We left (but only after Tolii playing one game of the Martian lander game) and headed towards the Royal Albert Hall.

Clock at Imperial College

On the way we saw Imperial College – a place where Katya has been many times for work; I recalled her saying there was a funky place to eat there. Well, we didn’t find anything funky (we did see a wonderful clock in the mechanical engineering building though).

We found a cafeteria, where we had a cheese burger each while nestled at a table amongst all the buzz-buzz buzzing 20-somethings with their iPhones and other electric gadgets. Ah, I remember the days; and reminisced with Tolii a bit (who sort of was listening, but was mostly dipping the chips into the ketchup and eating them; the more I talked, the more chips there were for Tolii). There were signs about for a rally on Saturday to protest against the latest Israeli war (in Gaza).

Finally - the Royal Albert Hall

Right – time to head out to the 3pm show! We walked the short distance to the Royal Albert Hall and went inside. We found our seats. Last year we were up in a box. This year we were in row C – one row from the stage (there was no row A). Wow. After the intermission (Tolii likes Appletiser!) we moved to the empty seats in the next section and had a front-row view. Wow-wow!

Tolii said he preferred the boxes because he got to see the whole stage. I liked this year’s seats because you could see the expression on the performers’ faces, and their budging muscles!

Let's watch the show!

It was a very entertaining show (the first half was better than the second half).

Tolii liked so many things in it – the skipping rope act was particularly good (triple-skipping: one guy skipping inside another pair’s skipping rope who were also skipping inside a third outter pair — how do you coordinate jumping over three skipping ropes!? Amazing).

The clown act of making a silent movie using four members of the audience was very funny, too.

Natural History museum's ice rink at night

The show finished just after 6pm. We walked back to the tube (stopping to take a picture of the ice rink at night) and onto our train home from Waterloo – it was packed, as I expected it would be. We played Rush Hour all the way to Overton!

Tosha was very please to see us home. He was in bed, reading a book with Baba, but came downstairs to listen to our tales while we had some supper. Finally, it was time for bed.

Until next year (with Tosha)…I wonder what show it will be then…

Friday: sunburning daddy at Finkley Down Farm Park; Tolii meanwhile shuttled between THE slide and the monkey swing. Tosha took the whole place in, but especially liked his first ride on the monkey swing. Back home we had our first BBQ of the season!

Saturday: hunting for Easter eggs in the Millennium Meadow, quickly followed by hunting for bugs in the pond! The afternoon was mummy’s time to strip (wallpaper) from our upstair hall – she found pink underneath! That made Tolii very happy (ha!).

Sunday: swimming at Basingstoke Aquadrome. Tosha clearly loves the water: with his typical “no, no, no” he told mummy not to interfere with his wading until he was up to his nose standing in the water (literally!). In the afternoon we took off to Popham airfield where we met up with Katie and Amy to watch the many airplanes at the fly-in.

Monday: hiking up Farley mount monument in Winchester. It was our mistake to tell Tolii that a horse was buried below it…”What horse?”, “Why did it die?”, “Where is the hole (it jumped into)?”. Politely we answered all his questions. And then he asked them all again. And again. We distracted him with some fun games. That quieted things down a bit. Mummy thought it quite funny when daddy, a short time later, asked Tolii if he had seen a horse. “What horse?”…Oh, the fun a 3 year old gives daddy!

We rounded out the “holiday” by painting the pink hallway yellow.

A wondrous feast followed – topped off with dessert by granny (and Marks & Spencer).