We lucked out and got just enough of a sunny day to make our annual trip to the bluebell wood today. It’s always a special day in a very special place for our family. Charlie’s bluebell slideshow 2008

If you’ve sent any email to anyone with a ridey.net address in the past 24 hours or so, it probably bounced back. Sorry about that. But apparently I’m a very lazy system administrator because I got caught out by this bit of geek nastiness.

I think I’ve sorted out the problem now with the help of the good old UNIX command line. Slashdot also has something on this. I imagine I wasn’t the only “lax administrator” who got stung by this. But if you’ve sent me or any other ridey.net address anything lately, please send it again!

Charlie has a close look at an iron railing during our visit to Bruge last weekend, where we also checked out the windmills at the edge of the old town. It was our sixth (we think) visit to this magical place and Charlie’s second, and we’ll definitely be back again soon, particularly as we found a fantastic restaurant called Calis, which also has rooms.

Ridey.net is changing to a new internet service provider some time on Monday, so the website and email will be unavailable for a day or so. But rest assured that no email will be lost over the down time. We’ll soon be back up and running faster (we hope) than ever.

Charlie with the yew tree we planted today along the route of one of our favourite walks. It first sprouted up in our garden when we were living in Bletchingley and had been confined to a pot ever since. We hope it will thrive in its new home, and we’ll be checking up on it regularly. Perhaps it will still be here hundreds of years from now. A yew tree in nearby Tandridge is estimated to be in excess of 4,000 years old! It seemed a good way to start the new year. Here’s a look back at 2007 (38Mb QuickTime file)

That’s Charlie at about 6.15am, managing to stay still long enough to have his picture taken with all the presents that Santa brought in the night. He didn’t stay still for long, especially when he opened a couple of presents in particular. Happy Christmas!

Charlie with his classmates during their Christmas concert today, and below, at the microphone for his ’solo’. He was thrilled to get to sing with a microphone for the first time and he and the rest of Year Three were brilliant Christmas stars. Watch a short clip of Charlie here with a longer one here.

The impressive train shed of the newly opened St Pancras International Station, now the London terminus of the Eurostar service, the Christmas lights on the Champs Elysee leading up to the Arc de Triomphe, and the Paris traffic seen from La Defense - all taken at either end of my just completed business trip to Paris - it’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it!

I can’t believe a month has gone by without a single post. But then there’s been a lot going on lately. Must try harder in December!

This Halloween, we went for the space alien and evil angry eyebrow looks. They were by far the scariest in our street… Boo!