I was fast asleep this morning, probably dreaming about tornadoes, when I was rudely awoken by the sound of mayhem in my garden. As I was jolted fully awake I realised it must have been the duck nesting in our garden as I could hear incessant quacking. Looking out of the window was such a lovely sight – it was our duck leading her flock of newly hatched chicks around the decking!

Since it's Saturday morning we knew we didn't have to go to work and could finally follow them around to see where they go. After letting her chicks frolic around she herded them together, somehow instructing them to rally underneath her and then spent around an hour keeping them warm while having a bit of shut-eye:

Then, with the flap of a wing, she decided it was time to move on and she started leading them in a line at a fair pace down our street with us and our friends (who were staying with us) in tow:

They were absolutely adorable and once other neighbours spotted what we were watching they came along to enjoy the spectacle. The duck then led her chicks down a cul de sac – much to our puzzlement as it was not towards water – and then proceeded to have a drink stop at a pond in one of the gardens. After that we decided to leave her to it and not interfere with what she was doing – it was clear that she had a plan.

And with that our duck and her chicks walked out of our life. I hope we'll see them again soon! 

I know you've all been waiting impatiently for another episode in my hair saga, well here it is! While the My Hair section of my site was the most popular for a time, it's been overtaken by my Photography Tips and that's not right. It's time to redress the balance.

So, to recap. I had a crew cut for several years up until 2005 when I decided to grow it long. Very long. So long that I could tie it up in a pony tail and easily pass as a member of a folk band or a student. After growing tired of it blowing all over the place and wearing a girlie hair band for football I cut it back to the more rock star look you see here:

And for a while that was good. The hair was at a length where it wouldn't get in my eyes so I could do most sporting activities without it annoying me. When it grew a bit longer before I had it cut I could use the girlie hair band and it wouldn't look too bad. But I was becoming a slave to the salon and having to work my life around when I was getting my next haircut. I'd have to wash and dry my hair in the morning for it to stay where I wanted it and that took time. If I had a workout in the evening and a shower afterwards I'd have the tricky choice of:

• Wash the hair and go to bed with wet hair
• Wash and dry the hair (which takes time) only to do it again in the morning
• Don't wash the hair and just ignore the fact that it was all sweat-covered and greasy
• Wish I had shorter hair and didn't have to think about it

And naturally I took the last option most of the time.

Of course, the well documented fact that I'm slowly getting more and more grey hairs didn't help either. I'd get my hair looking good and then some damned grey hairs – all straggly and horrible looking – would pop up and annoy me. This vanity and fussing all had to end. And now it has.

I'd finally had enough and decided it all had to go. I was going to return to my roots (pun intended) and revert to my crew cut. And here it is:

(You wouldn't believe how long it took to reproduce the expression and angle from the rock star shot above). It's no mess, no fuss. In the morning I have a shower, towel dry my hair and I'm done in seconds. If I've had a workout it's a no brainer, I can wash my hair in the shower – it'll be dry in no time. I can throw away the girlie hair bands and the lads I play football with can stop taking the piss (they can now just stick to jokes about my footballing skills or poor finishing). I don't have to pay top dollar to a hair dresser, I can get my good lady to do it for free. And if it's windy or rainy I won't care at all about my hair going frizzy or getting messed up.

I feel like a man again! Now, if I could just do something about those pesky grey hairs…  

So just to recap, last year we had a duck nesting in our garden and she had 14 chicks. Then a couple of months ago our duck came back and reared about 16 chicks. My good lady missed the new chicks as she went to work that morning without first doing a duck check (you should always do a duck check in the morning) and she was gutted. However, a couple of weeks ago I saw something swooping out of the sky from the corner of my eye and you'll never guess what it was… It was another duck! She landed in the garden and walked over to the same patch (just behind the lavendar) and nestled down on her newly created nest!

So that's going to be 2 lots of chicks raised in our garden this year in a plant bed measuring about a metre deep by 4 metres wide! Unbelievable. I guess we're getting a reputation in the local duck community as a safe haven for rearing chicks. I'll make sure this time I take the morning off when they hatch so I can get loads of pictures and some video of them frolicking around and formation marching to water!

I’ve just had the pleasure of spending a long weekend with good friends and their entertaining children in Lyon, France. I wrote the last time I visited them about how my first holiday abroad was punctuated by spending a day waiting in Lyon bus station for another friend who’d forgotten his passport (unknown to us) and never made it (although he did a day or so later). As I discovered the last time I was there Lyon is a beautiful city with large parks, old and new sections and lovely weather – amongst many other things.

Despite the fact that my French gets worse every time I visit France and I come back promising myself I’ll do something about it (damnit, this time I will!!), it’s too easy as my friends speak fluent French – which isn’t surprising since one of them actually is French!

There’s always something happening in a place like Lyon and we spent Saturday afternoon attending “Les Invites” festival which was a most curious experience. We were greeted by the following scene:

As I’m sure you can tell, there are a couple of guys (several more out of shot) being led along the street in leather leashes howling like monkeys. Clearly this was some sort of artistic statement (I was guessing it was something to do with the lack of individual freedom we have as individuals thanks to increasing government interference and control making us nothing more than animals in a zoo – or maybe I was reading too much into it). As you might expect they were being led towards a cage where they spent the rest of the day howling and frolicking around:

The quizzical looks on the faces of the passers-by says it all!

I had a really great time (well, it was actually “we” since my good lady was there too – although this is supposed to be “John’s Adventures” so I’ll continue the “it’s all about me theme”) and it was lovely to be in a warm, sunny climate. To see colours other than drab Yorkshire grey. To eat good food. To experience a culture that embraces sport and activity. To see friends I don’t get to see often enough!

Ah well, back to reality and miserable weather…

I spotted this while walking through Kettlewell at the weekend and despite it being an old joke it did make me laugh seeing it in someone's window:

It reads: "Missing from home. Wife and Dog. Information Required. Reward for return of the Dog.". I just hope their dog turns up!  

After re-factoring the templates that generate this site I was randomly flicking through some pages just to make sure everything was working as intended. (I'm glad to say it is – in that nothing looks different). While on this page I accidentally clicked the spellcheck button that's part of Google Toolbar and was presented with the following message:

It reads: "The default language you have selected for spellchecking is English, but your text looks like it might be Portuguese. Would you like to change the language to Portuguese?". The nerve!

Since moving to a Mac I copied all my old documents, photos and videos across to their new home. This gave me a chance to have a good trawl through the last few years of my life which has been quite interesting. One video clip that made me laugh was the following one of my guinea pigs fighting over a stick of celery a few years back:

Whitie (in the video) lasted a good 8 years and sometimes when I rustle a bag of salad I can still hear her squeaking (if you tune out my inane cackling you can hear her in the video). So many happy memories!

You know, I’m sure I don’t sound that Scottish now. I think my accent may have softened after years of living in Yorkshire…

Whenever I think of 'The Three Peaks' I think of Ben Nevis, Snowdonia and Scafell Pike. These are the highest mountains of Scotland, Wales and England respectively. While I've climbed Nevis and Scafell (the latter about 3 times) I haven't yet climbed Snowdonia but it's on the list for this year. In all it will have taken me around 10 years for me to get the 3 done. However some people like to do it in 24 hours – driving like madmen between each mountain. That's never interested me, it just seems like a waste of time turning up at each mountain, climbing it then going elsewhere. I'd rather spend a few days in each area climbing several mountains and appreciating their respective surroundings.

However, in Yorkshire there is another, slightly less pointless 3 peaks. They are Pen-y-ghent, Ingleborough and Whernside. They're all around 700m high and are situation within a few miles of each other. I've climbed the first two and even mountain biked up the second one (to be fair I pushed it up a lot of it and flew like a maniac on the way down) but have never been up Whernside. Until yesterday that is.

A friend of mine and my good lady decided to take on the mighty task of scaling this awesome peak! Okay, this isn't the Alps or the Himalaya – this is Yorkshire. It was a fairly steady incline, not too taxing and not at all technical but it did give us a fantastic view of the surrounding countryside and the spectre of the other 2 of the 3 peaks looming in the distance. My friend told me he was going to do all 3 back-to-back which set me thinking…

The official Three Peaks Walk is 24.5 miles in length and takes in 1600m of climbing, should be completed in less than 12 hours and is one of these things you really should do if you live in the area and call yourself a hiker. Frankly, when I was 23 I'd have seriously considered running it but since my friend suggested doing it in 4 weeks I don't really have time to get that fit (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it, nothing to do with being over 30 at all). So it's time to polish my boots, buy some new hiking socks and get walking.

For the last few years I've wanted to do a solo walk across one of the wilderness areas of Scotland (Letterewe and Fisherfield Forest) carrying everything I need on my back. I guess ticking off the 3 peaks would be a good training exercise so I'm going to give it a shot. Wish me luck!

My friend Ade was on assignment taking photos of black and white cows (strange but true) and since I was there and we found a field full of the beasts I rattled off a few shots. My favourite of the lot has to be this one:

Since I'm much better at taking photos than coming up with witty taglines, does anyone out there have a suggestion for a caption?