Well guys, I may be offline again for a while….
On Christmas eve my recent technology woes reached a new peak.
My laptop has died.
It seems converting some DVD content to ipod format was too much for it and something went pop inside.
So please forgive yet another reduction in posting.
I am beginning to think it may be time to make the switch to Mac.
Hmmmm…. a MacBook Pro maybe?
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As usual, my Christmas shopping has been left to the last weekend possible - but I am kinda pleased at my lack of planning or I would not have discovered the Christmas food market in Covent Garden and its tasty bratwurst.
Nor would I have witnessed the slightly crazy lady pictured above and her graceful aerial ballet as she floated above the crowd on her giant helium balloon.
I say crazy as it was around freezing yesterday evening and she wasn’t wearing many layers; that and the fact that she was only tethered by 2 very slim cables to 2 not so burly men who moved around in the crowd adjusting her direction and height.
Yet, it all felt very festive and I am glad I happened upon it.
I love London.
I finished work yesterday for the Christmas break, and I do not go back until 3rd January.
12 days off.
Result!
OK - so the first half of today was a write off due to the fact that we went out last night and consumed copious amounts of beer, and I was then unable to get out of bed until 1ish this afternoon.
But that’s what holidays are for right?
Happy holidays to one and all - hope you have fun.
I certainly plan to…. 
Well ‘The Second Coming’ was one tag line….
Another was ‘Kiki & Herb stick the yule log in the Shepherd’s Bush’, which I think is much more of a fun title, but hey ho….
Kiki & Herb feel like a part of Christmas now as I have seen a few of their festive shows.
Actually, I think I have seen them 5 or 6 times now in various places and I always enjoy it.
Last night they were on form, with some new material thrown in with the classics.
It is, however, kind of hard to explain to the uninitiated what they are all about.
So have a look at the clip below - It’s one of my festive favourites.
(And yes it is done with tongue firmly planted in cheek)
Brussels City Hall…. above by night, and below by day….
Spent last weekend in Brussels from Saturday afternoon until Monday evening.
My first visit there, and I enjoyed it very much.
The Christmas Fair was lovely. The Belgian Beer did flow. I can recommend the local Beef Carbonnade. Mussels and frites were also tasty. The chocolate goes without saying.
What I really liked was the atmosphere of Christmas all over the place. The Grand Place is the focus with the light show on the city hall, which I think was built in the 1600s. As you can see above it is quite spectacular, by day or night.
I definitely want to go back, and at 1 hour 51 minutes via Eurostar from London’s St Pancras international station, I think it’s a distict possibility.
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I would have posted this a week or so ago when I actually put the tree up - but between my ISP sucking majorly and my being as busy as fuck, I only just did it.
So here it is.
Nice huh?
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We spent yesterday afternoon in Hexham and we decided to head back at approaching 3pm due to the worsening conditions.
We almost didn’t make it.
The main road through my parents village is normally kept clear as it is a military road, however, yesterdays sudden snowfall seems to have caught everybody on the hop.
The road was becoming increasingly more slippery as we moved up into the hills, and we saw various places where people were pushing their cars off the verge where they had slid to a halt; and even more places where the tracks in the road swerved and weaved where drivers had lost control.
My Dad was getting increasingly nervous about making it back to the house and at one point we were struggling to get up to the brow of a hill due to lack of traction.
Then, just as we were entering the village we drove over the crest of a hill and the car started to slide.
It’s not often my Dad swears, but for him to utter ‘Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, shit, shit, oh bloody hell’ aloud in front of his family might give you an indication of how bad it was.
The car was basically sliding down the hill towards the village, with absolutely no traction, no way to steer and no way to stop.
I think we slid for 5 or 6 seconds, which may not seem like a long time, but when you’re in a car that’s sliding down a snowy hill on the wrong side of the road it feels like forever - thankfully there was nothing coming the other way.
We finally managed to park up at the top of my parents street.
At that point we were thinking we might get snowed in, but thankfully the snow turned to rain overnight and the roads are mostly clear this morning.
Phew - I’m London bound.
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Only in a small northern town would a man cut a ring of metal from the end of a pipe and put it on his penis.
The fact is that the small northern town in this case is Wigan, and it just happens to be the town where I did most of my growing up.
I wish I could say I was surprised…. but I did want to escape for a reason.
Thank you to BBC News for bringing this to my attention.
My favourite Muppet character - Pépe.
Rizzo comes a close second though.
I was just sitting here, zipping through the English countryside at what must be around 100 miles per hour, in the quiet comfort of a first class train car, sipping complimentary coffee, eating complimentary snacks, happily surfing the net with free wi-fi and thinking how thoroughly civilised it is.
Sometimes we just get things right.
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