A couple of weekends ago we went up to Cleethorpes again, to celebrate my parents 50th Wedding Anniversary.
It was the biggest family gathering I’ve been to in a long time, possibly ever.

There was a party held at Cleethorpes Cricket Club and it was great to see so many of my parents friends and family coming together to celebrate their Golden Wedding Anniversary.

I’ve got two sets of photos online, one set of the party itself, and another of photos taken during the rest of the weekend.

Ages since I posted so a quick run down of what we’ve been doing.

First off, I finally went to see Devo at Shepherds Bush Empire. I’ve wanted to see them for 25 years, and this was the first chance in more than 15 years.

It was strange being in an audience where ther majority of people were actually older than me! And the band did look a bit like old fellas, but they did a great show, lots of their singles and really rocked! Bought myself a t-shirt and an energy dome hat (for laughs).

We spent a Sunday afternoon at the South Bank, visiting the Anthony Gormley exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, which was pretty interesting, including spending some time spotting as many of the “Event Horizon” figures dotted around the walkways and rooftops of the area as possible.

There was also a strange water installation outside called “Appearing Rooms” which had walls made up of jets of water which would appear and disappear randomly.

A couple of weeks ago, Vic and I, her sister Lorna and Lorna’s friend Caroline all went to see Prince’s second concert at The O2. The concert was “in the round” and our seats were quite close to the stage. Felt a bit sorry for some people sitting way, way up high looking almost vertically down.

Some people were disappointed with the concert as Prince didn’t do many of his hits, even though the concerts were billed as the last time he’d be playing them. He put on a great show though, and showed his obvious desire to be the new James Brown with carbon copy moves. His band were great too, fantastic brass especially from Maceo Parker, who used to be in James Brown’s band.

Prince did a few of his hits though, including “U Got The Look”, “Kiss”, “Let’s Go Crazy” and “Purple Rain”.

The weekend before last Vic and I went to Ightham Mote, a medieval moated manor house near Sevenoaks in Kent. It was a lovely sunny day and we enjoyed a stroll around some of the grounds as well as a look round the house itself. It also houses the only Grade I listed dog kennel. Which is nice.

Last Thursday evening we journeyed out to Earls Court for the Great British Beer Festival. We had plenty of half-pints to sample the various beers, tried a couple of ciders too and bumped into all sorts of people we knew. A good evening and plenty of good beer.

And finally, we’ve just spent the weekend up in Cleethorpes visiting my parents. We also managed to fit in a trip to Ernie Beckett’s for fish and chips, a trip to TkMaxx in Grimsby, the first football match of the season (Grimsby vs Notts County, a 1-1 draw) and a nice walk along the beach.

I really will try to keep things more up to date now, honest…

Well, we survived and made it back but it was all a bit of an ordeal.

It started well; we drove down to Somerset on the Tuesday evening and stayed at a great pub, The Manor House Inn, in Ditcheat just a few miles from the festival site.

We had a great meal and a few pints of local cider and got our last night of comfortable sleep for a few days.

The next morning we drove over to the festival site, but despite it only being a few miles away, and us starting off at 7:30am, we didn’t get onsite until around 9am.

As we unloaded the car we noticed that something had clipped the car in while it was parked outside the pub and broken the rear light cluster. As there was mud on the light, it looks like it was probably a tractor that did the damage. We loaded up our new sack truck with the tent, some food and various other bits and pushed it out of the car park and down the hill to Pedestrian Gate C. From there it took another 45 minutes to an hour of pushing the truck before we got to our chosen camping area, in the top of the Dragon Field next to the Sacred Space (where the stone circle is situated).

The field was already pretty full, despite the gates only opening at 8am apparently there were 77,000+ festival-goers onsite by 9am. We found a reasonable pitch close to the stone dragon and set up the tent. As with most new tents, this turned into a bit of a mission, mostly because we were fairly constrained for space and the new awning seemed to be too large to fit the tent. After a couple of hours of puzzling and grumpiness we got it sorted out and had a sit down in our shiny new folding chairs.

The weather forecast had been pretty gloomy for the week but Wednesday was pretty pleasant, not too hot and no rain. We trundled down to the main festival and had a couple of ciders and some food to get into the swing of things.

Around 8pm we met up with a whole bunch of people from Urban75, and it was nice to meet some familiar faces as well as to meet lots of new ones. By that point, we’d had a few ciders though so I can’t honestly remember everyone I met, though I do recall meeting Aqua, Editor, Dubversion, Pie-Eye, JTG, BlueStreak, Eme, felixthecat and beesonthewhatnow. My apologies to anyone I met who I can’t now recall. It was a bit of a night.

Getting back to the tent after several more culinary indulgences, we discovered some of the downsides to being so close to the Sacred Space and the dragon; people stay up all playing bongos and shouting. And we were close enough that we could hear everything very clearly.

The next morning, Thursday, the rain started. It wasn’t too bad initially but quickly turned the path through the Dragon Field into a dangerously slick mudslide. By Thursday night people were sliding off the path into tents. Fortunately our tent was on a fairly level bit so we weren’t as badly affected but it all started to get very messy.

I won’t go into great detail about the rest of the festival. We didn’t really see many bands, and by Saturday the site had become so muddy and waterlogged that we decided to start packing. After one trip to the car, the rain eased off so we stayed over Saturday night as well, but once again Sunday morning arrived with the sound of rain rattling down on the tent.

Looking back I’m very glad that we did leave on Sunday, from what I’ve heard getting off the site on Monday was a nightmare.

Some of the acts that we did see: The Zen Hussies (great jazz on the Bandstand), Alloy Mental (slightly disturbing dance stuff), Hearin’ Aid (hip-hop), The Cribs, Modest Mouse, Urban Myth Club and !!! (pronounced ChkChkChk), Good Shoes, A Guy Called Gerald, and Men in Masks. We heard quite a few other acts either from our tent or as we were wandering around.

Here’s a collection of my Glastonbury 2007 photos and below is a short video clip showing the mud around the Cider Bus area taken on Saturday evening.

Lorna and Dan’s wedding went off very well. The weather forecast was a bit foreboding, but it turned out to be wrong and everyone enjoyed a beautiful warm, sunny day at the Cornwallis Country Hotel.

Lots of pictures available at my Flickr gallery.

The next day, both Vic and I were pretty badly hung-over, and as is often the case when in that state, we made the unfortunate decision to try a different route to get home. After several wrong turns and a quick trip through Southend we made it home more than two hours later. That did include a recuperation break at a service station though.

The next day, Sunday, I was flying off to Seattle, WA for an IBM/Microsoft Study Tour, so it was a relatively early start and off to Heathrow to meet up with my half of the party at noon. A 9 hour flight and an 8 hour time difference ensured that I was absolutely shattered by the end of the day.

The two study days in Seattle were pretty intense, but informative. Presentations from Microsoft on the Monday and IBM on the Tuesday, excellent meals each evening and a few hours to have a look round Seattle. We also had a few hours on Wednesday morning before setting off back to the airport at 2pm. I managed to visit the Space Needle and Pike Place Market and took a few photos.

Arrived home completely exhausted and it took a few days to recover any semblance of normality.

Now we’ve got Glastonbury just around the corner, next week. The tickets have arrived, we’ve got a shiny new tent, a sack truck to carry stuff with and the weather forecast is looking decidedly dicey. Fingers crossed…. (but I’m packing my waterproofs).

Didn’t realise how slack I’d been on updating the blog; my apologies to everyone.

Had a very relaxing time in Egypt, nasty 2 hour delay on the way back which meant we arrived at Gatwick at 2am.

What have I missed? We had the London Marathon a few weeks ago, which we watched for a little while as it passes a few hundred yards from the flat.

We also went to Mez, a restaurant just round the corner on Manchester Road for dinner one night. It’s a Mediterranean-style place so lots of Middle Eastern dishes, all very good and excellent value. They even have a (very good) belly-dancer, although that can distracting if you’re trying to have a conversation and there’s a shapely lady jiggling all sorts of bits in your face. Not that I’m complaining or anything. Definitely recommend the place.

Work rolls along, causing me to work quite a few late nights recently. I’ve also volunteered to help out with the server maintenance on Urban75 in my spare time. That’s proving interesting as its using FreeBSD which I haven’t used much previously. So far we’ve upgraded the database, PHP and web server, but there’s a lot more to do besides.

I’ve picked up a few server bits from eBay, and from Mark at Exonetric in order to build a potential replacement for the ageing Sun Netra X1 that currently hosts this site. Still a way to go before I’ll have a complete system, but it gives me some new hardware to fiddle with.

I’ve also updated my MySpace page which I joined ages ago and never really did anything with. I found loads of bands and people on there from my past, and found out about a few re-issues of long, almost-forgotten tracks. I’m not sure I really like the way MySpace works or the really nasty layouts that people use on there but I can see how it’s fun and useful. Had a few “Friend Adds” from people who I’ve never heard of but, hey, I’m not fussy.

Getting quite excited about the forthcoming Glastonbury Festival, but need to sort out a new tent (old one has a broken zip which will cost almost as much to replace as a new tent), and want to pick up a trolley so that Vic doesn’t have to carry anything on her bad back. Vic’s also booked us into a lovely looking pub quite close to the site so we can get in there nice on early on the Wednesday morning.

More news when I can think of what to write :)

We’ve had a great time in Taba Heights, very relaxing and peaceful.

We changed rooms last Saturday to one further away from reception and the rather loud entertainment each night, so it’s been much quieter.
Had a couple of meals at the El Mare seafood restaurant, which made a very pleasant change from the usual evening buffet. The food was a little pricey (£12-13 for a main course) but the restaurant was quiet apart from the excellent guitarist who played while we ate. The quality of the food and service there was way higher than the main restaurant.

Earlier in the week we also ate at the Lagoon Mezza/Tapas bar which sits on the salt water lagoon. That was pretty decent too, though not quite the same quality as El Mare.

We’re just packing up, checking out at noon, leaving the hotel at 4pm so we get an afternoon in the sun before we leave. It’s a little overcast today so it’s cooler than the blistering heat we had yesterday which was by far the warmest day we’ve had.

We’re on holiday in Egypt at the moment. We’re staying a hotel in Taba Heights on the Sinai Peninsular next to the Red Sea.

We’ve been here for a week and haven’t done much except for yesterday’s day trip to Petra, where the photo above was taken.
We’re here for another week but we’re just relaxing and doing some reading and lounging about.

The hotel’s good, the service in the restaurant can be a bit slow; asking for something three times before it arrives isn’t uncommon, but the location is very nice, right on the beach. One of the things which attracted me to the hotel is that there’s free Internet access in every room (provided via a Netgear ADSL router in each room) so we can keep in touch with the world and post our holiday photos on Flikr and my own web gallery.

The Taba Heights resort complex is a bit “packagey” compared to what we’re used to. There are lots of hotels all grouped together. There’s one “town” nearby but it’s actually just a group of shops and restaurants aimed at tourists and a few empty buildings. You’re not encouraged to leave the resort except on pre-arranged excursions, opportunities for doing any shopping that isn’t related to the resort are pretty limited. The food and beverage prices are all pretty much the same as UK prices, around £3 for a bottle of beer, £5-6 for a bar-type meal.

The day trip to Petra was interesting, if a little rushed. We set off from the hotel at 6:30am, caught a ferry to Aqaba in Jordan about an hour away, then onto a coach for a 2 hour drive to Petra. We got three hours in Petra which is only enough to scrape the surface really. I’m sure there’s lots more to see and more information to be gathered. We had to remain with our tour group as the city was very crowded as it was a public holiday; the guide estimated that there were 15,000 people there compared to the usual 1,500.

The walk back up from the end of the main section is quite tiring but we weren’t tempted to take up the offer of a horse ride, having earlier seen another tourist get injured after being thrown from one of the horses.

We’d definitely liked to have spent more time in Petra (and more time in Aqaba, where we only had 30 minutes on the way back), but it gave us a glimpse of the place and a feel for what was there.

Vic recently introduced me to Hot UK Deals which is a user-contributed site where people can post their latest bargain finds. There’s all kinds of stuff on there, from computer kit to clothes and power tools. Some of the bargains are huge reductions in price, and some are where the retailer seems to have made a mistake.

People also post vouchers and discount codes on there which all helps to save a few quid here and there.

Looking round that led me to another great site, Quidco, which is a collective cash-back scheme. The co-ordinators of the site arrange deals with online retailers so that people using the links from Quidco get a percentage of their purchase attributed back to their Quidco account.

The amount you get back varies depending on the retailer, some giving more than 10% back, others giving a miserly 0.1%. The co-ordinators keep the first £5 that each user generates per year as a subscription fee, but everything else comes back to the user, via Paypal if they choose.

A great idea, well implemented, using the collective power of online communities, and it can save you quite a bit of money if you shop online regularly.

I spotted on HotUKDeals that Ebuyer were doing the Microsoft Optical Wireless Desktop (wireless keyboard and wireless optical mouse) for £8 each, so I ordered 4. The price is back up to £21 now, but the keyboards and mice arrived yesterday, and I’ve sold a couple of them on, at cost, to people at work already.

A couple of contrasting photos taken from our lounge window a couple of days apart.

I didn’t realise that I’d framed the shots almost identically until I put them into this post. It’s a view we still haven’t tired of. There are coots, cormorants, swans and ducks which all visit the dock.

We saw a fox running along the dockside footpath past our window a few nights ago, and this morning his footprints were clearly visible in the snow.

Last Thursday, the company that I work for, Mistral Internet, was sold to Kingston Communications. I’m pretty positive about the change, as I think Mistral had reached the point where it was difficult to grow without more significant investment.

It’s all business as usual for the time being, and I’m hoping that this take-over proceeds without the pain of the last one I was involved in. We’ve met some of the management of our new business unit and they seem like reasonable and friendly people who recognise the value of the business they’ve bought.

I only became a permanent member of staff on 1st January, previously I’d been a contractor, so it’s all come fairly quickly. Not as quickly as it has for my colleague, Ealing Comedy, who only went “permie” on Thursday!

(The “White Phone Box” stuff is a reference to Kingston Communications’ origin as part of Hull City Council who operated the city’s own phone system, which used white phone boxes instead of the red ones used by the Post Office and later British Telecom.)