James & Ben's Party

Cousin James has come to visit. That is the kids’ cousin, my nephew. And not really to visit us… but to pick up bags that he had to leave behind at the airport following his expedition to Everest earlier in the year - which he conquered. Not only conquered, but with his best friend Rob, becoming the youngest Britons to do so at the tender age of just 19. Reported here on the BBC website.

A dream from the age of 16, Rob & James prepared very well. This is as shot from Ama Dablam in Nepal on an earlier climb - just ten miles from Everest. At the bottom right of the picture you can see the camping ground. Yes that is a tent on a rock pinnacle. So big your feet stick over the edge apparantly.

I can see why James like to do this. Here is is nearing the summit of Ama Dablam with the valley stretching off into the distance.

Now we move on to the main event - James close to the very very top which is about the same size as a dining table… at the same height as planes fly… with thousands of feet to fall down any which way… seeing the curvature of the earth - with you feet on the ground… its utterly amazing.

James sat here on the left holding his school flag - Christ’s Hospital which undoubtedly gave him the confidence and where with all to do this.

Meanwhile back on planet earth with his flight into Delhi delayed by two hours, and baggage collected - finally with a little help from Virgin to find out where they had put them… I pick up James and whisk him off to school so he can talk about his adventure to Ben’s class - who are studying mountains!! What timing. Despite the overnight flight he gave a very good talk which had both the teachers and the children in awe…. quiet frankly me too. That was Friday.

Saturday is Ben’s belated party and James being the good cousin obviously helps out. After he has had a massage of course - standard Saturday morning fare - though the bedroom floor isn’t the most comfortable of places..

Barefoot football in garden is a good way to get going afterwards. The teams being Aaron and his friend Emanuel against Ben’s friends with James in goal - what could be fairer.

Aaron weaving and dodging…

On the attack - can I beat the Everest conquerer… errr yes - many times!!

Next its into the pool with Lucy keeping her usual watch full eye on things.

Ben and Shiv taking a quiet stroll. Whats this the pool - oh no.

A much better game is diving through the boat with a hole in it. I could swear its more fun now that its broken. A bit like the cardboard box syndrome.

Want to know what it feels like to hit solid water with your face. Not sure but it obvioulsy doesn’t hurt!!

Finally its dinner time, James, Aaron & Emanual having demolished their pizza.

Now if you were a Labrador at a party what would you do…. strange thing is Lucy has never been told waht to do she just does it!!

Ben and his buddies meanwhile munch away.

‘What do you mean you want to take my photo - leave me and my pizza to be!’

With less than 48 hours gone by, it’s time for James to leave. Only 19, with Everest under his belt and more adventures in the pipeline he is quite a role model for going out and achieving your dreams. Utterly Fantastic.

Had we known where the bags were at the airport and how easy it would have been to get them all this could have been avoided. Thank goodness it wasn’t.

For James next adventure - May next year, travelling from pole to pole 100% man powered… 180degrees.co.uk

The Elephant & The Boat

Here is Ben proudly showing off his first oil painting - lavishly framed which it richly deserves.

Its actually a colaboration that he started when we were at some friends celebrating the Holi festival earlier in the year. Holi is when you throw coloured paints over each other so we all ended up very much as a living canvas. Sorry no pictures from that day. Anyhow Ben started it with the elephant (central bottom) and made the biggest contribution. I must remember to get him to sign it soon.

Hung up in the hall it looks very good in deed.

Jessica following a more sculptural route shows off a Lego boat we all made whist basking in the pool.

When we eventually recieve our membership to the lego club then we’ll send the photo in and hopefully get the model published.

GMTV - Live at The Taj

For those who didn’t catch it live, here is a link to our starring performance on GMTV earlier in the year.

Live at the Taj

It’s quite a big-ish file (4MB or so) so may take a short time to download. It should launch windows media player.

Upgraded

The time has come and passed - yes I have upgraded the blog software - not that it wasn’t working fine before but this should make it better.

There was a small problem with the photos but that was solved very easily by asking the guy who designed the theme / look how to fix it. Amazing how he did it … just like that and its done. I just need to work out how to get the weather back again and its sorted.

Best news is that the photos will get a whopping bigger 30% bigger - all or free!

Perhaps a spell check wouldn’t go amiss either huh?

Jerusalem

After a long day in Cyrpus covereing HMS Bulwak, London calls and asks us to go to Israel. I have no desire to be anywhere close to where people are trying to kill each other so I am asked to stay in Jerusalem where it is much safer. Any trouble though and I will be on the way out. Alex and Neville are to head north to Haifa and the border with another cameraman. Its a tough decision but after talking to a my bosses and a few people I agree to go.

This was no easy feat. We took off from Cyprus at midnight that night and landed at Tel-Aviv a little later. Immigration staff are generally not known for their friendliness and I think Israeli’s take the biscuit for their surely outlook. The first thing you need to do is ask them not to stamp your passport. If they do this will make getting into any Muslim nation a complete nightmare - from Malaysia or Indonesia to Pakistan and Afghanistan - which obviously we need to do. Being a journalist doesn’t help either so we all got sidelined to a special area and told to wait.

One American had only been held waiting there for 8 hours. Fairly quickly after checking Alex and myself out we get our passports back and are able to proceed. I head out to get the lugage whilst Alex stays waiting for Neville who has been taken away to be interviewed.

To cut a long story short, Neville is refused entry as he is Indian and needed a visa beforehand, his passport is stamped with ‘Entry Denied’ and he is kept in isolation until his flight left at 7.00am in the morning, only returning his passport when he was safely on the plane. When making small talk he did get one back by saying… ‘Plenty of Israeli’s come to India and we are very friendly to them’.

After twelve hours of much needed sleep we meet up with Hedley, Alex’s temporary Cameraman, in Jerusalen who takes us up to the Mount of Olives. From here you can see the old city, with Mosques, Temples, Churches… the building that hosted the ‘Last Supper’, Jesus’s Burial ground, Solomons tombs… so much history - the most fought after square kilometer in the world.

You can just about see the city wall and the Al-Aqsa Mosque where Mohammed ascended from…

and also the Garden of Gethsemane where Judas betrayed Jesus…

I have always imagined that all these places where much further away from each other but everything is in about a square mile.

If I get a chance I plan to go to the old city to have a quick look around, and possibly the Dead Sea too.

Worth the Wait?

After a long and arduous journey we find ourselves in Cyprus - Limassol port - waiting for the HMS Gloucestor and York to bring evacuees from Lebanon. After a couple fo very long days and nights of lives and pakages in the blazing sun we finally get some back up from London.

Here are Glen an Derek, satellite engineers admiring the sunrise whislt we wait for HMS Bulwark to come in carrying 1300 passengers.

With the dish set up between two rusting hoppers on the dockside where hopefully it will stay cooler, we wait for the ship to arrive

HMS Bulwark slowly docks, she and her crew are actually supposed to be docking in Portsmouth after a 6 months at sea but has been diverted to help with the evacuation.

Alex has been on board overnight and I get on as soon as she docks to meet up with her and follow a couple of families. The place was packed with people everywhere having slept where they could including in the corridors.

With 1300 people to get through the system it took a while for everyone to get off - those with children first waiting in long queues, slowly making way down three or four decks before disembarking.

All of the crew worked very hard in making everyone comfortable bringing lots of tea, coffees around, playing with the kids, changing nappies. No one had a bad word to say - in fact only lots of praise for their tireless effort.

Once processed, everyone who was going back to the UK was bussed up to RAF Akrotiri where a hanger had been turned into a huge bunk. Again the servicemen and their wives couldn’t do enough to make everyone comfortable, giving toys to the kids and generally just chatting to people and making them feel better. The relief was obvious.

The govenment was critised for waiting or taking too long but compared to other countries who rushed in and left people on the dock side I honestly think that we did it the best and the forces were amazing.

Still Waiting But Safe

Family are well and I am in Cyprus at the moment with work trying to get at least 28 hours out of each day.

And this is as close as I will be going. When its all over hopefully I’ll be able to catch up with all the photos and posts from the last few months.