LlamaBlog

It’s been an age since I wrote on my blog.

2009 has been a heck of a year.

We’ve bought a house, with all the upheaval that entails and even after 6 months there still a ton of stuff that needs doing. We were badly let down repeatedly by our builder, who topped it all off by taking money for a radiator and two cupboard doors and then refusing to respond to any further contact.

The only holiday we’ve had this year has been a few days at The Big Chill Festival in August where someone stole some of our stuff from our tent, including car keys, contact lenses etc. We really enjoyed the festival, but the theft put a bit of a downer on it, especially as it happened on the first night.

Vic at The Big Chill 2009

As some of you will know, since moving we’ve had some more fairly major ups and downs which I won’t go into here, but suffice to say it’s been a very trying time.

But we’ve made it through to Christmas, the house is in a reasonable state and we’ve got a holiday booked for late January 2010, so we have a lot to be thankful for too.

Vic and I have both been looking forward to Christmas, our first in our new home. We both need a break from work which has been pretty full-on for us both.

I don’t know what I would have done without Vic this year, she’s been supportive in times of stress and I can only hope that I’ve been of some use to her too.

I’ll aim to update the blog more often, and for those who do this whole social media thing, I’m also on Facebook and Twitter (as lazyllamauk).

So have an excellent Christmas and I hope that the New Year brings good things to everyone reading.

Things are moving along. “Slowly but surely” seems to be the phrase we’re using most of the time.

The bathroom is looking good, still a few bits to finish in there but it’s all usable.

We’ve got a wardrobe installed in the main bedroom, which was a pretty huge effort due to the walls, floors and ceilings all being less than straight.

Work is now progressing on the kitchen, again with matters being complicated by the walls not being “true”.

I’ve set up a Flickr set of photos of the various renovations and will try to keep that up to date as things move along.

Following my previous post back in March, we’ve now moved to the new house.

To say it hasn’t gone smoothly would be a bit of an understatement. Even now, almost 2 weeks later we have no shower, no storage or wardrobes and no discernible kitchen.

We’ve encountered dodgy plumbers who have cost us hundreds of pounds for their work and then even more on top to have their work undone and thrown away.

Lots still to do, the wardrobes won’t fit properly because the walls aren’t straight, the kitchen needs fitting, the downstairs shower room is derelict and everything is in piles of bags and boxes.

I’m sure it’ll be great when we finally get there but at the moment, it’s a little trying to put it lightly.

If all goes well, we should exchange contracts on a house in the next day or so.

We’ve been trying to buy somewhere on and off for the past 3 years, so it’s been a long time coming, but I think this one will finally go through.

The house needs some work before we can move in so we’ll be staying in our rented flat for a couple of months while that work is done. There’s plenty to do, with a new kitchen, 2 new bathrooms and lots of redecoration required.

Fingers crossed, this will be ours soon

If things go according to schedule, we should complete on the house before Easter, so we can start some of the work then.

We’re quite excited after having several disappointments when trying to buy properties previously, but I don’t think Vic or I will actually believe it until the deal is finally complete.

I forsee many trips to B&Q and IKEA in our future.

Update @12:34pm 31/3/09: We’ve exchanged!

Been slacking again and not updating the blog. Bad me, no biscuit.

Went to see the Human League, Heaven 17 and ABC last week in a nostalgia-fest called The Steel City Tour at the Hammersmith Odeon (or Apollo or whatever they call it this week).

Heaven 17 and ABC were okay; you could hear the groan when Martin Fry announces that the next song is from the new album…

Human League were fantastic, great stage lighting with the entire stage made up of LEDs making it into one huge screen, and they sounded really good. I didn’t get any photos when the bands were on but here’s one of the stage.

Human League stage, Hammersmith Odeon/Apollo, Steel City Tour

They did most of their hits, including my favourite, “Love Action”. Vic and Cedric enjoyed it too, even though they weren’t particularly keen on the Human League beforehand.

On a completely different note, a few of the people at work have started visiting Trinity Buoy Wharf at lunchtime. There are a couple of places there to eat, one is the Driftwood Cafe, a white van doing paninis and a variety of wholesome foods and Fatboy’s Diner, an American-style diner.

Fatboy's Diner at Trinity Buoy Wharf

The diner serves the usual fare of burgers, hot dogs etc, along with malts and shakes. It’s pretty good value for the location, and although the interior is a bit run down, it’s a pleasant change from our usual dining spots of The Steamship or Telehouse at East India.

Built in the late 50’s, the diner was originally the Georgetown Diner of Georgetown, Massachusetts. It is Worcester Lunch Car # 849, the next to last diner built by that company. It was stored in Ipswich, Mass, restored in New Hampshire and then shipped to London. It was previously situated in Spitalfields Market in London. The diner also appeared in the Gwyneth Paltrow movie “Sliding Doors”. www.fatboysdiner.co.uk

Last weekend, Vic and I went for a walk down to Greenwich. It was a chilly day but the walk was pleasant and we had a hot chocolate before turning around for the return journey at Greenwich.

Here’s a picture of me taken by Vic, all wrapped up in the cold:

Nigel at Island Gardens, Isle of Dogs

As ever, recent photos can be found at the Lazyllama Flickr Photostream.

Last month we were lucky enough to go to Las Vegas. I went to attend the VMworld 2008 conference, the largest gathering of virtualization professionals in the world. It seemed too good an opportunity to miss, so Vic came along too.

We flew via Chicago, and had added a couple of extra days on at the start of the week so we could get some time to look around Vegas. We were staying at The Venetian hotel on the main strip in Vegas. Fantastic hotel, and our room was great with a lounge area and bedroom both with large TVs.

The Venetian is an experience in itself, having replicas of famous Venetian buildings outside, along with a canal complete with gondolas which continues inside alongside a shopping centre.

On the Saturday afternoon we went on a helicopter trip over the Hoover Dam and into the Grand Canyon. Neither of us had ever been in a helicopter before so it was a new experience. There were 7 in the helicopter including the pilot and we had a commentary pointing out places of interest as we flew over the Hoover Dam and saw its new road bridge being constructed.

We landed in the Canyon for half an hour for a glass of champagne and a small picnic before heading back to Vegas. We approached the city as the sun set, giving a great view of the Vegas Strip in the dark.

The conference started on the Monday and lasted until Friday afternoon. Each day saw an early start with the keynote speeches starting at 8am, and most days lasting until 5pm. I attended mostly technical sessions, along with a few about the future direction of VMware and their products. There were 14.000 attendees, the scale of the conference was quite astonishing. The lunchroom alone was the size of several aircraft hangers.

We also visited the Atomic Testing Museum, which was interesting and showed a different side to Nevada.

We had a look at quite a few other hotels on the Strip and watched the famous fountains outside the Bellagio hotel. Vegas is a very strange place but we quite enjoyed the feeling of being in a city where almost everyone was a visitor. We had a look round some of the casinos, but didn’t gamble, we were too busy spending our money on food and shopping.

See more photos in my Las Vegas album on Flickr.

We’ve just spent the weekend at The Big Chill 2008 festival at Eastnor Castle Deer Park, near Ledbury in Herefordshire.

We had a great weekend, lots to do, the weather was mostly pretty good; good enough that I got a bit of a tan anyway.

Highlights for me were:

• Alabama 3 acoustic set
• John Hegley
• African Head Charge (once the sound was sorted out a bit; it was terrible for the first 3 songs)
• John Shuttleworth
• Adrian Sherwood (Lee Perry was quite funny to start with but got a bit annoying after a while)
• Russell Howard (as seen on Mock The Week)
• Tom Middleton’s “Summer of Love” set
• Cider Bus and the food stalls in the Enchanted Garden
• The Disco Shed
• Burning down the house on the hill.

Other stuff I saw, but didn’t hang around for, or caught the end of:

• Leonard Cohen
• Beth Orton
• Bomb The Bass
• Martha Wainwright
• Ty
• Roots Manuva
• Roisin Murphy
• Martina Topley-Bird
• Hot 8 Brass Band

We were in the Quiet Camping section of the South Camping field. The toilets there were pretty much clean with paper and handwash throughout the festival. More waterpoints or some sinks would have been useful. The security there was also fairly innocuous and we didn’t see any heavy handedness. A tent a couple down from us had money stolen while they slept and two police officers were patrolling the area the next night.

Although the food was pricey, it was mostly of a very good standard compared to the woeful burger/noodle stalls I’ve encountered at other festivals. Manic Organic were charging £7 for a plateful of tasty veggie food. I didn’t go to Glasto this year, but seem to remember they were charging £6 last year.

The festival programme was £6 extra, with some of the money going towards The Big Issue, but charging for the programme was a bad idea, given that the times weren’t announced anywhere else obvious.

The main field was pretty messy with litter by Sunday afternoon, but others were remarkably clear of litter, certainly better than any Glasto I’ve been to. Watching the rubbish collection, it also looked like people did bother putting the recyclable stuff in the right bins.

It was definitely a good idea not having vehicles moving around on the main site, it stopped the ground from getting churned up and made it safer for kids, and there were a lot of kids at the festival.

We missed Bill Bailey as he was on first in the comedy tent when there were no other major crowd-pullers on. We had a look over an hour before he was due on and the tent was full.

Nice clear journey there and back, but we were both shattered by the time we got home.

Just testing out the Wordpress for iPhone app, which will let me blog from my phone without having to use the usual Wordpress web interface.

If all goes well, there should be a photo taken on my walk to work this morning at the bottom of this post.

Two weeks ago we had another weekend camping in Suffolk.

This time we camped at a nice site in Hollesley, near Woodbridge. Lovely site, with room for about 20 caravans and a similar number of tents. Good, clean toilets and dog-friendly for those who have them.

We drove up to Aldeburgh on the Saturday morning to be greeted by the customary blustery day that seems to greet most of our camping expeditions. The sun was out though and it wasn’t raining so we had a nice walk along the sea-front.

After a spot of lunch from the excellent fish & chip shop in the town centre, we drove up to Sizewell further up the coast.

Sizewell is best known for the two nuclear power plants there, Sizewell A and B. These two buildings loom over the beach, dominating the skyline, but not really detracting from the lovely empty beach at Sizewell.

You can walk quite close to the two buildings from the beach, and there seems to a warm water outlet just offshore which was surrounded by fishing seagulls when we visited. Sizewell B is instantly recognisable by the giant “golfball” which covers the reactor.

The beach area is part of the East Anglia Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and lives up the classification. The beach is a combination of shingle and sand with the dunes playing home to Sea-Kale, a rare plant which is protected under the Wildlife & Countryside Act (1981).

After a very pleasant walk along the beach, we went back to the campsite, eating at the local pub in Hollesley before turning in for the night.

Sunday morning was bright, but windy. We packed up the tent and drove to nearby Orford.

Orford is really pretty, with a harbour, castle and Orford Ness which is an island which used to house a secret military research base.

The Ness isn’t accessible on a Sunday as the ferry doesn’t run, so we made do with a walk along the shore of the estuary, past a number of decaying boats sitting in the silted-up estuary.

Heading back into the village we stopped at The Jolly Sailor pub for lunch. I had a really good ploughman’s with a huge chunk of cheese, pickled onion and a good chunk of pork pie. One of the best ploughman’s I’ve had anywhere!

Finally, we went for a walk around Orford castle, though the strong wind made it difficult to walk around the more exposed parts of the earthworks.

The castle is close to the hotel owned by Ruth Watson, who starred in the first few series of “The Hotel Inspector” on TV.

After that it was time for the journey home. It rained pretty much all the way, but that didn’t really matter as the rain had held off while we were camping.

More photos of Aldeburgh, Sizewell and Orford.

Quite a while back we visited the Chapman brothers’ “If Hitler Had Been a Hippy How Happy Would We Be” exhibition at the White Cube Gallery near Piccadilly. It was a very interesting exhibition in three distinct part.

Upstairs was “One Day You Will No Longer Be Loved”, a room of altered paintings. Each picture was an old portrait of the kind you would expect to see in any stately home. All of the painting had been changed to make the faces look like those of decomposing bodies, with nose bones exposed, sunken eyes and skull-like grimaces. Really horrible but equally fascinating and in some cases amusing.

Downstairs, in the main room was “Fucking Hell”, a remake of the brothers’ 2000 work “Hell” which was destroyed in the art warehouse fire in 2004.

Nine large glass display cases arrange in a swastika shape. Each case contains a diorama crammed with figures, vehicles and landscape. Most of the figures were skeletal Nazi soldiers, with varying amounts of flesh still on their bones. There were hundreds, if not thousands, in each case, crushed together following paths, being tortured or torturing others. Some of the figures were of Hitler, including one of him painting a picture of the scenes.

Despite the horrific imagery there was actually a lot of humour involved, there’s a McDonald’s logo in there, a Stephen Hawking character on an island and all kinds of amazing little details.

The sheer scale of the work is staggering, the amount of work that the brothers and their team have put in to creating such a huge work is astounding. The horror of it is relentless but fascinating.

The final part of the exhibition gives the show its title, “If Hitler Had Been a Hippy How Happy Would We Be”. The brothers bought 20 authenticated water-colour paintings by Adolf Hitler for £115,000 and “improved them” by adding rainbows, flowers and other “pretty” items. They then put the collection on the market for £685,000.

An interesting show, with lots to look at. Some people will be horrified by the “bad taste” and twisted creations, but I really liked them. Great imagination and a wicked sense of humour were exhibited in all the works, and I’d recommend people see the works if they get a chance when they’re next exhibited.

(The exhibition closed on 12th July 2008, I really should have written this sooner)