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The big news of the last week is that we had our second scan and found out we are having a girl.  This is no surprise to me at all I had no doubt that I will forever be surrounded by women.  I can’t say I minded one way or the other – boy or girl, they are still destined to be a climbing super athlete.  Of far, far greater importance is that all measurements etc came out within the normal range. So that’s a small measure of stress removed.

If anyone asks, this photo does not exist (more fool the nice lady for leaving us alone for long enough to snap this)

She definitely has an eye (the small circle is her lens!)

Work has been progressing on ‘The Boudoir’, Holly’s walk in closet and dressing room, which will make our three bedroom house into a two bedroom house, but as I have a climbing wall, I can’t really complain.  Plus, I am enjoying building the thing.  This will get its own post in due course, which will probably be quite boring.  Oh, and our reseeded lawn is growing, as are our tomatoes and chillies and strawberries – I am so middleclass suburban!

I just returned from a weekend in Wales, taking cadets to get walking days logged before they do their Silver and Gold DofE Expeds.  I can’t say I enjoyed it, it was hard work and they were a bunch of pissy teenagers.  I won’t go into to details, but three complaints by two Wing Commanders, a lot of swearing, a lot of whinging about not wanting to do the very thing they went there to do and one seriously inappropriate comment later and we have two demotions, two blocked promotions that were imminent and one cadet being told he can’t do his Gold this summer (plus me speaking to his parents).  At least I get paid I suppose.  I think the fallout will make the next trip go a bit more smoothly.

We managed to fit in a couple of short runs – here is Mike running over the disused slate quarries. My knees are becoming a problem.

The Nantlle Ridge is a very pleasant walk (even more so without cadets in tow I imagine)

And finally, here are some tiny horses

Nick the telly critic

I was discussing TV shows with my pal, Gav, the other day.  He happens to think Grey’s Anatomy the best show ever.  This, along with him not ‘getting’ Arrested Development, does bring into question our friendship, but now he has been publicly shamed so perhaps he’ll amend his preferences.  Anyway, it prompted me to compile my top ten TV shows, nay THE top ten TV shows:

1.    The Wire – without equal.

2.    Battlestar Galactica – almost as expansive as The Wire but in a very different way.  I watched all five seasons twice in three months. 

3.    Breaking Bad – I cannot wait until July for the final part, bitch!

4.    Buffy the Vampire Slayer – the greatest teenage show ever, by far, and platform for future Whedon greatness (The Avengers).

5.    Arrested Development – the cleverest comedy around, everything is finely crafted and multi layered.

6.    The Killing – the original Danish version, compelling.

7.    Modern Family – Phil is my hero and model for my impending fatherhood.

8.    Band of Brothers – well, it’s like a film version of Saving Private Ryan.

9.    The Office (US version) – much better than the UK one (he says having never seen it).

10.  Californication – who knew Duchovny could be so good in a part!?

Special mentions: Game of Thrones (may break into top ten but only seen season one), Firefly, Sherlock, Outnumbered, the best of the Attenborough shows (Planet Earth?) and the odd Horizon. Oh, and Strictly Come Dancing.

Likely future additions: The Sopranos, Homeland

What is surprising is that there is nothing British in my list.  There is even something Danish for crying out loud!  What happened to British TV? We still do the best nature programmes, and quite possibly the best costume dramas (not my bag) but once we did the best comedies too at the very least.

I once read someone explaining that they thought The Wire slightly edged Battlestar but if they had to give one show to an alien race to explain humanity, they would choose Battlestar (the irony being, of course, Battlestar is about aliens).  I definitely see where they were coming from.

In other news, trying to do Insanity, after the programme has finished is quite psychologically difficult, but I am just about keeping my fitness up.  I am not yet taking it to the next level though, so that needs some thought and motivation.

Climbing-wise, I am sporting a pulley injury (self diagnosed, of course) so there hasn't been any.  I am doing a few pull ups though and managed 100 yesterday evening across 20 sets of five.  I am doing cold treatment on it every day (along with icing my knees, I look a right state covered in ice lying on the sofa!) so hoping it clears up soon.

Saving Winter

So, our plan for a week of sunny rock in Cornwall quickly morphed into a winter climbing trip to the north face of Ben Nevis when we heard from Alan Kimber's blog that there was space in the CIC hut.

The hut is a two hour walk from the road, sitting at the foot of the mighty north face, and having never been there before we weren't quite sure what to take.  I reckon my bag must have weighed a good 45kg, and what you see below is a 25 litre bag and a 40 litre bag strapped to a 70 litre bag with two dry sacks hanging off it.  This two hour walk took us three.

Walking up was a long slog and into a pretty gnarly wind, which remained for the following day, but after that the weather was pretty perfect.  

Our tick list for the week:

Vanishing Gulley - V, 5, ***

Italian Right-hand - IV, 4, **

Gemini - Route not in 

Carn Dearg Cascades - V, 5, ***

Vade Mecum - V, 5, **

Minus Two Gulley - V, 5, ****

Two Step Corner - V, 5, ***

17 stars in five days of climbing!

The hut is pretty good too, apart from a gas problem we had for a while, which Doug and pals managed to sort.  Oh and him pointing out there was a burn behind the hut was handy after two days of us melting snow. Doh!

It has been a while since I have gone a week without washing and my head was getting a bit scabby by the end of the trip. Nice.  The hut filled up as Easter approached and we ended up bugging out a night early with an epic day of Two Step Corner (hard crux and spicy cornice), the heavy walk out and an all night drive home.  Despite the hut being mobbed, the hill was really quite quiet.

It's a nice feeling living in winter and then descending into spring back nearer sea level.  Whilst disappointing not to get a good start to the rock season, it was even better to salvage a winter we had already written off!

Here is a bit of a photo dump of our trip:

Promising...

Hot aches in my face

Italian Right-hand

The wind slab on the way to Vade Mecum (Hadrians Wall is the fat ice line, with Vade Mecum just to the left)

Nick climbs a cloud

The thin start of Minus Two Gulley takes the very right of the gulley

The CIC or Carn Dearg Cascades - stiff for V!

Two Step is directly above me

The infamous Two Step cornice - shit a brick

James should have been in the left hand shot of Vanishing Gulley, by the time I had taken it he had fallen out the bottom of the picture!

Vanishing Gulley is the thin line above James

Grand News

I have some big news, people, some big and good news.  Holly and I are expecting a baby.  There, the news is now out there in the blogosphere.

We have been holding off on announcing it until after the first scan, which we had yesterday (those machines are pretty cool).

Clearly a climber

We decided to start trying for a baby so that he would be old in her school year (I shall alternate between she and he for the time being).  The due date is 19 September, so that gives you an idea of how long ‘trying’ took.  Not very - I am powerful.

Holly has been pretty sick with anti-morning sickness, in that she seems to feel okay between 10am and 11am and is ill the rest of the time.  Now we are out the first trimester, she should start to feel better, but her mum was ill for many months.  This sickness is not pleasant at all – it means I am having to do more cooking.  Holly can’t abide the ‘smell’ in the kitchen – I use inverted commas because to a normal person there is no smell.  She had me disinfect the fridge at the weekend.  And I had to unblock the sink after her roast dinner reappeared into it (she must chew her food more if she is going to vom it up again).  Its for love I do these things.

At the antenatal clinic yesterday, there was a shouty chav waiting alongside us.  One of those people who talk to the room rather than the person they are with (her equally repulsive mother), you know the type.  She wanted a cappuccino, so they were going to head off to the pub, as you do.  I feel a drain on the welfare state coming on.  Anyway, her due date is 24^th.  So Holly is now adamant our baby must arrive on time so there is no risk of her sharing a room with this social detritus.

So I am now sentenced to a lifetime of worry and poverty.  Its pretty exciting though. I think I can be responsible, or at least pretend I am for the next eighteen years.

I think girl, Holly thinks boy.  We should find out in early May (the pragmatist in us demands to know).  Exciting times indeed. 

All change please, all change.

Graduation

I am now a graduate of the Insanity Workout.  The sixty days of some seriously grueling workouts are finally complete and I have to say it has made me re-evaluate the worth of exercise DVDs!

You will probably be glad to know that, thanks to bricking my phone, I lost the 'before' semi naked picture of my beer gut.  So there really isn't much point in posting one of the new trim me.  I have every confidence that, had I had any self control over my diet, I could be pretty ripped now.  I will just have to settle for a massive increase in fitness.  The other day I did twelve inverted sit ups (ie dangling with knees over a bar), sixty days ago I could just about do one.

On the Fit Test front, I increased my scores by an average of 36%.  Impressive. (Note, I took my initial scores as an average from the first two tests as on the first one the movements were unfamiliar and that may have affected my scores.)

I only missed one recovery day and one fit test, and on some other days I swapped a few jumps for other exercises.  My one criticism, and its not a criticism really, just an observation, is that it's quite brutal on the knees.

My plan now is to tick over with a few workouts this week then have a bit of a break while I go away climbing for a week.  Then for April I will be concocting some kind of hybrid from Insanity and The Asylum (the sequel to Insanity) and a bit more climbing.

James and I reset my wall yesterday so it's more usable (he pointed out that I had some tiny holds up high and some decent hand holds too low), but of course I have now strained a finger pulley on my left hand.

A wee update

It’s been a while since I blogged so here I am writing something without a whole lot to say.

I have now completed month one of the Insanity Workout and I must admit that despite it appearing like ‘aerobics’ it is rather effective.  A month ago I could not do any straight-leg leg raises and now I can hold one for some seconds, and I could do nothing resembling a lever and now can hold a half lever for a few seconds.  It has rather displaced climbing  (not that there was any a month ago) but this is phase one (get fit) before phase two (get specialised).  Perhaps most importantly, I am enjoying training again.

My main thought about Insanity is that it demonstrates the power of interval training and proper application of effort (busting one’s balls).  I think I used to coast through my training, going through the motions, so whilst it got me quite fit, it wasn’t very good value training.  I am quite excited as to what month two will bring.  And also by what I can formulate for post-Insanity; I am thinking of some home-brewed more climbing specific version combined with the odd Insanity session plus a lot more climbing.  I am getting some odd looks at work as I do a lot of it at lunchtime in the basement.

In other news, we held Gran’s rearranged 90th birthday party, with Holly’s cake garnering universal praise (I did the ‘90’ in silver balls though).

90 years young

Holly and I also ran our Squadron’s annual ‘NCO Cadre’ leadership course at Crowborough.  Think of it as trying to teach the unteachable to the unteachable.  Over the weekend we had ‘all weathers’, including snow, but the most prominent was rain. It rained a lot.  The cadets were supposed to sleep out under ‘bashas’ (a tarp strung up between trees) but it rained so much I did them the kindness of moving them into one of the concrete troop shelters, which promptly flooded.  How we laughed (I should add that we slept there too).

Our home for the night

This coming weekend we are taking them to North Wales, where there may or may not be some snow.

Oh, and if you ever go to the Highams Park Tesco, avoid going to the till operated by Bilal.  I think he is retarded, but more to the point he is rude.  Next time, Bilal, next time...

Workout of the day

When the ice climber cannot climb ice, the ice climber sweeps snow.

Grafting

...and like alchemy, the snow was transformed

In other news, after six months, we finally worked out how to use our living room fire.  Below, behold the dullest photo this blog has yet experienced:

Big up (oh, yes) to Gran who was 90 this week.  Alas the 'adverse weather' has meant postponing her party for two weeks.  Just as well as we were taking her there and the car battery was dead yesterday morning.