I've moved

Blogger pissed me off yesterday. A bug in their system meant I was unable to update anything on my site for over 24hrs. Further, there was no report of the bug on their site - just a whole lot of bloggers going mental in the forums. So - I've moved. I might come back if Wordpress prove themselves to be even worse, but until that happens - find me here.

Sunday Soundtrack

It's raining today, so I sat in and did family tree 'stuff' on the computer. I have discovered that my GGG Grandparents moved from North Yorkshire to Longhirst in Northumberland sometime between 1851 and 1861, and had moved to Blandford Street in Newcastle by 1871. By this time, my GG Grandmother was living on Forth Street, Newcastle - a street which was also home to The Robert Stephenson Company. Back in Yorkshire, I also discovered the name of my Great Great Great Great Great Great (count 'em - there's six!) Grandfather. It was Thomas.

Soundtrack for the afternoon was Ray Lamontagne's cover of Gnarls Barkley's Crazy, and the new one from Primal Scream - country girl. The video for Country Girl is a cracker, don't expect to see the full thing on Top Of The Pops anytime soon...

Training, Deer.

Training continued apace today with a round trip to Richmond Park (and a few laps of the park) - about 28-30 miles. Weather was great and sunny and all in all a nice day out in the sun, despite slight hangover from last night's soiree in the Old Red Lion. I was a little fazed by the sheer number of deer in the park though! As I entered the park I remembered something about there being deer in there and thought to myself 'best keep your eyes peeled, if you're lucky you might see a deer or two', and was certainly not expecting the sight that greeted me a few minutes later - hundreds of the buggers sitting a few feet from the roadside! Most impressive. I do like Richmond. Had a snooze in the sun when I got home; all refreshed in time for Dr. Who. :)

Sponsor Me!

For those of you that don't know, I thought you might be interested to learn that I am taking part in the 2006 London-Brighton cycle ride for the British Heart Foundation, (NOT the World Naked Bike Ride, as some rumours have suggested!) and I'm looking for sponsors. I have a page here where you can sponsor me. If you think you might know others who would sponsor me, please feel free to forward this post to them using the little envelope icon below.

...and relax.

Yesterday evening was a lot of fun. A large group (30) of us from work were treated to a tour of the Renaissance Chancery Court Hotel. Apparently the hotel has a theme each month, and this month was 'chocolate month', so after being plied with as much red wine, liquers, and fine chocolate as we could eat - we were shown around the hotel, its ballroom, its gym, its very nice restaurant and bar, its rather expensive 'standard' rooms, and its even more expensive (£450+) 'superior' rooms - which were bigger than some of our flats! The highpoint of the evening (several glasses in by this point) was the spa. We were shown the special group therapy rooms and told (cue infantile sniggering amongst the lads) that this is where the 'husband/wife, mother/daughter, brother/sister, sister/sister' activity takes place. There was much falling about at the back when we were shown the special instrument they have that drips oil "onto your third eye", and lots of larking about on the electrically adjustable relaxation beds, before we were each given a private shoulder and head massage. It's been a long, long time since I was given a massage that lasted longer than two minutes and didn't end with a perky "my turn now!", so I loved every minute of it - utterly blissed out (and I'm very sure the wine was helping). After a few more glasses of wine and cheeky smuggling of alcohol to the masseuse(s), we adjourned to the Old Crown on New Oxford Street where, and I'm not entirely sure I didn't imagine this, a loudspeaker in the toilets tried to teach me Spanish. A fun, fun night. I'm sure I'll remember the rest in the fullness of time...

4 wheels bad, 2 wheels good

Finally, after what seems like aeons trawling eBay looking for a bike on which I can train and participate in the London - Brighton road race later this year, I have got me a new bike. From gumtree. I had been in a bit of a dilemma over whether or not I actually needed a new bike, I mean - I've kind of got a perfectly decent hybrid-commuter already, but I'm delighted with the new Specialized Allez, and just know I made the right decision now. I can lift the thing with two fingers, and when I put my foot down I go like the wind. With my other bike I kind of gradually sped up, getting to a decent speed just in time to brake at the next set of lights. I've still got a little over two months in which to train properly, but my mate John reckons I should shave half an hour off my time on the new bike - I hope he's right.

The Chatham Singers

Went to see The Chatham Singers last night at Spitz, part of their Festival Of Blues. Somehow or another we managed to get ourselves positioned to the side of the stage, which afforded a great view of the band and the back of Billy Childish's head... Had a really good night again, regardless. Billy read most of the lyrics from sheets at his feet (that he'd transcribed while listening to the records), and his wife seemingly played on stage for the first time - she was nervy and didn't appear to know many of the songs, taking her cue from Billy for what to say, and when. One track toward the end of the night descended into 'La La La', when everyone forgot the words - but at least the audience got to join in on that one! There's a video I made of The Chatham Singers doing 'Hollis Brown' here. Support from The Surgens was ok, they had one guy who played nothing but an interesting array of gimmicky instruments (loud hailer, saw, washboard); but I preferred the first support - some guy from Egypt called Peter (allegedly).