Two trips to Bitterne in two days. That's more like it! Both by bike, in stunning sunshine. Monday I made excellent time up the hill to get to the doctors for my annual blood letting, the thing about sitting in the doctors waiting room is that I feel like a fraud because I am not ill. Still, the NHS really is cradle to grave, and I have to give a phial of blood once a year until I die, which is checked by my consultant, although she may die first, so I am not sure what happens then.

Yesterday, it was a social trip to Bitterne metropolis, as Ang had offered to take me clothes shopping, as a birthday gift, so I jumped at the chance to do the charity shops. I found a lovely top in the local charity shop on Thornhill Park Road, and then found a over top made of wool in Barnados, so a new outfit for £5. Ang and I also had a very pleasant cup of tea in Greggs, although it needs refurbishing in there, but the place brings back happy memories of little girls in pushchairs and teetering on the the dogdgy loo when toilet training.

Today Fareham - that charity shop treasure trove - but sadly not for shopping, but for part 3 of 4 of my Magnificent Middle - not an abs exercise class, but the leadership development course I am doing at work. It was not as inspiring as the others in terms of content, but still great to be with other like minded people and inspirational head teacher leading it.

I have not told you about the Dinghy show, so I will. First. Do not ever go to Alexandra Palace. It is a stupid place to get to and takes hours and hours and hours. H, R and I went, A wisely decided to stay with the cousins and play. It was fairly interesting in a boaty kind of way, I entered a trillion competitions, some to win things I have never heard of, some to win boats and holidays, which I have heard of. The tickets were a win, so the only cost of the day was to our patience as we sat in traffic in north London. Bumped into a few people we know from the sailing world, Chay Blyth, Ben Ainslie, Ellen Macarthur - well, none of them actually, just a few guys who sail 15s and a dad from my class at school.

I have just read a great book about a new settlement in Oklahoma which did not have a rail road station, and so was starving to death, and about how the community was formed and who did what and the role of children in civilizing the adults. It is one of those books that makes you gasp with shock. Now I am back onto Lance Armstrong, book 2. He should have changed his name to Legstrong.

Amazing news, after months off running I have done a few jogs lately, and not too much trouble with my foot so far, so hopefully the inserts are doing the trick. I have done a lot of swimming, but a rather inaccurate clock that I used for timing ( no second hand) seemed to imply that my time has not improved very much over the last two years, despite all the training I have done. When I look at the times from my first tri, which I am repeating this year, I am hard pressed to see how I can shave any seconds off any sections of it. Surely two years worth of training can be worth something?

On Friday night, the girls were at granny's as they had an INSET that day, so R and I were alone and could have gone out but no, we opted to spend two hours doing our month end finances and budgets for this month. This is our fourth month sticking to our system of writing everything down on the kitchen wall. Will soon need a redecorating budget. It is going really well, and despite having to buy a washing machine, and having just come back from skiing, our monthly figures are standing up quite well. Let's hope the government don't cut our pay, it is frozen for two years, which is as good as cutting, but not as bad a situation as some are in. I am going on a march against the cuts, and have free transport on the NUT bus from Eastleigh. What a result! I love things for free. Sadly there are almost none of them, but lets hope I win the electric jam maker I have entered for from the WI.

Today I cycled down one of my favourite roads, favourite because of the comedy names the residents have chosen for their houses. One is called Gazebo. Another is called Random Oak. Love it! it sounds like the kind of name a rock star would give their child - Gazebo Random Oak. A friend of a friend of a friend has a baby called Matilda, going by the name of Tiddles. Tiddles Gazebo is a nice twist.

Apart from swimming, cycling and wearing my new trainers to walk around the house, I have been skiing! It uses the same leg muscles as cycling so it counts. I am sure you would be bored by the details of the scenery, perfect snow, sunny blue skies and happy children in ski school, so I won't bore you with them. Instead I will tell you about our progress. I am the lower attainer in our skiing family, using the whole piste ( they were lovely wide ones) to make my turns, I like to get my money's worth on the lift pass by covering every inch of snow with my agonised snow plough and attempts towards parallel turns. R, H and A are all above average achievers, we can all now do red runs, but I take twice as long as everyone else. A challenged me to a race, and she was out of the chair lift and down the hill before I had fumbled my sticks together and untangled my legs from the bar. R and I went to the top of the mountain on a grim snowy afternoon, and then on the next sunny day I went back all by myself! I love the views, and the solitude and quiet pistes, and I hate being on busy red pistes when everyone else swooshes down really fast and I am gently snow ploughing my way down. I did not overtake anyone all week. H injured her thumb and is in a plaster cast, with a date next week at the hospital. She missed 1.5 days, and luckily for us, Granny Mary was staying in the same village and was happy to do the childcare. that left r and I free to explore a different ski area, the unbelieveably good Tauplitz, with one of the best snow records in austria and a wealth of options for the blue / red skier. and the most amazing panorama of mountains covered in snow from the top of the lift. I got on well with the chair lifts, I was a bit worried about them as in Switzerland I found them a bit nerve wracking. As well as skiing we walked on a frozen lake, I struggled to have faith in the ice, although it is 25cm deep, it just felt all wrong. We ate out and I partook of a couple of apfel strudels, you really need to immerse yourself in the culture, I feel.

Bit late posting this, but this is one of the places we visited in Portugal last summer. I should consider working for the Portugal tourism office.

Last swimming lesson at the uni this afternoon, we worked really hard and I did some tumble turns! Was dead chuffed as my hope for these lessons was to achieve this aim. It is a lovely pool at the uni, and I am torn between it and the Quays as my new home. R is now a paid up member of the Southampton Tri club and it is my turn to try it out tomorrow.

I was supposed to be in Leicester today riding my bike, but got to Newbury last night ( interestingly, just a few hours after 2 horses had died there in freak circumstances) and realised I had forgotten my shoes. I turned for home and decided that a 4 hour drive and then a 5 hour bike ride were not what I needed this weekend, going for an early night and a 2 hour bike ride instead. It was chucking it down, and the route was quiet, hardly saw any other cars, let alone cyclists. I was pleased with how I kept my heart rate down and got up Beacon hill feeling quite comfortable, but I did struggle with the cold and being wet, my waterproof gloves are maybe oversold on the waterproof feature. Still, being out in the elements is always good for the soul, but ice and freezing winds are more my weather than rain and freezing winds. I can visualise myself doing the same routes in the summer with shorts and t shirt, of an evening - it feels good - and less washing afterwards.

Yesterday A did a diving taster session, and grinned for the half hour duration, so I have put both their names down to do the beginners lessons after half term. If you have ever wondered where everyone is at 8.30am on a Saturday, the answer is - at The Quays. The water is thick with young people diving and swimming, if anyone thinks that young people are not as fit as in the olden days, you need to go to the Quays to see how wrong you are. They can all dive and swim better than me. R was at the Quays, having run there, for his swim training session, whilst A and I set off at a trot to get H and also Kate, R's cousin who was staying for the weekend. We had booked to see 'animals united' at Vue cinema in Eastleigh. A sobering message film, A found it scary despite its U certificate and spent a lot of time on my lap. It is worth seeing, but don't watch it for the laughs. After a quick lunch it was on to Chandlers Ford for me, A and 3 of her friends, to a party at an indoor play centre. I left them there and went to Eastleigh for a shop, and actually bought myself some clothes. Shock. I also won £10 voucher for Vue cinema on a competition, so I will be going back to Eastleigh soon. I already have a £10 cinema voucher for the Point in Eastleigh, but their films are a little random this season.

As it is midpoint in the month, I am about to update our finances. on my own, as r is out at men's curry night. the last 3 months of tight financial planning and recording, we tend to do this review together, so here I go to have a go on my own. Without a calculator. Lets hope I only get things wrong by one order of magnitude, as in the other day when I calculated that we needed £15 000 a month to cover a set of expenses.

I have become a follower, of another blog, which is of one of my local councillors, Matt Stevens, who is very commited to Thornhill. I am thinking of becoming an MP as have realised my ambitions of becoming secretary of state for education depend on first getting into the lower chamber. Or I could become a peer straight from the shop floor and get in that way. I am going on a march, in March, in London, to protest about the cuts. Just in case you didn't know already, I DID NOT VOTE FOR THEM.

R had a meeting tonight at the Youth centre where he does his bike project to find that all the open access youth work on the east of the city is being scrapped. This means that effectively, unless people volunteer to open youth centres ( and it is not a job for inexperienced, well meaning volunteers on their own, but a very challenging and tricky role which you need professional training to do well) there is nothing for the most disenfranchised and vulnerable young people in the city to do. Shall we look forward to a rise in anti social beahviour, drug use, petty crime and teenage pregnanices? I wrote a letter to one of my councillors ( the young tory one) telling him what I thought, and not to reply with platitudes. He already tried to fob me off regarding the library, which is to be run by local people. Only Libby and I are local people who care about libraries, Libby is not running a campaign a la her Cobbett Road efforts yet, and Thornhill does not have the capacity of people who care about libraries and have the spare time and energy to volunteer in them. Grrr. Can you hear my blood boiling? There may well be other library lovers in Thornhill, I hope there are, but you can't expect people to run public services well.

Having left Esporta on my bat, with R reluctant to do so, we have been experimenting with public swimming pools. A baptism of grime after two years of comparative luxury, at a price. R has done two training sessions at the quays with soton tri club, and got on well. I did ok there apart from the smell of urine in the changing rooms, which I mentioned on a comments form and got a reply today. Last night I had to go to Eastleigh to go swimming, as Southampton pools shut at 9. Well, Fleming Park, I had not been since 1994 and I don't think they have cleaned it since then. I found it a bit too scary for me, as the deep end is really deep and sudden, a sort of cliff edge effect about 5 m in from the deep end edge. It is like a deep water vent in the Pacific ocean. I kept thinking of sharks and that if I drowned down there, the smiley but plump lifeguards probably did not have the skills to rescue me from certain death. And Fleming Park ( I don't like it to start with cos of the word phlegm in its title) is not where I plan to die. So after 32 lengths trying to shut my eyes over the precipice I gave up and came home, never to venture near the place again. I can't help thinking that R will be feeling a little smug over this episode, although he is much nicer than me and doesn't say ' I told you so' when I come home with veruccas all over my body.