Category: Elliott

What a difference 2 years makes

In the last two years I have addressed what I thought was an issue for me (your experience and feelings will likely vary) and that was my weight. I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t healthy (or I didn’t feel healthy) and I wasn’t fit, in fact exercise was tiresome and often painful.

So I went to the gym, and I started to run, and I learned to love it. The following pictures are 2 years apart. The first two from the Tree Top Nets in Cumbria on the 22nd October 2016 and the next two from this morning in a hotel room near to the Theme parks and the M4/M25. I am with my two oldest boys, and I feel better about how I look, how I feel and how much exercise I get with my boys.

Another Kindness of Strangers

18 May 2013
On a train from Paris to Marne le Vallee

I am sat here wondering how, aside from using it in the title of this piece, I can work in the line from the Tenesse Williams play:

“I have always relied on the kindness of strangers.”

I guess I just did.

I am in Paris, home to the maligned Parisians, who some would have you believe are the most arrogant citizens in Europe. Some of those who hold that belief are British so the hypocrisy is thoroughly on display as I think we English hold records in the stuff.

I don’t hold that belief about Parisians or the French in general. Aside from knowing many nice French people I have also stayed in Paris more than once and find them easily as polite, if not more so, than Londoners.

So I guess I shouldn’t visit London for a while.

Today was a typical example. We have two small children and are hopping buses in Paris. We have had people help us onto the buses with the pram. Hold open doors. And the one moment than strikes the best, sat waiting at a bus stop and a gentleman gave Ben and Elliott a banana to share.

I don’t rely on the kindness of strangers. I usually plan ahead. But I do so like it when I experience it.

This specific post was created using WordPress for Android on a mobile phone. This explains but not excuses any incorrect or unusual typography, brevity or formatting.

Imprint

This unusual image is the coliuration and imprint on my arm caused by my youngest son sleeping on it in the same position for two hours.

image

This specific post was created using WordPress for Android on a mobile phone. This explains but not excuses any incorrect or unusual typography, brevity or formatting.

The February Challenge

I am continuing to do the challenge set by the excellent Castaway on her blog for February, and as part of that participated in today’s challenge to photograph a child.

Luckily for me I caught a break today with Elliott being held by his mummy in the rain and finding it hilarious that we were getting wet and i was holding a camera. So I managed to snap a few good images of him.

It’s especially gratifying as yesterday he was one year old, and was filled with quite a bad cold so pretty miserable from feeling ill, so seeing him closer towards his usual chipper self is really great.

Onto the images:

IMG_5149 IMG_5151 IMG_5152 IMG_5153 IMG_5154 IMG_5156

 

Mark Keating
The Quick View Mark Keating is an odd male with roughly five decades of chronological competence in his girth. He is married to Leigh a girl of great patience and unsurpassed kawaii-ness. They both live in Lancaster, UK, conveniently since they are wed, with their sons, Benjamin, Elliott and Asher. They are terrorised by a cat called Darwin and various tropical fresh-water fish.