There are several new galleries up. You can find them under the Gallery menu item above, then just roll down to ‘Family’ and you’ll see them at the top. I’ve ditched the per girl idea. It takes so long it’s prohibitive.

So what’s new? Wouldn’t you like to know.

I’ve repaired the galleries. After a recent update the album links stopped working so you could see the various galleries but couldn’t actually view them. That’s now consigned to the past.

I’ve also been hard at work updating the images I have to upload. If anyone you know ever makes light of photo editing then they are trying to deceive you. In the age of digital cameras where we may have taken twenty photos with film we’ll easily snap a couple of hundred. You don’t intend to keep them all, you might take five when you only want one, that way you can choose the best and discard the rest. Well, that takes time. Once you’ve got the images you want to keep then there’s the inevitable cropping, and basic touching up to get the ready for publication.

Once that’s done you’ve got to compress them to a size that’s large enough for family members who want to print them yet small enough for your server to remain sane and functional!

Rinse and repeat 8,000 times.

I’ve also neglected any updates. Perhaps because I have been so busy living. The last few months have seen significant steps forward in all aspects of our family life. I have been promoted, church is going well, we have another daughter on the way and we are all hale and healthy. Did I mention that Ninette and Persephone are gorgeous, smart and happy?

Yes, I really should write about my family a bit more… Until then folks.

Newton-Williams.com will remain online and will function purely as an online diary for the Newton-Williams family. Each member of the family will have an account and family related shenanigans will be posted here on an ongoing basis. So if you want to read about our exploits or gawp at a gallery then this will be the site for you.

Big Hungry Giant is in the process of getting a facelift. We’ll let you know when it’ll be up and about again, the most important announcement for now is that it won’t be here.

Feeling whimsy today. Take this as you will.

You see, I’ve had some quite serious problems with my back. About June or July last year I started to get shooting pains in the outside of my calf and across the top of my foot. I have pains like these before. I thought it was the same thing. A little bit of sciatica. I was wrong.

Sciatica is where the sciatic nerve is pressed on, or squeezed by the bone or cartilage in your lower back. Although the injury is located at the back of your hips all of the sensation comes from the legs. Usually on only one side as the nerve is typically crushed or squeezed where it leaves the spinal column to make its way down to the foot.

It’s really quite unpleasant and there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. Often a bit of rest and some stretching exercises, which help to free the nerve will see you on your way again. I should know, I’d been here before. As soon as the pain flared up I called my GP.

At the GP I quickly explained the symptoms and asked for a referral to a local physiotherapist. During an earlier bout physiotherapy had brought results and relief very quickly. Simply completing the exercises I had been given previously seemed unwise as I’m not medically qualified, or even knowledgeable. I wanted to get the nod before I started doing anything.

I saw the physiotherapist for a pre-assessment about a week later. He was great and we talked through the symptoms and joked about a couple of current events. Then he told me that he didn’t think I had simple sciatica.

That was the start of what’s been one of the most miserable, difficult and interesting experiences of my life.

To cut things short, I’m sure I wander through the whole story at some point just not today, I had an X-Ray and immediately after a CT-Scan. These revealed a pars defect and a small occult spina bifida. As well as what appeared to be some compression as a result of a recent fall.

This was the first time in my life that a medical professional sat me down and told me there was actually something quite seriously wrong. It was well done, but quite unpleasant.

The pain I was experiencing came from spondylolisthesis. Unsurprisingly I had precisely no idea what that was. A quick look at my X-Ray was enlightening enough. Two of my discs were shot to pieces, there was cartilaginous gloop everywhere. Later an MRI scan of the area would reveal that my L5 vertebrae was a mess. Better yet, most of the damage was caused by a congenital weakness.

I was born this way.

I suppose that didn’t really bother me. The Doctor was quick to explain that even if my condition had been known nothing would have been done about it. Tearing out perfectly good cartilage makes no sense so they would have waited until it had deteriorated anyway. The nature of the problem wasn’t my concern, what bothered me what what was to be done about it.

The Op

It was clear right from that first appointment in September 2010 that I was going to need a surgical intervention. That meant seeing a consultant who would agree to perform the surgery and then getting a hospital bed so that I would be able to receive it.

That’s a saga for another day. Suffice to say Mr Irfan Malik of Kings College Hospital London agreed to operate and I received the needed procedure 17th January 2011. A little longer that I would have liked but then I had neither private health insurance nor the £19,000 I would have needed to pay for the operation up front.

Let’s be clear about this. This is my life and my injury. I’m not resentful in any way. I have received life-changing surgery from an excellent surgeon at no cost. I remain an ardent fan of the NHS and much appreciate that my station and personal income was entirely irrelevant.

Now

I’m back on my feet again. more importantly my brain is abuzz.

One of the most terrible side-effects of the whole experience, partly due to medication, pain and the unbelievable tedium of inactivity was that my mind ceased to work properly. Throughout the whole experience I found it difficult to follow a thread of thought.

A good example is reading. Reading things online was still possible. Much of the internet is crafted for low attention reading and can be skimmed without much loss. Trying to read a book on the other hand became impossible. This was a real torture. I love reading. You would have thought that several months in bed or crawling around the floor would have been a good opportunity to get some reading in.

You’d be wrong. For almost six months I have been unable to follow the thread of a book from paragraph to paragraph. It’s weird. I can read the words, I can understand the sentence. I can follow one to the next, but I was absorbing nothing of what was happening.

I tried, I tried all the time, but was left frustrated.

After the operation, through to the moment that find me writing this, my mind, me if you will, has been slowly winding up to speed again. The emphasis on that sentence should be on ‘slowly’ mind you. I did write unbearably slowly but that’s not true. There’s a quite pleasurable relief that comes from waking up every day a bit smarter than you were the day before.

This morning I realised that I live with a princess

We’ve been married for several years and I am by no means a prince. But this wonderful woman who calls herself my wife is a twenty-first century princess. An extraordinary thing to be sure!

I supposed that if my wife though her quite kindnesses and endless gentle graces was a princess then other men like myself young and old might also be married to princesses. I thought I might talk about the experience for a moment and share some of the thoughts I have arrived at concerning how one ought to go about living with a princess.

Princesses are bold yet vulnerable creatures. They enjoy being caring and gentle, yet are often very much aware of the dangers and practical challenges that the world presents to them and those they love.

They are also inclined to love deeply, and perhaps sometimes a little too much. They believe in others with a strength that saps their energy when their belief is ill-rewarded.

5 Ways to Love a 21st Century Princess

1. Show her you lover her brashly and openly as well as quietly and secretly
2. Show her you think of her well and often, and of none other
3. Be a little jealous, a scintilla of jealousy is a marvelous thing for her to treasure
4. Grow to love and appreciate the things she loves and appreciates
5. Listen intently and remember her words more carefully than any others

Remember, no Prince has ever loved his princess too much, or too carefully and that the crazy singer was right, it’s a verb. Now get up and do something that she might else have to do and expect nothing for having done it. Repeat daily.

This unusual Christmas treat called for a small excursion. We wrapped up warm and went for a walk.

Well, Persephone got carried the whole way, but she enjoyed herself too. Take a look at the pictures the BHG got while the NW’s were out and about…

Just click here.

If you can think of something, so can someone else. Now that the world is so big, some of those people who also thought of it use WordPress. Better still, at least one of them probably wrote a plugin that makes it happen.

I’ve just realised that I’ve had an idea for a plugin that may not exist yet. This is unusual for me. Better yet, I think it’s a bit of a corker. Shush. Don’t tell anyone, let’s see if I can crack this on my own first.

Then I’ll have to suffer the ignominy of being the guy with the great idea who watches other people do it better and shinier and more monetized in about twenty seconds. Mind you, it will still have been my idea.

Now, off to my local search engine. I need to make sure I really am the only person who has thought of this.

Oh, and in other news, Christmas is only a few days away. To those of you who are interested. Happy Christmas. To those of you who aren’t cheer up! It’s an opportunity to celebrate when it’s cold and dull outside. Get with it!

Personally, regardless of how you feel about Jesus, I think this is a tremendous time to celebrate ideals and principles that are recognised as universal. Courage, dignity, honour, friendship and trust. All of which are exemplified in the accounts of Jesus’ life. If he’s a myth to you then it should be a poignant one, and worth celebrating. If he is a friend, then all the more so.

Set something aside, let something go and enjoy a warmth that goes beyond even that of the smell of mum’s gravy. Happy Christmas!

It can turn even the most interminable wait into something you can get your teeth in to. I suppose it’s a bit like paint that changes colour as it dries. You just don’t mind watching it.

Unfortunately I’m not aware of a widget or plugin on the market today which can show the readers of a blog how close the author is to writing another post. It would be hugely useful.

Presently when you visit a blog you have no idea if the post you’re reading is soon to be relegated to the annals of history by flurries of new content or if it is the last defiant gasp of a now deceased effort. I think a small indicator, perhaps an hour glass with a % musing completed would be a helpful thing to have around.

I know I’d appreciate one.

I’ve been close to posting for weeks now. All sorts of things have happened. I recovered from a sort of melancholy which snuck up on me from somewhere. We’ve had some wonderful people join us for dinner. I’ve been to the hospital and my local surgery a number of times and I’ve taken more painkillers than I have taken in the last ten years combined.

So. Why the delay?

I’m unsure. It’s not writers’ block. At least I don’t think it is. When I sit down to write I don’t sit sucking my digits wondering how to start. If anything, capturing something from the profusion is the usual problem. (I still think learning to type faster will help with this, anyone have any experience on the matter?)

I have been bereft of both my computer and internet access for a few days on separate and quite unrelated occasions. We’ve had both a power outage and, a first for me, a physical component failure. The graphics card I spent far too much money on simply gave up the ghost. Unusually, at least to my knowledge, the card died while the machine was off. Typically they pop during a frantic moment in a FPS or strategy game when you have one too many triangles too calculate…

But that’s hardly an excuse now is it? Uptime, if that’s a word, has far exceeded downtime. Probably somewhere in the region of 95:5 or 19:1 if you like things as simple as they can be. To my mind 95:5 sits easier but hey, that’s a different topic for another day.

The small and short of it is that I have been thinking about my blog a great deal. I have all sorts of ideas and a number of experiences that I would like to post about. I just haven’t been ready to do it. Until now that is. Now I’m good to go.

Back to the point. If there is one.

I can foresee, though it shouldn’t be much of a surprise to you, that this sort of inappropriately long delay between posts will probably occur again. While I may lack the motivation to post I will probably have the will to give some sort of indication that I am thinking about a post. That the will is building as it were.

I could leave some sort of sign. A marker which advises the patient visitor to wait patiently a little longer before they’ll hear from me again.

Hopefully, like paint that passes from green to pink, it’ll be interesting enough that you’ll hang around to read whatever emerges once the bar reaches the other end. All I need to do now is figure out how on earth I am going to do it.

While I was at it I have refreshed the theme too. I liked the old theme at first but it was getting a little old on me. Let me know what you think of the new one.

I think I need a big hungry giant picture to go with it. Any artists out there?

I’m pleased that the blog is still going as I started last September, it’s been a bit patchy at times but I think I am finally getting into my stride and I certainly enjoy working on the site just as much as I did on day one!

Enough of my bumbling. Go and look at the pretty pictures!

For those of you who live in North London and are unaware that the city continues on the other side of the water. Yes, it does and it’s lovely.

Like practically everywhere in London there’s a decent amount of local history, architecture and intrigue. More on that later. For now I wanted to draw your attention to some of the resources available to residents.

First and foremost, don’t wander over to hithergreen.org. It’s a lovely site but that Hither Green is in Ohio and may be a little inconvenient to visit casually.

A better place to start is with the local community discussion forum.

This is a simple phpBB site which allows you to post matters and engage in discussion. It’s worth noting that Hither Green is loosely defined as SE13, SE12 and SE6, areas which exceed what most people consider Hither Green quite comfortably, but it’s good to be inclusive right?

I’ve not had the chance to poke around the forums much just yet but I have registered as my usual online self, Zarahemna. Once I have had a bit of a closer look I’ll post a review of the forum and highlight any interesting threads or comments here.

Another useful thing to look at is the Hither Green Community Association (HGCA) website. The community association was founded several years ago and consists of a group of residents determined to put Hither Green more firmly on the map in South East London.

The HGCA have been involved in a number of projects including the erection of “Welcome to Hither Green” signage, to help identify the area a bit more clearly. They’ve also coordinated improvements to the area including a garden and some renovation of the railway embankment.

I’ll get out to each of the various projects, grab some photographs and post some reviews here once I get the chance.

It’s great to live in an area with a community organisation that’s already well on the path to helping to improve the area and I look forward to finding out what I can do to help out!