You are welcome to my website, a present from Jeanette, with a little bit of help from our friends at Blackbook Services.

Contact

I can't spell out my email address because of the spammers. But if this website was fredbloggs.co.uk, then my email would be fb2@fredbloggs.co.uk. You should be able to work it out now...

You can also find me on Facebook.

Incidentally, I love this (click for the detail):

A few pictures from our Coast-2-Coast bike ride (me, Jeanette and Francis)

Stuff I've Seen Recently and Would Like to Share

Basically, like it says. I've only recently started this, so be patient... Get it on its own page here

Very Quick Book Reviews

Checkout my notes on great stuff I've read recently (and ideas for gifts...). I'm only going to comments on stuff that's really worth reading, or really worth avoiding; not the usual mundane pulp. And I'm too lazy to write more than a sentence or two...hope that should make things clear.

Holiday Pictures (feel free to skip this bit...)

Some pictures from Recent Holidays:

• Skiing in Sweden Not a natural born skier, it is nevertheless an experience that lets me get outside myself for a while. It's only my second time, but it's curiously habit forming.
  
  I went there rather than, say, the Alps, to be sure of snow; and there was much. Åre is a rather nice place and the largest town for miles around (Sweden has very low population density, presumably because of the climate and terrain). But although the locals are just really friendly people (I know, that sounds hackneyed; but it's nevertheless true. As polite as Norwegians, but less formal; a million times nicer than, say, Londoners), there's not a whole lot to do if you're not skiing. Which explains why the pictures are basically snow and rock.
  
  The restaurants were superb - real top notch cuisine, at real top notch prices; not a huge variety of choice, though, especially on vegetables.
  
  Skiing is not really Jeanette's thing, so she wasn't there; that explains why there's no pictures of her; or indeed me, as I've really not worked out that aspect of the camera's amazingly complicated functionality.
  
  Nevertheless, a good week, and I'm sure it would be a great place for a summer trip as well.

• Reading to Bournemouth by bike, April 2006

• Walking Loch Ness, July 2006.

• Rovaniemi (Lapland), February 2005

• A composite page of weather miscellany

Cricket Stuff

For my Tour Manager's Diary of recent Mandarins Suffolk Tours:

• 2008 (Four Games Played, at last!)

• 2007 (The Last of the Pimpernels)

• 2006 (same pictures, different year)

• 2005 (more pictures)

• 2004 (chat, and pictures too)

• 2003 (just chat)

• Pick up the bat for Mandarins Cricket Club

Wasting Time on Chess

Touch the pawn for the Beckenham & Bromley Chess Club, which I run (do contact me if you're interested in playing a bit, especially in the London League).

The Original Site

I'm not quite sure what this picture, which was lovingly constructed by Jeanette and Neil, is actually saying! It's Darren Gough looking a little forlorn after a West Indian batsman (Chris Gayle?) has (presumably) carted him to the boundary...