A week on Texel

We were on holiday on the Dutch island of Texel last week (below a visual reminder of location for those who may have missed geography class).


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It was the 4th time we've been to that particular Ferienhaus, and this time we were in the good company of the Seel family. Amelie and Emil are a year older and younger than Liam respectively, and the three of them had a great time together, whizzing about on their Laufräder. Rosalie aged 8 weeks was not quite up for this sort of action, but did her fair share of being cute.

Liam tried his hand at pony riding several times during the week, and absolutely loved it. Here he is with Joep on Monday:

From 09 - Texel

then Filou on Wednesday (no photographic evidence!), Okkie on Thursday:

From 09 - Texel

and finally Alfredo on Friday:

From 09 - Texel

Note: Alfredo made such an impression, that Liam has been calling out his name in his sleep since we got back...

It wasn't all pony riding, we braved the elements every day for a spell at the beach. Some days the weather was kind, and other days, well, it reminded me of all those childhood summers in Ireland :-) Here are myself, Liam and Rosalie enjoying the fine weather, shortly before Liam waded in to his neck in the North Sea:

From 09 - Texel

Here we are with Seels in a bit of a breeze, trying to explain to the kids that it's okay to have sand blow in your eyes:

From 09 - Texel

The great thing about the adverse weather was that Liam got to model all of his cool Finkid gear. This range of clothing is designed for a Finnish winter, so was well able to cope with a Dutch summer.

From 09 - Texel

The weather did improve occasionally, and a bit of paddling in the sea was possible, even for those not as hardy as Liam:

From 09 - Texel

Liam tried his hand at sand-castle balancing:

From 09 - Texel

The dogs were also with us of course, Elektra carried her frisbee everywhere:

From 09 - Texel

and Othello showed himself to be adept at extreme-relaxing:

From 09 - Texel

Bundestrojaner given short shrift by Register

See here for the Register's take on the German government's plan to conveniently forget about civic liberties.

From the article,

"Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble is seeking police powers to harness malware in upcoming federal security laws. AP reports that snoopware would be developed by the German government rather than existing commercial software. Using malware to spy on terror suspects would "cover a serious and scandalous hole in our information that has arisen through technical changes in recent years," according to Stefan Kaller, a spokesman for Schaeuble."

The mechanisms proposed are as laughable as the principle is draconian. For example, government departments are supposed to send out deliberately tainted emails to terror suspects. Presumably they already have a mailing list with entries like osama@alqaeda.org. There's probably little danger of terrorists using cryptic email addresses, right?

Anyway, as the Register points out, "Would-be terrorists need only use Ubuntu Linux to avoid the ploy". Darn it, those terrorists are just too clever!

Given this approach, perhaps it's a good thing that the current CDU-SPD coalition have no time to do anything about health, education and unemployment.

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Rosalie has a younger cousin :-)

We woke this morning to read a long-awaited text message from Davnet and Paul that their daughter Alannah Roisin Conneely was born on 1st September at 22:00. Although it seems to have been a rather dramatic entrance, mother and daughter (and presumably father) are reported to be well.

Those who know Paul will understand when I say he is a man of considerable stature. Therefore it is perhaps no surprise that Alannah weighs in at a respectable 10 pounds and 5 ounces, or 4.67767132 kilograms for those of us with trouble understanding imperialistic measures. Funnily enough, this is only marginally less than Rosalie's weight last week aged 6 weeks :-)

Congratulations to the Davnet and Paul, I hope to see some pictures of my new niece soon.

An afternoon in Obervolkach

We spent yesterday afternoon visiting Heike's relatives in Obervolkach, a charming village in the Franken (Franconia) area of northern Bavaria.

Rosalie posed for photos with her various cousins and great-aunts, some gallery excerpts here...

From Obervolkach

From Obervolkach

From Obervolkach

Meanwhile Liam was thrilled by his great-uncle's mini-tractor, and was inconsolable when we couldn't bring it home.

From Obervolkach

From Obervolkach