Today I’m sitting typing to you from the inside of a lobsterish skin. I’m a bright red warmish pink with taught lines across the forehead and neck after picking the one sunnny weekend of the year to spend more than 20 minutes in the great outdoors. All worth it though because the weekend was that of the Secret Garden Party, a festival in Cambridgeshire we went to and also my first festival as well 
I should write a nice big blog entry but near peeling sunburn is making it harder to concentrate than I’d hope so here’s some pictures
And many more are to be found here. All in all we had an excellent time with some excellent people and as the title said I’m sure this will be the first of many.
Woo Hoo! No parking ticket, the world loves me.
I lead an exciting life. A quick trip to the London suburb-by-sea Brighton by train. Arriving at Southampton station car park a little late it quickly become apparent the wadge of coinage I’ve brought are mostly euros. Given my lateness the car’s been left un-ticketed and vulnerable to a fine or even clamping. I’m betting on slap dash car parking, I can’t imagine anyone taking that job and being determined to do it well and if right will leave me £6.60 up on the deal. WooHoo!
It’s that or I’ll £30 poorer through a parking ticket (£60 if I do my usual trick of forgetting to pay the fine within 14 days). Optimism has me already making plans to squander the winnings on booze or sweets. I’ll report back my high roller status soon.
Strangely enough my car park high stakes gambling adventures are mirrored in my business life where right now a bit of a cheeky punt could bring home rewards of even more than £6.60 to spend on booze and sweets. It’s an exciting time right now but commercial sensitivity means I can only talk about it in rubbish similes about parking cars near railway stations.
To be really honest we wouldn’t have been there had it not been for a work related meeting on Friday but always keen to see a new city and neither of us having been to Germany before me and Suze extended out stay out to Sunday for a bit of a look around. In fact it turned out we stayed until Monday, a muck up on the plane tickets on my part meant we couldn’t get the Sunday return flight and came back a day later.
So on Saturday morning we had an excellent breakfast with Markus and his wife Julia who also gave us a pretty good steer on what to see and where to go over the weekend. Mid afternoon, after looking at a few ducks and scoffing up with Hotdogs and beer, we ended up slap in the middle of something called Schlagermove, the best way to describe it is a street festival celebrating really crap German cheesy music.
Even trying its hardest Europop struggles to elicit any positive emotions in me. Rather oddly the worst of the genre loudly played in German and sung along to by 10,000 lagered up Hamburgians (most dressed like Jonathan King in 1976) isn’t the hell you’d expect. It was actually almost very good despite the weather pouring rain on us and generally being filthier than the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s red light district where it all took place. Pints, some tequilas and then some more pints may have been key to our ability to enjoy this.
Sunday we switched hotels from the excellent 25 Hour Hotel to even more excellent Gastwerk Hotel and had another mooch around town, the ship like architecture of the Chilehaus standing out most.
All in all really nice, good to get away and take a bit of time for Suze and I to spend time with just the two of us. Always fun and sometimes hard to make time for.
Pictures to be found here.
Been meaning to write a little entry about this since I heard a couple of weeks ago. Looking through some picture from the end of 05 has spurred me into action. Rob, the landlord of the excellent Fawcett Inn in Portsmouth passed away recently.
To say I really knew him at all would be disingenuous having only shared a brief chat a few times. I have had some excellent times at the pub he run and from talking to people that did know him well it’s fair to say that this brilliant place was an extension of his personality.
The Fawcett is an idiosyncatic and odd pub melding the characteristics of traditional old mans boozer with neon tinged crusty filled trance night. Imagine a rave bus crashed into the Queen Vic and you’d be someway near. 30 feet and you’re from here:
to here:
It was always pretty hectic, never anything but a delight and despite that massively wide range of different clientelle always friendly. I’ve had a lot of fun in there so massive thanks and farwell to Rob who made it the place it was.
That was good A party at Bernie’s, this time for her 50th and despite shitty weather turning up for some of it every seems to have an excellent time. I’m still a little knackered from the weekend excitement so I’m going to slip into slovenly bullet point prose style and pictures for the rest of the post.
Bought our my first tent. Did the wise thing and consulted the enormous hive mind intelligence of the YakYak forums and ended up with a Vango Spirit TBS Spirit Lite. Bit of overkill for 1 night’s camping in someone’s back garden but should be good for the couple of festivals we’ve on the horizon of our social calendar.
Had some fun helping put the marquee up. A bit practical for me to be honest but a nice sense of satisfaction once it was all together and looking mighty swish.
Took some piccies. I got lucky at Bernie and Jim’s party last year and took some crackers. This year the light during the day was very poor and my soberness during the evening was even worse. Jim is always photogenic though
The party was very ace though, the band of Jamie played (they have a proper name but I’ve no idea what it is). I played guitar very badly for a bit in the front room with some nice chaps but packed that in out of embarrassment very quickly. And apparently before hitting the sack I was wrestling, something I’ve no recollection of.
On the way up I also had a crack at a HDR image, taking the same picture in quick succession and then merging it down into one piccie able to capture high detail in dark and light tones. Practically this worked pretty well, CS3 has an automated process that makes this very easy to do. Artistically it looked shit And I need a bit of a sensor clean, one of the side effects of this sort of photography is any dirt on the sensor stands out really clearly. Still now I know what to do I’ll endeavour to get some less shit HDR images in the near future
Outside of the excitement of partying in Norfolk I’ve also managed to get meself a hair cut.
And after producing some nice salad leaves and courgettes Suzey’s gardening efforts have now expanded into the world of tomatoes. Very small inedible ones right now but they’ll be turning in big fat juicy sandwich fillers in no time at all
Next weekend it’s Hamburg. A bit of business on Friday and a weekend break for me and the mrs until Sunday.
