James at 15 weeks.......

well, here he is at 15 weeks, having his dinner disturbed!!!

Home, James

and here's a couple of pics of James in his class walking ring / buggy device that his Gran R bought for him.

already he appears to be a more confident driver than his dad, and somewhat better at corners than, say, Takuma Sato, or whatever his name is.

i did like the device, but unfortunatley his mother has put batteries in the thing for the flashing lights and music.

DON'T BUY THE TOYS THAT MAKE A NOISE.

be excellent to each other!

James eating.......sort of

hey everyone

well, here's young James having his first go at eating something!! rice cereal with all sorts of yucky fruit purity mixed in. hesitant at first, then happy to eat, then very delighted to sneeze it over Michele!!

his cousin Katie ("Pebbles") has her first tooth! James will not be far off!

be excellent to each other!

South Africa's Chuck Norris (it is alledged)

i have no idea what this is. thanks Matt, i am sure that Mr Mervin Fraser will enjoy it


· Riaan Cruywagen is fluent in twenty seven of the eleven official languages.

· Riaan Cruywagen knows the news before it happens.

· Riaan Cruywagen knew you would say that.

· Riaan Cruywagen is cryogenically frozen every night for EXACTLY eight hours.
His brain impulses are monitored during this and used as templates for deciphering elaborate ancient manuscripts.

· Riaan Cruywagen had a telekinetic showdown with Johan Stemmet. After draining all of Stemmet's powers and rendering him severely retarded, he created Noot vir Noot and made Stemmet the host.

· Some people believe Riaan Cruywagen wears a toupee - he has, in fact, one perfect hair. The one that covers his entire head - giving it that, 'not quite real' look. Riaan himself is not quite real.

· Riaan Cruywagen was the original model for Michelangelo's statue of David. Unfortunately, that was in the early years of Michelangelo's career and he wasn't yet artistically mature enough to capture the Cruywagen essence. He nearly drove himself mad with frustration until eventually he decided to settle for his number 2 choice of model in Chuck Norris who was only 3 years old when he posed for Michelangelo.

· One night during an ad break on the 8 o'clock news, Riaan Cruywagen mentioned to the makeup lady that he was 'tired of this apartheid nonsense'. Nelson Mandela was released from prison the next day.

· Riaan Cruywagen wasn't born, he thought himself into existence.

· The only man made object visible (with the unaided eye) from space is the Great Wall of China. Riaan Cruywagen can see the Mir Space station with his 'unaided eye'.

· Riaan Cruywagen never blinks; if he does the entire world would just not happen for that split second.

· When Sir Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Mount Everest, he was welcomed by Riaan Cruywagen, who briefly interviewed him, before wiring the information through to the SAUK.

· The SAUK is actually a front for a secret society of Swiss Bankers who manipulate the world's economy, and is chaired by non other than his most Worshipful Master, Riaan Cruywagen.

· In binary code the word "Riaan Cruywagen" looks like the shroud of Turin.

· When he was three Riaan Cruywagen successfully reinvented the wheel. For his second birthday party he entertained guests by coming up with the first highly successful prototype.

· Riaan Cruywagen will never die. His soul gets transferred to another identical body via various arcane rituals and current nano-technology thrice fortnightly.

· Bruce Willis' character in Die Hard is based on the unpublished autobiography written by Riaan Cruywagen at the age of 15.

· Riaan Cruywagen is an accomplished author and poet - though, humble by nature, he chooses not to write under his own title but prefers to go by psuedonyms such as W. Whitman, E . Hemingway, Proust, JD Salinger and G Chaucer - amongst others.

· Riaan Cruywagen's first job was tutoring Pythagoras.

Sunday James

bonjour mon amis

well, i know it is kind of wierd for me to update so frequently, but to quote Michele of sorts, James was looking rather angelic this afternoon. here's a couple of pics to illustrate her point!!

an odd Sunday - people coming to look to buy our house in anticipation of us moving soon, me putting together a new phone for James's Grandad, and Boro actually winning a game - a rather interesting one, too!

be excellent to each other!!

influential gifts on Barry Dale

here's Barry in no way mixing art with reality with two of his gifts.

it is worth noting that Mervin "Chuck" Fraser, he of all responsibility for Chuck Norris appearing on these pages, considers Barry to be a pillar of society.

James meets the extended family!

heya

Barry's birthday party also afforded James the opportunity to at last meet his Auntie Les and Uncle Bryan, pictured here with the ever proud Grandparents getting into the pictures!

James seems to have taken quite a shine to Bryan, which is no bad thing at all!!

Happy Birthday Barry!!

here's a couple of pictures of Mr Barry Dale, along with the delightful Viking Michelle Dale and the fine gentleman Jason Dale, taken at his surprise birthday party today. it certainly was something of a surprise - he couldn't figure out why everyone was rushing, and thus got there at his own pace!!

thanks very much to Michelle and Jason for organizing everything, and indeed for inviting us along! a most excellent day had by all!!

Crockett and Tubbs

partly as a protest against the impending and probably awful new film version yes, but mostly because it is ace : Miami Vice series 1 & 2 will soon be mine on DVD. oh yes they will. i believe i shall be playing them on a continuous loop for me and James to enjoy.

Michele disagrees. Michele covers up James's ears when i play the theme tune at full volume. but she is a girl, and Miami Vice is meant to be enjoyed by men anyway.

i look forward to giving you a most triumphant update on their arrival soonest.

aaaaaahhhhhh.............

James having a snooze. Michele's fave pic of the moment.

need i say anything else?

James at 14 weeks

somewhat more recent than the 13 week ones i just posted, but i guess that kind of makes sense in itself!!

as per the earlier post, we believe that Napoleon may well be teething. he seems to eat everything (a damp flannel is the number one choice for him, closely followed by his teething toys), and it at least feels like a bit of a bite there. nice one!

be excellent to each other!!

James at 13 weeks

hello hello

SORRY SORRY SORRY for the delay - huge thunderstorms for a while have prevented me from connecting, as well as me just being very very lazy!!

here are the pics from a week or so ago - he's becoming cuter by the second!!

we're convinced he is teething, as he wants to eat everything......

James : an apology

oooooops!!!!!!!!!! i said in the eat the fruit post that James is just over 3 months. ahem, the gregorian calendar system of establishing time as a movement of days, months and years says that he is in fact just under three months old.

sorry!!

Victory For South Africa

over 800 runs in one day playing? how was it done?? if one were to ask any of the usual suspects (Mervin, Conrad, Matt, etc), the answer would be this picture........

eat the fruit!

OK, at just over three months, James is making some slight forays into the world of eating something other than his beloved formula, or in the words of Farmer Palmer, powder. he seems to have taken a shine to sucking on, and attempting to chew, some dried mango. nice one!!

we are contemplating starting him off on some 1st foods stuff - you know, the apple jelly type stuff that they fed to RoboCop in the first film. not yet, but will let you know when that happens!

going on the class mustard stain on my shirt today, like, it may be wise for me to learn to eat properly before i expect James to :)

Napoleon meets Blondie

hey everyone

here are some images of my mate Blondie, proudly holding his future son-in-law James :) James did a little bit of crying when he first met Blondie, but the two now seem to be best of mates!

oh dear - it seems that the DVD release of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang has now been delayed until mid-April here. i guess that is me ordering a copy from the UK, where it is on the shelves NOW.......

be excellent to each other!

James at 12 weeks

hey everyone

well, James was rather tired when we took the weekly photos this time around, so please forgive his more grumpy look being in place instead of his traditional smile!!

James at 11 weeks

ahem........

James/Napoleon is in fact 12 weeks today, but here is the 11 week pic!! sorry, i have been running around with this, that and the other!

my mate Blondie is out from the States at the moment. nice one, good to see him, have a few ales and discuss proper footie and ways to improve it!!

otherwise, thanks to Chris over in the UK, i have heard the new Moz album, Ringleader Of The Tormentors. it is a most excellent album indeed!!

be excellent to each other!!

James at 10 weeks

hey everyone

sorry for the delay in these pics, but as you can see below there were some rather urgent Chuck Norris images that needed to be published here.

as you can see, James was just out of the bath when these were taken. i particularly like the 1st one, in which he is doing a class Butters impression with his eyes!!

be excellent to each other!!!

for Mervin Fraser

hey everyone

here are some most excellent jeans being advertised. thanks very much to Matt for the full action one!!!

the James / Napoleon picture updates will resume soon!

and now it's KING King Monkey

friends, family, casual browsers and music lovers

i am delighted to announce that IAN BROWN has won the GODLIKE GENIUS award at the NME awards today.

there should be more and more awards given to IAN BROWN on a regular basis.

stop reading this and go and listen to some of his music. NOW.

be excellent to each other. worship ian brown.

The Christening Party

hey all

here's a picture of the "Christening Party", for want of a better term!! other than those you know, pictured here are Larne, the minister who performed the service (and indeed married Michele & I), godparents Richard and Erika (Erika is hiding at the back), godparents Duncan ("Spiros") and Linda, and their young one, Falco (also called Robbie).

quite a great day!!

be excellent to each other!!

nine weeks

hey everyone

well, so many pics to choose from, but here's a good one for him aged nine weeks. i am not at all sure if he will have the misery of being a Boro fan too, but he looks smart in the outfit that his Uncle Colin, Aunty Angela and Christopher & Andrew (no idea what relation!) got him!

hope all is well in your world!

be excellent to each other!

family portrait

hey everyone

well, the usual weekly update pic of James will follow soon, but this pic was taken on the Thursday anyway, and as it is my birthday (and James was Christened today!), i have decided that i would rather put this one up right now!

in the spirit of my birthday, for what it means, take it as an excuse to be excellent to each other!!!!!!

Uncle Mervin

and here is Napoleon with his Uncle Mervin. the two seem to get along well!

to understand more about Uncle Mervin, click on his name above the pictures and you should be transported to his all time favourite webpage.

be excellent to each other!!

James visits Daddy's verk

on friday, young Napoleon, along with Mummy, Gran and Great Gran, popped into the office for a cup of tea and a sing song at my office. all seem to love Napoleon to bits, and it would be fair to say that he is (quite rightly) more popular than i am with everyone!!

i think someone else has more pictures, but here are what i have on my camera! there is another post with someone else to follow this one.......

James at 8 weeks

hey everyone

well, we (ie Michele) could not pick just one picture of James for the usual weekly update, so here's a series of the lad in his rather smart new bouncy chair thing that Grandma R got him.

James is doing well, daddy not quite so well. i seem to have some sort of cold/flu thing on the go. as it is not bird flu, it isn't particularly interesting and thus i will just try and get rid of it!

otherwise, i personally slept through Aeon Flux this week. take that review as you wish!

hope all is well with you!

be excellent to each other!!!!

7 weeks already!!

hey everyone

here's James enjoying seven weeks with his Grandma and his Great Grandma, the latter having come all the way from England to see her two Great-Grandchildren. nice one!!