In the pub last night my friend Nick (happy birthday!) mentioned this website: the UCL Surname Profiler. It does an analysis of the relative distribution of surnames in 1881 and 1998. It's well worth wasting some working time upon.

Johnston turns out to occur most frequently in Shetland and the Lake District in 1881! Running them close is the Scottish Borders which is exactly where my Grandfather's family came from. In the intervening 100 years plus we seem to have become more frequent across the whole of Scotland, the North, and, erm Central London.

What does it all mean....? Who cares! It's just interesting.

Check out DJ Moule and his ace Beastie Boys vs Beatles mashup - Close to my Roots.

Discovered courtesy of this excellent blog

I've updated my flickr account with pics from Breck. But here's a taster...

I've been meaning to post for ages but a combination of an inaccessible super-highway and total exhaustion every evening have kept me quiet. But here I am (don't call it a comeback).

What a week! Best week's skiing ever. We've had two fantastic powder days (it snowed 6-7" inches overnight - twice!), a trip to Vail and I've discovered the healing powers of the hot-tub. Good times.

Powder day 1 was Monday, which was also a public holiday in the US. Snow had been forecast and as I thought it would be crowded because of the holiday I booked myself a lesson with the Breckenridge Big Mountain Experience. The idea of the BBME is to go and ski the steep scary stuff I wouldn't generally do on my own. So we did. It was fantastic; just our instructor and one other punter so it was like a private lesson. Plus, because we were with the ski school, we got priority in the lift queue so we bypassed the holiday crowds. Sweet.

On Tuesday we took a road-trip to the nearby resort of Vail. Our driver was another friend from Fernie, the one and only Deke Dalas (aka Derek Wilson). He's staying in Breck for the winter and has a car so off we went. Vail is one of those resorts with a really big reputation so I was really excited by the prospect but wondered if it would live up to its billing. Apart from the skiing the reputation it has is for being expensive and a bit posh. Well I can report that they employ people to hand you a tissue as you enter the mountain restaraunts so I think we can tick the posh box. (I didn't go to the loo so who knows what services they offer there...).

And the skiing? OH MY GOD! If I can drop into the local idiom for a second its "totally awesome". The famous Back Bowls are incredible. Huge, open, round bowls, usually with a single lift coming back up and you can pretty much ski any line you like on the way down. I thought it was off-piste heaven but that was until we got to Blue Sky Basin, the new jewel in Vail's crown. Even more fantastic off-piste through the trees. I'm going back to Vail tomorrow and BSB is my first destination. So the bullet point to take away from all this is "Vail: believe the hype". Mind you I couldn't help but laugh at some of the rampant commercialism on display. Each one of the Back Bowls is trade-marked and the runs in Tea Cup Bowl (tm) are all named after varieties of herbal tea from a particular company. And then there's the cod-Austrian stylee architecture in Vail village. All a bit twee. So if you are coming this way, stay in Breck and get a mate to drive you to Vail. Regularly.

And then there's today. Another huge dump of snow overnight and I was up with the (mountain) lark to get some freshies. It was boot deep powder all over the mountain, except in some of the sheltered treed areas where the drifts were knee-deep or more. Super soft fluffy snow it was absolutely fantastic - definately the best day's skiing I've ever had.

One of the apres-ski traditions I'd heard about in the USA is the outdoor hot-tub. Our hotel has about six and it's just great to lounge in this hot, hot water while it's gently snowing. I'm an absolute convert and as soon as I can work out how to get one into my flat in the Bush then in it goes. One thing I am disapointed about is that I'd understood that hot-tubs were typically filled with "College Girls Gone Wild". Turns out they aren't. Ho Hum.

Arriving in Denver is quite a thrill, especially if, like me, you flat-out love America. You arrive over flat flat plains and then to the west the Rockies rear up like some massive rampart. It's a bit like Calgary and if patriotic pride makes me say the Canadian rockies are more magnificent, the mountains here are more imminent: they seem to start right on the city limits.

We arrived just as the sun started to set behind the mountains and the skyscrapers of downtown Denver. The sun setting behind the Rockies.... I've always loved that imagine, there's something kind of sublime or pioneer-y about it. Maybe its the way they run North-South so uncompromisingly - they define the compass points unequivocaly. I remember standing by the trans-canada highway in Golden, British Columbia as a 19yr old watching the sun set behind the mountain and thinking that this was a great thing to watch.

Anyhow I'm now another 5000ft up in Breckenridge, Colorado. The resort is at about 10,000 ft and I was feeling very ropey when I arrived. Walking up the stairs left me knackered! But a good night's sleep seems to have done the trick. Waking up to 4" fresh snow also helped. And today was bright sunshine and blue skies all day - great skiing.

Today I began the task of trying to sort out my parents' house in Oxford. I've drawn up a plan of when I'm going to do each room and if I can stick to it we'll be in a position to sell everything I don't want to keep, in aid of OXPIP: the Oxford Parent Infant Project, sometime at the end of May or in early June.

I started with the attic and what a treasure trove that proved to be. Among the items I found were:

• A wig (which it turns out doesn't suit me)
• A collapsable top hat
  
• 2 fishing rods, 2 reels and my old tackle box (so that's where it went)
• The freedom of the city of Winnipeg. (For someone called Sir John JOHNSON - I'm sure dad was too polite to point out the mistake)
• Some strange ceremonial sword (probably Malay or Indonesian?)
• A backpack full of possesions of a student friend of my parents who dropped it off for a few months. In 1990.
• A paddling pool
• 100s of my mother's letters home to her mum
• A suitcase full of sketches made by my great-grandfather between 1880-1900. Basically his watercolour holiday snaps!
• A set of journals belonging to some ancient relative. How ancient? Well they cover that period between 1783 and 1796 which seems pretty ancient to me. File under "spidery writing".
• The membership list of the Whig Club 1795. I'm chuffed to see that my family have been putting the smackdown on Tories for over 200 years because one of the members is John Crace "builder and decorater, Hammersmith", my Great-great-great-great-grandfather!
  

I was watching ITV news.

I've been carrying my camera around in my bag this week (only because I had neglected to take it out after the weekend). But this has meant I've been able to snap a couple of odd sights I've seen.

First of all there was this mysterious post-it note on the tube:


And then this poster, which confirms my opinion that the only thing commuters want is pictures. I'm sure it's all in the best possible taste:

Happy New Year chums.

Here are my resolutions - you are my witnesses:

1. Quit the on-line dating: It's taken me a year and a half to realise that it's just not for me. I could go into why not by Spinsterella has done it much better. I deleted my account today - so that's already achieved, now I just have to guard against recidivism.
2. Do some voluntary work: Not the most original resolution, but then thats not the point. In a world without my mum and dad we are down two good-guys so we all need to step up...

If my time IN Chamonix was great (and for those of you still wondering: I did kind of get what I wanted for Christmas!) then the time between leaving Chamonix and getting into my flat was a lot less great. Not disasterous, just annoying.

The trouble started when I realised that I didn't have the house keys for my Shepherds Bush bachelor pad. When I got my bags out of the van that took us to the airport I got a sinking feeling that the pocket on my backpack where I had put my keys was the one that was lolling open in a very empty kind of way. Hmmm. A frantic check, double check, triple check of all my pockets confirmed that wherever my keys were, they weren't on me. Now normally I panic in these situations but my feel-good holiday mojo was still working. So I made a few calls.

Call 1 was to Alex and Jonny. Once upon a time they had spare keys for my flat but I was pretty certain that Lucy had come to get them one time and I had not returned them. But maybe I could get a place to stay for the night. Unfortunately there was a chance that they might be in Dorset. Or Yorkshire. And there was no answer when I rang.

Call 2 then was to my Aunt Anne in Oxford hoping that she would:
A. Be in
B. Be in Oxford
C. Be willing to put me up for the night
Luckily she was all 3. Thanks Aunty! At least I knew I had a place to stay, even if it would be a palaver to get there from Luton.

Call 3 was to Peter and Eleanor. They also had a spare set of keys but again I couldn't remember if I had returned them after the last time I had got locked out. (I'm a bit useless aren't I?) Rang the mobile and got the answering machine. I explained my predicament.

Call 4 was to Alex and Jonny on the land line. Joy! They were in and despite having a house full of grandparents and 2 children under 3 they offered me a sofa. I thanked them profusely and rang my aunt to stand her down.

Just then I got an incomming call. It was Peter who was on the way to Stratford to see The Canterbury Tales. He was full of confidence that they had my spare keys.
JJ: Hoorah!
But they were in Malvern all week.
JJ: Arsebiscuits!
But their estate agent in London had a set of keys and they could ring them in the morning.
JJ: Hoorah!
Hang on - they had double locked the door and the estate agent wouldn't be able to open it.
JJ: Bum!

Peter wasn't to be daunted by that set back and we agreed to speak when I was back in Blighty. What a mate!

The flight from Geneva proved to be relatively crash free and we were certainly better off than the EasyJet flight to Gatwick at the gate next to ours which got cancelled just as the passengers were ready to board. Nice.

Back in Blair's Britain and it seems the transport system is being assailed by, erm , snow. Queue chaos on the Thameslink and lines to all points south. I arrive on Platform 3 at Luton and listen to automated announcements that the next train is getting later and later. Things have come to a pretty pass when they need to automate the voice that spends its time explain that trains are late. The odds shorten briefly as the train comes in from 18 minutes late to 15 minutes late. But it still makes sense to hump my skis and bag over to platform 1 for the next scheduled arrival.

Another automated announcement tells the growing throng that the next train at platform 1 will be the 21.20 to Brighton. Great, I thought. Hmmm, I thought as I saw a train pull in at Platform 3. "Platform Alteration" is the next mechanised message and we all rush for the stairs. The fastest people have just made it to the top of the bridge over the lines when the train pulls away and leaves. Quite extraordinary. An American gent next to me was absolutely gobsmacked. I was going to say that this is the sort of thing we expect from our trains but even I thought it was shocking. Oh Brunel, where art thou?

In the end another train did turn up and I made it through to Alex and Jonny's. Sleep - lovely.

There was no way I could go to work the next day so on the plus side I did get another day's holiday and spent the morning with A & J, my delightful god-daughter Jessica and her 6 week old bro, Tom, which was lovely. In the course of the morning I struck a plan with Peter and Eleanor. They suggested we meet half way: if I went up to Oxford then they could come down from Malvern, give me their keys and I could go back to London, go to their flat, find my keys and at last get back to my place.

So that's what we did and I even managed to bump into Andy Mulligan in Oxford who's in the panto there so it was a great day for seeing friends. And I need to put on public record that I have the best friends in the world! Peter and Eleanor for comming all that way; Alex and Jonny for putting me up. Thanks so much guys. And while we are at it - Jamie Reid for the most thoughtful Christmas present I've ever received (more on that another time).

Thank you all.

I finally got back into my flat about 24 hours later than I should have. It was so great to be home and I've learned there's no more wonderful sound than the comforting rattle of keys.