Lynette & Dave's wedding (Jan 1997)

I found an old video tape this weekend which turned out to have lots of film from our wedding. It was fun looking back nearly 14 years later - we'd forgotten a lot of what happened on the day. These are the highlights, uploading for posterity's sake and to make it easier to share with those who were there.

Sri Lanka (August 2002)

Besides seeing elephants, we also visited a lot of other cool places while in Sri Lanka. Here are just a few:

Helga's Folly: This is one of the most fun hotels I've ever stayed in... It is in the mountains outside Kandy. It's very over-the-top, and the bedrooms certainly weren't great, but I forgave them that for the experience of being able to hang out in the main rooms and the amazing feasts we had each evening. This is years ago now so I would check out recent hotel reviews before going there, but certainly back then it was worth a visit. In case you're wondering about the choice of music, it's because they had this playing on the old gramophone when we first arrived. :-)




Polonnaruwa Temple: This was my favourite of the temples we visited, I wish we'd had more time to explore the ruins as everywhere you looked there was interesting detail.



Sigiriya Rock Temple: It was a *long* way up. I didn't make it all the way, because the last part of the stairs were metal slats that you could see through and I got really dizzy... so I stayed down on the level below and watched the monkeys playing, while Dave went up to the top - with the camera.



Potgal Vitara statue: This giant buddha wasn't far from the Polonnaruwa Temple.




Dambulla Rock Temple: Speaking of Buddhas, we also saw a whole hall full at them at the Dambulla temple




Driving in the Tea district: We went up in the mountains for a few days, lots of winding curves and rural vistas occasionally mixed with spectacular views.



Visiting a spice garden: Amazing to see it all growing..

Sri Lankan Elephants (Aug 2002)

I only recently got round to digitising all the video from our Sri Lanka holiday back in August 2002. Here are some of the highlights which feature animals - especially elephants, as seeing them had been one of the main reasons for the trip:

A ride on Nonna Elephant: we went on an hour long safari with a lovely friendly elephant called Nonna. Nonna was a huge fan of bananas, and partial to the odd pineapple or two as well... needless to say, we fed her loads, to the point that she did some remarkable yellow cannonball poos enroute!



Elephants at Pinnawala orphanage: This is like it sounds, a sanctuary where both elderly and young elephants come to live out their lives. Besides just the wonderful opportunity to see so many elephants so close up, my favourite parts were when I got to bottlefeed a baby elephant and help wash another elephant in the river. :-)



Wild elephants at Uda Walawe: In the course of a several hour jeep drive through this national park we saw lots of wild elephants. These are the best bits, as captured on camera.



Uda Walawe elephant orphanage: It's not that widely known (or at least it wasn't in 2002), but the Uda Walawe national park also has an elephant orphanage. It's for all the young elephants who are orphaned in the park, and they keep them in a separate area alongside the park and then gather every day just for feeding but with minimal human handling. Once they're old enough to survive on their own, the orphan herds are released into the park and they're encouraged to be wild again. My favourite bit was how they were released in pairs to walk up to the feeding area, so no-one got crushed, and also how the really tiny babies were paired with some of the much older ones who were acting like big brothers to them. :-)



Elephant at Temple of the Tooth: This lovely elephant had tusks and was so tame that you could have your photo taken holding them.



These were the very first elephants we saw - but they were far away in the distance... luckily our video camera had an amazing zoom. :-)



And finally... it wasn't only elephants we met.

We got to see a Porcupine family:



Also lots of lovely baby turtles:

A tour of Aunt Marion's house

My brother Pete hasn't yet made it over to the UK, and so has never visited Aunt Marion. So he can see what he's missing, Aunt Marion and I gave him the house tour...

But, because it's going through her house, I decided to err on the side of caution and make it password protected. So, if you know me and want to see it, send me an email. :-)

New Years Day walk in Earith

Earith is a small village in Cambridgeshire, UK. Every New Years Day the villagers get together for an hour or so's walk through the nearby fields and canals, culminating in a bagpipe performance by the local Scotsman. A good friend of mine lives in the village, so this year I got to tag along.

Aunt Marion reminisces

Often when we visit Aunty Marion she talks about things that happened when she was younger. This trip I decided I would video some of it as thought Mum (who is very interested in researching family history) would find it entertaining. It was filmed over dinner at the Red Lion pub in Freshwater.



In order, Aunt Marion talks about the following (with start times in brackets):

• Her garden at the Ilford House (10 secs)
• Talking about trains (1 min, 30 secs)
• Meeting her first husband Nick in Torquay (2 min, 10 secs)
• How Nick was like Uncle Jim (3 min)
• Uncle Jim in India during the war (3 min, 20 secs)
• What Uncle Jim did after the war (6 min, 10 secs)
• Meeting Uncle Jim when she was aged 16 (7 min, 50 secs)
• Travelling and what Heathrow was like (10 min)
• Uncle Jim and his trains (11 min, 10 secs)
• Uncle Jim and his sailing (12 min, 40 secs)
• Thinking she would die in hospital (15 min, 20 secs)
• Being paralysed as a child (16 min, 30 secs)
• Having scarlet fever as a child (17 min, 30 secs)
• Very old relatives (18 min, 30 secs)
• Old clocks and teapots (21 min, 30 secs)
• More about relatives (23 min)
• About relatives being Quakers (24 min, 30 secs)
• Northern roots (25 min, 50 secs)
• Her parents (27 min, 20 secs)
• Her singing in light opera (31 min, 30 secs)
• Her grandfather making home liqueur (32 min)

Just in case the above video stops working, it's also available here on Google Video.

Dave cooks lasagne

Gordon Ramsay has a "cookalong" show here and is asking people to upload videos to Youtube of themselves cooking his recipes. Dave agreed kindly to oblige. Here's the highlights of this evening's lasagne cooking. :-)

History of Cricklewood

We attended two talks about the history of Cricklewood recently. We recorded both for posterity as figured it might be interest for future reference for others interested in the borough.

The first was by a long-time resident, Nora Marshall, talking about her experiences of living her during wartime. It was absolutely fascinating.



The second was by Malcolm Barres-Baker, who gave a slideshow and talk about the history of Cricklewood based on information from the local Brent museum archives. (This one starts off a little fuzzy, it wasn't till about 4 min in that we realised we had to zoom in in order for the slides to be in focus).