cornwall

Tomorrow we, that's my mum, dad and I are heading down to Cornwall. We are going to stay near Mazarion. I am looking forward to a break from London and work. I'll post more soon from Cornwall. I am in Doncaster tonight before we go to Cornwall. Donny seems the same as ever sunny and strangely grim. The local TV is depressing, every other advert on itv is about a Christmas themed out of town shopping outlet.

Royal Parks Half Marathon

This weekend Jason and I supported a friend, Michi who was running a half marathon in Hyde Park raising money for Epilepsy Action It was a beautiful weekend full of hazy autumn sunshine which Jase's picture below captures wonderfully. I had great fun supporting all the runners, I clapped for half an hour solid. One of my favourite runners was the badger pictured below.
As well as the race there were food stalls - some of which were giving away free food and drink! Unfortunately the hog roast stall pictured below was not providing free food and the queue was horrendously long.
After the race we all went to an Austrian restaurant to drink beer and eat sausage - Michi is Austrian and had sacrificed beer during his race training!

Cute white lions

I could have posted today about the "credit crunch" but I am totally fed up of hearing about financial woes. I could have posted about my dreadful week at work but that would just be depressing as would be blogging about Sarah Palin and the US election. (although I recommend checking out Brigitte Bardo's fantastic comments on Sarah Palin here.) So instead of depression and frustration click on this link and watch a really lovely video of rare white lion cubs. Brigitte would approve!

Birmingham

I went to Birmingham on Friday evening as I was speaking at the Deaf Parenting UK conference on Saturday morning. The conference its self was very interesting and definitely worthwhile me attending and speaking at. It did make me wonder if their are any organisations run by visually impaired people about being a parent but from doing a quick google search there don't seem to be any, other than RNIB general stuff and local authority sensory service teams. Yet there seem to be a number of similar issues experienced by deaf parents affecting visually impaired parents too. Issues like lack of accessible services and information and a fear of social services stepping in at any moment.

Birmingham its self was as friendly and welcoming as ever - apart from the taxi drivers who seemed to be very grumpy. Now, Spurs supporting north London cabbies have every right to be grumpy at the moment but everything seemed rosy in Brum apart from the taxi drivers so I am not sure what their problem was the credit crunch maybe? I was driven - by a morose cabbie past the Radisson tower in the photo above. The picture (grabbed off the internet not my handy work) must have been taken on Holloway Circus where the pagoda is situated. Anyway the tower looks pretty cool when you drive past it.