Well, after dinner I shall be driving down to Trelowarren for my silent reatreat. Apart from involving my bible, and silence, I'm not sure what's up, but hopefully it will be helpful. If I come back feeling "very zen", give me a slap, that should sort it out. I'm taking my mobile in case of disasters, otherwise ta-ta for the week, and have fun.

Good B3ta. DIET PILL GUARANTEED TO MAKE YOU LOSE 30 POUNDS!

Huh. Gavin's been updating his blog again. Dunno if it warrants putting back in my header - probably not. Apparently he wants to get shot of a kitten, and is putting all his salesmanship into it:

That kitten is still on offer! I’ve been lumbered with the creature this Friday night while Mum and Dad have been away. It’s a pain in the neck and will probably be living in the greenhouse when the parents go away for a week next month. Doesn’t do what its told, is either in your face or in your food all the time (the pushing onto the floor has become throwing it to the other side of the room and still it doesn’t learn), and it has barely spent any time asleep when usually it sleeps most of the day.

No doubt when they get back the cat will have full sympathy and I’ll get none despite the rat slitting the side of one hand open today (not an accident and would have been worse if my reactions hadn’t been so quick).

At least with Obby if you shoved food in her bowl she loved you for days. This thing needs its head read - if it carries on I might just do that.

Saying that, he would make someone else a lovely pet! Any takers?

He'd be able to learn a few things from Adam when he gets back. I might get "I don't want a bloody encyclopedia." made up into a placard.

I've just been told that Andy Wilkinson, one of the members of CTaCH, has died in an accident. Please pray for him and for his family.

Right, due to insomnia, you can have an update regarding my progress in the musical.

The singing is fine :)
I have been through all the tap, but can't remember any of it :(
I reckon I've got the hang of the kick-line :)
I was in Scotland when the can-can happened :(
I've volunteered for the birdie (Not quite sure what this is, but I think it involves being on a large swing in a bikini, and going into the audience to flirt with people. I just know I'm going to regret this at some point!)

And now, after some of the other scenes have been arranged, I'm also a waiter and a fisherman. So in summary, I'm a singing, cross-dressing waiter, who can dance a bit, and smells of fish.

Well, well, well. Today I got a text from Amy saying that she was coming back to Exeter for training, also a query on the death of the author. Cheh. I dunno. Some people just aren't good at leaving Exeter I guess. [smiley]

We went on holiday last week to Scotland. Stayed at a nice B&B near Fort William. We found out while we were there that we were near where they did alot of the filming for the Harry Potter films. We went and found the huge Viaduct but didn't go on the steam train going over it. Its a day trip and we found out later that it is booked up pretty much a week in advance at the moment due to the films and the kids being on holidays.

To get up to Scotland we spent the whole day in the swealtering heat driving in our little car. As soon as we got there the weather changed and we had lots of rain. We heard on the news that scotland recieved more than its average rainfall for August in 48 hours. Ade bought a raincoat and I got some waterproof trousers and we went for walks and went waterfall hunting. They were quite impressive with all the rain! Despite the waterproofs though it was raining that much that we were still getting soaked and kept heading back to the car and the B&B to dry off.

We went funyakking (which is like white water rafting but in two man boats known as divorce boats) since we were already getting wet. That was quite fun, we only fell out of the boat once.

Then on Tuesday I got stung by a bee. That wasn't very nice, I've never been stung by a bee before and wasn't sure what it was at first just that it hurt very much. We were sitting on a bench in town watching this band that were playing in the street (the first time I think that it had stopped raining) and i just put my hand down on my lap and i think the bee must have been sitting on my lap and thought that i was trying to squash it or something. We went over to safeway to see if they had anything to put on it and the people there told us to go over to A&E as it was over the road and they didn't know what you could put on it. The nurse at A&E sorted me out. I still had some of the sting left in which was why it was hurting so much. So for future reference for bee stings the best thing to do is to scape the sting out with the edge of a credit card and put bicarbonate of soda on it. Oh and vinegar for wasp stings.

Then on Wednesday we went walking in the rain again and my mobile ended up in the bottom of Ades bag in a pool of water from where the water had soaked through the bag. So that died. Mark at work has now lent me his old mobile to put my sim card in until i get a chance to sort it all out so its now working again.

Now you think that would be enough for one holiday, but no things come in threes they say. So on Thursday we went mountain biking. That was really fun. I've never done any off road biking before and its wicked. We went on a massive bike ride all around the forest, down hills and rough tracks, it was wicked. We got back to the hire place and decided to just go round a little loop bit nearby and thats were I fell off going rather fast down a hill. It looked really difficult so I was going to go slowly but some guy at the top told me to go high on the bank where it went around a corner. He didn't tell me that was how you go faster! So I lost control of the bike. My loving, caring Adrian described the crash as like out of a cartoon! Something about flying up in the air and back down behind a hill. I just remember thinking as I came off this is going to hurt. Luckily I was wearing a helmet so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I vaguely remember my head scraping along the floor at one point. This medical student came running over to me to see if I was alright and I got up a little scraped and bruised thinking wow amazingly I'm alright. I even carried the bike back down the hill. It was only later when I was having a shower at the B&B to get all the grit out of my arm that I realised that my arm was stiffening up!

We ended up going back to A&E - twice in one holiday! I think everyone had been out that day as it was the first nice weather that we had had. When I went in with the bee sting there was no one there. On Thursday however there were quite a few, a lady had badly twisted her ankle walking, a little girl had fallen off a slide, everyone had gone out and injured themselves. Good weather is bad for you up there I think.

So now I'm stuck with my left hand for a few weeks. My writings getting better, it now looks like a five year olds rather than a four year olds! And everything is taking longer than usual even this!

The worst bit was getting back from Scotland. Our little car is a little bumpy on the road and with that and the vibrations you get in cars on the road it aggrevated my arm all the way home. Its rather a long way to Scotland. We ended up getting back on Sunday not saturday after staying in the worst B&B ever near the lakes.

So you might get the impression that we didn't have a good holiday but surprisingly apart from the mishaps above we had a great time. The lady who ran the B&B we stayed at was really lovely. She even bought us some mugs with scotland on as a gift because she thought we were not seeing scotland at its best because of all the rain. And for breakfast she cooked us different things most mornings so that we could try some haggis, cooty dumplings and tatty scones. It was great!

Fantastic news! Will and Rebekah both got jobs! I expect they'll let people know all about it.

Bit of bad news. We got back from Scotland on Sunday, after a mostly nice holiday. The not nice bit was that Emma fractured her right elbow (the end of the radius - one of the two bones in your lower arm) whilst mountain biking on Thursday. It needs to be immobilised for 2 weeks, rested for 6 in total. It's just in a sling, as it's not a break, and all the bones are in the right place, save for the crack. I'll blog properly about it later.

Anyone for Brighton on 26th September?

And now - an update.

I have been rather tired at work this week - about three hours in credit on flexi-time though. Police kept on sending through late leavers forms. To prevent overpayments you have to fax a request to stop the original payment to Barclays Bank, calculate the exact net pay, which generally involves NI, tax and superannuation, and always needs a double-check by someone else, fax that through to the police so they can raise a cheque, manually create a pay advice on a shitty Excel template designed by someone who clearly didn't have to use it and hand-write a P45. It takes longer than it might just because you have to make sure that everything is exactly right. About four of those in a day really slow you down. Michaela at work hadn't heard of Charles Darwin. I was amazed. I no longer do stationery, but I got landed with another job of the same ilk - photocopying staff record cards when the pensions section ask for them. i.e. When I'm already busy enough, thank you very much. I expect that all sounds a bit grumpy, but I feel alright really, especially now it's the weekend.

Sold a couple of videos at work to raise money for the Spaced DVD set. I suppose it is technically a box set, but that would make the case sound much better than it is. Still, enough commentary and deleted scenage to be going on with.

Had a bash at redesigning the Christians Together at County Hall website. I didn't change much, but I streamlined it a bit (FrontPage, though naturally not as good as hand-writing, did provide tolerably clean HTML) and prettified it a bit.

I think Norris' clothes have been hanging out all week. It's been raining all week. Is that bad for clothes? They certainly aren't doing anything for me on an aesthetic level.

I'm never using the Blogger spell-check again. It knows cock-all about apostrophes.

This freakin' weekend was a relaxed affair. It is a tradition of Dan's to hold a barbecue while his family are away, and he asked if Norris and I wanted to come. As I was at a loose end I thought I'd come, which saved Dan a train journey.

We rolled into Tunbridge Wells around 1130 I think, and we watched a bit of TV until I could take it no more. I slept in Dan's sisters' room. In the morning I found a note in the kitchen instructing Dan not to let anyone sleep there - but I gather sisters are like that. Of three cereals, the non Nestle one was Coco-pops, but I was foiled by the absence of fresh milk. Had my first meal at a Sainsbury's cafe therefore; a very serviceable breakfast for £1.99; or was it £2.99? Oh dear - I should really write Dan's tab up. A bit of a haphazard shop later, and we were ready for a barbecue. I bought a four-pack of beer from the Badger brewery, which has served me well in the past. I would recommend Badger's Golden Glory, which involves melons. Between that and Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Raspberry Wheat Beer, I'm very much sold on the idea of fruit in my booze; and that without resorting to alcopops.

Who came? Well I'll tell you. Well, I'll tell you some of the peopl who came anyway - with my memory you should feel privileged. Dan and myself, and some of Dan's friends from his pre-university full-time education days. One of them did English in the year above me; had Colin MacCabe for a personal tutor. Eep! He's one of those people who doesn't seem to have a normal mode of address. I mean, even more so than I. She was called Rachel. Also met James of sphericalbowl - a fairly vague sort of individual, with comical facial hair. There were also people who I had met before Cathy(sp?), Des and Charlie. Charlie appeared to have brought his other half too.

The barbecue itself was pretty good, though I only had vegeburgers, the rest seemed to go smoothly. I was fairly relaxed about the whole thing, and it wasn't much of an effort to remain entertained. There was altogether too much wasp asphyxiation for my tastes though. Dan's family has a table-tennis table, which I was right glad of. I gotta get me one of those. Well, that or a car.

There were quite a lot of wasps around, which we attempted to scare off with tea-lights, but it, fairly predictably, did not work. It went some way towards waterproofing the garden furniture I guess though.

We finished off a bottle of vodka while Dan attempted to educate us in the matter of astronomy. There seems, by the way, to be some controversy over whether the stars, or knots, are more beautiful in their variety. I think it's probably the stars. It was dark by that time, and we had lit an exciting faux-primitive cooking pot thing, which we were using for nothing in particular. The sparks left lovely trails in the air like they just didn't care. Bit of Jackass and Dirty Sanchez after we came in the house. Then to bed.

Dan pointed out St. Augustine's church to me on the way past it to J. S. (Johann Sebastian? ) Sainsbury's, but I didn't know what the mass times were. I was up predictably early though, and stumbled into the 8 0' clock. How handy. Dan informs me that the small, black and bespectacled presbyter was a Fr. Jehoshaphat, which is a rocking name.

Wandered back to the house and, as I was up, meandered around the garden, trying to redress the damage. Dan tells me that this sort of thing is more generally saved for for two weeks down the way. Hmm. I put all the unfinished beer, tea, bacon &c. in one bowl because I find it amusing, and it gave the wasps something to do.

After much lazy Sunday morning chattage, and meanderage, it emerged that Cathy's golden shoes has gone missing. We spent a long timelooking for them, and found only one. The whys and the wherefores of the matter we know not. Dan, Des and Cathy decided to go horse-riding, but I sat out. I know someone who knows someone who owns their own jodhpurs. Odd.

When we drove back, we stopped in the same Little Chef as we had come to on the way, and witnessed some heated acitivity in the kitchen, if you will pardon the expression. All very dramatic. And now we're back in Exeter, with a bootload of leftover beer. Cracking.