About Stuff

I don’t do New Year resolutions, but these are my goals, aims and targets for the coming year. In no particular order:

• Run 700Km, by no means a given. Running 500K is a minimum target, 800K – 500 miles – would be excellent but I don’t think I will have the time to complete this challenge, but 700K will be an achievement if I can do it.
• Swim the channel. OK – so not all in one go, or in the freezing sea, but in the calm warmth of Strode swimming pool. The Channel Swimming Association gives the distance as 32 Km which, by my calculations, is 960 lengths. France, here we come!
• For the past couple of years I have been in a football predictor league. This year, I find myself top of the table as the new year dawns. I would dearly love to win the league this year. Failing that, I would be content with a top four finish. Oh, and this year, I so want to beat my good pal Marc Radford – aka Menaggio Myla – but he has an uncanny knack of coming from behind to pip me at the post. (I’m Senor Cuerpo Guisante (use Google Translate) sitting pretty at the top of the table in the pic above)
• It was 1996 that I first qualified as a football referee, so long ago that my level of qualification no longer exists. This year, I have three goals, in ascending order: re-qualify & re-register as a official FA referee; referee a non-school game; get paid to referee a game.
• Weight – I’m a stone and half down on my long term weight of last year.  I’m claiming a weight of 13 st 7 for the start of 2016. Two goals: 1) establish 13 st 6 as my new long term weight or 2) (better) get to sub 13 stone.
• Write at least twice a month in my maths blog – A Maths Teacher Writes.  I feel I’ve begun to neglect it a little of late and I need to rectify that.

Well that little lot should keep me busy for the next twelve months – come December I’ll do a review of how I did.

Happy New Year!

2015 – a fairly momentous year:

We moved house:

… and then proceeded to knock part of it down …

… but we’re now “in the dry” for Christmas …

… and we should have our brand new kitchen and loft space bedroom all finished by the end of February (when I then start landscaping the outside.)

Becky & I both caught the running bug …

In our nearly twenty years of marriage I would never have thought I would have been discussing personal bests and split times with my beloved!

I’m now running regularly, averaging about 5 mins per K as I run my favourite 6 or 7Km run.

The end result is that I have shed a few pounds …

… I’m claiming a loss of one and a half stone over the year …

… but that was nothing on Becky, who (quite rightly) gained celebrity status following her epic weight loss.

It was the year that Sam shed his snaggle tooth status as his corrective work was finished and his brace removed to reveal his smile …

… Sophie turned 16 (frightening that I am old enough to have a 16 year old daughter!) …

… and Sam finally – and emphatically – overtook his mum in the height stakes.

We had a great family holiday in Ibiza …

and Becky & I went to see Take That (good) and Scouting for Girls (blummin’ brilliant) …

2015 – A Great Year, but I reckon 2016 will be even better!

Cheers!