We just had a lovely braai, with Black Farmer sausages and spicy beef kabobs (Tesco).
Now we are sitting by the embers having a little drink (well I’m having a raki, Lee-Anne is on the 7-up), look:
Category: Uncategorized (Page 6 of 44)
…no, don’t get excited, the baby is not coming early – I’m looking at __you__, you know who you are 😉
Just wanted to let it be known that Lee-Anne and I will be in Reading for the weekend.
We have __A LOT__ to do – my flat needs to be made ready for full-on stuff evacuation ahead of minor works and then renting it out, so we are going to set aside Saturday evening for some socialising.
With that in mind, does anyone fancy a couple of hours of banter on the aforementioned Saturday evening..? I realise that it’s short-notice, but I’ve spent this week feelin’ horribly ill (I’m keeping whoever makes Lemsip in business) and so I wanted to be sure I was getting better before making a firm commitment. This is the last weekend that we __can__ come over before Peanut arrives, but we may well be back once we’ve got past the first month, so we’ll catch you on the bounce if not on this occasion.
Anyway, hope to see some of you, and in the meantime please pass it along to those that know me / us…
T’Ra!
…but this is ridiculous!
I was happy that coming to work at the BBC I would finally be working in an environment that does not discriminate on the grounds of race, sex, disability or indeed anything, but I have to admit that even I am uncomfortable working alongside a Dalek, even if he tried to tell me that he was:
“…past all that exterminating stuff and just really exciting about PHP and Open Source Web Services…”
I mean really, what does he take me for anyway..?
I saw this on a friend’s Facebook Feed today, and realised that I’d not read XKCD for a few days, so I clicked through…
Couldn’t have come on a better day… (Click here to see it on the originating Web-page)
For quite some time now I’ve been wanting to plan a long bike ride, something to have as both a milestone for myself, you know a goal to achieve, and as an opportunity to raise some money for charity.
I am hoping to do something towards the end of the summer in this vein, but before then I want a kind of measure of whether or not I can do the kind of distances involved, and so I’ve hit upon the idea of doing the London to Brighton bike ride in June this year, and I was wondering if anyone else fancied doing it with me..?
I’m perfectly happy with just doing it on my tod, but seeing as general registration opens next weekend I thought I’d spend a little energy this weekend seeing if anyone out there fancied doing it as a team.
So let me know if you like the idea, and go here to find out more.
Cheers!
Last night I fulfilled my obligations as a World Book Night Giver and wandered the little village where Lee-Anne and I live giving away free copies of “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” by John LeCarré.
It was an eye-opening experience in many ways…
For those who don’t know, last night was World Book Night, upon which volunteers all over the UK gave away 48 copies of their chosen novel (from the twelve options) in the place of their choosing. I had applied way back in December, and had finally found out that I was accepted as a Giver in late January / early February (I forget), so I was really quite excited about wandering around our village and knocking on some doors with nothing but the desire to give my neighbours a free book.
In the main it was a lovely experience; so many people were friendly, intrigued and happy to receive a good book. A couple of people were brusque and one chap was very, very rude:
“We’re in the middle of our facking dinner, now fack off!”
but overall it was a really nice thing to do.
Did anyone else out there act as a Giver, or did someone give you a book for World Book NIght?
I was excited to discover last night that I have been selected as one of the 20,000 volunteer “Givers” for World Book Night 2011, the inaugural event…
You can find out more here:
http://www.worldbooknight.org/
and if you’d like me to give you a copy of John LeCarre’s “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold”, then you need to be in Seal on the evening of March 5th 😉
(click on the image to see the cartoon in its original setting)
I have to be honest, I don’t imagine that this is an unusual feeling for anyone out there holding down a full-time job, but I know that both my wife and I were left feeling a little shell-shocked when we realised that it was 1930h on Sunday evening, we had not yet started thinking about cooking and soon enough it would be Monday morning…
We made the best of it, had a lovely meal that was ninety percent down to my brill other half, and ten percent down to me and Knorr… We then settled down to watch “The Black Dahlia”, Brian de Palma’s confusing and rather rambling attempt to bring James Ellroy’s classic novel of the same name to the silver screen.
By the time we went to bed we were somewhat numb to the Monday morning issue, but morning soon came, in the shape of my first run for ten days (my back is now finally well again, at least as far as I can tell), and by the time we got out of the house and on the way to the station it was clear that neither of us were even remotely happy about this state of affairs. Now you may say that no one enjoys getting up and / or getting to work on a Monday morning, and I am pretty certain that that is true for ninety-eight percent of the population, but I also think that there has to be another way…
A fair old while ago I read a fantastic article about working four day weeks – you can read it too, here – and I am starting to think that even before we become parents there might be merit in trying to move towards this model for my working week / arrangements, now that I am working on a freelance basis… I want to have time to really get stuck into my side-projects, my creative projects and still have plenty of time to invest in my wife and marriage, and in the fullness of time my children as well. Working five out of seven just doesn’t leave enough time… Well it’s just a thought – what do you think / do on the subject, dear reader..?
TTFN – hope you had a good weekend and today didn’t completely ruin it 😉
I saw this on the way from my car to the station in Sevenoaks this morning, and all I can say is that when the shooting and explosions start we’d better be getting a visit from Shia and Megan along with the forty foot robots and non-PC characterisation…
Seriously though; how cool!!?!