8 Keeling brothers

Hip hip hooray

Dad / Grandpa arrived home at 11.30 this morning after his hip replacement on Friday. Here he is, getting out of the car, from where he made a beeline for his cigars. 

 And here he is puffing away.

Grave matters

Being at Jacobs it was time to revisit the grave of my grandparents. Mum and Dad gave me directions and twice I failed to find the flat grave stone 'slightly to the right of the path from the lychgate and behind the church'. The third time I walked from Jacobs, met my Mum there and she showed me. Better directions would have been 'Walk down the path on the left of the church, continue after it ends over some grass and between some very old graves and it is just after the next path you come to'.  In case anybody else is seek-disabled, here is a map. The yellow dashed line is the clue to 1) Sir John and Lady Keeling's resting place. Their oldest son is also in a much better marked graved at (2). It took me 40 minutes to walk from Jacobs via the park field, Hurst lane, Churchland lane, then right after Killingan wood across some fields. You can enter the cemetery by Jacobs gate, apparently so called because the people from Jacobs always walked that way to church. 
George
PS you can click the pic if you want a bigger view. And google map here. 

Detention for Grandpa

Grandpa had to attend corrective driving school today, due to a bit of accidental speeding a month or two ago. It set him back £80 and four hours in a 'very boring' lesson on the perils of driving too fast. The lessons were conducted by (according to him) Mr Jimmy and Mrs Jemima Knowall. Mrs Knowall strutted about on her platforms as she spoke and, as the floor was loud, he could not hear a word she said. There were only two ten minute breaks and poor grandpa couldn't even get out for quick puff at a cigar. To his credit, he did not fall asleep. The photo is for illustrative purposes only.

How to see the calendar

Granny asked how to see the calendar which Rob was so nice about. You get to see it by clicking on Jacobs Calendar at the top right under the picture of Jim and Paul. But David says that it does not always work. I don't know why - yet.

And by the way I'm in Gran Canaria with Ruth and my friends Alex and Gavin. I really should be on a lounger by the pool soaking up the rays. Or should I have a second breakfast? Decisions decisions. x George

Congratulations Rob

Happy Birthday Robert Michael Keeling, born 19 January 1952.

Going, going - only one left.

Leather bound Arthur Gibbs letters are bing snapped up and there is only one left. Get in touch quick if you want it! george.keeling@gmail.com

Letters home 1914-1918

Paul and George got a bit excited over a year ago and decided to get a beautiful leather bound edition of Captain Arthur Gibbs' letters home. We have given a few copies to Granny / Mum and kept one each for ourselves. Another six are lying in some warehouse printed but unbound. It took us over a year to get the first six copies and we believe it would be up to three months to get more with that lovely leather binding. (We're not Amazon).

Sadly it's not cheap and we would have to ask £250 + postage for each extra copy. (Even if we shift all six we will still be out of pocket). So if you would like one of these very rare editions, e-mail me quickly before they all go! george.keeling@gmail.com.

Stop press: Sold out!

 

5 years old

8brothers has just turned five year old! To celebrate I've put up a fascinating optical illusion at the bottom of this post. It may have something to do with the semi conductor current flow. And, apart from the great new banner, a few other things have happened:

I've had a membership drive recently and we've got 8 new subscribers bringing us to 32: Archie, Siobhan, Tom the older, Polly, Issie, Josh, Kate and Dr Trevor. Welcome to the great 8brothers blog! Everybody can post stuff up here to tell us about what you are up to or beg for money etc. It's quite easy, even Paul can do it, just follow one of the links at the top left. Also if you want search for old articles there's a new search box at the top right. For example, type in Barbar, and you can find her diaries again.

Talking of Dr Trevor there should be a new one soon. Trevor the handsome has just started a postgraduate course at Reading University studying the effect of building design on the people who use them. He's already optimising M&S freezer layouts to buoy up the shoppers. I think that's what we used to call Feng Shui, but he's getting fully paid by his benevolent employer for the whole four year course. Result. So assuming he and Archie pass their exams we'll have three doctors in the family soon

Ruth the senior grandchild is getting more famous: She woke up this morning to hear her report for the Local Government Chronicle being broadcast on Radio 2. It was also in  the Mirror, the Telegraph, the Huffington Post and a large number of local newspapers.

And here's the optical illusion that I found on Google+. Look at the + in the centre of the purple dots. What do you see?

You can find out why that's like semi conductor current flow click here.

Bye for now! 
George 

Tom wants ALL your money

Graffiti Tom put this about his Belfast run on Facebook. For those of you who missed his Facebook post, he wrote: 
So I am running the Belfast Marathon next May. Got the flights, B&B and entry all sorted. I thought a [facebook] group would be the easiest way to contact all the Keelings to try and get you to give me all your money, and I mean ALL of it. If you could add all the others to the group as I dont have that many on here right now. the giving page is http://www.mycharitypage.com/t2keeling  and it is a charity in africa that builds schools etc. You can find more info about them on their website. [Ed .. Where's that?]

 

Bratwurst

You can see Tom Palmer's show here: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/comedy-lab/4od. I guess that the Bratwurst sketch was the one Howard was thinking of. Dry Martini please!

Granny beware: Contains "Strong language and adult humour".

Next question: Which actor is Tom?