8 Keeling brothers

come and blow away any January blues ......

Congratulations Rob

Happy Birthday Robert Michael Keeling, born 19 January 1952.

Going, going - only one left.

Leather bound Arthur Gibbs letters are bing snapped up and there is only one left. Get in touch quick if you want it! george.keeling@gmail.com

Letters home 1914-1918

Paul and George got a bit excited over a year ago and decided to get a beautiful leather bound edition of Captain Arthur Gibbs' letters home. We have given a few copies to Granny / Mum and kept one each for ourselves. Another six are lying in some warehouse printed but unbound. It took us over a year to get the first six copies and we believe it would be up to three months to get more with that lovely leather binding. (We're not Amazon).

Sadly it's not cheap and we would have to ask £250 + postage for each extra copy. (Even if we shift all six we will still be out of pocket). So if you would like one of these very rare editions, e-mail me quickly before they all go! george.keeling@gmail.com.

Stop press: Sold out!

 

Last night Frewin Rd almost burnt down! Emma was woken by our smoke alarms (I’ve always cursed them, but no more) and we found smoke pouring from our downstairs loo with flames licking up the wall to the right of the sink. A candle we had by mistake left alight had caught onto its very stupid base (a coconut shell) and thence the wall-paper and wooden picture frame above it, both of which were completely burnt out – another few minutes and it would have required the fire-brigade I’m sure, but as it was we were able to put it all out with a towel and bucket of water! Thank God! It brought back memories of the “Fire in case of Fire in case of Fire in case of Fire in case of Fire” notice that used to be stuck to the wall in Albert Place – and I was glad of the training that had given me. Fire drill in our house will be happening as soon as we are all six back together again in Frewin Rd. With lots of love, Jim xox

5 years old

8brothers has just turned five year old! To celebrate I've put up a fascinating optical illusion at the bottom of this post. It may have something to do with the semi conductor current flow. And, apart from the great new banner, a few other things have happened:

I've had a membership drive recently and we've got 8 new subscribers bringing us to 32: Archie, Siobhan, Tom the older, Polly, Issie, Josh, Kate and Dr Trevor. Welcome to the great 8brothers blog! Everybody can post stuff up here to tell us about what you are up to or beg for money etc. It's quite easy, even Paul can do it, just follow one of the links at the top left. Also if you want search for old articles there's a new search box at the top right. For example, type in Barbar, and you can find her diaries again.

Talking of Dr Trevor there should be a new one soon. Trevor the handsome has just started a postgraduate course at Reading University studying the effect of building design on the people who use them. He's already optimising M&S freezer layouts to buoy up the shoppers. I think that's what we used to call Feng Shui, but he's getting fully paid by his benevolent employer for the whole four year course. Result. So assuming he and Archie pass their exams we'll have three doctors in the family soon

Ruth the senior grandchild is getting more famous: She woke up this morning to hear her report for the Local Government Chronicle being broadcast on Radio 2. It was also in  the Mirror, the Telegraph, the Huffington Post and a large number of local newspapers.

And here's the optical illusion that I found on Google+. Look at the + in the centre of the purple dots. What do you see?

You can find out why that's like semi conductor current flow click here.

Bye for now! 
George 

Tom wants ALL your money

Graffiti Tom put this about his Belfast run on Facebook. For those of you who missed his Facebook post, he wrote: 
So I am running the Belfast Marathon next May. Got the flights, B&B and entry all sorted. I thought a [facebook] group would be the easiest way to contact all the Keelings to try and get you to give me all your money, and I mean ALL of it. If you could add all the others to the group as I dont have that many on here right now. the giving page is http://www.mycharitypage.com/t2keeling  and it is a charity in africa that builds schools etc. You can find more info about them on their website. [Ed .. Where's that?]

 

Bratwurst

You can see Tom Palmer's show here: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/comedy-lab/4od. I guess that the Bratwurst sketch was the one Howard was thinking of. Dry Martini please!

Granny beware: Contains "Strong language and adult humour".

Next question: Which actor is Tom?

Don't miss Tom Palmer on Channel 4 (Well E4 actually)

Howard let me know yesterday that his son Tom has got a TV show on E4 on Friday 9th Sept at 11pm – part of the Comedy Labs series - which reproduces (in full costume production) some of their sketches. Howard particularly thought that George would enjoy it, so if he is in Berlin and can't get it off the net, someone better tape it for him.
Howard was actually very specific as to which sketch George would like, the first to come up with the correct item that he thought would tickle George gets a beer/dry martini or similar off me, Paul, when we next meet.
Better set the recorders going!

END TO END WITH ARTHUR

On Thursday 21st July Arthur completed his bike ride from Land's End to John O'Groats. He rode 916 miles in thirteen days (average 70 miles per day). Siobhan, Tom, Edward, Imogen and Flora drove in the support vehicle and occasionally needed to provide directions through some towns or shelter from the headwinds north of Ayr. We were very lucky with the weather and only had one morning of torrrential rainfall. At the end of each day Arthur still seemed to have a fair amount of energy left, even trying to water ski on the Moray Firth east of Inverness when we met up with his godfathers one evening. Our last night in Scotland was spent with Cherry and Bill at Latheronwheel which was a huge treat for all of us. We arrived safely home last night after after a twelve hour slog on the south bound route. It was a great trip and of course our congratulations go to Arthur. But also praise is due to Edward, Imo and Flora for their patience sitting in the car for day after day as we tracked Arthur's route.