Mar 22 2009

Driftwood, Seb And Anna

Category: Anna's Photos,Friends,PersonalChrisM @ 8:23 pm

The day (22nd March §) after Marilyn arrived, Seb came over to say hi to all of us, and so we decided to take a walk on the beach. As there are three main beaches within easy reach of Clydach, we had to decide where to take him. The Mumbles is possibly the most famous beach near us, but unless you time your visits with the tides correctly, there can be no sand left at all – just the wall and then the sea itself! This left us a choice between one of Swansea’s beaches and Port Talbot’s. Although Swansea itself is a little prettier and seen as more up market (relatively speaking) compared to Port Talbot, Irina and I had been down there quite a few times recently with Anna (and sometimes Gwen), so we hopped onto the motorway for a few junctions, and parked up along the sea front in Port Talbot.
As ever, hover your cursor over the image’s to see their title/description… You could do that, or I could just remember that I only need to leave the caption field blank on tweet posts that are displayed as asides. (Runs off to edit a few earlier posts)

§ – Why this constant fascination with the dates photos were taken? In case the EXIF data is some how not retained with these JPGs, I wanted to ensure that in years to come, I could easily tell when the pictures were actually taken, rather than when the posts containing them were published. You’ll just have to put up with it for now, sorry…

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Mar 04 2009

Swansea House For Rent

Category: PersonalChrisM @ 6:23 pm

Available Early May

Three bedrooms, large living room, GCH and a multi-level rear garden that backs onto a hillside.
Modern terraced house, quiet area with own car parking space. Close to the centre of Swansea, with easy access to the M4.

£465 per month, with one month’s rent & deposit required. Professional(s) preferred, no DSS.

Contact SwanseaHouseRent@gmail.com for any queries.

A satellite dish is currently pointed at the Hotbird satellites. Simply attach a receiver to view these channels – most languages covered.

A map of the local area…

View Larger Map

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Feb 27 2009

Anna Christina Merriman Photos – Last Batch For Today

Category: Anna's Photos,Personal,PicturesChrisM @ 4:38 pm

Today we went to Swansea’s County Hall/Civic Centre, to see the Registrar and officially registered the birth of Anna Christina Merriman. Her middle name is a suitable mixture of Christopher and Irina, which is close to what her patrynomic name would be in Russian. Hopefully the Kazakh red tape guardians will accept this as a suitable choice, and won’t complain.

These photos were all taken around the time Mum showed Ira and I the best approach to bathing little Anna, and we’ve since done this solo without any major mishaps. Irina was a little apprehensive about full on bathing (as opposed to topping and tailing) and safety, so I explained that if the bath shifts around, or looks likely to shoot off the surface its laid on, hold the baby, and forget about trying to stop the bath from falling – as long as Anna is safe and secure, no is going to give a damn about a little spilt water. A case of not throwing the baby out with the bath water 🙂

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Feb 15 2009

Swansea civic centre attempt k…

Category: TweetsChrisM @ 4:06 pm

Swansea civic centre attempt kidnap? No, the shutters are only down at the back…

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Oct 28 2008

Nick et al Off To Australia

Category: Personal,PicturesChrisM @ 2:43 am

This Wednesday my brother, Nick, is going to Australia with his girlfriend, Roz, and her mum, another Chris. They will be back by Christmas, but not before Irina and I return to Swansea this mid-November (more on that later).

As I was going through the almost year-old photos on my phone (I really need to sort and post them more often than that), I found this one of Nick and Roz, just after Christmas last year at Mum’s.

Nick And Roz - Xmas 2007

Nick And Roz At Xmas 2007

I hope their trip over goes smoothly, that they have a great time there, and will come back with lots of stories and photos to show us all 🙂

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Jul 02 2008

Good And Bad News For Wales

Category: In The MediaChrisM @ 4:19 am

I read a report that back over in Swansea, they recently held a film premiere for “The Edge Of Love”. The movie was partially funded by the Welsh Assembly (via their Wales Creative IP Fund), who invested £700,000 in the Dylan Thomas biographical film. You can find a video interview with two of the stars (Sienna Miller and Keira Knightley) here.
Sadly, Wales is also in the headlines for topping the list of underage drinkers in the Western world, at least according to the WHO. Check the BBC article here. The sample size was 250,000 (I’m assuming that is in total, not just in Wales) 11,12 and 15 year olds. 15 year old girls in Wales were the most likely to have experimented with weed. As long term readers will know, I have no issue with schmoking personally, but the fact that so many young girls have tried it is a little surprising.

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Apr 23 2008

Prince Philip Insults People

Category: In The MediaChrisM @ 3:13 am

Not the most shocking of post titles, I have to admit, but this occurred near where Mum lives (in fact right where they used to live), so it caught my attention.

King Of Insulters

The Queen and Prince Philip were attending Swansea’s leisure centre, to re-open it following extensive improvements, and dropped in on St Thomas’s Community Primary School to, well, probably just say “Hello, and what do you do?”. Anyway, Philip unwisely opened his mouth, and surprisingly enough, insulted a lot of women who live in the East, by proclaiming he thought “Eastern women just sit around smoking pipes and eating sweets all day”, when shown a display of some locals belly dancing.

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Apr 20 2008

Happy Birthday To Me

Category: Amsterdam,Friends,PersonalChrisM @ 7:00 am

If all has gone to plan, today Ira and I are in Amsterdam, celebrating my 29th birthday. Or should that be 30th – the day you turn 1 year old, is surely your second birthday, 365 days (or thereabouts) after the day you were born…
Anyway, despite the meandering style of this post, I’m not writing this live from our apartment in smokeland Amsterdam – I wrote most of the next two weeks worth of posts whilst still back in Kazakhstan. I wanted to keep my readers coming back for more (if you stop posting for more than a few days, you are guaranteed to lose return visitors), and as most of my friends are too lazy to guest-post. ChrisD would be a prime example – 18 months later and still no sign of his post on holidaying in Astana. So, I finally got around to clearing out all the collections of bookmarks I’d made on topics that I wanted to blog about ‘one day’.
Anyway, I hope all who read this do so in good health, to my friends in Britain, I hope to see you soon (we’ll be near Swansea 25th – 29th April (approx.) then some time in Cheltenham and Evesham, before heading back to Swansea once more, as my cousin is getting married. 4th May we head back to Astana, so if I haven’t seen you by then, you’ll have to survive until Xmas again.) To friends elsewhere, I hope things are going well, and that our paths cross again sooner rather than later…

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Mar 11 2008

Family All OK

Category: Personal,WeatherChrisM @ 2:29 am

Realising that the likelihood of anyone commenting on the post re. Britain’s weather any time soon was slim, I decided to check in with Mum & John, Dad and Nick. All were OK, though John did get a bit blown around by the wind. Probably because he went down with another photographer friend to the Swansea coast to see what pictures jumped out at them.

Trearddur Bay Storms Wind Rain Crushed Car Tree North Wales Britain March 2008

OK, so that isn’t actually Swansea, its in North Wales, but I couldn’t find any decent shots right now; John’s will probably be published on his blog sometime soon. Anyway, really glad our family seem fine, hopefully friends are OK as well.

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