Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

It was an obvious scam.  An email thanking me for participating in a survey, and rewarding me with a $250 Amazon gift card.  But I was home alone so rather than just delete it, I did some Google research and peculiarly it seemed that this might, just might be genuine. The email was genuine.  The person existed on LinkedIn and indeed at the magazine she claimed to work for.  So I took it, expecting really just to get a pile of viruses on my laptop.  No, there were none, and I had indeed won $250 dollars.  That's the most I've ever won in my entire life.  I'm pretty pleased, of course.  But then there is the small print...the gift token was issued in the States and can only be redeemed in the US store.  It cannot be transferred to amazon.co.uk Now I could get all angsty about this...after all shipping costs would take up a big, big chunk of it if I bought anything real, but these days my entertainment is mostly downloaded...so that's going to be a pretty big library of MP3s isn't it?  Any other suggestions for my treasure trove, let me know.

Land of the giants

Is this the 21st century version of a family portrait?

Yes these are 9" statues of us on the mantle piece...I included a £1 coin so you can get the idea.  Some people find them a bit freaky, others think they're wonderful...we think they're great.  They were created for us using the latest 3D printing technology.

If you want to spin them around, you can look at the makers website links here, here, here and here

When I organised it, I kept it a secret, so that when we arrived, no one but me know what was going to happen...not surprisingly, no one had the faintest idea.  I simply asked that we each took along something that represented an important aspect of our lives.  The Boy took his skis, The Cat too the complete works of Shakespeare, The Cat's Mother is holding a sculpture of a hare, and I had my camera.

Pants on fire

So, here's a video.  It's Kitzbuehel on New Year's Day at about 6.30 in the evening.  Thousands (about 12,000 they told us) gathered to watch the flaming torch descent of the mountain.  The Boy was carrying one of the torches...it was a quite remarkable sight and was followed by the most spectacular firework show we have ever seen.

The highlight of the descent is when a select few instructors throw their torches aside, hurtle down the last few hundred metres as fast as they can and jump through a wall of flames.  The Boy was one of these.  Don't ask me which one....he was wearing a blue jacket  I think it was the experience of a lifetime for him...and indeed for his Dad



This was his burnt jacket and glove afterwards

And this was father and son celebrating together

And then him with The Cat and The Muffins