I was vaguely interested, but there seemed to be little information about.  More recently one of my parents told me about it and I started to think about it again.  A few google searches later and I’d found out what it was called and the basic techniques required.

Effectively you’re trying to teach your lungs to breath more shallowly and tolerate a higher concentration of CO2.

I’ve long felt my own Asthma may have psychosomatic tendencies.  As my control with preventative drugs has improved, my symptoms have reduced to the point that occasionally when I get home I find I’ve left my emergency inhaler there and haven’t needed it during the day.  If I run for a train however, I can arrive breathless (no surprise there, I’m not going to win any fitness awards) but my first thought after grabbing my seat is “am I having an asthma attack”.  Shortly after, I usually do.

Over the last weekend however I’ve been pretty sedentary.  I reached for my inhaler around 3 times a day.  That’s high for me and today I’m feeling a little under the weather, usually I’d use my inhaler around 1-2 times a day.

Using this for a basis, I’m going to start following the Buteyko technique as described on the website and see how I get on.  The first exercise involves taking two normal breaths, then once you’ve breathed out on the second breath, holding it for up to a minute.  I was fairly shocked to find I almost passed out at 20 seconds – as a kid, I used to be able to hold my breath for just over a minute.  It’s going to be tougher than I thought.  After checking your breathing, you go for 5 minutes of breathing shallowly through your nose.   I’ve always found it difficult to breath through my nose due to allergies, but recently I’ve been taking antihistamines and nasal sprays (as prescribed by my doctor) to free my nose up. You repeat the process four times, in total it takes about 25 minutes.  This needs to be done 4 times a day.

Fun.  I’ll post back on my results throughout the week.

For starters:

Since moving into the new house we’d been thinking about the pattering of tiny feet. Actually once the realisation hit us we were going to be parents, the panic set in.

As you can see, it’s got a big nose.

We’d had a scan 4 weeks previously just before Christmas and I can honestly say I didn’t realise that bundle of cells only 13mm long could have a heart beat, let alone one that could beat about 110+ beats a minute.

In march we’ll find out what we’re getting, well, we’ll attempt to anyway.

Still, with the beds in, the coop up and a greenhouse in potentia we’ll have a wide selection of veg to feed it and fresh eggs to boot.

Only about two weeks later and I pulled my first pint from the barrel.

Generally at this stage I find the beer virtually undrinkable, so was pleasantly surprised to find it was pretty damn amazing. So far I’ve drunk about four pints over the course of the week and undeniably it’s a good brew.

I look forward to moving into freshly hopped brews going forward, even if it’s a little more expensive (about 64p a pint)

So we had a little trip to Egypt. Unsurprisingly it’s fairly cheap at the moment even though it’s peak season – that’s mainly due to the revolution that’s been going on. Tourism is 82% down on last year, which means in Luxor, a well known area that relies solely on tourism is really suffering.

I felt nothing but safe on my journey, though because we were the only tourists within miles, everyone wanted our business and to be honest, we were inundated with people trying to get us to ride horse and carriages and boats.

We did ride a boat on one day, very pleasant riding on the Nile on a warm windy day. We visited “banana island” which is one of five known, isn’t even an island but there bananas there and oddly baby crocodiles in a pen.

And the colours in the tombs, amazing!

We concluded our week long trip by doing some star gazing – the above is quite obviously the moon and the below is Jupiter with a few of its visible 4 moons. All taken on an iPhone, which isn’t usually used in stellar photography. Highly recommended if you’re in the area to look up the Space Observers – quite knowledgeable and a good evening in the desert!

I’ll admit all of my brews have been from kits. Today however following my return from Egypt I’d been crushed in on an Easyjet flight and twisted one of my vertebra and caught it on my pelvis, or some such. This meant I visited my osteopath in Westcliff.

Very close by is a brew shop. My last visit was 5 years ago, so high time I popped in.

My first move was to walk straight into his stock room. This used to be where he had his “beers of the world” selection of imports. No longer!

I did however walk out slightly poorer and proud owner of a couple of cans of malt extract, hops and yeast. Yes, no generic kit for me… One more step to proper brewing.

And adding hops… Look like a drug dealer…

A little while ago at pizza express if eaten one of their etna pizzas. It was very nice and had a mild, sweet chilli pepper on it. I found peppadew peppers in my local supermarket stuffed with cheese and the same sweet chilli flavour came through.

I set about wondering where I could get some seeds from, but it turns out its very difficult because they are apparently copyrighted. Not something I often come upon when growing fruit and veg.

It got me thinking and doing a bit of searching came across several people wanting to do the same thing.

A few searches on eBay and I’d found a supplier of “peppERdew” peppers. They claim to be so similar (could even come from the same plant… ) that you’d never tell the difference…

Whether they are actually from the same wild African shrub that’s been copyrighted or not, I couldn’t possibly say. All I can say is they’re similar!

The above photo could be seen as me trying to be arty. This I assure you is not the case. In fact when pouring the last of the sloe gin into the funnel, they poured everywhere. You can’t see the piles on the floor.

Still, with the nights drawing in, even though I’ve always hated gin, I’m quite enjoying a little tipple

The left over sloes will be going into the freezer tonight to make a sloe sherry!

So with my brown fingered hands from boat building I had to make my way off to burn a few burgers at the Rochford Lights.

Fortunately my St John Ambulance Division was there, so I pinched a pair of gloves.

We took about £400 of which half goes back to the council and the other to our scout troop!

Many of the scouts, beavers and cubs turned up to say hello or to help out!

Today saw glueing of the gunwales and a fair bit of clamping. And wiping! Lots of wiping as the glue expands and dribbles everywhere. The odd little quirk of the glue is the fact it stains your fingers an odd shade of dark brown. I could now be a 60 a day smoker. Fortunately that’s not the case!

We also stuck some foam into the rear of the boat to add some flotation for if it goes over…

Only one side to go, a bit more painting and one of those bits on the bottom to make you go in a straight line.

http://www.waark.com/2008/02/sheds/

And

http://www.waark.com/2011/11/chicken-shed/

You’ll see my poor ol’ friend Ben being mugged into not only once putting up the same shed, but twice.  But I have realised the shed is 3 years old… not bad for something that only cost £99, has been broken into, torn down and rebuilt.