Missing months

Ooops. I've now managed to miss two months worth of blog posts.
I missed July, but that was a fairly hectic month with wedding and honeymoon. But also managed to miss September too.

Looks like I'm getting too busy to blog.

Well, 3 places I've been or am going to this month:

1. Sunningdale Park
2. Ascot (near Suningdale Park)
3. Um, Bristol...

Sounds quite boring really... Except for the vaguely interesting fact that I ended up in the interview room of Ascot police station!

random wedding pictures

A flavour of the wedding. But only a teaser. We're saving the best shots for the wedding album...

Post-Marriage

For the first time since starting this blog, I didn't manage to make a least one post a month. Admittedly, I did get married in July and so blogging (thankfully) wasn't my main priority.

So, that's one of my 3 recent regrets.

The second: not barring my best man access to this blog and thus denying him any embarassing material he could use in his speech against me (though in retrospect, I think he was pretty kind and if I'd denied him access to this blog for 'embarassing-lite' material, he might have had to bring out the big guns).

And finally, failing to cater for one half of mattandjules dessert requests. Thank goodness for understanding staff at the Templeton! They did say 'there's always one'! Well, thanks for being that 'one'.

Notice that in absolutely no way am I regretting anything else I did in July. Married and loving it. Even Geraldine hasn't received much attention since getting back from honeymoon...

Sigh, in-jokes about in this post...

Stag do!

Picture taken by Gazman. Being the stag, I was in no position to take any pictures. Though I suppose in retrospect I did have a very fetching Indy manbag to carry a camera in...

I can think of 3 awards I'd like to award from my view of the stag-do:

1. Most competent - dandcmi for his amazingly frantic paddling style which despite being about 20m behind an opposing player in the canoe water polo, still got to the ball ahead of that player. Was definitely the red team's most valuable player and contributor to the 5-2 (was 4-0 at one stage) thrashing of the blue team.

2. Most violent - the testorone pumped male half of the entity known as mattandjules. Best demonstrated when dandcmi had the ball and he leaped kamikaze from his canoe onto dandcmi's canoe and capsized him in order to retrieve the ball. Strangely enough no foul was given, which leads me to suspect that canoe water polo was just invented on the spot by the Bray canoeing instructors.

3. Most Disorganised - Desborg for managing to turn up at the wrong Go-Ape 30 miles to the North. Could also win the award for Most Speedy due to the fact that he managed to catch up with the main stag party group before we started on Go-Ape proper and showed us how to do backwards head-plants on the zip wires.

Cabin & Cabinette's wedding - Part 1

Why have a first dance when you can have a first 'dodge'. This definitely goes into the top 3 weddings I've been to. Top marks to Cabin and Cabinette for the dodgems.
Beautiful weather, lovely location (Penrith / Long Marton, Lake District) and insane people as per the videos and pictures...

1. Here we have the groom getting 'ready to rumble'

Until his mother-in-law jumps into the passenger seat...

2. Some 'dodgem rage' from Pie here. Admittedly he was being provoked by the Beast..

3. And finally my favourite video, showcasing the driving talents of mattandjules...

Yeah, I know, you probably had to be there, but watching no. 3 cheers me up no end!

Pictures from Belfast

3 pictures from my last visit to Belfast at the start of May:

1. Me canoeing - I'm meant to be steering here, but I'm doing a pretty bad job of it... Note the attractive riverbank foliage and, um shopping trolley...

2. And a shot of the other occupants of the canoe...
3. This wasn't taken in the canoe, but in Hazlebank Park. Do you think we're warned to keep out because of the dangerous wildlife?

1. If I had a £ for every bluebell in this picture

...But alas, it's illegal to pick bluebells and sell them under the Wildlife & CountrysideAct 1981.
Gosh. What would we do without bluebells? At least I can now include "The Wildlife & Countryside Act" amongst the various labels attached to my blogs.

2. Continuing to tick off things done for the wedding. All the bookings for the honeymoon have now been completed. In the 2 weeks immediately following the wedding, we'll have stayed in 3 hotels, a B&B and a holiday cottage.

3. The question is what music to play for the evening do? Tunes befitting the lifting of 'goblets of rock' may well be required. For comedy value, I wonder if there are any tunes than lend themselves to lifting 'Goblets of Fraggle Rock'. Apparently if you watch it now, it's not as good as you remembered it!

Lots of stuff going on

So just a token blog to keep my 'one a month' record up.

1. Since 1st March, I have been to Belfast several times,
organised a James Bond themed stag do which involved rollerskiing around Hyde Park, travelling on a fast boat up and down the Thames, pretending to be a bad guy chasing Bond (admittedly this was done on bumper cars), shooting at things and driving a ferrari (sadly only virtually at the arcades) and finishing off with dinner and martinis at the bar where Ian Fleming would spend a lot of time (I imagine drinking martinis, but you never know, it might have been cosmos)
1a. been best man at a wedding (related to stag do in point 1)
2. been to Sheffield (for Matt's b'day)
3. I've also picked up wedding rings for my wedding.

3 ways of wasting time

1. A guilty pleasure for me at the moment is watching Reaper on E4. It's got an easy-going slacker charm to it, even though it's about the devil's bounty hunter. It does give some food for thought about how the devil goes about his business though!

2. I had pretty much given up playing computer games for a couple of years, but I'm getting addicted to Jedi Academy and working my way through the levels. I've just got to the stage where I can use two lightsabers (or the dual bladed Darth Maul lightsaber) which is pretty cool. That said, I've found out that you can take down the dark Jedi by crouching down all the time and swinging merrily away with the lightsaber. Possibly a flaw in the game, but then again, maybe it explains how Yoda lived to be 900!

3. blogging random thoughts... Still, at least I've got a post relating to Star Wars on my blog. I wonder if I should put a lightsaber on the gift list for the wedding...

3 Things I'm looking forward to in the next 12 months

Well, Shrove Tuesday has passed us by which means we're now into Lent where a lot of Christians decide to give something up for Lent. I guess I'll be giving up pancakes. I don't know if I can wait 40 days before having another pancake... Especially having found out that my frying pan is particularly good at making pancakes. I can flip pancakes almost perfectly with this beauty!

So, what am I looking forward to in the next 12 months? well:

1. I have to say getting married to my fiance obviously. If I don't, then there probably won't be a wedding in the next 12 months.

2. The new Indiana Jones movie on May 22nd (YAY!)


3. Um... Using my frying pan to make pancakes in approximately a year's time??? Maybe I should probably say doing my Best Man bit and organising a stag do in March...

Easyjet, Ryanair, getting money back

1. I'm sure everyone else is smarter than me about this, but I never realised until recently that even if you miss your flight, you can still claim back the airport tax from your flight.

Since these days at least 2/3rd of the cost of a flight is airport taxes, Easyjet and Ryanair must be making a fortune out of people who didn't make their flight but then didn't bother to claim the airport tax back. Since the tax should only be paid if we actually use the airport, it makes sense that we should be able to claim back the airport tax if we ask nicely.

2. That said, you have to call Easyjet's customer service line at 10p a minute and the first minute consists of listening to how you should call the premium rate 09 numbers if you
a) need phone support to talk you through how to make a booking through the website
b) have lost your baggage on the way to Alicante
c) just feel like spending money.
But on balance, I got to talk to a real person (and it sounded like the call centre was based in the UK) within about 5 minutes and got a refund of airport tax back within 2 mins. I have to say, I was pretty happy with that! I note that even searching the Easyjet website with the words "airport tax" results in zero returns on how to claim airport tax back off Easyjet.

3. Ryanair was a different matter. I spent 10mins on hold on a 10p per minute line and gave up as it didn't sound like I'd get an answer for at least an hour. So on balance, given my flight only cost £10 return, even if I did get an airport tax refund, I would probably have spent the equivalent amount in phone bills just waiting on hold. I suspect the best way of trying to get hold of someone to speak to is to call as soon as the line opens, so that you're more likely to be closer to the front of the queue... Bizarrely enough, at least 50% of the hold music seemed to be Christian contemporary worship music including such classics as "I could sing of your love forever", "I'm coming back to the heart of worship" and a rather upbeat gospel choir classic. First time I've ever heard Christian music being used as hold music - though I suspect if I had reason to be put on hold by Christian organisations, I'd probably hear that more often...

Post-Christmas Shopping

Although I'm not back at work until Monday, Christmas 2007 already seems to be receding into the distance. The tree and decorations have been packed away and the 22lb turkey cooked for Christmas (not by me I hasten to add) has mostly been eaten with a little bit stored in the freezer. It makes a change to the 22lb of sausages, prawns and beef steak which was consumed last year in Melbourne.

Christmas time involved catching the Christmas cold, watching the nativity, singing carols, eating my own bodyweight in turkey and chocolates, watching lots of tv and playing some of the games we got over Christmas. We also learnt about the true meaning of Christmas. Which isn't, as the shops might have you believe, about running up a credit card bill equivlent to the GDP of a small Eastern European nation.

1. I enjoyed (?) my first sales shopping trip with my fiancé over Christmas.

Why does everyone look so miserable when they're shopping? Out of every 50 people, I'm sure only 1 person has a genuine smile on their face. Faced with that level of gloom and grumpiness, it's no wonder most of the shop assistants and cashiers look so depressed. We tried smiling at them which sometimes got a smile back, but probably just gave them the impression that we'd spent too long sniffing the scented candles in the homewares section.

It was kinda fun watching the behaviours exhibited in the shoppers while waiting for the fiancé to browse through evening dresses for the 2008 weddings. The shop was filled with sounds of hangers click-clacking as dozens upon dozens of women sorted through the rails of clothes searching for their size. There were handfuls of men spread out across the shop. Some were trying to stand in a spot out of the way of the main thoroughfares, others were forlornley shuffling behind their partners carrying several bags in each hand. There was the middle aged man standing next to his wife, who was also flicking through the clothes rails and would occasionally extract a dress or pair of trousers, examining it for a second or two, before placing it back on the rail. Whether he was thinking about outfits that his wife could wear or whether they were for him, I wouldn't wish to enquire. Having originally adopted the 'find a spot somewhere in the store' approach, I decided to wait outside, along with a number of the 'dads with small children' and the 'I've spent 30 minutes in HMV, but she's still inside monsoon' brigade. If I were designing a shopping mall, I would have a minimum of one table football and one pool table outside every womens' clothing shop. Either that or every clothes shop must be pared with a bookstore, electrical appliances and gadgets shop or music store, before a plot is leased out. Failing that, maybe every store should have a minimum of 2 large televisions showing Top Gear or episodes of Blackadder. :-)

2. Out of all the shops where men and women can peacefully co-exist, places like Zaavi and HMV probably rank as one of the highest. So, we decided that Zaavi would be a convenient meeting place in the shopping mall. My future brother-in-law remarked that they seemed to have actually increased the price of all console games and accessories - presumably on the basis that everyone got a WII or Xbox 360 for Christmas and are now out to buy extra controllers or games with the money they got from their granny after telling the little old dears that they didn't need more deodorant for Christmas and money would do just fine. We very nearly bought an extra 'nunchuk' controller for the WII so that we could do the 2 player boxing game, but given how sore our arms were from 'playing tennis' and doing the shooting games, we decided we should probably wait until we'd extracted all possible enjoyment out of the other games that had been receive for Christmas. Besides I'd already managed to blow two lights and almost demolish the living room light fitting after getting a little too enthusiastic with my topspin backhands on the WII tennis game the previous evening. It's a wonder that the cricket game played at New Year didn't result in more damage to Nud's living room! Though actually, I think they were hoping for a bat through the TV screen, so that they could replace it with a brand new widescreen LCD telly. You can just see their insurance claim now "The TV was damaged as a result of playing cricket in front of it". "Ah, well, of course, why didn't you say so. That kind of thing happens all the time. It's not like you were doing anything crazy like playing tennis in front of it..." It's no surprise that the WII remotes come with wrist straps, just in case you lose your grip...

But I still enjoy the non-electronic games too. The Fiancé got a Dread Pirate boardgame, which was fun to play with the 2 of us, but should be great if we can get 4 people together. And yes she is into pirates and boardgames, he says, like it is an obvious combination; "I wish to parlay with Blackbeard the pirate." "Can you wait 20 minutes?" "Why?" "Well, he's just finishing off a game of Monopoly with Norman the cabin boy, Bob the deckswabber and Captain Hook. Once he buys the Gas Works, I'm sure he'll be up for taking a break to do some raiding and pillaging of the local ports."

In return, I got Uno Stakko, a game which comes perilously close to infringing copyright on another well known game. I think the shout of 'uno' comes in when you use 2 hands to remove a brick from the tower. As if Jenga wasn't hard enough eh?