No it wasn't wor Jackie

On Thursday I went with Tina to see Milburn play at the Astoria.

It was the day of our staff meeting, which customarily has free drinks afterwards, and I think this was the first time I had been and not taken up the free drinks offer. I think I deserved it after taking two or three digs in the presentations. I'll have to make up for it next time.

Support came from Model Radio, I think, I wasn't really sure as I couldn't understand him when he was talking, probably the accoustics and not the Stoke accent. They were pretty good though, although the lead singer's habit of saying 'lets have it', 'lets fucking have this one' or some other combination just before starting singing on every song got a bit tiresome, maybe he was just geeing himself up. they came on really early at 7:15 as well, so I reckon it was pretty difficult playing to a mostly empty venue.

Second we had The Envy Corps from somewhere in America. I thought they were very boring, long guitar parts, a lead singer I couldn't understand when he was either singing or talking, who made every single word last about 6 notes. Was very glad when they finished.

The main men were very good though (although not so much for Tina who did look like she was going to fall asleep, but then she had been getting up pretty early all week). I really like their first album, the second isn't as good, so far, but maybe it will grow on me. They have drawn comparisons to the Arctic Monkeys, which, based on their first album is fair, but I thought live they sounded more ska-like, and reminded me of the Coral's first album.

I don't think the night was a sell-out, as there were tickets still available on the door, which surprised me as they do have some very good songs. My favourite of the night was 'Cheshire Cat Smile', but unfortunately they didn't play my other favourite from the album, 'Brewster'. Very good overall though.

Here's a couple of videos for the uninitiated.

Computers. a programming code that is easy to remember

We have a spreadsheet at work used to store mnemonics. These are three letters to represent a word, so we can use the same letters consistently for the same meaning in lots of different places in code...(e.g. ACCOUNT-NUMBER would be shortened to ACT-NBR).

Anyway, I opened up the spreadsheet the other day, but got distracted, and instead of looking up the word I wanted, looked up MNEMONIC instead. It was only when I got back to my code I realised I didn't actually want MNEMONIC, but obviously it was in my mind as that was the spreadsheet I had opened.....I was a tad surprised to see it in there though

Anyway, I found this funny, everyone I told (well both of them) thought I was just silly.

Sir Prize!

(note....I composed this post about four weeks ago but forgot to submit it, so have just decided to leave it mostly as it was)
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So, first up on my Indian food quest was a trip to France so surprise my uncle for his 40th birthday. Unbeknownst to him, a surprise meal-cum-party was arranged in the local Indian restaurant in Eymet (which you might remember is where they live).

Me, Tina, my nan, my auntie Susan and uncle Stephen decided to nip over for a few days to celebrate, but this involved laying low for 24 hours or so. In order to do this, we hired ourself a car and drove around for a bit, stopping on Sunday evening in Bergerac for a meal and some entertainment (in the loosest sense of the word), and then drove to many other places who have names I just can't remember now. Luckily we picked up my cousin Jennifer who could translate for us, particularly useful around mealtimes. Here are some pictures from our jaunt...









David had no idea the extent of the surprise (although he twigged something when he was outside), and it all went pretty much to plan.









Unfortunately we had to come home the next day, buut not after seeing the water fountain in the centre of the village had been 'contaminated' with washing up liquid....not an uncommon occurrence either by all accounts.





One further thing is, I did mention the airport in my previous post about our time in France, but here are a couple of photos to show you what I meant.

Maybe some are, maybe some aren't

As I alluded to in my previous post, I was aching on Saturday. That was because I attended the 2nd annual Essentis (that will be the company I work for) sports day on Thursday. Unfortunately, I missed last year's event because I was in Toronto, and the sports day there wasn't really anything of the sort.

We were split into 4 teams, or "schools"....allegedly randomly but you can never be quite sure. I was in team Hogwarts, and, to prevent, or at least lessen the number of, any catcalls from spectators who are of course jealous of my abilities, I made a promise to just be a team member and try not to be my normal competitive self. So much so that, whereas ordinarily I would have been first up to volunteer, I turned down the captaincy of the team. Won't happen next year though (well, the captaincy turning down, I am still going to try and keep any competitiveness to a minimum from now.....we'll see how that goes).

The events we had were (and those I participated in are in bold)...

Rounders, Dodgeball, Tug 'o War, Bean Bag Race, Welly Throwing, Sack Race, Football Dribble, Egg and Spoon Race and Three Legged Race.

I think we had a nice combination of jokey games and team sports. I couldn't not be involved at all with the planning etc. so when I was asked to be a referee I jumped at the chance.....mainly as it allowed me to tell people what to do with no recriminations, so long as I was fair about it.

As it turns out, the teams were particularly fair and kept most people interested until the end. Unfortunately (for me), my team didn't win. In fact, four members of last years winning team won again. But that was OK. I had a pretty successful day personally as our team won our rounders and tug 'o war games, and I won the football dribble race too. I think most people had a good time. I think it is good to have these kinds of events where a lot of the company can go and interract with each other, rather than just in their own teams. We were lucky with the weather too as it was mostly sunny all day....which is good as some people were worried we'd have to come up with some indoor games!

Here are some pictures: -






Unfortunately my camera ran out of battery halfway through the day so I have no tug 'o war or dodgeball pictures.

Must remember to stretch properly next year as I was still aching on Monday....or maybe I am just getting old. I didn't actually think I did that much, but I guess it was the rounders, and also the unofficial frisbee football (like football, two goals, but with a frisbee, and you can't move once you've caught the frisbee) that probably took it out of me.

I also had to give up the trophy (we only have one) that I won at the pool tournament.....I was sad.

One other thing to note is that we were drinking from about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and so, when the bar shut at 11, we thought it would be a good idea to continue into town. Now that's fine, but I'm not sure nine of us flagging down some guy in a transit van in the car park and getting him to drive us into town, in the back of his van, was necessarily our best bit of thinking. It's not like town was miles away, about 10 minutes maybe, and I'm sure he took some kind of scenic route (not that you can tell when you are in the back of a van, singing football songs and attempting to avoid the panes of glass that are on the floor). 3am we got home.

Step on....

I went to the England v Isreal game at Wembley, being the first competitive fixture there since it opened. England won pretty comfortably in what was being billed as a must-win fixture. I always thought it would be simpler than people were making out, but you never know.

I bought the tickets late because I was in Toronto and forgot they went on sale, so that meant I was up in the gods. Normally that wouldn't be a problem, but I am seriously aching for reasons I will go into in my next post, but anyway, I had to drag my aching body up a total of 185 steps, which, even at the best of times is a struggle for an unfit person such as me, and I think I've got to do exactly the same again on Wednesday for the Russia match.

I guess one other thing to mention is that, for the first time ever, I booed one of our players. I normally can't stand that at England games, particularly booing during/after the opposition's national anthem, or if one of our players does badly, but I felt differently this time. The player in question was substitute David Bentley, and it is nothing he did today, but more his actions during the summer when he pulled out of the England U21 European Championships because he was too tired to play, but after the squad had been named, which meant that they could not call up a substitute squad member. If he had pulled out earlier, then I don't think it would have been as much of a problem, but it appeared a very selfish act to do so when he did, as it left all his fellow team-mates short in what might be their only chance to play in an international tournament, and he was one of their best players to boot. I personally think that he should not have been allowed to pick and choose which international games he plays in, and should not have been forgiven and picked for the national team so early......and judging but other reactions I am not the only one.....we'll see what happens if and when he plays again