Darren Roberts’ Home Baked Blog

After a little bit of to-ing and fro-ing on the design front, and some tweaking with the CSS file, we now have Shawn Randall’s website up online, featuring information relating to his Fine Art degree at Bournemouth Arts Institute, his work on Installations in the UK and abroad and general information such as his CV, portfolio and contact information.  We’re reasonably happy with the look at the moment, and will be building on the content in the coming months as and when we can, expanding on information relating to all aspects of his work, modern art, contemporary art and artists who have influenced his practice.

I’ve compiled a list of other websites designed by Darren Roberts, or contributed to by me here.

Dinner - We popped in to Lyn and Geoff’s tonight on the way home from dinner with my Mandarin class - nice pancakes and a couple of glasses of vino with the family there, always good to see them.

Apparently I inadvertently stole a pancake that wasn’t mine…..oops….bit of a faux pas there….

Our Mandarin class met today for lunch…..mmm…..we ate Dim Sum at Will’s mum’s place in the triangle, Bournemouth.  Magic.  Loads of different dishes, was good fun.  Myself and Pei went to meet everyone for about 1pm, Will and his other half Pan, John came along, and Nick, and our tutor Ruiyan with her husband Mark.

Good chance to practice our Mandarin, although I definitely felt a bit self-concious doing it in the ‘real world’ as opposed to talking at home with Pei.  Had some really good tucker, all from the Dim Sum menu (lit ‘touch the heart’, or ‘order to your hearts content’) - tried chickens feet again, and I’m still not convinced!  Duck’s tongue was okay - gotta get the video footage of Nick trying to eat it and heaving - 10 out of 10 for effort on his part though!  I really liked the squid in ginger & chilli, and the steamed dumplings.  The savoury steamed buns were bloody lovely.  Custard tarts, a coconut jelly type thing, and mango pudding for dessert rounded it off nicely.  All washed down with lots of jasmine tea (hua cha).

We did a bit on Chinese New Year for our Mandarin lesson last week, this year being the year of the Rat if I remember rightly.  Loads of info on Chinese New Year on wikipedia.  I arranged a bit of a Chinese New Year surprise for Pei when she got home from work!  I thought she could use something to remind her of home - the way I think of it, is that it must be like being away from my family at Christmas.  Not easy.  I got some sense of the importance of going home for New Year in Chinese culture by the fact that 200 million were on the move recently in really bad weather.  It seems like it’s the most important thing to them.  Maybe next year we’ll get to go again, we’ll see.

Note to self - must watch advancing age. I’ve started cutting my toast in half for breakfast. In my virile youth I’d never have considered such a thing. Maybe I need some supplements!

The toast is good actually - think it’s ‘Hovis Original Wheatgerm‘ with some butter and Hartley’s Black Cherry jam…..mmm. Appetite’s back up now so I must be on the mend from the nearly fatal bout of Man Flu I have been suffering. Wonder if I’ll get a medal for bravery?

Right, must crack on with plans - the bournemouth extension we’re drawing up for planning approval at the moment is coming on nicely - I’ll post a quick screen shot of the plan later.

This is really starting to p*** me off now. Probably some shut eye would be good before I throw the screen out of the window.  Okay I figured it out, one of the templates just wasn’t showing the page I’d written.  Switched back to default template, no problemo!