6 years.. yup, it’s been that long. As a special treat I decided to take Vicky on a journey back in time to 1999 so on Friday evening we went for a Chinese buffet followed by bowling…. which I let her win of course 
. Between the meal and bowling session we had an hour to kill so spent a few minutes playing air hockey before discovering the ‘portrait’ machine.
We chose Rembrandt to draw our picture, incidentally he is American didn’t you know, judging from his accent. Saturday was a quieter affair… Paddy and Lorna passing briefly through on their way to catch the ferry, and I went to the Toyota garage to get my spare car key programmed. Worth the trip because you get a free valet clean and safety check whenever you visit them!
And today we dropped the kids off at Granny and Grancher’s house before being driven to Maesteg. We walked back to the village through the hills which I like to call my back garden. The rain didn’t quite hold out but it was only light drizzle. The views were pretty decent once the clouds started to clear. This walk was just a 7 mile warm-up for Vicky… the real walk should have started another 5 miles North and taken in two more 200 metre climbs / descents but I decided we should start easy for now. Once we got home I helped Poppy make some little paper boxes and packets ready to put our DFC in. Sorry, that’s Daddy’s Fried Chicken. Well, it’s cheaper than another takeaway and kept her occupied for an hour or so!
Phase 1 of the digital switchover is now completed, and for those who don’t know what I’m on about your telly is probably going to stop working in the next couple of years. All of the analogue TV channels (that’ll be BBC1 through to FIVE) are being switched off and replaced with their digital Freeview alternatives. Phase 1 for the Kilvey Hill transmitter in Swansea involves turning off the analogue BBC2 and boosting the signal power for most of the digital channels which have been rearranged frequenecy-wise to take their place. The result is that our previously flaky Freeview reception is now pretty decent and watchable for BBC channels anyway which was the aim of this first part of the switchover . The remaining analogue channels are scheduled to be turned off in just under a month (9th September) so I guess that is when we’ll see the newspaper letters from “John, Neath Port Talbot” moaning that “no-one told me they were turning off the TV, what am I supposed to do with myself now? I don’t get my benefits for another week”. We are in one of the first regions to go completely digital, with most of the others being switched in 2011 or 2012 at the latest.
I may have mentioned before that I was given a ‘Vivabox’ for my birthday. This neat little box contains 10 samples of eau de toilette along with a voucher allowing me to pick up a full size bottle of my choice. Personally I’m leaning towards the sweeter smells like Play or CKIN2U but I really can’t decide, so I thought I’d throw it out to the public and see what you all think. The poll is below (you RSS reader folk might have to actually visit my web site to place your vote) and I’ll run it for a few weeks. Once I have a decent number of votes, I’ll take the top 3 and run another vote on just those to come to a final decision. The phone lines are now open…..
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