To anyone reading this. (Snovum Goddum)
We’re at the in-laws, and we’ve eaten too much, drunk a fair amount, and made some snow angels.
Pictures to follow hopefully….

As you may have noticed, I’ve not yet posted anything about our trip to the UK, and now we’re already back in Astana. Hope to post more details over next week or so. Summary of our return journey is that Nick, Dad & I went via Istanbul, Almaty, Astana, and Ira went Moscow, Astana.
In case I miss posting tomorrow, Happy New Year to everyone.

We’ve been getting ready for our return to the UK, and we’re pretty much done now…

A huge thank you to our family and friends in Britain, who have kept me sane whilst I’m out here, and also to the family and new friends we have made out here in Kazakhstan.

We took Karra (our kitten) over to the in-laws, so she can stay with her mum and sister while we are away. Karra behaved a lot better in her carry bag this time, with only a few mystified miaows in the taxi
In 30 hours time Ira and I should have arrived in Cheltenham, where I’m staying with Dad & Nick for the first week, and then onto Swansea (well Clydach to be precise) on the Saturday/Sunday (23rd/24th December) with Nick & Ira to see Mum.

Really looking forward to catching up with family and friends; most of our evenings are planned out already in Cheltenham, so hoping we can just kick back and relax during our time in Clydach.

Irina has been allowed some unpaid leave from work, but only received the permission quite recently, by which time, the flights I’m booked on were full, so she is returning to Kz one day earlier, and going via Moscow, whereas I’ll be dropping into Istanbul on the way there and back.

By the time New Year hits us, Nick, Dad, me & Irina should all be in Astana and I’m hoping they’ll enjoy seeing Astana (it will be Nick’s first winter over here, and Dad’s first time ever.)

And I’ve been very bad at posting recently. Apologies to anyone still reading this
Irina has just returned from Moscow, Karra is fine and still biting us randomly.
Mum had her birthday on the 5th, but her presents and card didn’t arrive until yesterday, and one still hasn’t made it
I hope to see Tom and Walton before I leave for my Christmas break, and Tom#2 (’pilot Tom’) has been in contact to confirm he is fine, but wasn’t able to meet up with us recently due to his work commitments.
It is quite late now, so heading to bed.
Oh and Dad & Nick have received their visas, so it looks like everything is good to go for their visit over here for New Year
Hope all who read this do so in good health…

I woke up this morning, looked out the window, and it was snowing
There were a few flakes a couple of weeks ago, but this was proper fluffy snow.
Dad is off to Paris this weekend with Jan, and hopes to be buying a house in Evesham soon.
Mum and John have hopefully sold the house in St Thomas, and are settling in nicely at Clydach. In case you missed the posts on it, and ignore the links in the sidebar on the right, you can visit John’s site here. Please be aware some of his images are not for minors.
Really looking forward to visiting family and friends this Christmas in the UK, and to Nick (my brother) and Dad coming back with us to celebrate New Year here in Astana.
If you don’t get this post’s title, I’m guessing you’ve never heard a town crier…

Apologies. I’ve been a little distracted re-building a PC for a friend. I had everything just right, all working, and secure (he had stability & security issues that couldn’t be sorted out without a re-install of XP). The final update was to bring the BIOS up to date - it had had a few revisions in 14 months. Unfortunately, for the first time ever, I appear to have killed the BIOS whilst flashing it. The board is supposed to have a 2nd BIOS that gets used if the first is fried, but it hasn’t come into play, no amount of keypresses or floppy disks with binary images & flashing programs have helped. As I did the damage, I’m using up the last of my birthday money to replace the motherboard. Except, of course, that particular model isn’t stocked any more, so I’m trying to find a suitable upgrade for him.
On a more positive note, my brother and dad are hopefully coming over to visit us, around New Year time, and Losha, may be coming with us to the UK for Xmas