The saddest goodbye... July 2005

Sadly, on June 14th our beautiful Tiffin had to be put to sleep after collapsing the day before. He was an old dog when we adopted him and we always knew that we were not destined to have him for long... but this was WAY too short a time to spend with such a lovely companion.

Never in a bad mood or badly behaved, loving everyone and everything, he was the most perfect creature I have ever known or probably will ever know and Rob and I are broken hearted to have to say goodbye to this best of friends.

We love you old fella - thank you for gracing our lives.

My 60th Birthday

February 26th 2005 saw my 60th Birthday roll in.... yep - I'm officially a 'Senior Citizen'! Quite a few friends called around in the afternoon and helped to down a bottle or two of wine.. ;-)

Here's my official birthday cake.... featuring Mr. Tiffin of course!!!

Above - my bouquet from Rob and flowers and cards from friends!

The latest pieces of news Chez Ixer is the arrival of my 60th birthday present from Rob... a new buddy for Tiffin called Inka.

A 9 month old pedigree pekingese, Inka was brought all the way from Wales for us by his breeder, Mrs Galloway and her friend Miss Evans. He has 16 champions in his pedigree but it doesn't stop him being a mischievous little bounder.... which has already earned him the nickname of Inka the Tinker! The good news is that he and Tiffin haven't had a single moment of aggression since Inka's arrival though Tiffin, who is no longer a youngster, is regularly bullied into playing when he'd much rather sleep. ;-)

Here's a little gallery of photos I took during his first two days here.

I'm not playing until I've dried off from that rain!

October 17 2004 - I get my new car - Clementine! (Kia Picanto SE)

The Diva Returns. Now you may think this slightly unusual, but the main reason for the delay in my starting a webpage has been deciding exactly WHO I'm doing it for.... it is proving something of a schizo experience. Although I thought, in 1992, I had finally got that dreadful diva, Rosie Hardman, into her box with the lid nailed down for eternity, she has risen to haunt me yet again - if only in 'virtual' form. Get out your Mogadon, dust off your earplugs and take out shares in Kleenex....... the old trout's back! You will find all the latest news on 'The Return of...' on the Music page. Click the appropriate button on the left and don't blame me...

The Nerd. Rosie Ixer, on the other hand - now affectionately nicknamed 'The Nerd' by husband Rob (right) - is a relatively sane person, if a little obsessed by all things connected with computers. All updates of news from home, travel, my swimming career etc. will be found in links on the homepage.

The past few years? Well, Rob and I are still living in Sutton Coldfield - as we've done since 72. Rob's still working at the University of Birmingham in the School of Earth Sciences. Since I retired from the folk scene in 92 I've been teaching swimming for Birmingham City Council. I did that until 97 when, on June 6th, a load of packages arrived from Dell and my life changed forever... I didn't even know where the 'on' button was but it was love at first boot-up...... I now work only two days a week at the pool, teaching adults (mainly one-to-one) in the water… the rest of my time I work for Rob, doing all his computer work for the University and I also do graphic work for anyone who'll hire me. I do a bit of computer teaching one day per week as well. For a couple of years I went to college - the 97/98 year I did six general subjects on the computer, the following year I went on to specialise in desktop publishing, passing the Intermediate and Advanced Grades of the OCR (Oxford, Cambridge and Royal Society of Arts) Exams in June 1999. In September 1999 the new, all-bells-and-whistles computer arrived at our house, to which I immediately staked claim and the Dell was relegated to a life of word-processing and solitaire in Rob's office upstairs..... I then tried in vain to find a local course on web design but without any luck - so in February 2000 I bought myself a book on HTML from Amazon (see Computer Chat) ) and this is the result. I now run on-line courses for a graphics program (PhotoImpact.... WAY WAY better than PaintShopPro and not as ridiculously expensive as PhotoShop), have a tutorials site for that and also a Tutorials and Resources CD for sale for it. Most of my life revolves around computer graphics.

Travels. Rob and I have done quite a bit of travelling over the last 14 years - mainly to Africa where we've done about 12 safaris - in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa. (See Safari Tales and Photos Pages). The picture on the right was taken at the celebration of our Silver Wedding Anniversary under canvas at Larsen's Camp in Samburu Game Reserve, Kenya. This may not sound very luxurious but believe me it's the nearest place to Heaven you will find on the planet..... I quite lost my heart to the town of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe too - even if it is the only place I've ever been charged by an elephant whilst out for a quiet evening drive! We had a timeshare in The Gambia which we used go to each year around Christmas time however it turned out, in the end, to be a FAR from happy experience thanks to the people who ran the place. I shall refrain from saying any more on that subject however! We still co-own some property in St. Lucia in the Caribbean - but we're selling that now (it's on the side of a hill and has a stunning view but I'm finding it increasingly difficult to manage steps as my arthritis is beginning to bug me!).

MUSIC.I'm glad to announce that I have now bought back all the Plant Life albums and I'm in the process of releasing these as CDs. Do keep an eye on my Music page for news of this!

This Site. Just a final word about this site.... I can't fit links on the navigation bar for everything - so you'll need to follow live links (anything underlined!) from individual pages to find a few hidden secrets... Also - watchout for little bits of text that appear when you hover over pictures and so on... you might find a few hidden surprises there too! Don't forget to write and let me know what you think of the site, what you liked best, what you'd like to see etc.... I'm waiting!

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