At the Discworld convention last August, YoungBloke attended a kids' fencing session.

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In April 2015 I bought myself an annual swim membership at the pool next door to work. I swam almost every work-day the following 12 months, so I renewed it in April. It's a routine now. I see the same people every week, we smile and exchange pleasantries as we pass in the pool, we chat in the showers (it's communal), but I wouldn't recognise most of them in street clothes!

As well as the recreational swimmers, there are the training teams, made up of school kids and uni students. Almost all the girls have nearly waist-length hair, which they wash every day, and all I can think is how they end up going to school with damp plaits. Occasionally we see the Para-GB swimmers training too, which is quite exciting. Prior to the Paralympics the whole team was in. I think there was an event in December because the main pool was out of action for a week for para-training.

Today was the first day back after the Christmas closure. It's very apparent that the students aren't back yet: there were five of us in the 25m laned pool, so we had a lane each. I did my 500m, 100m of which was front crawl, which is by far my weakest stroke, and 6 months ago I could hardly manage half a length.

The most noticeable thing today, other than the fact that the shower I reported as broken last month is still broken and its neighbour has decided to join it in solidarity, is that the changing room playlist has changed. You get used to the music after a while. In fact, you get to the stage where not only do you know what comes next, if you hear the song on the radio it's startling when the next tune is something completely different! Last autumn Coldplay's "Yellow" was on the playlist and you could tell the approximate age range of the morning swimmers by the fact that almost all of us sang along in our changing cubicles! Today I didn't recognise a single song, although I think one might be an Eliza Doolittle and one a Corinne Bailey Rae. This time next week I'll be singing along to one, at least.

D'you know, it's really tricky going out for a Chinese meal these days: there's soy sauce in almost everything and there's wheat in almost all soy sauce. However, Manchester is blessed with a very nice family-run restaurant with an extensive gluten-free menu and a clear understanding of cross-contamination. Add in the fab family (we see at least one of the sisters every time) and it's well worth a visit - so we go roughly every couple of months.

Having done some pre-holiday shopping after work we visited tonight. Despite the extensive choice, we went for the usual: salt and chilli wings, salt and chilli squid, and salt and chilli crab followed by lemon chicken, crispy beef, and sweet and sour battered king prawn, with boiled rice (oldbloke), egg fried rice (youngbloke) and Singapore vermicelli. We rolled out, along with enough leftovers to have lunch tomorrow. Huzzah!

Anyway, Sweet Mandarin, if you find yourself in Manchester.

Welcome to 2016. It's got off to a good start: YoungBloke stayed up through Hootenanny for the chimes, then went to bed while OldBloke and sat up to watch my old mate Andy play bass for Paul Weller. And Sir Tom Jones. I had a proper Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon moment when Andy admitted via FB that he also shook hands with Toby Jones, who's in The Detectorists with Mackenzie Crook, who was in The Pirates of the Caribbean with Johnny Depp...

I've also had the first "worth paying the licence fee" watching a superb episode of Sherlock.

This is what 49 looks like.
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I'm happy with that and I'm happy with life. Can't quite believe I've hit my 5th decade though!

After a fortnight of late nights and lie-ins, getting up at 6am was a bit of a shock. It's still dark when I leave the house and dark when I get home, but there are some lovely sunrises.
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Work was fairly busy. Three new starters, and an inbox of 155. It took me all morning but I hit inbox zero and actually dealt with most of the emails. About five seconds after I cleared everything, I had four more...

It's been a good fortnight and now school and work loom large. Having got a proper travel mug for Christmas, I've reset my alarm for 6am as I can take a mug of tea on the train rather than having to drink before I leave the house.

To mark the end, we went to see Big Hero 6, which we all enjoyed and would recommend. A tale of loss and redemption, family and friendship, nerds and belonging. And a huge Michelin-man robot who learns how to to do a fist bump.

As I suspected, the drop in temperature gave us a frost this morning and clear skies. Here's the view of the valley as you leave the village.
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Some babies are pukers. One of my mummy-friends had a puker. The paediatrician I used to babysit for had one baby you could hold upside down and shake, and two pukers...