Visitors - Nick, Charlotte, Curtis & Connor

Nick and his three children came to visit for the February Half-Term holiday, leaving Karen at home to look after the new kittens!!

The weather stayed fairly good for most of the week allowing everyone to get out on quite a few day trips. These included lots of Geo-Caching with Annette and Clive and even me on one day. The photo below was taken on the Goss Moor Trail where we must have walked about five miles to find just two caches. If you study the photo carefully, you might notice some very muddy boots and trousers. We decided, perhaps unwisely as it turned out, to follow the Fritillary Trail, which turned out to be ankle deep in mud in some places. Perhaps we should have stuck to the road, however that would not have been so interesting. You might notice that Charlotte is not in the photo; this was because she had hurt her back and spent this particular day resting at home. Fortunately the day of rest seemed to work very well. Oh to be young again with the powers of rapid recuperation.!

On another day we all went up to Trevone where we played cricket and clambered around on the rocks. The photo shows me with the two boys; I have no idea why we looked so miserable!

Nick decided to take everyone out for a meal one night so we decided on a local "Award Winning" Fish and Chip shop. Not sure what the award was for! To be fair, it was 18:30 on a Friday evening during the week of half term so we expected it to be busy. We found a table for seven easy enough, which was good; after that things went gradually downhill. I asked what the "Fish of the Day" was, as two of us qualified for the Senior Citizens Special , and was told that it was Haddock, which suited us fine until the waitress came back and said that there was no Haddock! No Senior Special then. The adults ordered the set meal, with Cod, and the children had a variety from the children's menu. When the meal came, we asked where the Bread & Butter was, to be told that they had run out of bread! Anyway the rest of the meal was OK, even if there was no sign of a deduction for lack of bread. The children wanted to have some Ice Cream for sweet, so Nick went and ordered. After 40 minutes of waiting, we decided to cancel the order and leave. we came home and had our own Ice Cream, which was £15.00 cheaper on Nick's wallet. We probably shall not be rushing back there in a hurry.

On the whole however, I think that they all had a good time and we look forward to their next visit, whenever that might be.

Hot Flush

Maria, Annette and I had a recent trip out to the Hall for Cornwall to see Hot Flush starring a cast of four women and one man in a very naughty, but extremely funny, musical about women and the problems of the menopause. Lesley Joseph stars along with Sam Kane, who plays about 20 different male characters brilliantly. All the cast however contributed something different to the overall performance.
The theatre has a capacity of 969, if my addition is correct, and I suppose that there were about 850 in the audience, of which I was probably one of less than 50 men, so suitably outnumbered, however even from a man's point of view, it was an extremely entertaining show and well worth seeing.

March Update

OK, so I am way behind with the Blog. This, for the most part, is because, as far as the computer is concerned, I have concentrated on producing a Family History of my HILLS/HILL family in book form. This has turned into a marathon task as I have some 1300 descendants of Matthew HILLS, who died in 1644. I have documents, letters and research information from all over the world that need to be indexed and collected into a logical order. Of course, as soon as I started the process, I found anomalies and further discoveries that sent me down different tracks. I also had to learn how to produce PDF Files and how my OCR software worked, all of which proved interesting to say the least. Then there are the photos that have been sent to me by various people. They are stored electronically, but not necessarily in the ideal order or size.

Horace William HILLS - taken about 1885.

In February, Nick, Charlotte, Curtis & Connor came to stay for a week and, when I have sorted out the photos, I will make a separate post to give some idea of what they got up to.

Earlier in the year, I was asked if our top field could be used for grazing for horses. I thought that this would be a good idea to keep the grass under control - what a mistake! The field now resembles a bog around the entrance gate and I have now stopped that arrangement as I would rather have the problem of cutting the paths once a week rather than having to look at the mess and not being able to use the field for anything else. Of course, the month that the horses were there coincided with the wettest weather we have had since we moved in here. The photo gives some idea of the problem.


I have had several appointments with specialists for both my heart valve and shoulder. The left shoulder, which was operated on in 2002, is causing me a lot of concern since I damaged it again whilst moving stone for the wall back in November. A visit to the surgeon who operated and another one for a scan have not yet produced a definitive result. The heart valve seems to still be working the same without any further deterioration. I have also had 24 hour heart and blood pressure checks so am feeling a bit like the proverbial Guinea Pig at the moment. One of these days I might get some results!

That is enough for now, more detail later.