The ramblings of Keane Ingram

The weather has turned and summer is definitely gone for another year, so I'm writing about it whilst I still remember what has happened!

I took the kids camping at the start of August for four nights. I did relatively well with all the packing, the only things I forgot were things I already owned such as tea bags and ketchup. Thankfully I was camping with generous people! It's one of the best holidays I've ever been on. We camped with some friends and their children, and the children were happy entertaining themselves whilst the adults relaxed. The weather was sweltering but thankfully we could throw ourselves into the river several times a day to cool down. Kitty did us dinner on the first night, demonstrating the skills she has learned at Scout camp.

The holiday was exactly what I needed. It's the first time I've taken the kids away after Covid and after separating, and I think we all really enjoyed it. Being able to end the day just sitting around a fire having a drink or two and talking nonsense was brilliant, it's exactly what I miss from my early days of camping at festivals. I came home feeling more relaxed than I've felt in a very long time.

I took Nicky and Kitty to Thorpe Park - Rory is sadly still too short, hopefully next year he'll be tall enough. We had a great time, although disappointingly Nemesis Inferno stayed closed all day and a lot of the big rides closed near the end of the day.

Our last big outing before the kids went back to school was the Natural History Museum. We had planned to eat at Mei Mei's in Borough Market (Rory is obsessed with Uncle Roger) but unfortunately it was closed due to a plumbing issue, the Rice Guys chicken rice was a decent alternative. It was nice to visit the museum again, last time we went Rory was still in the sling. Dippy was back too.

I've been to a couple of gigs, first up was Everything Everything at Chinnery's who were really good, I didn't know much about them beforehand but I came away a fan. Also at Chinnery's was Marine Metal Fest which was a bit heavier, but also enjoyable.

Recently I've attempted to push outside my comfort zone. First of all I attended a Brazilian dancing lesson, I'm rubbish at dancing and I was the only man so I was feeling pretty anxious, but by the end I'd kind of got the hang of it and really enjoyed it, enough to go back the week after! I also attempted speed dating. Again, I was massively anxious about it but I had a really enjoyable evening. I didn't get any matches but it was nice talking to people, the fact we were all there for the same reason meant there was less pressure in a strange way.

I'm still practicing the bass every day, I've added a few songs to my repertoire with Heroes being the most recent addition. I'm still enjoying drumming too.

My hair is short now (as you can see in the Thorpe Park picture above). I was clearly losing the battle with my thinning hair so decided to go for it. Practically everyone has been complimentary about it. It also saves time when leaving the house!