Ocean Park error of jugement

Two weeks no post - not great; apologies. In truth not a lot reportable or photographable happening. The exception to this is that Aiden has learned to ride a bike without trainer wheels. No photos of this though - me too busy playing the neurotic parent running alongside, to get it together. Learning to ride a bike, as you will know, is also about learning to fall off one. Aiden has not disappointed. At the tender age of four he has chalked up one Lexus SUV already - THANKFULLY it was completely unmarked in any way.

I've been preparing for an interview I have in Geneva on the 25th of August. I'll tell you more about it if I get it - hold thumbs though, I think it's worth having. Ange's folks are here to visit, which is great. Having people here closes the distance, and Aiden and Ev are having a ball. The pic on the right here features Ange's dad Ian and Ev. If you look closely you might be able to see that that Ev has recently landed on the side of his nose whilst running - across nice rough concrete of course. Now he is Ev "Scabnose" McG. I've also been able to watch a bit of the cricket, which has been a nice treat. Not sure that I think the English have been too sporting - I thought the whole issue with the site-screen was not quite cricket.

I go back to work next week, which will be interesting. I was supposed to work yesterday morning, but we had a typhoon near-miss and the city was closed. I saw the signal was up at 6.15am, and just rolled over and kept going. Great timing, and a pleasure because there was not much damage. Tracy and Simon's canoe and sailing dinghy broke free of their mooring, and went walkabout in the storm. We had to go looking for them, thought it was worthwhile because the worst of the wind had been onshore. We eventually found both, one just in the bay and one around the corner towards DS beach. Very wierd really, because you're looking for something on the rocks at water level, and they had both been carried way way up by the storm surge. It was almost as if they were behind and above where we were looking. Both are miraculously in one piece.

The boys had a bit of cabin-fever by today, and Aiden asked to go to Ocean Park, a theme park on the coast near Aberdeen harbour. In a blistering error of judgement I agreed to this, not very smart. Chinese schools here and on the mainland are on holiday. It was like going to a huge scrum. The water-rides that Aiden specifically wanted to go on were closed for maintenance too - adding insult to injury. In the end we collectively got to ride on the cable-car, and Aiden had a b-grade (in my experience) ride on a very mini abyss thing called the Frogger - pictured above. I think I have more empathy with the feelings of the two guys on either side of him; that was about it. The views were fabulous, but even the cable-way was conjested - as illustrated on the right. Rush hour recreating. Better analysis next time I promise you. The Olympics begin tomorrow - not sure if that is a big thing there, but it's huge here, given where it is. I have a ticket to go to a horse cross-country event on Monday morning - but it's not really the men's 100m, is it now? And, I have to work...