Fishing, a christening, go carting and a birthday

It's been quite a busy time here this last few weeks, one way and another. Since I last updated my blog we've had 2 fishing trips, my youngest grand daughters christening, a trip go carting, my birthday and my daughter getting 4 weeks work experience at a tattoo shop ...not bad for a sleepy little back water eh lol.

Since my daughter showed an interest in fishing, I've wanted to take her up to Holyhead Breakwater for a fishing session, as I knew we'd catch some fish even though they'd be small ones. A few Sundays ago we actually managed to get up there, and as I hoped we actually caught some fish, much to my daughters delight. She caught 3 wrasse, one was a particularly pretty shade of green, a pollack and a crab, whereas I caught 2 pollack, a blenny and a crab lol. We really enjoyed ourselves and came away feeling extremely relaxed, all the fish were safely returned and all our mess was cleaned up and taken with us. The 2nd fishing trip was last weekend when a we had family and friends here visiting for my youngest grand daughters christening. Yet another trip to the Breakwater of course, and there was fierce competition between the men and women !! The first and biggest fish of the day was caught by my 15yr old grand daughter Raggz a good sized wrasse, not bad for her first attempt. More fish were pulled out including a scorpion fish by my other daughter Jenny, some pollack by the lads and nothing from me !!! It ended up as a 3 all draw, which wasn't bad as it was quite a short fishing session :o) My son Ben brought with him loads of fishing tackle for us, so with what had already been given to us by a good friend of mine, we had more than enough rods and reels to go round everyone.

The next day was the christening of my 6 month old grand daughter Kacey Louise. Anyone that knows me, knows that I'm not too keen on anything to do with religion, churches, sermons or anything else along those lines. The christening was in with the usual church service, and this made the whole thing a very long drawn out affair, of over 1.5hrs, probably closer to 2hrs. During one of her sermons the vicar mentioned how good it was to see so many young people there and that the church worried how few young people attended church services these days. In all honesty if this was typical of a church service these days, I'm not surprised !! For starters, it was way too long, the christening only accounted for approx 20 mins of the time we were there, there was nothing in the service that that any of the younger people there could relate to whatsoever, so very little chance of them wanting to go back again, and lastly there were only two hymn books between 10 of us, so even if we wanted to join in there was no chance !!! I have to say my grand daughter behaved beautifully, and had a good few of us in fits of giggles with the expressions on her face looking at the various comings and goings of the vicar, and the choir. After the service it was off to a nearby pub for the get together afterwards. As there was only one out of 10 of us that drinks, we didn't stay too long. Once back at my house it was decided to go off go carting, before everyone set off on their long journey home.

There's a local go carting track called Cartio Mon Karting, so we all headed off there. My daughter and I had seen this place from the A55 many many times, but this was our first visit. I have to say I was extremely impressed, all the staff there were very friendly, helpful and all aspects of safety on the track were covered very well. I can also highly recommend the cafe on site. It was very very clean, had large windows to watch the go carting through and the drinks and food were very good !!! It was all reasonably priced too. Some of the people with us were regulars to larger go carting tracks down in the Midlands and said that this track compared very favourably to those down there.

My youngest daughter who lives at home with me, is very interested in tattooing as a few of you will know from reading my blog. Four weeks ago she was lucky enough to be given 4 weeks work experience at Redskins Tattoo shop in Bangor. After her initial misgivings about her ability to actually cope with this, she really enjoyed her time there, and was extremely sad to leave last Tuesday. The tattooists and the owner of the shop were also very sad to see her go too, but couldn't afford to take her on, so they are looking into to seeing if there is any chance of them getting funding to keep her there for a longer period of time. I'll be keeping my fingers and toes crossed for this to happen, as I've watched my daughter bloom, and grow this last 4 weeks, and have never seen her so happy and content for a long long time.

The last thing to report was my birthday last Thurs, I had a fantastic day and was thoroughly spoilt by the amazing presents I got, thank you everyone for making it such a special day :o)

This first photo says it all, the look on my daughters face when she caught a fish was a cracker lol.



My lovely little grand daughter Kacey, wearing the christening dress that was her moms before her.



The gang ready to hit the track go karting.

First of a set of oil paintings for myself

I finished doing this first oil painting for myself a good few days ago, but it's been really difficult to get a decent photo of it.This is because the painting has got a sheen to it, caused by me mixing a drying oil to the paints, so it doesn't take days and days to dry. The photo at the end is about the best of 20 odd photo's I've taken lol. I've already finished the 2nd painting all bar the edges of the canvas, so I'll take one of that as soon as I've done that bit. I've also made a start on a 3rd painting now. If I've got enough canvases I'm hoping to do a set of 5, all with a similar theme to them.

The sunset seascape however is causing me loads of problems. I just can't seem to get the effect of " moody clouds " that the guy wants. I've tried about 5 times now and not been happy with any of the end results. The one good thing about oils is that you can go over and over it, with layers of paint lol.

The weather has been so nice again here the last few days, so I've been able to spend a bit of time sat in the garden reading. The other day my son and daughter decided to go fishing. The first thing on the agenda was to dig for some bait, that alone was quite a challenge as they had to navigate sinking sand that had a layer of very smelly mud under it lol. I had quite a laugh watching my usually very agile kids slipping and sliding all over the place. My daughters trainer got left behind at one point when she took a step forward. By the time they'd managed to get some lug worms, the tide had gone so far out I knew there wasn't going to be much chance of catching any fish. My daughters rod was a bamboo cane from the garden, with a bit of fishing line sellotaped on the end lol, my son had the more usual type of rod. But much to my daughters delight she caught 3 crabs and my son caught nothing !!

Sea fishing and more sunshine

Well here on Anglesey we've been enjoying the longest spell of sunny weather that I can remember. In the last couple of months (maybe longer) we've only had one proper rainy day and a couple of cloudy days. My daughter and I love the sunny weather, so we've been making the most of it.

My friend Steve came and took me sea fishing for a couple of days, I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed fishing. We went to a popular place to fish, Holyhead Breakwater and over the two days we caught 11 dog fish. The fact that Steve's got a camper van added to the fun, you just can't beat a bacon butty and a cuppa while you're fishing lol. He wanted to take me to RAF Valley to watch the sunset, but as the tide was a high high tide, the sea started coming in a bit too quick for our liking, so we abandoned that idea before we got cut off lol.

I've also been spending most early mornings and nights working on my latest mosaic panel. Yesterday morning I put the last piece of glass on it ...whooooo. This only left the grouting to be done. Grouting is very time consuming, putting it on isn't quite so bad, but cleaning it off again is a nightmare as it's not a nice smooth surface like when you do tiles in bathroom. It's a mass of 100's of slightly uneven pieces which are a nightmare, as I have to clean off pretty much every one individually. But eventually by midnight last night I'd done the first rough clean off. Shortly, once I've posted this and wrote an email I'll do a 2nd clean clean on it, this involves polishing the tiles of the residue of grout dust and checking to make sure I've got it all off. Quite often this involves having to scrape off grout that I've missed, which I'm not looking forward to as my hands are already really painful from last nights grouting. Then once that's done it'll be a couple of coats of varnish as this panel is going to live outside my front door, so needs protecting from the elements.

Here's some photo's of my fishing trip, and my new grand daughters first smile captured on a photo awwww, she's so cute.

Best made plans and all that !!

We were due a visit from friend Coral, her mate Steve, and her son Deckie on Saturday due to arrive in two vans. Everything started well and I was due to go sea fishing with them on Saturday night.... that was about the last thing that went to plan !! After meeting Steve for the first time, we got on really well especially after I realised very quickly Steve was a cheeky scouser, with a sense of humour that matched mine perefectly and there was loads of banter flying back and forth lol. As Steve was a dab hand at DIY, I thought I might as well ask his advice about my bed !! When we first moved here I bought a lovely mexican pine bed, very comfortable ...however because I'm so tall I can't stretch out in it properly, because it had a foot board at the end. This has been a real bug bear for me and try as we might, every idea me and my daughter came up with seemed very complicated so we never got round to doing it. Within minutes Steve came up with an excellent idea, went to his van and got his power tools and within half an hour had it all sorted out !!!

PLAN A ...... was for us to take both vans and go up to the other end of the island, to fish off a popular fishing spot called the Breakwater. Steve and Deckie shot off first with me and Coral bringing up the rear more slowly in her camper van which she also happens to live in. We hadn't even got out of our village before I realised that Corals van wasn't very well at all !! But Coral being Coral decided to plod on anyways. We got about 1/3 rd of the way up the island going up a hill when the cab of the van started filling up with smoke and we were losing power fast. Now I'm a pretty unflappable, laid back type of person usually, but even I started to get more than a bit alarmed at this point. I suggested to Coral that smoke might mean fire, and that maybe it might be a good idea to stop straight away !! It was then that Coral told me her handbrake wasn't any good ...so stopping on hill might not be a very good idea, plus she had no hazard lights, so maybe it wasn't such a good idea. With my heart in my mouth, clutching my bag and a camera ready to make a quick exit incase any flames followed the smoke we struggled up the hill. Once at the top, in the distance we could see a lay by, Coral was convinced we could make there by coasting down the road ..... we DID much to my surprise. With much relief we pulled into the lay by and Coral turned off the engine ( oh yes ..I forgot to mention her alternator was also bust so once the engine was off there was no chance of turning it on again without a jump start lol.

PLAN B ..... ring Steve and get him to come back and help. The only flaw in this plan was that Coral had left her mobile at my house, and even though I had my phone I didn't have Steve's number seeing as I'd only just met him lol. A quick text to my daughter who was at home, asking her to use Corals phone to ring Steve and tell him what had happened and where we were, seemed like a logical idea, but Steve's phone went on to answer phone. So we were sent Steve's number to carry on trying to get hold of him. It was only much later that Steve told me he always kept his phone off, as he was having some hassles off an ex girlfriend lol. We sent a text hoping against hope that he might turn his phone on and get our SOS message. By pure good luck he turned it on and came to hopefully rescue us. Once our knights in a shining van arrived, it became a bit obvious that Corals van wasn't going to go anywhere quickly as the clutch had gone !!

It was decided that it might be good idea for my daughter Jenny to come and pick me up and take me home again, as there was no point in all 4 of us spending the nite in lay by. Oh did I mention that Corals side door on the van doesn't lock, so it couldn't be secured ?? By the time my daughter arrived, the kettle had been put on and we were having tea and cake with music blasting. As we were having such a laugh, it was decided that maybe we should leave my daughters car behind, all pile into Steve's van and go off to a beach at the top of the island and for some fire spinning to go on. Once we got there, Steve decided he might as well do some beach casting, while the others did their thing. After a few hours, with more tea, biscuits and crackers with cheese, it was time to go back to the lay by and for me and my daughter to come back home.

PLAN C Sunday arrived and it was decided that the best plan of action was for Coral to join the AA, and then on Monday we would see how much our regular mechanic would charge and also Corals mechanic who specialised in working on Renault Master vans, who was back in Oswestry.

No doubt there will more to follow in this little saga ...I shall update you as it carries lol. But for now, here's some photo's of the fire poi and fire staff antics, and a picture of Steve after one of my Sunday dinners...I shall take great pleasure in embarrassing him on Facebook with this photo lol.

A staff burn out, for those not familiar with fire spinning. A staff is a long metal bar with wicks soaked in paraffin on each end, and a burn out is when someone gets rid of the surplus paraffin.



A cage of fire



Close up of one end of the fire staff



Coral doing fire poi.



Steve after devouring one of my Sunday dinners lol.