OMG it's bloody high !!

I first got a taste for rock climbing in the Army whilst staying at a place called Bertchesgarten in southern Germany back in the early 80's, I really enjoyed it and whenever we had adventure training which was basically a "get away from the wives" exercise, I always signed up for it, I went a few times during basic training and during my stint in Germany, but unfortunately never pursued it once I left, well all this changed after my divorce, and I got back into it, I had forgotten just how much I enjoyed it, it was hard
the first few times out, because you use muscles that don't usually get stressed, and the next morning after the first climb, I remember thinking, as I was practically paralysed in my sleeping bag, with fingers like something out of a horror film, something this much fun shouldn't hurt so badly, but like all things if you keep at it, it gets easier, I pumped myself full of painkillers and took on the next climb that day, I have to say after 4 days of continuous climbing, I didn't hurt at all by the 5th day :) I met up with quite a few climbers and I have to say they are a mad lot, and come from all walks of life and their age ranges from as young as 16 to 60, the only worrying ones are the ones that have no regard for their own personal safety, which when you are climbing with somebody is very important, because if they fall and you are belaying them, then it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out what happens next, you can never have
too much "pro" in ;¬)

Anyway, It wasn't long after this I met up with Caralyn, she had always wanted to try climbing but never had the opportunity, so we went to Llangorse climbing centre to the indoor wall, I really recommend that place it's excellent, basically it was to give her a taster and after she was shown the basics, it turned out she was a natural at it :)

now 3 years later she is climbing insane grades way above me, (see picture above) and going off climbing in exotic places, and has her picture in various rock climbing magazines, so a bit of a rock climbing success, and a bit of a rock climbing star :) she has compressed into 3 years more rock climbing experience than most, I do worry about her though because she hasn't really had a bad fall yet, she has had a few slips but nothing heart stopping and until you get one of those you tend to think you are invincible, as for me, well things have conspired against me getting out on the rock recently, what with work and other commitments, although weather and time permitting this year I intend to get back to it.

I also introduced my fiancé to it at Llangorse, needless to say she is a natural at it as well, although she did have a fear of trusting the ropes, but once she found they really are very strong, and they weren't going to snap, (well if they can carry me without snapping, say no more) there was no stopping her, and she really enjoyed it, it must be that women are more supple than men, and what they lack in strength, especially upper body strength they more than make up for it by being able to put their foot up by
their ear !!! mind you they both had at least 10 years on me, so that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it, mind you I've never really had the urge to put my foot up by my ear, even if it was physically possible for
me.....which it isn't :)

Weddings & stuff

Well the day is looming closer….23 days and counting until I tie the knot with my intended ...... it is completely different to my first wedding, which admittedly I was far too young at the time, but you live and learn, I’m certainly wiser than that cold day in February 1981, and I must say happier about the whole thing, we were talking about it last night, both of us have been married before, and both of us had doubts with our first wedding/partner, but bizarrely not with ours, I guess it comes from knowing ones own mind finally, and your partners, and knowing it’s right from the ground up .... I have to say I don’t regret my first marriage, because it produced two lovely daughters, and without it, I wouldn’t be the person I am today, so we are all moulded by our past, it’s the one thing you can’t escape from...

My parents have accepted my fiancé completely, quite relieved that she is “utterly normal” which made me laugh, and I have been welcomed with open arms by my fiancés parents with similar relief expressed ....

Anyway I digress, do you have any idea how hard it is to choose music that is fitting for a wedding ? for those of you that have gone through this, you know what I’m talking about, we could of course choose all the songs that meant something to us, but it would be a pretty bizarre mixture, and then of course you have to think about the “cheese” factor, there is a fine line between something meaningful to us and something that makes the guests “barf” uncontrollably, so we are weighing up a humorous selection to help keep the bile down for the guests, the after party music isn’t a problem, it’s the 20 minutes before the bride to be arrives and the music during or afterwards, I do feel sorry for couples that enjoy “death metal” or “hardcore trance” the choices must be even more limiting .

The hugely massive gazebo has been bought and is apparently very easy to put up, thankfully we have a massive garden/field, which reminds me I must do those concrete steps this weekend !! it might stop our more elderly guests tripping the light fantastic past the decking and sprawling into the bottom of the garden, it does help living miles from anywhere, because we won’t be disturbing our neighbours with music pumping out into the early hours, but what do we care, we are going away straight after the party anyway !!

I shall keep you posted as to any developments that might happen, but so far things are going as expected

A rant about "WiFi"

this entry has been spurred on by the recent press coverage of the "dangers of wifi", it seems when the news is slow they bring up some other horror of modern living, for a start wifi uses extremely low power transmitters, and they seem to have forgotten that DECT cordless phones which have been around for a lot longer operate in the same frequency band as wifi, PLUS you actually hold a DECT phone to your head when you use it, I don't see many people holding their laptop to their head when they use the internet, but has there been any media coverage of DECT phones ? EVER ? if you saw the Panorama programme which covered this "slow news day" it said "wifi had three times the strength of a mobile phone mast"

if you had watched the programme you would have seen the "expert" testing the field strength of a laptop at the distance of 1 metre then testing the field strength of a mobile phone mast at 100 metres, I don't know about you, but I would have thought that for the test to be fair they would have to measure both sources at equal distances, and why didn't they do that ? ...... because if they had measured the phone mast at 1 metre, the field strength meter would have gone off scale for the mobile phone mast, and if they had measured the laptop at 100 metres it wouldn't have picked up the signal (or barely)

it's true RF is dangerous to living tissue, I should know I worked with some very high power transmitters in the late 70's and early 80's, and was exposed to some very high doses of RF over the many 8 hour shifts I used to do, contrary to the recent scare stories, I was able some years later to father two lovely daughters, both of which are perfectly normal human beings with zero defects (and I might add I have another one on the way, due in October 2007) neither did my skin scale over, or at any point did I grow another head, (I did lose my hair, but that's more to do with genetics than Radio Frequency) we live in a world where we are literally bathed in RF and other types of radiation every waking the sleeping minute we are alive, and it has been that way for many many years, they will be telling us "milk" gives us cancer next........ohhh hang on a minute they did that one already ;¬)