This afternoon we went to see my mother in Richmond. The boys did 45 minutes of sledging at a place called Westfields at the western end of Richmond naturally! There was a bit less snow in Richmond and the cloud cover was much higher but looking very mellow and wintry. Fiona and I had a walk around Round Howe and we saw some deer footprints. The snow was a lot deeper on the opposite side of the valley from where the boys were sledging because it gets no sun at all. It is amazing how out of the way it feels even though it is only about a kilometre from the road. We saw a lot of fresh molehills the moles seem to get very active when the weather gets really cold. That's one I don't think I will look up! When we got back to the lads they were all excited and glowy which was really nice. Mum was well but her foot was still quite swollen from the operation she had a few days ago to straighten her toes out. Thinking I was helping her because she mentioned about toilet rolls a few days back I took a huge pack of 24 but it turned out she didn't need toilet rolls. Oh well, what are sons for but for forgiving! A nice day.

In all the snow me and the lads had a nice afternoon out in Durham. They sledged and I had a beautiful walk around the town . The lovely Fo was still not well so she stayed near home and had couple of miles walk around the local park just to get better quicker. The snow was quite deep in Durham and coming in on the Shincliffe road it was a bit hairy but passable. There were a lot of students and kids sledging and it was great to see my lads dashing up the slope to get going . I was stood next to a tree the branches bending with the snow and I thought it had started snowing again but it was just blowing off the tree. After watching the lads for 5 minutes I headed off into town over Prebends Bridge keeping an eye out for the Goosanders on the river but they were nowhere to be seen. The clouds were low giving a cosy feeling which could also be due to fact that I had wrapped up well warm. Soon regretted this because 10 minutes later I was very sweaty. At what age do you slow down? Eventually I went into Durham Cathedral because I just love cathedrals and churches in the low winter afternoon light. I have had many a spiritual moment? in these places and oftentimes I say a prayer in them or even sing one . Couldn't find the prayer chapel today so the secular feelings option of coffee , sausage roll and a custard tart made up for it in the cathedral cafe which was half empty and very relaxed. Missed my deadline to get back to the boys so they could have there biscuit break so I just sauntered along the river enjoying a fine English winter soaking in those Medieval vibes and getting that great sense of history and nature which I often feel when going around Durham. I'm falling in love with the place!

When I got back to the lads they were wet , muddy and Clifford was pretty cold because he only had thin socks on . Bad dog. I didn't do my standard gear check before we went out . Bad Dad Doggy. They were still going strong up those slopes and it is about 50 meters in vertical height so they did at least 20 runs so that makes roughly a kilometre of climbing or 3000 feet in old money. Sledging is great exercise no doubt about it . Of course Miles wasn't cold at all and was raring to go for some more but Clifford had had enough so home it was and as a lot of snow had started I'm glad we got going when we did because it was really sticking on the A1 but because we are used to going up to Upper Teesdale in the same weather it was no problem : "Don't touch the brake "! Someone did earlier on and the car was being cabled up a bank it had slid down by a tow truck. It's not just Miles who needs to learn to drive! No one was hurt. Back at home Fo was all cuddled in up bed with her DS trying to destroy a monster when we got back and had the lads in there to help her out . After shooing them out we listened to a Radio 3 concert of Cuban and Mali muscians which was brill. A nice , mellow, but with the snow, exciting afertnoon. I love my family .

This morning I took Miles driving again and he is really getting it. This is a big load of my mind as well as his! This afternoon because the lads felt unwell Fiona and I went out on our own for a walk around Durham. The weather was very cloudy very low cloud in fact but when walking with my lovely wife it feels like the sun is always shining. As soon as we started walking into the centre we had the surprise of our life when we saw three Goosanders cruising around the River and one of them hunting for fish. It has been nearly a year since we last saw them on the River Wear and they are a welcome addition to the diversity and interest of the area. They are a joy to see not least because there are only 2600 breeding pairs in the UK and around the 16,000 pairs overwintering. A rare treat. It is interesting that we mostly see them over the winter period. I have also seen them last year right in the centre of Leeds which was totally amazing. These birds are pretty wild and that was the case today because when we first saw them going into the city centre and they were on the opposite side of the river they had no problem with our presence but when we saw them roughly in the same spot going back to the car we were on the same side of the river as them and they saw us and flew off. They certainly like to keep their distance. They are also known as saw bills because of the serrated nature of their beak which enables them to keep the fish firmly gripped before swallowing. Today we also saw a couple of herons and it is quite startling how well camouflaged a heron is against water. One of them was right beneath the weir and was quite hard to spot so much so that Fiona couldn't see it for a few minutes. It made me think in a speculative way that about the only predator of a heron is a fox and it can only approach a heron from land but when the bird is in the river I do wonder if it is quite hard to see with its grey and off white feathers. Who knows but I will look this up. We had a great cup of coffee at Starbucks and that old romantic feeling kicks in. Of course it does not last long because we are joking too much to get really heavy man. When we got back home we came in all giggly and considering the boys were very subdued with whatever bug they have got we both just pointed out that the show goes on. A nice afternoon. Oh, I also met a good old friend of mine Alan Riley who I have not seen for a few years and he is a drummer who plays with various bands in the Dales and tomorrow there is a blues jam night at the Town Hall pub in Richmond and I am going to play their with my harmonica. It will be a bit of a blast from the past because I used to play in a band with him when I was 16 right through to when I was 18. I reckon I'll see quite a few old faces from my past as well and that will be nice because some of them I will not have seen since the 70s. Something to look forward to!

Yesterday was a good day. In the morning I did a lot of countertenor singing practice and my voice is finally getting stronger particularly in the lower notes. It is nearly fit for public consumption. I am sounding like a rougher version of Jimmy Somerville of the Communards. I cannot sing as straight as he does because I am primarily a jazz player but that's good as it is nice to develop originality. Because over the next month I will be going out playing with various people on my harmonica I did quite a bit of harmonica practice for once. Although, because of a lot of neglect I have become a bit out of practice all my former glories are returning! I improvise a lot better these days on the rock and pop songs because I keep it simple. I still overplay when I do jazz but I am trying to learn that less is more.

At three o'clock in the afternoon with my family we went for a walk in Durham in the evening light. Miles drove us there and that was really good because he is getting the driving at last. We started walking from Shincliffe just outside Durham and the river was fairly high because of the previous rain and as we walked into the centre along the river in the gathering light we saw two herons and a salmon attempting to jump up the weir. I am still struck by seeing salmon in the River Wear in Durham but there you go! We were going to be Inshanghai restaurant but it was a bit early so we decided to walk around the town up to the cathedral. At the moment, I am running up every slope little or large that I come across because I want to get my legs in training for running up a Lakeland mountain as soon as possible. So every time I see a hill I dash off yelling "hill training" and quite often my family comes running up behind me. It sounds crazy but a man has to do what he needs to do and I really need to do a mountain : running! By the time we got to the cathedral we realised we could not go down the back path because it was closed so we had to walk back through the town again. The food at the restaurant was great as usual.

After getting stuck into two large platefuls of food and the boys did even better than that we went up to St Oswald's Hall to Baha'i event: the Celebration of the Birthday of Baha'u'llah. It was a really good do and I saw many Baha'i friends that had not seen for a while because we do so much in our own community directly being involved with the public as well as doing the family thing with our children and relatives. We tell people about the Baha'i Faith wherever we go but only if it is relevant to a conversation. The last thing that anybody wants these days is to be "told" about our beliefs. Sure, if somebody brings up why they think things are going wrong in our society on any issue as a family of individuals we give our view about that which is a mixture of Baha'i beliefs and what we personally think needs to be done. What I liked about the event last night is that a lot of the people were just talking about ordinary subjects although I had a good discussion with a very nice man from Iran who was a Muslim although he also said that he was an atheist. An atheist Muslim I think that makes sense but I do understand what he was getting at. He said that there were a lot of problems in Iran and he was particularly against religion : any religion. I asked him why he came to a religious event and he said he was just interested so I made the joke that coming from a country where it is popularly perceived in the West that it is full of religious fanatics that we at this Baha'i event were making him feel at home because he thought all religious people were fanatics ! He is a good man and I gave him my card and hope to see him in the near future. I think I will. He is studying sociology at Durham University and back in Iran he was studying engineering. I told him he should go back to engineering! Our lads also managed to woof even more food down at this event after the restaurant and I seriously wondered where they put it!

We left the Baha'i event at about nine o'clock and we walked back to the car taking a shortcut which seemed like a good idea at the time but when we went down this path it was completely black. It was a hoot and we should do that again. When we left the Inshanghai restaurant our lads wanted to walk around the river when it was all dark and I said quite firmly "No". It is all right doing that sort of thing on your own but when there are four of you there is a high chance somebody (my wife!?) will indeed go straight into the river. Next year though we will take torches and go by the river as it will be good fun. Miles drove us back and again he is picking up the driving quite well now and on a scale from one to 10 he has been at one for about 15 hours worth of driving just not being able to get first gear basically. But yesterday he rose up to five and I am sure that he will be able to take his test early next year.

Last night I had a really good conversation with a friend of mine Darren Howell a Durham Baha'i who is now married and for quite a long time I always teased him about getting married. Well now he has finally done it and he has a lovely nice baby as well. His wife is a delightful woman and from what Darren was saying about boys needing fathers, really good stuff, I know that he is a good dad as well as husband and will continue doing that. It is funny but some people you just know are going to do it all right which is good for everybody. It was quite funny because he was sat with his baby in front of him in a car seat baby carrier and when the lad woke up he looked at his dad and then started just gazing at me for about 10 minutes I think. I do not know what it is sometimes , children just seem to lock onto me. One time when I took the boys skateboarding a couple of years back in Richmond there was a five-year-old playing in the skate park and I just sat there reading my maths textbook minding my own business. Within a few minutes as the boys were doing their thing on the ramps she came over and started asking me questions about what I was doing so I asked her what she was doing on her own so she told me all about her mum and dad working and that she had a woman looking after her at the other end of the park but as she was doing this she started to get cosy and snuggled herself into my side which I was not best pleased about because I really did want to just get on reading but we continued on with the dialogue. I asked Fiona about this while some children home in on me sometimes and she says it is because I smile at them and notice them with my eyes. Apparently this is something that primary teachers do all the time to get the children's attention. Oh well that is something I must try and stop but have not succeeded yet but it has also been the case, maybe because the boys have got a lot bigger now that small children do not approach me in skate parks these days! Mind you, there are plenty of teenagers who talk to me in Rkade skate park in Redcar.

Today, Sunday, I took the lads down to the skate park or should I say Miles drove us down there and he is really getting into it. The lads had a good session and I had a good laugh with two of my friends down there two of the mums who take their lads on a Sunday. Scooters have been really good for the skate park and it is nice to see lots of young people really going for it and getting a lot of exercise. It will put years on their life although there may be a few broken wrists on the way. It's worth it! In the afternoon we went to visit my mum and she was very well but after she heard of the woes of Miles learning to drive she said she would light a candle for him in the Catholic Church that she goes to. I said that was okay so long as there was an "L" on it! I think just the thought of the prayer was working even before she went to the church because Miles took us home and had an excellent session doing pretty much everything right. Good dog and for all the worry he has given me this week with his driving : bad dog! Still that's kids they drive you crazy and worry you but they do get there if you give them intelligence and a good push along. Direction and motivation are all that most children ever need. A good weekend.

Yesterday was a good day. In the morning I took Miles out for a driving lesson and he is now starting to get it. In the afternoon with the family I had a really good walk around Durham. We did a different walk because I wanted to look at a driving route for Miles to take us to Durham avoiding the motorway. So we parked up near the Durham crematorium and walked through the woods and on to our usual route. In the woods, because it had been raining very hard the night before there were large amounts of leaf debris and sand strewn across the path carried by the rainwater. The woods were really good because the leaves falling off the trees had become quite deep. When we got down to the weirs in Durham we saw salmon attempting to get over the weir right between a pair of cormorants who were looking hopefully no doubt to try and get a meal. The trouble was the salmon are bigger than the cormorants so they had no chance. It was remarkable to see salmon because about 20 years ago the River Wear from just above Durham was quite dead and polluted and now it is alive and vibrant with life. No matter how bad it looks for the ecology on our planet there are some positive moves happening. It is the same on Teeside where the River Tees also has salmon running up it because several years ago we saw them attempting to leap over the Tees barrage. Our usual perches in the centre were all taken up so we had to have biscuit break up by the St Oswald's Hall Park .

We had a good evening set up because Fiona and I went to see Digital Earth at Kennedy's Bar in York. This was the first night out just Fiona and me for as long as I can remember at least 10 years I think. It was a great drive down because we played Bob Dylan and when we got to York we walked in from a Clifton past York District Hospital and as we were going past I noticed that we could see into the corridor of the maternity unit and off the corridor where the birth rooms for women to have babies were. This is where Fiona gave birth to our 2 fine boys. I had mixed memories about this because the birth of Miles was quite difficult but Clifford's birth was very easy. That's if you can say that giving birth to a child is easy. I may regret saying this! When we got to Kennedy's Bar Digital Earth were having a run through and the band sounded pretty good . I really enjoyed talking with Sybil's husband Jon Wood and then I went to talk with Nicky Young the wife of the keyboard player David Young. It was really nice sitting there and noticing all these club, party type people going by because the last time I ever was in a pub was when I went to the Irish sessions in York and they were mostly folk people there who were very different! Digital Earth started playing at 11 o'clock and they were really good. I really enjoyed getting swayed away by the brilliant rhythm and keyboard section and then listening to Jon Woods excellent flugelhorn playing and the vocals of the lovely girl singer and a man who was a MC doing rap like speaking alongside the singing. I thought he was excellent and the rhythms reminded me of bebop rhythms which is quite interesting. Very syncopated and catchy and I actually wonder if anybody else has noticed how bebopish rap rhythms are. It has inspired me to think of my own songwriting having some sort of rap talking going on as well or before and after the words I write. An interesting idea. I also found it really funny that these big bouncers were walking through the club to make sure everything was all right which made me feel quite reassured. These characters I always find quite interesting because whilst they are very big and strong which is quite good for grabbing somebody quickly and subduing them to propel them out of the club they absolutely cannot run! It was lovely seeing Sybil again the last time being at the Peace Festival in York. Fiona and I also talked for a bit with Jon Woods mother June, Sybil's mother-in-law who is a really nice lady and she told us to get in touch with her to go and see her when we have another night out in York. We left the Bar at about 12:30 a.m. and walking through York was interesting because there were so many people around. The last time I walked around York at that time of night in the late 1980s there was hardly anybody around. York certainly has a more late night cosmopolitan feel about it than it did in the late 1980s and this is really good. On the way back going through the Vale of York we went through a huge rainstorm but given that Fiona was asleep after 10 minutes in the car she left me on my own to fight my way through it and listen to Leonard Cohen as well. She didn't actually wake up until I parked the car on our drive at around 1:45 a.m..

A lovely day and a really good night out. Thank you very much Sybil, Digital Earth and my lovely wife for wearing a nice short skirt which really showed off her hiking legs. I have never seen my wife wearing such a skirt out and about and I noticed myself staring at it several times during the evening particularly when she was dancing through the Digital Earth set. She and Sybil danced through the whole thing. Two fine wives, mothers, and ladies!