Monthly Archives: July 2005

Cousin Iain had suggested spending a few days in London on the weekend after my birthday a couple of months back now, so I’d been looking forward to it for weeks. Although the terrorist bombings the week before made me slightly apprehensive, I was determined not to let the tragedy get in the way of something we’d been planning for so long. To let them affect our way of life is to let them win, right Tony?

As it turned out, other than it taking a little longer than normal to get places, I needn’t have worried at all. Iain met me at Euston station and we made the quick trip to Islington to meet Jess at Chandler Gooding, before enjoying an hour or so of good banter until Jess had to make for home.

Iain and I met up with Andrew at Angel, then headed back to Iain’s flat from Euston, where I collected my left luggage. Despite my tiredness and the heat of the evening, by the time myself, Iain, Binnie, Andrew and Mark were sitting in a bring-your-own-beer indian restaurant that evening, the great food and the good company made for a top night.

On Saturday things kicked off in earnest, and after a trip to a nearby cafe for coffee and a snack, we set off to the small park at Brook Green to play some football and frisbee. All the running I’ve been doing recently didn’t translate at all into the quick burst fitness required for football, so with the heat I was literally gasping for breath in no time. The rest of them seemed to cope okay, though, so I must need to get fitter.

Charlie, a friend from WipeoutZone, came to meet me during the afternoon and his addition to the group evened up the sides, so we split into teams of three for more footie once I had my second wind. It was a good laugh, but I’d stretched and strained so much by that point that I was hobbling for the rest of the day.

We went back to Iain’s via Tesco, buying odds and ends for the barbeque we were having at Emily’s as well as getting busted by a security guard for trying to take pictures by the beer shelves. Strict lot those Tesco cops. The brief stop at Iain’s allowed the others to play some Pro Evo while Charlie and I played Wipeout Pure. I say played, but I was merely there to make a noise while Charlie was around the other side of the track in the lead. In the end I felt happy with two victories out of 12 – it could have been worse!

It’s early Sunday evening and I’m sweating away over Iain’s laptop in his room near Hammersmith in London. And man, is it hot. Hot and muggy, with very little air to breathe and a quick look at the Met Office website indicates it’s going to stay this way for the next few days at least.

The last couple of days have featured the delicate balancing act of trying to enjoy the fine weather, while at the same time keeping in the shade and drinking plenty of water. Of course, I still managed to get a little singed on Saturday, but considering the amount of time we spent outside I got away pretty lightly.

Iain is at church right now with the rest of the lads, so I’m at a bit of a loose end while I wait for him to come back. Don’t know what we’re doing this evening, but he’d mentioned going back to the great curry house that we ate at on Friday night. That would be fine by me, as it was a great meal on the night I arrived and since it’s hot as hell anyway, a spicey curry isn’t going to make things any worse. ;o)

Update at 21:40
We went for that curry – now feeling absolutely stuffed to the gills. We had the buffet, so it wasn’t quite as good as Friday, but tasty none the less. An interesting development was a call from Ian Binnie mid-way through our meal to tell us that he’d missed his flight. This isn’t the kind of thing that Ian would normally do, being a sensible and reliably kind of guy, but when you go to the wrong airport entirely, the chances are you’re going to miss your plane like he did!

So we’ll sit here and play Pro Evo until Binnie shows his rather sheepish face. :o)

My 33rd birthday came and went without much of a noise this week. The day consisted of going to work as usual, doing the usual stuff, chatting with the usual folk. It was only on the drive home where things got a little bit mid-life-crisis on me.

At the weekend I decided to dig up and re-sow a patch of grass in our lawn that had been scuffed bald by the feel of the little girl who used to live in our house as she played on her swing. Now, I’m not a gardener as such. As Fliss pointed out recently, my cutting the grass was the first time I’d done so for most of the last decade, so any other gardening beyond pushing our Flymo around is simply not me.

This bald bit on the grass had been bugging me for the three months we’ve been in the house, though, so with the weather hot and sunny and the grass freshly cut, I dug, I added fertilizer, and I sprinked some grass seed. All that is required from that point is to keep it well watered, said the instructions. But, since we didn’t have a watering can and the hose wont fit onto the weird taps in the house, each attempt at watering the patch involved filling a jug and splashing the water over the area. A bit hit and miss, I can tell you.

The hardware store is on the way home, and, being older and wiser on that particular day, I figured a watering can would be the solution to my irrigation woes. Much to my dismay the lame ass hardware store only had the most basic of watering can – one without a spout attachment that sprinkled, taking the point out of it entirely in my opinion.

Explaining this to cousin Iain brought great mirth for him… and great mirth to Fliss too. Just because a man has reached the age where he knows what he wants in a watering can, it doesn’t make him, you know, old.

Once home we kind of solved the problem by using a hot needle on a lemonade bottle to create a rough-shod sprinkling device that works rather well, considering it was a first attempt. See, the old mind is still sharp as a tack.