Renamed and rebooted

Part of the reason I failed with keeping up with at least one blog a month was that it was increasingly difficult to find the time to think of 3 things to say in an vaguely intelligible form.

So, now that I'm 30, I guess I'll try a more mature, sensible, less sensationalist approach to blogging.

Without the pressure of having to split my thoughts into 3 discrete chunks, I might actually feel like blogging more.

So, here's to the blogs of 2009!

My lovely wife organised a cracking surprise birthday party for me this saturday just gone and it was great to see lots of people. A number of top comedy presents were given, but the Extreme Ironing calendar for 2009 was one of the standout presents!

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...