Civilisation

One of the things I have to say I've been looking forward to since we started our family is spending time with the boys doing more grown-up things. Nothing too ambitious, just simple things like sitting having a chat over a cup of coffee (or a mango smoothie) or having a quick lunch in a restaurant that isn't painted in primary colours.

So today was a real treat. Mrs had a day off and went shopping (a novelty in itself) and the boys and I went off to find a barber, a coffee and to see what we could see. We went on the bike and the boys both sat in the trailer - they're getting a bit big for it now, but were very well behaved.
We ended up on 4th avenue, Kitsilano, meandering along the street, looking in shop windows and watching the world go by.

We stopped off in the Book Warehouse and found a fantastic book called "Skippyjon Jones" by Judith Schachner. A hilarious story about a kitten with a wild imagination. Elder and I then had our hair cut at the Kitsilano Barber's and we had lunch at a little chinese diner. Then we cycled home. Simple pleasures, but great fun (apart from the revolting nappies).

Gloat? Me?

OK, so maybe Vancouver's nice but this is a pretty special spot too - only a 9 hour flight and a four hour drive from here. Sandy Cove, near Lee in Devon is one of the great spots with walking distance from Rockley. A great spot for a week away from it all.

Reasons to be cheerful, part 3

This spot is about a half an hour's drive from our place. Lynn Valley Headwaters Regional Park is a beautiful corner of North Vancouver, the city that backs the mountains. Our boys walked nigh on 6km up and down the side of the valley a few weeks ago - we're dead proud!

Noise

Where I work at the moment is surrounded by construction. We are on the corner of two streets in downtown Vancouver. Construction is taking place on three of the four corners. In our building they are remodelling the ground floor retail space that used to be a bank. On the northwest corner they are slowly flaying an perfectly serviceable mall to replace it with a high-class department store. On the southeast corner they have been building a 40-storey residential tower with ground-floor retail units - a project that started before my first visit to Vancouver in recent times - in November 2003.

Add to that the fact that the air conditioning in our building is less than useful and that it's still beautifully sunny outside so windows need to be opened for cooling, and you get a recipe for noise-induced insanity. One small mercy is that with the additional construction project of the Canada Line along Granville we are now spared the noise of buses going up and down and stopping outside. I kind of miss the clacking of the pantographs, though.