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Easter

Blasdale Home Posted on April 13, 2009 by SteveNovember 1, 2020

Easter started off with a BBQ on Friday evening. How hard is it to buy charcoal at this time of year? Tesco was saying there will be none in stock for another 2 weeks.

Slow roasted English lamb shoulder was cooked for almost 8 hours on the BBQ, then shredded and mixed with pomegranate seeds and mint leaves and served with a salad of skinned peppers and feta cheese. We had some friends around, who all stayed the night, and again it seems we and our friends drank rather too much alcohol. Gordon Brown would not be at all pleased with us. Some wag on the radio said there would be two types of activities in the future, mandatory and banned.

Flower bed in WarkwickshireFlower bed in WarwickshireSunday had a meal with my Aunt and Uncle in Warwickshire, yes again it was lamb, but this time English leg of lamb, and slow roasted.  Their garden was beginning to look lovely with lots of blooms.

There was also a lot of food walking around on two and four legs, the four legged varieties which have to be fenced out of the vegetable patch, but seem to find a way in.

The two legged variety were seeking refuge from the woods on the other side of the field.  M said how the shooters who stood in the field, fired at the pheasants as they were driven out of the wood.  When they missed, they turned and fired at the birds towards M&D’s house, often with shot hitting their windows.  Not dangerous, but an annoyance non the less.

Pheasants

Monday was a lovely day, Rosemary spent most of the day at Ludgershall village auction. This is an auction held once a year, and is used to raise money for the village hall. It though is a proper auction with proper items, some selling for several hundreds of pounds, not any old junk. She came away with another rug for the house.

Posted in Buckinghamshire | 1 Reply

Newcastle and Gateshead

Blasdale Home Posted on April 9, 2009 by SteveApril 15, 2009

A visit to the office in Gateshead for the start of year meetings.  Anouncements on the new bonus plans and targets.

Main event though was the evening meal in Newcastle.  Have to admit to feeling slightly hung-over the next day.

Posted in restaurant review | Leave a reply

One Stop

Blasdale Home Posted on April 7, 2009 by SteveApril 15, 2009

Travelled to Birmingham a couple of times this week.  Monday and Tuesday I was installing some new software at the offices of One Stop.  They are a small supermarket chain.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a reply

Sad Gits reunion

Blasdale Home Posted on March 8, 2009 by SteveDecember 1, 2020

Sunday 8th saw me head into London on a train from Bicester.  Normally my mode of transport is through Aylesbury.  Bicester is nearer and has a more frequent service, just that it’s a tad more expensive.  I have to admit the non stop service was nice, though the Victor Meldrew in me took exception to all the loud iPods playing around me in what was meant to be the quiet carriage.

Arrived and headed over to the British Film Institute to meet the other Sad Gits.  A special reunion in honour of Jon Lewis who was passing through from South Africa.

Sad Gits

Sad Gits

A quick drink, and then there was the call for lunch.  One pub ignored because it was totally crowded.  A good call was made not to eat on  the terrace.  Minutes later it started to rain.

Instead we went to the Tate Modern and ate in the downstairs cafe.  Decision making is not a feature of Cambridge graduates, trying to get a decision on the number of bottles of wine was rather painful, Andrea came to the rescue, the only non Cambridge graduate amongst us.

Massive spider sculpture by Louise Bourgeois

Massive spider sculpture by Louise Bourgeois

A quick tour of the gallery, and a walk across the millenium bridge and then it was goodbye as we wended our way home.

The walk across the bridge is always a spectacular walk, especially with the dramatic skyscapes we had on that Sunday.

I had another appointment in the evening, and went to a GMB union fund raising event at the Poetry Society in Covent Garden.  Here I was entertained to some poetry readings.  Decided to cut this short as Rosemary was due to pick me up from the Station, and I had a 5.00 early morning rise the next day.

The Crack, this is what happened to it.

The Crack, this is what happened to it.

On a final note, I have added an image of The Tate Modern’s crack.  This was a Tate Modern Turbine hall exhibition where a huge crack was created in the floor.  I always wondered what happened to it.

Posted in University | Leave a reply

Visting Iran

Blasdale Home Posted on March 5, 2009 by SteveMarch 5, 2009

I am meant to be going to Iran to do some work for a customer. Presently Visas seem to be an issue. First my 3 month application for a visa was rejected, and now my 3 day visa was rejected. It looks like I will have to wait a few more weeks before reapplying.

This is such a shame, the people I met and worked with in Iran a few years ago were very nice and helpful people. I do hope this can all be sorted out quickley.

Posted in Iran | Tagged Iran | Leave a reply

Waterperry

Blasdale Home Posted on February 16, 2009 by SteveNovember 1, 2020

No sooner had the deluge of rain occurred, the cold weather returned.  We have had a couple of weeks with snow and ice, shortages of rock salt, and now huge potholes in the road caused by frost damage.

Today it warmer.

Yesterday we went to see some snowdrops at Waterperry.  Waterperry  is near Oxford and is a garden centre and arty farty type place.  It though has some magnificent gardens, well they might be magnificent,  winter is not the best time to see them.  I went to see the snowdrops, and the crocuses.  Must admit, in past years, we’ve seen more snowdrops at other places .

Navigation to the centre was aided and abetted by my new mobile phone. [More like “hindered”.  Ed]

Posted in home | Leave a reply

Wet weather

Blasdale Home Posted on January 13, 2009 by SteveJanuary 13, 2009

The wet warm weather is back.  I drove to Bristol on Monday in the most appalling weather.  Windy and wet.  This was just a day visit to check out the customers user acceptance system, making sure all the modifications had been correctly customised during the copy.

They should be going live in February with their upgraded system.

Arrived back  quite late at 9.45 just to have supper and go to bed.  What a coincidence, cottage pie for lunch in the canteen, and cottage pie back at home for supper.  Ours though was traditional proper cottage pie made up from the left over roast from Sunday.

Posted in work | Leave a reply

The cold weather

Blasdale Home Posted on January 10, 2009 by SteveJanuary 10, 2009

Will this cold weather ever stop?  We have had -7C on our thermometer.  The ponds are frozen, and the temperature has failed to rise above zero for days.  Where has this global warming gone, or is it another con by our politicians and the green  groups. If we are cold, then one assumes there must be a balanced hot area in the North.  To me it does not seem  right that all of Europe is cold,  and that Canada is having a cold winter as well.  Sea ice in the arctic was at a high this summer as well.

Typical of Putin to cut off the gas when it is cold. At least we have our wood burner, fed almost exclusively on hard wood. In this cold weather, how have the wind farms been doing.  Oh not a lot, generating nothing.  Cold weather comes with no wind.  Seems to me a rather waste of money.  Time the UK stepped up to the task and built more nuclear reactors.  At least they work, look at France which generates 90% of their electricity with nuclear.   It’s time something is done, even if it’s opening the closed coal mines and building more coal-fired powerstations before our lights start going out.

Talking about lights, we can not buy any more filament lights, at least the type you can see by.  Another green con, and instead all the mercury from the new low energy lights will now go into landfill, polute the ground water and make us all brain dead.  Maybe the EU and our Government want to us to be brain dead, so we just accept their dictacts without argument.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Add new tag, weather | 1 Reply

WordPress 2.7

Blasdale Home Posted on January 10, 2009 by SteveJanuary 10, 2009

Another painless upgrade to my blogging software.  I am now running version 2.7.  Not sure what new features there are, except for the administrators panel which has changed.  I know some, not to be named, who don’t like change, but I do feel this is a move to the better.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Replies

Nokia E71

Blasdale Home Posted on January 10, 2009 by SteveJanuary 10, 2009

I bought myself a new toy.  It’s a mobile phone, a Nokia E71.  I have to admit I am really proud of it, and can’t let an hour go by without carressing its tiny keypad, and looking at the new messages that have arrived.  [In other words, he’s become a technobore]

It has a GPS, and with google maps I can walk around the garden using the mobile to navigate with.  [I can walk around the garden using my eyes]

It connects to the wirless wan as well as the mobile network, and has skype support and ipphone support.  So I can make cheap or even free phone calls on the mobile, and receive phone calls from my IPphone number.  It’s a video phone as well.  There is the normal camera and a small video camera on the keyboard side to video me when I am making a call.

Of course it it web enable, so I can browse the web and email on the move.  The email is always running, so I get little sound notifications when a new email arrives.

Finally I have discovered a wealth of applications which run on the phone.  I was really impressed when I found ptty which runs on it.  For those who don’t know, ptty is a secure terminal emulator, and allows me to logon to unix boxes in character mode and run basic editors.  Sad I know but a great tool.

I really just love the build quality of the Nokia E71, the solid cold  feel  of the metal case of the slender phone.  It was love at first sight.  [Humph]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Nokia, Nokia E71, phone garden 3G 2G Nokia 6151 | Leave a reply

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