weekend 5 nov 06

having made vague plans to go Out to celebrate my birthday earlier in the week, I didn’t feel like it on Saturday, so we stayed home (mostly) and started the site for the local LibDems (which I have finally got my hands on). We did venture down to North Street for lunch and veggie shopping. And, for once, the health food shop had four almond crossants left, so that was Sunday’s brekkie sorted.

on Sunday, I woke up with the worst arthritic/rheumatic pains I’ve felt for a long time, and could barely move, so perlmonger was a hero and went to Sainsburys. I finished the web site, and then we did something I’ve been meaning to do for *ages* – we went on the monthly Village Walk. Very enjoyable – through the woods and round the edges of the golf course for an hours and a half. I’d have enjoyed it more had I a) been hurting less, and b) worn proper boots – I assumed it was a stroll through the village, not a yomp 🙂 But we will do it again when we’re home on first Sundays (which are also Slow Food Market days in Bristol).

Harry who runs the walk was looking for a couple of volunteers to help, so we raised our hands – nice to get involved with something like that, and it will get us out into the fresh air.

came home made a batch of bee in ale, (obviously that should be “beef”, but I rather like the idea – not much eating on a bee, mind) cooked a potato and spinach gratin for our supper, and collapsed on the sofa.

nice weekend, in all.

weekend 28-29 oct 06

after fending off a hack attack on Friday night on the server/IP that hosts Newswireless.net, we were a bit worried as to whether we could get away, but it seemed to die down reasonably quickly. We did wonder whether it was a fishing expedition, to see if we were alert and responsive … and our ISP has all the logs, so we shall be going through them later.

on Saturday morning, I strimmed perlmonger‘s hair, and made a batch of banananananana and pumpkin seed muffins, then we set forth for Oxon, bearing said muffins, stopping only to consume a brekker at the greasy spoon on Hotwell Road.

we arrived at Mr and Mrs Keogh’s cottage in Killington at about 3.45, and a very pleasant time was had watching the bonfire and fireworks (with Sarah, Sara and Zara, to name but three – how confusing :), scoffing loads of lovely cakes, having a pub supper and a late natter with our hosts, and Steve and Lynn who arrived very late. perlmonger was extremely social, and fell fast asleep on the sofa, but then he is a very tired old badger at the moment.

Mrs K is a keen gardener, and we left bearing butternut squash, raspberries (in nearly Nov!), spinach, chillis and peppers from the greenhouse, and loads of lovely apples from their orchard. She also did us up a lovely autumn bouquet from her flower garden.

we came home via Dyrham Park, a National Trust property near Bath. Went round the house, and had a good tramp round the beautiful park and gardens, before having a cream tea (hurrah!) in the restaurant. Most of the NT properties close at the end of October, apart from the gardens, so we probably won’t be doing much more before the spring, which is a shame.

so a cracking weekend, once Friday night’s unpleasantness came to an end.

cream tea


Tinkinswood chambered cairn
Originally uploaded by ramtops.

I promised perlmonger a cream tea as a birthday treat, and we decided to partake of this treat at Lacock, making use of our National Trust membership.

we sallied forth from the house about midday, and stopped in Southville for lunch at our favourite brunching hole, and to stock up at the greengrocer. Then we allowed Jane (the satnav) to guide us to Lacock, which she did via Brislington and Bath, and thus it took *ages*.

still, we arrived eventually, located a suitable cream tea emporium, then went for a stroll round the very lovely manor house, abbey cloisters and grounds. And strolled too long, as the emporium had shut, as had the other one we found on our travels round the village.

ho hum. We returned home, to find nothing that we fancied that wasn’t frozen solid, and dined on a supper of lumps of Jarlsberg, a bag of Twiglets and a bar of Green and Black’s almond chocolate.

so yesterday, we tried again. We decided to go to the Welsh Bird of Prey centre, stopping for lunch at Penarth, as we’d never been, and it looked pretty. We had a very nice lunch in a restaurant called Piersons (which appears to be a Play on Words), then trundled on to Barry, to the BoP centre.

we arrived at 3.05. And it was shut. Doors and gates locked, tills turned off. With a notice on the door that they closed at 4 p.m. “in the winter”. It’s only 8th October, guys. And your web page clearly states that you are open till 5.30, or one hour before dusk, whichever is earlier. Which isn’t 4 p.m. in any book.

so we wandered home slightly disconsolately, pausing to walk over to the burial chamber at Tinkinswood; this is a mere 6000 years old.

and when we arrived back, I *made* some bloody scones, because that seemed to be the only way we were going to get any.

Show of Hands


Show of Hands
Originally uploaded by ramtops.

the extremely fine Show of Hands played an intimate set to 120 lucky people to mark the re-opening of the Village Pump at the Lamb Inn, in Trowbridge. perlmonger and I were lucky enough to get tickets 86 and 87 when we were at the Trowbridge Folk Festival this summer, and we were looking forward to the gig more than I can say.

with the very fine Martyn Joseph as support, and the ever excellent, and seemingly permanent third member of SoH, Miranda Sykes, complete with double bass, crammed on to the tiny stage, it was, in my opinion, the very best set we’ve ever seen them play – 90 minutes of their best songs.

the evening was rounded off with a raffle – we’d bought five tickets for a quid each. First prize was two tickets to the Trowbridge Festival in 2007. And we won! We also had another of our tickets drawn for the third prize, but we threw that one back in, for fear we’d be lynched by the crowd 🙂

a big thanks to John Alderslade and his team for getting the Pump reopened, and for laying on such a cracking evening – and we’ll see you all again in July 🙂

the weekend

the weekend started badly, really … detritus, our linux development and staging server, got overheated during the day on Friday, and we rebooted him. Some time between 8 and 10 on Friday evening, he crashed. Would he reboot?

of course not.

so perlmonger spent Saturday in the server room back bedroom, cannibalising bits of machines together. He decided to take the opportunity to upgrade the rather ancient and venerable version of Linux on the box, and is now up to his oxters in building and configuring things.

I whizzed over to Asda on Saturday afternoon while the foopball was on – the roads were deserted, as was the store. This World Cup is not altogether a bad thing.

a break was taken yesterday to trundle to Cirencester for lunch and natterings with landsmand and valkyrie_k, who provided us with a fabulous carpaccio salad with sundry multiple accompaniments, and then a humungous cheeseboard. A very jolly time was had by all.

Iggy has a poorly ear, and has been to the vet for a jab; also, antibiotic pills have to be perpetrated. He’s been very miz indeed, and we managed to get yesterday’s pills down him easily. This morning, he wasn’t having *any* of it, so is presumably on the mend. I have no idea how to get pills down a strong male Bengal cat who doesn’t want them, so I suspect it’ll be back to the vet for another jab. More expense – it’ll have to come out of his pocket money.

weekend

better [posted] late than never.

on Friday we set off not quite as bright and early as I’d have liked, but at 11 a.m., which is not bad for us, really, especially as Clients kept phoning. One of them reminded perlmonger quite forcefully of a deadline which had crept up on him for this Thursday …

anyway, off we trundled to Norwich – a journey which we estimated would take us 4.5 hours. No – 5.5 hours. Passing captainblue territory en route, we arrived just in time to check into the hotel* then go straight out for an early supper with kalunina, her other half Stuart, and his children Chris and Ellie, at Captain Americas, a burger bar in central Norwich.

Saturday saw us shopping in Norwich – I bought a Hat (it deserves the capitalisation), Pete got a belt with the shipping forecast areas on it, and we bought kalunina a set of digital scales and some gingerbread cutters – you can tell that she’s spending time with children 🙂 We also picked up the Wallace and Gromit DVDs as a present for the children. Supper was a takeaway from somewhere called Planet Wok, which was very good.

we had to leave fairly promptly on Sunday morning, due to the aforementioned deadline, but it was a very nice weekend, and good to meet Stuart, Chris and Ellie.

*the hotel? Just don’t – *don’t* – ever stay at the “Quality” Hotel in Bowthorpe, Norwich. It’s utterly vile. And as they were foolish enough to send me an e-mailed questionnaire this morning, I’ve told them so. And they wanted *six pounds* for 30 minutes of wireless internet access – FFS …

a new twist

we were invited for supper at our new neighbours, Matt and Andrea (WANOLJ). Very nice evening, with another three couples who (obviously) we hadn’t met before.

after we’d eaten, I asked Helen if she’d like to come and meet the cats, as we’d been talking about them. And so it transpired that, rather than the ladies leaving the room after dinner, we all left the house 🙂 And spent about 45 minutes in our gaff, admiring cats and nattering.

I wonder if it could be a new trend …

we returned to find the chaps drinking, and talking bollox; so that never changes.

entertainment

couple of Outs this week … firstly, Show of Hands on Tuesday at St Georges in Bristol. SoH are probably my favourite live band, even though they are folk 🙂 Moyra (WINOLJ) came up from Berks to accompany us, before wending her way northwestwards for a funeral.

she was introduced to Show of Hands by me – I gave her a CD of theirs. The band are more than happy for people to spread their music around like this, and say so at every concert; if only more musicians were able to do this, but the record companies wouldn’t like it, would they?

Phil and Steve were accompanied during the second half by Miranda Sykes, a singer / double bass player from Lincoln with a voice that we knew could do folk, but didn’t know could do jazz. Well, she can!

as always, a most enjoyable night.

last night, we went to see Jools Holland at Colsonall. We see him every year during his autumn tour, and sometimes during the summer too, and it’s normally a great gig. However, not last night …

firstly, the sound mix was dire. Absolutely appalling. The brass section were mixed up too high, and you couldn’t hear any of the vocals properly. Such a shame, because Sam Browne and Ruby Turner are both fabulous singers.

and then there was the elephant chap in the seat next to me. He was *gargantuan*. He can’t have been much more than 20 years old, and while I’m hopeless at judging weight in avoirdupois, he must have been at least 25 stone (that’s 350lbs for my transatlantic readers). He bulged over the edge of the shiny new seat, so that I had to sit twisted and hunched. Then he proceeded to eat. And eat. Two packets of chocolate, a bag of crisps, a bottle of coke, a banana (a banana?! in a concert?! oh yes – the smell was nauseating). At least, that was what I noticed, in about an hour and a half, and then we went to have a dance, and find somewhere else to sit. He’s probably there still, unless they managed to get a crane into the hall.

oh, and the support act was Chris Difford, who used to be in Squeeze. His voice is gone, and he just rehashed old Squeeze numbers, but Glenn Tilbrook he ain’t. Not enjoyable – avoid.

high spot of the evening was the guest star with Mr Holland, one Marc Almond – I must say that a rhythm and blues version of Tainted Love worked remarkably well, although I kept expecting it to segue into the 12″ version :… )