Long time, no write. This is mainly due to the mammoth "24" watching that we undertook. Managed to watch 17 and 1/4 hours of the series between last Tuesday night and Saturday evening. Then on Sunday the final 45 minutes wrapped the series up. I have to say that I really enjoyed both the show and the madly intense way of watching it. We did manage to sneak in a bit of socialising in between shows, notably at a surprise 70th birthday party for Steve Vowles mum on Saturday evening.

I am really enjoying "The Chosen", although it covers some pretty heavy Jewish themes in is written in a way that really pulls you in.

We went round to see Ed last night, he is off to Winchester for 6 months, whilst working on a new contract. To celebrate his employment Orynthia made one her trademark cheesecakes. We managed to eat about 1/2 of it and left the rest for Ed to finish off for breakfast!

I had a pretty tiring day today, due to a meeting that I had to attend in Bedford. The journey back was pretty frustrating as I think I must have stuck behind every Hay truck in the south of England, Still another glorious sunny day, it’s been quite strange to see so much of central Europe disappearing under massive amounts of water.

Well, with only a week to go before the series ends, we have got ourselves hooked on the TV show 24. BBC choice are showing all the previous programmes over the course of this week. So last night we found ourselves watching the 1st 6 shows and I am well and truly hooked. It is going to pretty intense viewing for the rest of the week but I quite like watching it all in a huge rush. Quite a few of our friends have been going through the agonies for the few months and now we are starting to understand what they have been talking about.

When not watching TV, I managed to complete The Sandcastle and I did really enjoy it, in a sort of "old black and white movie on a rainy Sunday afternoon" sort of way. Following from that I have started reading The Chosen by Chaim Potok. Just before we went to Cornwall Mr Potok died and I read a couple of obituaries, which made him, and his books sound very interesting. For some reason I have always been interested in the Jewish New York experience and the articles made great claims for The Chosen, so imagine my delight when I found a 2nd copy for just £2 in a magnificently overstocked 2nd hand bookshop in a small town called Wadebridge in Cornwall. The book is interesting because it looks at the tensions between different strands of Jewish communities, whilst placing those in the context of New York towards the end of World War 2. When seen through the eyes of a teenage boy coming to terms with his place in this society, it makes for a fascinating story.

Our friend Felipe went back to Madrid on Tuesday. It was really good to catch up with him again during his latest visit to Bristol. Lets hope that its not too long before we see him again.

Well the football season got of to a hilarious start, City winning 2-0 against a comically brainless Blackpool who managed to get two players sent off in a couple of minutes and then concede a goal by sending their keeper into our penalty area for a free kick, we get the ball break away and score from about 45 yards into an open goal. Generally low quality football buts lots of laughs.

Went to Ceri and Alan’s lovely house for a party on Saturday evening. Lot’s of BT people and strangely lots of young men in blue shirts.

This morning we went to a great exhibition at Bristol museum based on the Dan Dare comic strips. Loads of great ‘50’s futuristic graphics and it was quite a shock to see the amount of merchandising that was associated with the Dan Dare image. I tend to think of mass market product tie-in’s being something that was created on the back of things like Star Wars. However it’s clear that those crafty business folk knew what they were doing way back in the late ‘50’s – early ‘60’s, Everything from replica rockets to kites and jigsaw puzzles, it was all there. We met up with our friend Simon and his son Thomas in the museum. After seeing the stuffed animals and birds, Thomas announced that he would like Simon to stuffed when he dies. We thought it was quite a good idea, imagine inviting people back to your place and being able to show them your dead parents and maybe grand parents!

After the museum we went round to Heather and Spiders place for a nice get together with 9 other people. Some nice food, drink and conversation on a very relaxed Sunday afternoon.

Back to work tomorrow.

Well, we are home from our little trip to Cornwall and very nice it was too. We had a really lazy time of it. On our way down we stopped at the Bakelite museum a splendid little place, absolutely overflowing with a marvellous collection of vintage household bits and bobs. We were in retro heaven. They also sell the most amazing small caravans. Although they are newly built they look like little Art Deco masterpieces, Very cute indeed. On the Monday of our trip we went to the much-talked about Eden Project, which was only about 15 miles from our hotel. The place itself looks absolutely amazing, it’s the perfect 1960’s vision of the future, I was slightly disappointed that we weren’t made to change into sci-fi style unisex clothing before we started our journey around the domes. We stayed for about 5 hours before out feet gave out on us. Whilst at the hotel I spent most of my time reading. I took an ancient Iris Murdoch novel called The Sandcastle with me. The book is set in a fairly posh but austere English private school and follows the tormented life of one of the housemasters. The pleasantly old fashioned ambience of the hotel made it very easy for me to take the mental journey back to this England that has vanished for ever. The setting for the hotel was absolutely stunning, built atop a rocky headland with it’s own beach, when the tide was out. A series of magnificent sandy bays and coves each with huge cliff’s behind them made for some spectacular walking as the weather lurched between glorious sunshine and the equally glorious misty and moody conditions that Cornwall can through up in an instant.

Back in Bristol in time for the start of the new football season. City take on Blackpool tomorrow afternoon. No new faces to look out for on the playing side but I’m really looking forward to the start of the season.

Our new sofa came today and it’s fab. Our journey back in time to 1950’s continues with this amazingly simple piece of furniture designed by the god like Robin Day.

Well it looks as though summer has really arrived; yesterday the thermometer hit 100 degrees (F) in our back garden. Now for Bristol that’s pretty warm. Playing football tonight could be hard work. I guess I might spend a bit more time in goal than average if it is too warm. As I sit here typing this, the windows are thrown open and the music of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelly swings through the air. The album is "Swing ’35 – ’39" one of my Dad’s old LP’s which made it’s way to me after he decided that CD’s were the only thing for him. I love the wonderfully relaxed jaunty tone that this music provides, it is amazing that it still sounds so fresh nearly 70 years after it was recorded.

On Friday evening we went to see the excellent French film "Read my lips". The film features some very interesting use of sound, the female lead in the film is partially deaf and we get to hear things in different ways as she plays around with her hearing aids. The film was riddled with the influence of Alfred Hitchcock – never a bad thing in my book.

After the film we met up with a few friends for a quick drink outside The Ostrich. Thought that we would sit outside and had the strange spectacle of watching a young lad running down the road pursued by a large dog. Then a few seconds later a policeman in bullet-proof vest came running along shouting at the youth "Police dog handler with dog. Stop now" Now logic dictates that no matter how fit you are, you can’t outrun a police dog, but having started to run it must be really difficult to actually stop and wait for the dog to leap towards you. We have all seen those police display teams in action, when they set a dog on a man with a hugely padded arm (I often thought that the dogs must think it’s strange when they get to chance someone with two arms of the same size for the first time), and the dog wrestles the man to the ground. So if you are the one being chased it must be well neigh impossible to stand still and wait for the dog to treat you as tonight’s helping of Pedigree Chum. Anyway stop he did, although we could not see the immediate outcome of that but we did see him being driven away by one of the three or was it four police cars that eventually arrived on the scene.

On Saturday we eventually got round to ordering a new sofa, it is a design by the great Robin Day that was first available in 1957, It is a classic, simple design that would be right at home in your local’s beatnik pad. We are very excited and to make it even more exciting Habitat were having a sale this weekend so it was 15% cheaper than we expected. It arrives next Friday, the day after we return from Cornwall.

Oh dear our intellectual credentials are in tatters! Last night Orynthia and I joined forces with our friends, Jon Collins and James Thomas to enter what is apparently the longest running pub quiz in Bristol. We met for a pre quiz meal at splendidly cheap and cheerful "Indian Fast Food", where the heat of my Chicken Jalfrarzi certainly should have woken up my brain cells. Although the turn out for the quiz was not exactly huge, our lack of ability to memorise the innermost details of a Monopoly board combined with an almost total lack of knowledge of the animal kingdom, meant that we finished the competition battling for the booby prize for finishing 2nd last!

Good news for the quirky side of Bristolian nightlife. At long last The Cube is on the verge of reopening. For those that don’t know of The Cube it is a small independently run cinema (and much more) on the site of the old Arts Centre Cinema in Kings Square. It was the home for an amazingly eclectic mixture of the wilder side of the film and music world. The place has been closed for a year due to fire in the Chinese restaurant which The Cube shared an entrance with. We have had some great nights at this fantastically down at heel cinema. It is due to reopen at the end of August and I am really looking forward to it. Often you took the walk along the long corridor into the building without really knowing what you were about to let yourself in for; always interesting, often chaotic it was a shinning star in the Bristolian entertainment scene.

I’ve been reading an excellent article in the New Yorker magazine, which talks about the problem of over qualified, over ambitious people being pushed too far, too quickly by companies who think that the way to succeed in this wonderful corporate world is to get lots of lovely newly qualified MBA’s, pay them huge sums of money and keep promoting them before they get a chance to understand what they or the company are doing. The article went on to point out that many of America’s top performing companies are those that actually have people at the top who have worked their way gradually through an organisation, rather than people who have stormed through like a whirling dervish, having no true grasp of what they are doing because they are incapable of seeing the true impact of the decisions they make. Now I am not an ambitious sort of chap but I do know that the bits of BT that I have been involved have only worked when we have had people in charge who aren’t just concerned with the next big promotion and added share options. Mind you, one aspect of the current stock market crash that I have enjoyed is the crumbling values of these share options which we were told were a gilt edged "can’t lose" bonus. My My, don’t I sound bitter and twisted today!

During the weekend I read charming piece on P G Wodehouse in The Guardian. It reminded me, what a joy it is to read the sparkling prose of the great man. Since the start of the World Cup my reading habits have fallen back to magazines and newspapers rather than books. Time to rectify that and Wodehouse is the man to kick start the reading campaign.

Well the end of busy weekend is here. Once again Ashton Court was the normal mix of average bands and lovely people. We had a very social time amongst tens of thousands that turned up. No major musical treats, my highlight of the weekend was watching people career down the hill, in front of the Academy stage thanks to a track made from bits of cardboard on Saturday evening. A wonderfully haphazard collection of individuals speed towards a metal fence at high speed. Most of them managed to loose their balance and crash to the floor before eating the metal! The sun shone for most of the weekend and we even managed to eat some food which we had not tried before, It was a French sort of stew thing made from Potatoes, Bacon and Cheese which was cooked in an huge pan, very tasty and filling. No Jerk Chicken for us this year but a new West Indian restaurant has just opened on Whiteladies Road, which is excellent news.

Said goodbye to our new friends from Korea today, We spent sometime with them on Friday evening and it was amazing to see the kids playing hangman in English. They have only been in England for a year and the youngest of them is only 7 years old. They were a really nice family the husband is a producer and director of TV programmes in Korea (he works for MBC). Maybe one day we will some of his work on English TV.

Anyway, we are both exhausted, must be all that fresh air, so I think it’s time for bed.

Well the summer looks as though it has arrived and with the 2 day Ashton Court Festival approaching this weekend the timing couldn’t be better. Last Sunday we had the unusual experience of a Thomas visit to the country! On Sunday we visited Slimbridge, home to many thousands of birds who live in close proximity to water, so we saw masses of different types of Ducks, Geese, Swans and Flamingos. Although the birds are free to leave the whole did have the feel of a zoo, so consequentially the initial excitement of seeing so many birds soon gave way to a sort of pleasant "Oh look, there’s another rare South American Duck" type experience. Much more exciting was a trip around the outlying parts of the reserve. We clambered into a trailer attached to a Land Rover were driven out towards the Severn Estuary. For the next 90 mins or so we were able to see a smaller but much more interesting array of wild creatures. The highlights of which was a magnificent swooping aerial display by a Buzzard and later watching a wonderfully bored, fully-grown Hare siting quietly in front of a gate which we were waiting to drive through, eventually it bounced away into the next field. Whilst on this trip our group of about 15 people were guided by a couple of rangers, both of them lovely guys who’s obvious love of their job shown through, as they excitedly pointed out features of the landscape to us. Fantastically knowledgeable and yet completely free of ego, if only all strands of work could produce people who are at the top of their profession and yet have no desire to flaunt it.

During the World Cup we struck up a friendship with a Korean family living just around the corner from us. Now if you watched any of the Korean games you will know that during the tournament it looked as though everyone in Korea was wearing a red T-shirt with the rather strange slogan "Be The Reds" written on it. On Saturday morning the whole family (Mr Choi wearing his recently acquired red T-shirt) came round to present me with a splendid Bandanna with the slogan emblazoned on it underneath the Korean flag. This was passed to me in an amazing box made out of paper in a sort of Origami style by Mrs Choi. A really lovely gift, sadly they are heading back to Korea this Sunday, so we won’t really get a chance to know them.

I love this What time/date is it?. Boy that guy works hard! best viewed in IE I think - but what do I know?

It’s a strange thing but I have found a couple of new TV programmes, which have become "must watch" slots in our week. The 1st of these by a couple of weeks is the splendid Six Feet Under, which always starts with a wonderfully haphazard death (man killed in giant food mixer, former porn star electrocuted in the bath by her pet cat etc) and then goes onto show the attempts to provide the sort of funeral that the family and friends of the deceased want to see for their dearly departed. We also get to watch the painful process of the family who run the funeral parlour business trying to co-exist, when they should not really live in the same state let alone the same house. It’s made by the same people who made American Beauty and it shows. The other show is The Job, yet another show about New York cops. Pleased to say that the emphasis is drawing out as much humour as possible from gleefully acknowledged stereotypical cops, You know the sort of thing, the elderly overweight Irishman, the wisecracking lead man who is not quite as sharp as he thinks he is, the two innocent newly recruited Latino cops (one of whom has not said a word in the 1st four shows, as far as I can remember). This has all combined to produce quite a few laugh out loud moments, which comes as quite a shock after years of drab TV.

Well the Lambchop gig was just fantastic. The Fleece turned out to be a perfect venue for a band on top of their form. On this occasion, Lambchop were a 6-piece band rather than the 12 (I think) who came to town last time. We were treated to a much more varied show this time around; we even had the unexpected spectacle of watching Lambchop "rock-out!" on a couple of occasions. The intimacy of the venue seamed to suit the band much more and the joyfully exuberant response from the crowd appeared to really delight the band.

Just got back from visiting my Dad in Devon, Orynthia was driving, so I managed to relax with my eyes closed whilst listening to Storytelling the latest Belle & Sebastian CD. Now I must have heard this album at least 60 times in the past 5 weeks or so, and still I love it. I really think that it contains much of the band’s best work. Songs like "Big John Shaft" are just glorious. Also blessed with some beautiful instrumental tracks, it is that rarest of all beasts, a CD that I find myself humming and whistling along. I am not normally known for vocal outbursts whilst listening to music. So something pretty special must be going on here.

When we were coming back into Bristol, I decided that if I was a writer, I would try to write something where all the characters have the names of Bristol suburbs. You can guess the sort of thing; Bradley Stoke and Lawrence Hill go into town to meet up with that well-known communist Red Cliff. Later they spend some time with a couple of girls, Hen Grove and a couple of foreign students; Cot Ham from Ireland and Be D’minster from France. Then they go back to Lawrence’s place where he has a blazing row with his dad Bart(on) Hill. Phil Ton calms everyone down etc.

Following a recent attack on a small child by a Fox, The Guardian did a nice
piece on inner city wildlife today. I think it's great that the very rare
and strangely named Black Redstarts can be found on some industrial
wasteland within walking distance of Canary Wharf. Now these birds are rarer
in the UK than the Golden Eagle or The Osprey. Less than 100 nesting pairs
in the country and wisely they have decided that they would rather live in
the heart of the city than waste its time moping around in the dull old
countryside. I was talking to Orynthia about this the other day and I think
that I have worked out why I don't like the countryside. We are sold the
idea, that the countryside is a wonderful place where we can relax and do
anything we want to do, in this glorious open space. Now when I was younger,
I would see a nice green field and would immediately think, wow - what a
great place to go and play football, Upon rushing into the field, I would
discover that the grass was knee high, the ground was full of lumps and
bumps and most likely covered in cow dung as well. In other words useless!
Nowadays the ideal use for a nice green space today, is of course, a
sumptuous picnic. If you can succeed in finding a piece of land where the
aroma of the dung does not knock you senseless, you can bet that you will
need an industrial strength roller in order to get the grass down below knee
height. Now compare this to city, where the parks and public spaces are full
of neatly trimmed grass which just demand to used by human beings. Maybe the
wildlife of the UK has finally worked out that it's time to move into the
city!

Looks as though we may be off to Cornwall on a free holiday for 4 nights at the start of August. Sometime ago we sat through a timeshare presentation in an effort to obtain some free flights to Australia! We are still waiting for news on that but included in the offer was a mini break in the UK. It will be quite a change for us to go on holiday in a place which is not a large city and we are both quite excited about the idea of 4 days with nothing to do. Lets hope that it happens.

We are going to see the quietest band in the world "Lambchop" on Friday. This gig was meant to take place the fairly large surroundings of the Colston Hall, however when they played there last time many people that we spoke to after the gig complained that they could not really hear the band. Considering that there where about 12 people on stage, it is quite an achievement to be that quiet. However it looks as though many people were put off by the lack noise and ticket sales have been very poor. There was talk of the gig being cancelled, luckily that is not the case, it has just been moved to the Fleece. A smaller stand-up venue, which should suit the band quite well.

I've resisted this long but here are my thoughts on the world cup:
Well, as usual the English dream did not come true. How strange though to go out with such a whimper. The normal anguish of the last few minutes of the last game or worse still a penalty shoot out was replaced by the dawning realisation over about the last 40 minutes against Brazil that we weren't able to trouble a Brazil side which played with more tactical nouse and defensive organisation that we gave them credit for. No-one here got angry or upset, for once we all knew that we just weren't good enough.

Although the quarter final games were poor I have to say that I have really enjoyed the competition. The spirited performances of South Korea (or is that Corea now?) Japan, Turkey, Ireland, USA and Senegal at different times were a joy to behold. I must say that I loved Seeing the over pampered poodles of Argentina, France, Portugal and Italy sent packing. I know that Italy had some grounds for complaint but sometimes that happens. You lose games that you should have won, that is what makes football the head spinning crazy, addictive game that it is.

Brazil must beat Germay or do we have one more shock left in this crazy competition!

Where does the time go? Nearly a week since I managed to update this site! I guess it is a hangover from the world cup, must admit that the constant run of early mornings was really taking it’s toll at the end of last week. Anyway away from the world cup, I enjoyed The Bees gig in Cardiff last week. They were by some distance the scruffiest looking band I have seen for some time, but they do make some wonderful music. The later stages of the gig did turn into a bit of a scratchy guitar funk workout, but enough killer blows had been landed in the early stages to make it a worthwhile trip. The next night we went to The Fleece to see McDowell and they were great. It was the first time that we have seen them playing with the whole band and what a splendid treat it was. Nicely understated vocals and acoustic guitar from Mark Hymas matched with some beautiful, melodic guitar lines from the rather fearsome looking lead guitarist. They have an album out called Rooks Wedding, I don’t think that it really reflects the band as they are now but it is still a nice piece of music.

In between world cup games on Saturday we nipped out to Bedminster Library. The Library was holding a CD sale to get rid of excess stock amazingly all CD’s were only £1.50! We ended up buying 15CD’S!!! Lot’s of great old soul from the like of Aretha Franklin, Staples Singers and a couple by the Isley Brothers, plus assorted Jazz and indie selections. Then we have been lucky enough to be given from different sources new CD’s by The Reindeer Section, Tom Waites and Baxter Dury. We also recorded a 4 hour Northern Soul special from the radio on Saturday evening. You could say that we have a bit of listening to catch up on! Luckily for us, the weather on Sunday was gorgeous so we managed to spend and hour or so in the garden reading and playing tunes. The perfect Sunday afternoon.

No football for a couple of days, so a chance to draw breath and look
forward to the remaining game of this extraordinary competition. On my way
to watch the South Korea - Italy match yesterday I noticed that a house just
around the corner from us had a small hand made Korean flag on display in
their front garden. I think the family have only recently moved to England,
so it must be amazing for them to watching the scenes coming from their home
land. After the amazing victory against Italy, I felt that I had to drop a
small card into them to congratulate them the efforts of the team and indeed
the fantastic supporters. Can they beat Spain in the next round? I think so.


Yesterday Orynthia bought one of the new digital TV converter box's. This means that
we now have digital viewing and can watch the free digital services, such
BBC4, BBC choice and about 7 others. It also gives us access to the BBC
interactive services. So now we will be able to find out what is going on
when they "viewers with digital services, press the red button now". At the
moment it just appears to be showing lots of World Cup related stuff, in
fact when I left for work this morning it was showing the full Korea - Italy
match again.

Tonight we are off to Cardiff to see The Bees, I am really enjoying their
splendid CD, although I did read a rather uncomplimentary live review in The
Guardian for them today.

I have to say that the 7:30 AM starts for watching world cup games, is starting to make me quite tired. The main problem is the lack of catch up sleep on a weekend. Still it has been a fantastic competition so far and we only have to wait until 19/6 for the treat of an extra hour or so in bed.

Still managed to keep some vestige of a normal social life going. We went to see the film "About A Boy" last night. I must admit that when I read the book, it was one of those "OK" reads, I think that on this occasion the film is actually better than the book. It has to be said that the young male lead, had the most bizarre eyebrows I have seen for some time. The poor chap looked as though he must have a relative of good old Dr Spock from Star Trek. I hope for his sake that it was part of the make-up teams attempt make him look kookier, rather than a lifetime affliction.

Tonight we are meeting up with a few friends for a meal. At the start of the tournament I weighed myself to see how much the snacking whilst watching games would affect me. Strangely after the 1st week I actually managed to lose weight, so tonight is a chance to put a few pounds back on.

Well, as mentioned previously, I won’t go on about the world cup on this site. Will just say that this afternoon, I was a very happy man.

Went to one of the smallest pubs in Bristol last night, The King Charles to see our friends Ian Green and Steve Dew playing a short improvised set as part of a trio with a guy called Bill. They had never played or even practised together before as a trio, so everyone was unsure about the outcome. I really enjoyed the short set that they played and as someone who has never played anything, I just get more and more impressed at the creative abilities of our friends. I am also delighted to live in a city where people try to do interesting and unusual things.

I nipped into town after the football to pick up some CD’s. So we now have a proper copy of the lovely new Belle & Sebastian soundtrack CD. Also got the new Edwyn Collins CD as well as an album by a group called The Bee’s called Sunshine Hit Me. Heard this whilst at Mark and Bab’s over the weekend. It reminds me of a more structured version of The Beta Band deceptively simple on first hearing, it is a real grower.

Should be catching up with old friends Kevin and Julie over the weekend, along with yet more football.

Not too much point in me writing about the world cup here. Those of you that like it, will be watching it, those of you that don’t won’t be interested anyway. We had a lovely extended weekend break with Mark and Babs, managed to watch all the matches and had great fun doing it. The good thing was the matches are all over by early afternoon, so it leaves plenty of time for other stuff. On Tuesday afternoon we walked through the village for to Banwell castle for a cream tea. It is an amazing 18th century folly with a wonderfully low-key feel about it. A great relaxed way to end our little holiday. Also managed to catch up with lots of music thanks to Mark’s enormous record collection. Filled a few gaps in our knowledge.

Whilst reading the New Yorker I was amazed to find a review of Maroons a restaurant that we ate in on our last night in New York at Christmas. They liked it, and so did we. Even our friend Kelvin (on the left in this picture), who has an appetite that is best, described as gargantuan struggled with the enormous portions. We were ready to pop.

Back to work today, but only for a two day week, as I have Friday off due to World Cup commitments.