Q1

Well that was Q1 done and dusted - bring on Q2 ...

Cake

Made by Jake.
Iced by Nicky.
Enjoyed by me.

Shed

Achievements of the day:

• a tidy shed with a bit more space in it;
• a large bonfire; and
• a pile of stuff waiting to go to the tip.

Time

Another week done, and the weekend is here. Weather is going to be warm and sunny, and I'll get to spend time with the whole family. Looking forward to it.

Ideal

A day off work today, and a trip with Nicky to the Ideal Home Show. As is normal for these kinds of events, we come home having mostly purchased food (sausages, dips, fudge!) and got lots and lots of great ideas of things to do by way of home improvements.

Some of the things, not necessarily in order, that are on the list:

• front door;
• oven;
• lamp for hall;
• mirrors;
• chest of drawers for hall;
• dining table and chairs;
• kitchen work-tops;
• hot water tap;
• bar stools for kitchen;
• armchairs;
• built in wardrobes;
• wallpaper;
• en suite bathroom.

Watch this space - let's see what we actually manage to do!

WEX

... is apparently short for Work Experience, and that is what Jake has to look forward to later this year. He and I went to a brief presentation at school this evening about it, and essentially the choice is to either organise something independently between now and July, or failing that to make a selection from their list.

Work experience takes place in the week of 20-24 October, and they have a two week half term after it to recover!

Rambles

Posting from Sutton Scotney this evening, and I'm not the only one who has been blogging this evening. We have a new blog set up for Mum, and it can be found at:

oldschoolhouserambles.blogspot.com

Enjoy!

And again

Following straight on from yesterday's post, the first work task of the week today was to attend a client meeting in London. The client I was visiting has their offices on Buckingham Gate, which as the name suggests, is just around the corner from Buckingham Palace.

Despite nearly missing my train - terrible traffic trying to get to the M2, but then the Gods were smiling on me when I arrived at the station 5 minutes after the train had been due to depart to discover that it was running 8 minutes late - I arrived in London in plenty of time, and so took the tube to Green Park, and then walked through the park and past the Palace to my meeting.

Once my meeting had finished, as it was turning out to be a beautifully bright day in the Spring sunshine, I took a little walk through St James's Park before getting back on the tube at Charing Cross.

Here are a few of the photos from today, and I have to say, for a few quick iPhone snaps, I think they've turned out rather nicely!

London Walk

On Wednesday, after my meeting in Wimbledon, I got the train back in towards the middle of London, and arrived at Vauxhall station with some spare time before I was due for a work dinner, and so decided to go for a walk.

I walked over Vauxhall Bridge, and along Millbank to the Tate Gallery, and stopped in to have a look around.


As well as having some beautiful works of art to admire, the gallery itself is a really great place to wander around and enjoy.


Some of my favourite pieces in the gallery were the sculptures. The next three photos are Der Trommler by Michael Sandle, Working Model for Three Piece No. 3 by Henry Moore, and Forms in Echelon by Barbara Hepworth.


After enjoying my time at the Tate, I carried on walking (ending up walking all of the way to the restaurant we were meeting at which was close to Ludgate Circus), passing Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Whitehall and Trafalgar Square.

Missing

Bit of an unexpected late night last night, hence the lack of blog!

"Normal" service to be resumed later ...

SR2014

Normal blogging service (which as I'm often reminded isn't up to much anyway) has been suspended this evening in preference to Sport Relief.

Budget

Didn't get much chance to absorb the budget news yesterday, so have been doing my best to take it all in today. Obviously the one item that I am particularly interested in is the change to pension rules whereby it will no longer be necessary to use my pension put to purchase an annuity on retirement.

Fundamentally, I think that this is a great idea as it gives me more options of what to do with my money when I retire, but inevitably, I still have lots of questions.

• How will this impact, if at all, on the current possibility of taking up to 25% of your pension pot as a tax free lump sum on retirement?
• Presumably, taking out the remainder of your pension pot as cash will still attract a tax charge, but what if you want to invest it in some other investment product and not an annuity. Will it be possible to invest gross and pay tax on the income from that investment (as currently happens with an annuity) or will it be necessary to pay tax up front, and then pay tax again on investment income?
• The change in the tax charge on the amount over the lifetime allowance is also welcome news, as a 55% penalty on the excess was pretty shocking. However, whilst not directly related to the annuity rule changes, I'd love to know what is likely to happen to the total lifetime allowance amount. It has been reduced from £1.5m to £1.25m, but can I expect that to increase with some form of indexation in the coming years. Whilst undoubtedly £1.25m is a large pension pot to contemplate, £1.25m in 20 years time is a very different amount of money to £1.25m today. Isn't it reasonable to ask for some form of "forward guidance" in this area?
• If at risk of exceeding the lifetime allowance, given that the excess will be charged at a marginal tax rate, is there a benefit to reducing contributions now, suffering a higher tax bill now, and putting money away in a market-tracking ISA (especially given the announcement on increasing annual ISA allowances)? At least the returns on an ISA accrue free of tax, whereas any returns on a pension pot that continue to push it further past the lifetime allowance will only increase the tax charge.
• What should we read into the fact that the Chancellor thinks that the changes will increase tax receipts in the coming years? (Presumably this is good evidence that you don't get to walk away with your pension pot in cash tax free.) This seems to suggest that he expects people upon their retirement to show a lack of prudence and burn through their pension pots faster than would have been the case had they taken out an annuity.
• Is this a good thing? Doesn't it mean that in not too many years there will be a number of pensioners who no longer have much, if any, of a private pension income? If so, what will be the impact on the state and will it put a further strain on public finances?
• And finally, what will happen to the annuity market now that people will not be forced towards it? Will the market work even less effectively than it does at the moment, causing even lower annuity incomes for people who choose to go down that path?

With more choice comes more complication, and more questions!

Lutyens

And so a long day is drawing to a close. Work calls done from home this morning seem like a long time ago. Since then I have been to Wimbledon on the train (starting two new books on my journeys - the new Bob (cat) book as well as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes - learning from the first story - Silver Blaze - where "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime" gets its name from), travelled back into London and enjoyed a pleasant stroll (photos to follow another time) before going to a work dinner at Lutyens Restaurant on Fleet Street.

Now I am back on the train waiting for it to pull out from St Pancras.

Today qualifies as the most Fitbit steps since records began, and by quite some margin too.

One other thing - the second piece of fantastic news from Coulsdon this week. OK, so it wasn't a £108m lottery win, but I bet that right now it feels just as good. Well done GP!!

Kos

Extremely exciting news - we have booked a holiday!

We decided that the summer was still some way off, and that frankly we deserved a little bit of a break between now and then to keep us going. I suppose it is fair to say that holidays have been a little more sparse than usual since we moved house, and we thought that a little trip to somewhere warm would be a very good idea in the near future.

So for the first time ever, Nicky and I will be heading to Greece at the start of May. We'll be staying on the island of Kos for a four night break in a hotel called "Aqua Blu".

It looks rather nice - check it out here.

(By the way, I like to look back at old posts from time to time, and just decided to look back at the blog post closest to being exactly five years ago, and it talks about my first ever trip to Wimbledon. Guess where I'm going tomorrow!)

Just giving

A quick link for anyone who is interested. Jake has a "Just Giving" page set up for any sponsorship for this Friday's Sport Relief efforts.

You can find it here.

Watson

I remember writing a sort of 'book report' when I was at school, and the subject that I chose was Sherlock Holmes (I suspect it may have been a piece written for the dreaded GCSE 'coursework'). I don't remember the detail of what I wrote, but I do recall being proud of my efforts, as they reflected something I was actually interested in - I had read and enjoyed a fairly large number of Conan Doyle's short stories by then.

No doubt my observations weren't especially insightful - no doubt referencing some of Holmes's well known traits along with his methods of observation and deduction. One thing I could have commented on was the role that Watson plays in the stories - as loyal and trusted friend, and chronicler of the famous detective's exploits. One other point I could have made about Watson was that he never gets anything right, and never fails to be amazed when Holmes sets out his solution to a particular case.

It was probably reading Sherlock Holmes that first got me into detective fiction, and it has been something that I have enjoyed ever since then. One of my favourites is Inspector Morse - I think I probably enjoyed John Thaw's portrayal before I went and found Colin Dexter's books, but they are a joy to read. Knowing that I have never read the last and tragic tale, I decided that what I needed to do was start again at the beginning with The Last Bus to Woodstock (which I re-read almost three years ago) and work through the series in order.

So, that's what I have been doing, reading one of the novels every three to four months. Well, I have just arrived at "Morse's Greatest Mystery", book 11 in the series, and the only one that isn't actually a novel, but rather a collection of short stories. And, it turns out, that despite owning a rather lovely first edition copy, the stories are not familiar to me at all - I don't think I have read it before.

So far, and I am about half way through, the stories have alternated between Morse and non-Morse tales, and the one that I have just finished, called "A Case of Mis-Identity" is actually a Sherlock Holmes story. It follows a familiar pattern, that is to say Holmes receives a visitor at Baker Street who is in distress and in need of his services, and following a few sharp deductions, he appears to solve the case. In fact the story - that of a man who disappears without trace just before his wedding, is almost exactly the same as "A Case of Identity" which is one of the stories that appears in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. (The man in question is called "Hosmer Angel" in Conan Doyle's story: Dexter calls him "Horatio Darvill".)

However, whilst the story is almost the same, there are a couple of extra twists that Dexter throws into the tale. In Dexter's version, Holmes puts forward the same solution as in the original, but Mycroft, who happens to be present, then takes pleasure in picking holes in his brother's analysis, and explains to him both where he has got it wrong, and also what he believes the answer to be.

But then, best of all, Holmes's trusty sidekick Watson takes great delight (having by coincidence stumbled upon what had actually happened) in shouting them both down. And so, once, just for once, Watson is the one with the solution.

Nice one Dr Watson, and nice one Mr Dexter too!

Party

Jake was at a party on Saturday night - a Sport Relief event over in Cuxton, and so Nicky and I spent a quiet evening in, TV off, chatting, listening to Z88 (on Sonos) and looking up Orlando restaurants that we might go to in the summer. I was looking up lots of non Disney restaurants (thanks in part to the recommendations of the 2013 Dining Awards from Orlando Magazine. However, the only reservation we made was at the Magic Kingdom - we are planning to have lunch at the Liberty Tree Tavern on our first day of holiday (as given that we are staying at BLT we will no doubt head that way on day 1, plus we've never been there before).

A few pictures for today's post:

Firstly, following up on a post from earlier in the week, the special guest at Jake's school this week made the local paper, and here's the evidence.


Secondly, not that I am starting to post far too many pictures of them, but here's the cats yesterday evening - Jessie deciding that now wasn't the time to be reading the paper, and Coco having created a little nest for herself in amongst the cushions.


And finally, to prove that this Saturday post is really being written on Sunday morning, here is a picture of a sky that is almost Florida blue.

Benn

Looking back now, it seems like something of a privilege that I was able to go and listen to Tony Benn speak when he came to visit Corpus Christi in my undergraduate days.

Fogo

One of my colleagues was telling me today that they are off to Orlando in October, and they are particularly keen on trying out Fogo de Chao, which is a Brazilian steakhouse on International Drive.

Now that we've checked out their website, we are pretty keen on giving it a go as well.

My boss is going to Orlando in a few weeks - maybe we should send him it to report back to us.

More cheating

Found two more 15 x 6 "solutions" involving one blue (i.e. upside-down) piece, but still no proper ones.

Annoying!

Famous visitor

Jake's school had a famous visitor today - Sir Steve Redgrave came to see them as part of the build up to Sport Relief. It was covered on the local news, and can be watched (no doubt for a limited time only) here - the piece to watch starts at 16:30 into the programme.

Bec

Good luck!

Spring

Well it seems like Spring has sprung, and so we've been out mowing the lawn, and even had some helpers too!

Rochester

(Before I get started today, re yesterday's blog, it took Dad all of a couple of seconds to work out where
i'd cheated!)

Lovely day today, and not just the weather. We decided to head down to Rochester, and had a stroll along the High Street with our visitor.

All of the right ingredients were there:

• a meal out (Pizza Express)
• a look around the shops
• some sweets from the Candy Bar, and
• Jake and I wandered off to take some photos by the castle and cathedral.

Lovely day!

Cheat

Dad, as discussed, what's wrong with this photo?

Coffee

A day in the office today, made much more enjoyable for being able to step out for a little while for coffee and a catch up with Bec.

Looking forward

As I mentioned, yesterday was 20 weeks until we go on holiday to Orlando, and as always, there are lots of things for us to look forward to, and despite the fact we have been to Florida rather a large number of times already, there's always new things to do.

Things we are planning that are new to us (were already there last time we went):

• A meal out at The Wave restaurant at the Contemporary Resort;
• Maybe trying out the other water park - Typhoon Lagoon;
• Hunting out a new out-of-the-world restaurant to try - maybe Kobe, or a local BBQ;
• Our trip to the coast to chill out for a few days at Vero Beach; and
• Getting up early to watch the sunrise over the ocean.

And then there are things that will be new since we were there last time:

• Checking out the progress in turning Downtown Disney into Disney Springs, and whilst we're there maybe having a game of bowling (as well as playing some pool) at Splitsville;
• A new roller-coaster (the seven dwarfs mine train) at the Magic Kingdom, the first one of those in a pretty long time;
• A new parade to watch at the Magic Kingdom as well - I wonder if it will still be scaring the smaller children;
• More Harry Potter stuff at Universal with Diagon-Alley and the Hogwarts Express open by then (maybe I'll have to admit defeat and actually read some of the books before we go this year); and
• enjoying park-based coffee stops thanks to the arrival of Starbucks in the parks, as well as an exclusive members only "Vienna Latte" from the Joffreys coffee stands.

Crossing off those days!

All green

Today I needed to go to Kingston for work, and decided to go on the train. Three reasons:

• Financial - my car is on a three year lease and I am allowed to do up to 60,000 miles, and anything over that will start to incur an excess mileage charge. Based on current mileage I am projecting to do a bit more than 60,000 in the three years, so this helps to keep the miles down.
• Entertainment - I have been pretty poor with my reading over the last few weeks, and so the six train journeys I had today gave me a good opportunity to get stuck into my book, get through about 150 pages, and get properly into the story.
• Exercise - sitting in the car doesn't count for much by way of exercise, and by taking public transport I ended up doing a fairly large amount of walking, which combined with taking the dog out for a walk in the muddy woods before going, has meant that I have a record-breaking day in terms of steps (since fit-bit records began) of over 12,800. In fact I am all green for the key stats, not just steps: distance - 10.3km, active minutes - 85, calories burned - 2,960.

As I say, I didn't head off first thing this morning, but did a bit of work at home before going, and whilst doing so was listening to my favourite radio station - Z88.3 of Orlando (20 weeks today until we'll be there) and, in case I needed a reminder of why it's my favourite, heard these two songs.

For the record

As mentioned in a blog post near to the beginning of last month (and occasionally subsequently) I decided that I would cycle 0.5km x the day of the month for each day in February. Well, I can confirm that I did it, meaning that over the course of the month, I cycled:

0.5 + 1 + 1.5 + ..... + 13.5 + 14 = 203km.

Not bad I think, not bad.

In conjunction with some healthy eating, it meant that by 1 March I was onto 2 pounds away from my target weight, but unfortunately due to enjoying a nice meal out on Saturday, plus birthday lunch on Sunday, plus a weekend of no cycling, by this morning I was actually back to being 4 pounds away!

So, a little cycle today, plus back on the green tea, sushi snack pack, fruit, nuts, and so on today.

I'll get there eventually!

Also, in a quick update on yesterday's blog, finding a solution to a 30 x 3 rectangle is proving elusive so far!

Pentominoes

Anyone, who like me, spent an inappropriate amount of time in their younger years playing Tetris will be familiar with tetronimoes, as they are the shapes that are used in the game. Each tetronimo is made up of four 1x1 squares joined together to make a shape. Any Tetris player worth their salt will recall that there are seven tetronimoes:

• the 4x1 long thin shape - useful for slotting down the sides to complete a "tetris" (getting four lines to disappear at the same time);
• the 2x2 square;
• the 'T' shape;
• the two 'L' shaped pieces - one that is more of a 'J' than an 'L'; and
• the two (for want of a better description) wavy-line pieces, which also came in two versions like the L and the J.

Now, if you allowed reflective as well as rotational symmetry, then the L and the J would actually be the same piece, as would the two wavy lines, and the total number of tetronimoes would actually be five. But as any Tetris player will recall, it was possible to rotate your pieces to make them fit together, but reflection wasn't an option, so there are seven.

Well, what if we extend by one 1x1 square to make our tetronimoes into pentominoes? Then there are 18 different shapes that can be made. Of these 18 shapes, 6 are like the first three tetronimoes listed above in that they don't come as a pair (as they are their own reflection), whereas the other 12 come as pairs, one the reflection of the other. So if we allowed reflection then (where the number of tetronimoes would reduce from 7 to 5) the number of pentominoes would reduce from 18 to 12.

But, we aren't going to allow reflection, so we will stick with 18.

The total area made up by the 18 pentominoes is (given that each is made up of 5 1x1 squares) 18 x 5 = 90. If we want to make a rectangular shape with area 90, we have the following choices:

• 90 x 1
• 45 x 2
• 30 x 3
• 18 x 5
• 15 x 6
• 10 x 9

Now, if we wanted to cover the rectangle exactly by fitting together our pentominoes (a bit like a game of Tetris) then it is clear that the first two are not possible, as after all, some pentominoes are three units long by three wide (e.g. the cross).

However, I think that the rest of the rectangles can be filled using the pentominoes (although I haven't found solutions for all of them - note - self control required at this stage to avoid asking Google to check! - that might have to be a challenge for another day), and in particular, I have a wooden puzzle which asks you to complete a 10 x 9 rectangle.

And here is a solution.


(Note - solution posted here for posterity, but also so that when I have tipped all the pieces out, and it is really starting to annoy me, I can at least look back at the picture so that I can put the pieces back in again!)

Coast

First task of the day today was to take the cats over to the vets for their post op checkups, and all was well, so we can let them out any time from now. All we need to do is build up the courage to actually let them out.

Once the cats were safely returned home we went over to Oaks Dene for a session of sanding and painting of the doors and frames on the landing. That project is coming along very well, although some second coats will definitely be needed.

This evening, in celebration of a birthday, we went to the Coast to Coast restaurant for dinner, and very nice it was too.