David Coveney

Bye Bye Skoda

David Coveney — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:01:33 +0000

It’s always sad when you decide to get rid of a car that you’ve enjoyed owning. Not because it’s no good, but because your needs have changed. And the biggest problem was that we’re now parents to one growing toddler and another relatively new baby.

Which nearly did my back in. Both the Skoda and the Audi are relatively low cars, and as I have a weak back as it is, this proved too much and I recently found myself barely able to move for a weekend. Not good. I decided it was time to find a taller car.

So, with a heavy heart, I’m selling my 77,000 mile late 2004 Skoda Octavia vRS. As you might expect from me, it’s been well looked after, has a full service history and no expense has been spared in its maintenance. It’s a cracking car with great performance, handling and pretty good refinement.

I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking. If you’re interested, drop me a line in the comments below. I’ll be adding a contact number on here shortly once the Telesafe number’s come through.

Price? Just £3100 – a lot of car for little money. I’ll be sad to see it go.

2011′s Nearly Over

David Coveney — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:29:16 +0000

So I thought I’d do a Wordle to see what figured highly on this blog.

It’s probably no surprise that the two dominant words here are Conrad and Kolya! No bad thing – they’re my two amazing, wonderful kids. It’s been quite a tough year in terms of time and effort. Business continues as it should, and it’s almost certainly been the company’s best calendar year so far, with 2012 looking even more promising. But there’s not doubt that right now I’m feeling pretty tired – the holiday season couldn’t have come any sooner for me, and in-laws will find themselves well used!

Whilst fiddling with Wordle above, my colleague Rob came up and mentioned We Feel Fine. So I asked it for feelings in the UK of people aged 40-49 this month. I was a bit surprised by the existential emptiness of the result. Stark dude, stark.

Ignite Liverpool, 1st December

David Coveney — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:21:35 +0000

I’ll be speaking at Ignite Liverpool 8 on the 1st of December (ie, Thursday evening) about a pretty random topic.

I’ve settled on potatoes. Why potatoes? Because although they’re nothing like as dull as you might think, the perception is just that. They’re not glamourous, or pretty, or novel. I also wanted a challenge – what could I find in the familiar that’s unfamiliar. In researching the subject I surprised myself. I discovered that NASA has guidance on how to make asteroids with potatoes.

I did have some problems, however – I’d offered myself up for the gig before the birth of our second son, Kolya. What I didn’t realise was just how much more tiring, how much less spare time, I would have to plan the presentation. Not only that, but I’ve been busy at work trying to keep business coming in during a particularly dry patch thanks to the start of what appears to be a double-dip recession. But we’re doing OK, the presentation is written, and I think we’re OK.

So, are you going to come? Tickets are free… Book Now!

Do You Need an SLR?

David Coveney — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 14:50:11 +0000

OK, I’ve always said that you don’t need a fancy camera to take good pictures. All that a good camera does is add flexibility and choice, but so long as there’s a decent amount of light (and even then, not necessarily that much) a compact or a smartphone camera could well be adequate.

This lunchtime I went for a walk but was dismayed to find my trusty Lumix LX3 wasn’t in my backpack. I decided I should still try and take pictures, however. The light was flat, the weather uninspiring, but let’s try with the smartphone camera and see what comes up.

I’m going to have a go at doing this as a regular feature. Just to challenge my abilities with composition and creativity.

I will admit to one thing, however – I’ve post-processed. I usually post pictures up as they came out of the camera, but sometimes you need to tweak at least a little – and smartphone cameras are pretty limited in their controls for contrast and colour.

Three and a Half Weeks of Kolya

David Coveney — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 08:14:16 +0000

I’m sitting here in the lounge, at 6am, with my laptop open. Two things to note here – once upon a time 6am was more of a going to bed time than a getting out of bed time, and actually it’s really like 7am because the clocks went back an hour last night. But I’ve been up for an hour anyway.

So, three weeks after the birth of Kolya, we’re starting to find something of a rhythm. It’s different to around the same stage with Conrad, but not in the way Kolya is, but how we are. In fact it’s remarkable looking at my notes from Conrad at the same age it feels identical. Constant feeding, a fussy period (which I assume is the digestive system settling down) which is now waning, a tired mother, and a tired father. But the big big difference is that he’s our second child.

And that’s massive, because suddenly there’s very little spare capacity. The first few days especially were tricky because we came home on the Friday, meaning that we had two days where we had both a toddler and a newborn to deal with. The change unsettled Conrad, and Kolya is just like newborns always are – no sense of day and night, and constantly hungry. So Kolya would wake, cry loudly, and then Conrad would react with concern and a surprising desire to help. He couldn’t, of course, and that just led to tears from him also.

Once that first weekend was over, we were able to drop Conrad off at nursery which meant that daytimes were just like 17 months ago. In the evening and night it was a touch trickier, I’d collect Conrad, bring him home and, essentially be like a single parent for the night. I would feed Conrad, play with him, bathe him, put him to bed, calm him down if he woke in the night, get up before him if possible to shower and dress, feed him breakfast, play again, then take him to nursery. In effect this pattern is mostly the same a few weeks later – the difference is I’m back at work, so after dropping off Conrad I go to work. Although I don’t usually pick him up, once I’m home I’m mostly kept busy dealing with him until he’s asleep. Then I have about 1.5hrs before bed which is mostly domestic duties and jobs and supporting Romana and Kolya.

No Complaints!

That may sound like I’m complaining, but I’m not. I’m sharing because it’s stuff nobody tells you about before you have children, and what it all means is that suddenly you put great store by being organised. Spending five minutes looking for your keys isn’t really a problem when you live alone. Spending five minutes looking for your keys when you have a crying child in hand really is a problem.

Of course, with tiredness, mistakes happen. On the second weekend I’d left the car door’s unlocked overnight and an opportunist helped himself to our satnav. I didn’t need it and that, coupled with a few stressful incidents in the days following left me drained and misanthropic. In the end, while Conrad was at nursery I retired to the garage, got the power drill up, and put up some shelfs, reorganised the comms cabinet, and generally got some pent up testosterone out of my system.

The Main Course

But I know that many of you don’t visit to read my tales – you visit to see pictures of the babies!

Here’s a set from the past couple of weeks, including an afternoon where quite a few friends dropped in to see Kolya for the first time. Enjoy!

Las Palmas – Drunken Toddler

David Coveney — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 20:01:02 +0000

Ever thought that toddlers act like drunk small people?

The way the embed works is a bit rubbish, sorry, but the film’s worth it :-)

Hello, Kolya Coveney

David Coveney — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 22:36:02 +0000

After a couple of false starts, we left in a hurry for the hospital on Wednesday night. Less than three hours later, at 00:23hrs on the 6th of October 2011, our gorgeous new son Kolya was born.

At 3.6kg, 55cm and with a head circumference of 35cm he’s a tad heavier than Conrad, but the same length.

We’re now very tired, so I’ll just say a big thank you to everyone on Facebook and Twitter who have thanked us, our friends and family for presents, and to Gordon who came and babysat Conrad at very short notice.

Romana was a trooper, and left only a small bite on my arm! Both are doing well, with Kolya turning out to be a hungry and confident little feeder.

In the Forest

David Coveney — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 13:46:28 +0000

Conrad and I decided that a walk in the forest would be an interesting change.

Obviously, being his first time there, it was an interesting one for him, with the new smells, tricky forest floor and odd noises. He loved it!

I forgot my camera, so all shots were taken on my phone – apologies for the relatively poor quality.

The Liverpool Riots Do Not Indicate That Our Society Is Broken

David Coveney — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 09:57:12 +0000

Ok, the riots matter. Especially if you’re unlucky enough to have had to face rioters in your district, near your home, or near your business. In fact, the riots and disturbances are full of tragedy, deaths and ruined lives. They are, frankly, horrible.

And strong action is needed to stop it turning into a joyfull rampage for our criminal underclass.

But what they aren’t is some kind of protest. They’re a laugh. If I didn’t have much to lose I suspect I might even find the thrill of a riot quite an attraction. And in areas where there’s possibly not much to do if you’ve got very little money then I can quite understand the fun, the empowerment of feeling that police won’t stop you when they usually do. Thing is, what nobody seems to be saying is that the number of people involved is tiny.

200/816216 = 0.0245%

Here’s a thing – the number of people kicking off in the Liverpool area has been reported as approximately 200. In reality that means anywhere between 50 and 500. But let’s assume that 200 is correct for now. That’s a whole 0.0245% of the population. Another way of looking at is that that 99.975% of the population in Liverpool didn’t feel compelled to smash anything up or set fire to cars. I daresay the proportions around London are similar.

So actually, society functions well for almost everybody in it. In fact, given that 45,000 18-20 year olds are indicted of a criminal offence in a year (sample from 1999) you can see that even the vast majority of young convicted criminals aren’t interested in rioting. The numbers are so small that you can’t say that this is a problem with a consumerist society, a problem with poverty, or a problem with our culture – the sample size is too small. It’s probably just some yobs getting the upper hand on the police and having some fun.

It’s a Policing Thing, Stupid

You can stop almost all riots. All you need are an awful lot of police who aren’t scared to intimidate and bully their way through trouble. It works. Riots are rare in police states, for example.

So we need to ask if we really want brutal police officers? What about when they’re not dealing with a riot? They’re going to be the ones your son deals with when he gives a bit of cheek to an officer after being told off for cycling on the pavement. They’re going to be the ones potentially wading in too early during an otherwise peaceful protest.

We must come to accept that these occasional moments of unrest are, unless repeated again and again with significant economic damage, a relatively small cost of living in a relatively free society. Just as we mustn’t allow the few terrorists with religious agendas to change how we live, we mustn’t allow the few thugs out there to change the way we deal with protest and the way we run our cities.

Of course, the cost mustn’t be borne by the individuals and businesses affected – if our society is to accept this, it must also ensure that nobody is left harmed or significantly out of pocket by this either. We need to be humane and adult about it all.

What we certainly don’t need is to start pressuring our politicians into making some dumb, knee-jerk changes that will take away our hard won freedoms. Let’s take stock, let’s maybe ask for police to be a little smarter in apprehending the rioters, but let’s not give up and change too much.

Into the Sea!

David Coveney — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 13:20:58 +0000

Last month we enjoyed a number of visitors. One family to come were Adrian and Ania, Igor and Mikolaj – this is great for Conrad as he loves other children, with Igor being four years and Mikoaj nine months old.

In fact, it’s hard to describe the delight from Conrad when he’s got a four year old to play with. At times he’s clinging onto the legs of other children and not letting them move anywhere, which may come across as a bit needy. I hope he grows out of it before he’s 18.

We all went together to the Blue Planet aquarium. This was Conrad’s first time in such a place, and it was great to discover that young children go free. And he loved the colours. I suspect he was a bit bemused by a lot of it, however, but he did appear to have a great time.

The beach we went to was Crosby beach where Anthony Gormley’s Another Place is installed. This is one hundred statues in the image of the artist. It is, in essence, a statement on the massive ego of some artists but, as the tide corrodes the iron statues, probably reflects on its fragility too. That’s my arty bollocks approach to it anyway.

Pics, then…