Pilot, a Scottish rock group, recorded ‘January’, and it reached No.1 somewhat ironically on Feb 1st 1975. Apparently the song was about a girl called January, but the first line of the lyric sums up my feeling about January. Or to be more precise, the Winter. Cold and wet. Roll on warmer days.

A quiet start to the week, Ellie at school, Tricia off to exercise doing bodypump and pilates classes. Tuesday I was in London for the day, attending a BP IT event. It was ok, made for a long day having caught the 6:20 from Aylesbury. Wednesday I was in the office in Sunbury, again an early start, I was up at 5:20, and at my desk for 7am. Meteings kept me at the office till 6pm… and I thought it may not be too bad getting home in the traffic. Wrong. Took me 3 hours. I was not a happy bunny.

On Thursday Big John arrived for the weekend. On Friday morning John and me headed for Bletchley Park, and had a day marvelling at the intellect of the codebreakers. We didn’t get to see all the site, so will have to go back at some point. In the evening it was the monthly curry night at Pete and Sara’s. Here we have John having a quick bit of shuteye after being at Bletchley Park… the ‘Bombe’ rebuild, and the Mansion house.

Saturday morning, Tricia went off to see Nikki play hockey. John and myself sat and watched the Ladies Australian open final on TV… An enthralling contest. Wozniacki outlasting Halep. Just. Then we went off to the National Museum of Computing. This is adjacent to the Bletchley Park site…  there were some interesting items from the codebreaker and WW2 era – an older chap gave us a half hour talk that was very informative, but for me the highlight was an old ICL 2966 machine they have, which was very similar to the ones I used to work on back in the day. Wow.

John returned home, and then in the evening we celebrated Burns night, with Pat and Clive, Peter and Jane, Elizabeth and Malcolm. A fun evening with plenty of laughs.

And also a late night. Ellie had been in Aylesbury with friends and rolled in around 2:30am, and of course whilst she tried to be quiet, she wasn’t. So it was an interrupted nights sleep, and so Sunday was a somewhat tired one. I watched Roger Federer win the Men’s final on Sunday morning. Ellie and me were at rehearsal in the afternoon. In the evening we all sat down and watched Call the Midwife. Then it was off to bed.