Weekend

Some of the win from the weekend...

• We all went to a car boot sale at the donkey sanctuary, so saw the donkeys and bought some tat. We also bought a big bag of plums which got made into some very tasty jam.
• Would you believe that we had our first barbecue of the year? Well, we've been to a couple but hadn't had one in our own garden. This particular one featured our new speciality: barbecued flatbreads. We'll be doing them again.
• Another gallon of turbo cider is on its way. This time I have added a cup of tea to see how that affects things.
• Finally got around to watching In Bruges and laughed pretty much the whole way through. Great stuff. This was on <3's recommendation, and a good one. One of these days I'll persuade her to watch Fight Club.

Two Weeks

So we had two whole weeks off work thanks to a combination of public holidays, Xmas closures and a little use of annual leave.

The plan was to fly to Ireland on the Monday before Xmas to stay with the in-laws for a week, having spent the previous couple of Xmases at home. Unfortunately, the Youngling contracted chickenpox with the impeccable timing required to prevent the trip. (It could have been worse: if she'd developed the spots while we were over there, we may not have been able to travel home!) So, a hasty bit of replanning was required.

Meanwhile, our car's recent reliability issues finally got to the point where we couldn't trust it to get us to work, let alone to an airport on time. Getting it fixed, we figured, would pretty much be throwing good money after bad, so we went looking for a replacement in a hurry. Luckily someone at work was selling something suitable at a suitable price, so we managed to get ourselves sorted there. And we have since managed to pass the old car on to someone else who doesn't mind doing some work on it.

Xmas day worked out pretty well for an improvised one: we ate duck and had to bribe the Youngling with chocolate to get her to open her presents. Actually, by the end of the holiday, with several bouts of presents (including a birthday), she was getting a bit too good at opening packages.

On Boxing Day, thanks to a bit of hasty rebooking a few days earlier, we flew out to Ireland to have a shortened visit which was still good. The big discovery here was how much simpler and mellower it is to travel through Knock airport instead of our previous main choice of Dublin. I mean, we get off the plane, walk through the nearest door, wave passports at an immigration guy and, just past him our bags were turning up on a carousel. How cool is that?

New year's eve involved a trip to stay with I&E in South Wales, as per last year. Another great, mellow party with some good friends. We seem to developing new traditions, like substituting the theme from The Archers for the more usual Auld Langsyne at midnight.

Then after a couple of nights back at home, we were off to Wales again, this time to Pembrokeshire for another banquet, this time to celebrate a birthday. And much fun, food, mead and ale was had by all.

So, it's a new year and I'm back at work again. So far, so good...

Unknown Beneficiaries

It turns out that HM Revenue and Customs have given our family's personal details to persons unknown by sending them, along with those of 7 million other families who claim child benefit, on disk, via a courier, who lost them. Nice. Chancellor Alistair Darling has apologised for the security lapse, but apparently there is little danger of identity theft. According to the BBC:

The records include parents' and children's names, addresses, dates of birth, child benefit and national insurance numbers and in some cases, bank or building society details.

That sounds like plenty of information for bad guys to be going on with.

There are, of course, calls for Darling to resign. While I love to see a good bit of bloodletting, I'm not sure that he needs to go in this case. The chairman of HMRC has already resigned over this and an investigation is underway. The Revenue had better get its arse in gear over data protection before this happens again.

Actually, when I first came across this story I thought it was just a follow-up to the story from a few weeks back where HMRC lost a load of personal data in transit and more details were now coming out. But no, this is a new and separate cock-up, albeit one of a very similar shape.