January 30th - Another New Year

The Chinese New Year has come and the start of the year of the dog has begun. And you'll be pleased to hear that the Hampton household became suitably Chinese for festivities.

Due to respect for our neighbours sleeping patterns there were, unfortunately, no firecrackers at midnight, but the end of year family feast was succesfuly completed, thanks to hours of hard work slaving over a hot stove by Jewel and myself.

It is now safe to say that my mother has retained her chopstick skills from her visit to China, where as my brother and father definitely have not. The old 'spear it even though it's already dead' technique was their method of choice.

I remember my first Christmas away from my family being a somewhat strange experience )complete debaunchery and full of laughs, but something was missing) and we all tried to make sure Jewel's first Spring Festival outside of China went as smoothly as it could. I think it did, so everyone was happy at the end of the day.

I'm told that the Chinese belief is thatthe way you end the old year is how the next year will continue. So it looks like in the year of the dog I'll be working like one. Can't quite see it now, but that's what they say...

January 24th - Back Again

Getting back into the running has involved lots of early mornings but is starting to get a bit easier. In fact, today was the first day where I could really say I 'enjoyed' the run. Usually the only enjoyment comes when I finish and am having a hot shower, but today was different.

Instead of running a set route against the clock I thought I would go and explore some of the foot paths whish I have rarely (if ever) been down. I saw a few new things, 3 deer, a tawny owl and made it to both ends of the disused airfield which backs onto the garden here. No worries about the time, new things to see and all in all an enjoyable experience.

So all is going well on that front.

Changing subject slightly, but my dear parents are an endless source of entertainment.

My father, at 71, is a true working class hero. Hard working, honest to a fault and a true 'provider' for the family. He's always been involved in mroe manual labour and as such never really got to using computers at work. But that hasn't stopped him trying to get to grips with the one at home. He's an obsessive online banker, probably because he just hates all that face to face stuff.

At home now we are a bit in the wilds of Surrey (if there is such a place) and as such are still not privy to the fun and frolics that is life with a broadband internet connection. Nope, we have to grin and bear life on a dial-up connection. It's not really a great problem as I am the only one who would make use fo anything better.

We've got our desktop PC, which my parents use, and I've got my chunky old laptop which I use. But we've only got one place where we can get on the internet from. So I often take my laptop there, plug it into the phone line and play. When I'm finished I unokug and sometimes forget to plug the PC back in again.

My dear old dad was a bit worried the other day, saying that he wished people would plug the phone line back into the PC when they finished. Fair enough, I suppose, but I couldn't understand why he was so concerned about it.

It turns out that he thought that without the phone line plugged in we wouldn't be abel to get our e-mails! Bless him.

Still, even if he doesn't now how it all works, the fact that he's a self taught internet user at 71 is good enough for me.

And whilst on the subject of old folk, my father's youg fancy woman - his wife, my mum - is a grand old 63 today.

So, Happy Birthday Mrs H - you've done a grand job!

January 16th - Another Runner Returns...

I use the term 'runner' very loosely there. Not so much a runners return, than another doomed to failure comeback by a plodder. That's right - I donned my running shoes for the first time in about 6 months at 7.30 this morning. And it hurt.

In true James style I decided that Monday 16th January would be a perfect day to start another 'kick my life into gear' attempt. That involves ealry mornings, exercise and devoting time to getting this business off the ground all of which has to be done around spending more time with Jewel. No problem.

SO I set the alram for 6am thie morning. It went off, I woke up, looked out of the window and realised that British Winter mornings are really quite dark and decided against trying to fight may through a pitch black woods and went back to sleep until 7.30. Then it was on with the runners and out the door.

30 minutes later I huffed and puffed my back to the house and, after about 10 minutes of feeling claose to death, decided that it actually felt good. I'll try and do it all again tomorrow, assuming those bits of me that are aching now are aching a little less by then.

Yes, it's another '1 montha nd I'll quit it all' health kick, but at least it gets me out of bed for now.

Complete change of subject, but the folks were officialy married for 34 years as of Thursday 12th January. I have no idea how either of them have put up with each other for so long, but it seems to work alright for them. So, well done and long may it continue!

January 11th - The Runner's Return

Take a look at this fine specimen of man below:

Beautiful, isn't he.

Now you too can help this guy run across one of the most unhospitable parts of our planet by supporting him in his 2nd attempt at The Marathon Des Sables.

Now, he can tell you more about what he is doing, why he's doing it and how you can help him, but take this as a personal recommendation from me:

In my honest opinion, if you had to live with this guy for a year, there would be no one else in the world that you would rather see spending 6 days of his life in the Sahara desert, carrying a heavy bag and trying not to fall down ridiculously high sand dunes. He deserves every minute of it.

Good luck for April Mark.

January 10th - The Suprise Package

When we did th emove from Shanghai to the UK we had a lot of things to carry. We took about 70kg of our belongingss on the plane with us. In addition to this I also posted home a box which weighed about 10kg. That was my DVD collection. Yep - a 10kg DVD collection.

I bet you didn't know you could by DVDs by the kilogram, did you? Well, you can't. BUt you can spen a lot of time in a country where there is not much else to do and they only cost 80p each. Hence the 10kg.

When I sent it the very smiley and helpful man whop laughed all the way through our pigeon Chinese (mine, not his) conversation told me it would take 3 months for them to be delivered. Well today at about 11.30am, about a month and a half early, the big green box arrived.

So Jewel's now got every spisode of Friends and Sex In The City ever made to help her 'study' English, whilst I can reacquaint myself with the first 5 seasons of The Simpsons and about 300 of Hollywood's finest productions.

Home from home from home (I think!?).

And just when I was running out of things which were stopping me from actually doing some work. Perfect timing.

7th January - New Beginnings

We woke up to a dusting of the white powder all over the place this morning. Beautiful, but cold. And I should point out that the white powder I'm on about is snow - nothing sinister. 2 weeks too late for the best effect, but it gave me the kick up the backside I needed to get out of be a bit earlier and head out with the camera.

Didn't get much this morning, but might have a couple of nice snaps from that New Year's escape to post pretty soon.

I've spent the last couple of days looking at what I need to do to put my money making schemes/business ideas into practice. It's starting to come together a bit more now and with a bit of luck it might get a tentative start by the end of the month or mid February.

So that's pretty much me. How about the rest of the world?

Well, maybe not the peaceful start to the year that we might have wanted, but a couple of news items which have kind of stuck in my mind from the last couple of days. Both of them not so nice.

The first was the girl who was murdered in Thailand. She was talking on the phone with her mum back in Wales and was attacked and murdered right then, with her poor mother listening on. Not the NEw Year new start the famliy would have been looking forward to. A real nightmare come true for them.

The second is even more shocling and entirely incomprehensible to me. It was the story of a 3 year old girl who was abducted from iside her own home and then taken away in a car to be raped by 3 men, who by all reports are around the mid 20's age. A 3 year old girl. When the story firs came out I was waiting for some kind of story to fololow it saying that the girl wasn't raped and the abductor was an estranged husband/father or something. But it never came.

Just frightening.

So there we go. On goes 2006...

5th January - Just So You Know

The cries of 'get a job, you dole scrounging loser' and 'oi lazy - stop dodging tax and atart working' are ringing in my ear (although many come from an amazing ability to read my father's mind). Alright, it's been a few months and a couple of countries since I actually had a job, but things are not that bad.

Granted, my contribution to society in terms of my tax payments might not be what they should be, but it's not like I'm costing anybody else much either. And I've got enough cash saved to last me a couple more months, so I'm not scrounging off anyone else.

The whole 9-5 concept really does not appeal to me, so I've decided to try my hand at a slightly more unconventional lifestyle. No boss, no drive to work, no angry customers and probably no money wither. But I'm willing it give it a go until my bank balance becomes really unhealthy.

So there it is - the perfect excuse to stay firmly on my oversized butt for a little bit longer.

How long can one man escape reality? I don't really know the answer, but it's 28 years and counting....

3rd January - Happy New Year!!!

So it's a few days late, but it's here eventually. We just got back ysterday from our New Year escape and when my brother drove home I guess that was the real end of the festive season for us. And it weren't a bad one.

The last few days have been spent near Portsmouth, at a holiday resort right next to the sea. It was really peaceful and relaxing and the combined ages of Jewel, my brother and I was pobably equal to the average age of the other visitors.

We were certainly obvious as the 'youngsters' in town, especially whenever we went into the resorts aptly named 'Silvers' bar, I guess so named due to the colour of the majority of the patrons hair. Even my parents, at 71 and 63 respectively, felt like youngsters most of the time.

But, despite my initial worries of how on earth I was going to see those 4 nigths out, the time flew by. And it was pretty entertaining to see the old 'uns letting the shackles loose. The New Year's Eve party night was particularly enlightening.

If you can imagine how kids act when they get together, not the running around screaming part, but the playful slightly competitive side of them. It really was, often, like watching kids behaving badly, but just doing it a little bit slower.

And my Dad even danced for what I'm told was the 2nd time in 31 years of marriage. Worth going for that alone.

So that was that and now it's time for 2006. Time for me to knuckle down and get working/living here in the UK again. It realy feels, workwise at least, that I'm starting from scratch here. A bit daunting, true, but it also feels good to have that freedom to do anything I want.

Good luck and best wishes for 2006.