hmmmmmm just received an email from Travel Italia asking for reciprocal links so I have complied.. will it make a difference to my site I wonder.... any emails from anyone else about this would be good

Anyway the weekend......... had another wander up to see David Blaine on Friday, it was afternoon very pleasant weather and he was obviously enjoying it all... waving smiling and looking remarkably relaxed for a man that hasn't eaten for a week. A friend though went to look later on friday and described a very different atmosphere, he said that people were abusive and there was a general feel of aggression in the air, at one point a firework was released and the glass cage visibly rocked. DB must feel somewhat vunerable!

After having a look at the man we wandered around the Design Museum which has some fascinating bits of stuff in it as well as the ubiquitous Alessi kettle! Wanderings continued to Browns- newly opened in Shad Thames where we had dinner, a very efficiently produced and tasty meal ... Pete had driven up in an electric car so we headed home following the Thames path in a narrow Noddy-like red car, unfortunately the batteries are not very efficient and any slight upward gradient meant the lights dimmed and the car slowed to worse than walking pace!! Luckily we were not on the road holding up vast queues of maddened London drivers!

Yesterday was spent in hard labour on the boat! It is now empty, we must have moved 20 tons of rubbish, assorted metal pieces, bags of gravel and all manner of tat.. it is now empty! and we will be living in it by the end of October, dont know whether to be excited or horrified at the prospect... at the moment I'm just feeling exhausted

Forgot to mention about the surfing with Ruby Wax!! Bank holiday weekend Pete and I headed to Cornwall... weather was wonderful, St Agnes just utterly lovely I really want to move there right now!! People were really really friendly and unlike Newquay it hasn't lost its Cornish charm at all...... so we booked a surf lesson, turned out that it was fully booked by Ruby Wax and family/entourage..... so I watched Ruby's first attempts at surfing !! Which is an odd way to spend a bank hollday monday, we did get to have a go though as we stayed an extra day....... waves were the biggest I've ever seen in Cornwall and my underwater somersaults were spectacular!!! Decided this should be a new sport, particularly as I am soooooo good at it. I managed loads of 360's a few forward flips and even the occassional back flip, plus the ungainly sideways 3/4 flip to land face first in the sand, not elegent I grant you but utterly spectacular!

Went to see David Blaine last night, well he is in walking distance of home so it would seem churlish not to! So we wandered as a group, Pete and his kids, me and my boys and Steve a friend planning to have a drink in Shad Thames whilst in the area. It's a very pleasant bit of London and DB has chosen an excellent view for his sojourn into the self. We arrived on the other side of the bridge and it took a few moments to spot anything different but saw the crane first. So we wandered to far side of the bridge past a hot dog seller, will DB gets smells wafting up to him of bland frankfurter sausages and magnificent fried onions?? Above our heads in a narrow glass casket was a sort of duvet bundle, very reminscent of the bundle of the fusty grey homeless that lurk in doorways all over town. As there was little proof that an actual person was even in there it also reminded me of the duvet bundle that is placed under normal bedding by teenagers (well I did it anyway!) when they have gone out without permission and rather hope that the parents wont look too closely into a darkened room. But I digress we made lots of comments like it could be a robot, a lookalike and other similar suggestions and then there was movement from above and all heads turned upwards as DB slowly stood up. This was accompanied by a rousing cheer, the man in teh glass box proceeded to remove his jumper hang it up and wrap himself up in his bundle again and then subside once more to the bottom of the box. As far as I could see the person looked remarkably like David Blaine so I would say it was him!? Such an odd spectacle though, very zoolike in its voyeuristc qualities!! A man has chosen to place himself above humanity?? Is he watching the crowds that gather with the same sense of unease that I watched him?? Obviously his unease will be far greater as he is supposedly doing this without food, though I think it would very stupid if the water doesn't have some colourless nutritional addition to it, vitamins and supplements and maybe a sedative or two would make survival of 44 days sort of possible. DB's view of the Tower of London though, from across the river, is absolutely gorgeous with its floodlit turrets and ancient stone walls, it might help though probably after a few days you would stop appreciating the sights!
But, and there is always a but.... traffic was appalling last night as anyone crossing the bridge slowed to look and I would guess that by the level of traffic everyone who was travelling anywhere in the vacinity decided to take a look too. This is going to make driving utterly unbearable if it carries on for 44 days!

Travel by tube is generally an unexciting thing, it's often too warm and horribly crowded but recently I have noticed the phenomenon of the button pusher and it has intrigued me.... the whole tube experience is very automatic and probably for the first time ever I have felt utterly ant like in my insignificant crawling through tunnels along with vast numbers of fellow travellers. but there are amongst that number some who appear to believe they have some control over the system. They display this idea of control by pushing the button to open the train doors Ha! have they not seen that the doors open automatically regardless of human interaction?? that the whole movement is completely pointless?? that they are completely wasting their time?? or do they blithely wander around truely believing that unless they take part in this action the door will not open and the twenty or so people also waiting to get on board would just stand there looking at an unopened door???? What a wonderful sense of self importance they must have!!

off to see Morcheeba at Somerset House tonight.. will get the riverboat too which is a very pleasant idea as an alternative to a cab or the tube ........ still in London........... still part of a couple...... stiill pondering


saw Terminator last week..... all a bit of fun really! must admit to enjoying watching Arnie as the terminator and taking the piss out of it all.. he is obsolete but at least is aware of it and his older model was a pure parody of a former one

in serious run away mode..... Cornwall is beckoning even harder than ever and I just want to run............................surf.............. climb.....................

have started looking at jobs and houses... on my own........... my own place........... hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

and tonight it's Astanga yoga!!! yet another course I have signed up for, this one is a 6 week beginners course in power yoga!! Should be fun and as I am so stiff and achey from last night the stretching should combine well with climbing..... by the end of the 6 weeks I might even be on my way to a reasonable level fitness again which means I can eat vast dinners and drink copiuous amounts of alcohol with impunity!

Went climbing last night and scared myself silly but it was sooo good! Did the course a couple of weeks ago and have been down to the centre a couple of times since to try out all the exciting new techniques.... hmmmmmm boy can I smear well now!! Anyway sort of realised that my confidence is fine with top roping, I can happily climb to dizzying heights and make interesting moves if I have a rope attached.... but without a rope I have been a little wuzzy, until last night that is! There are a couple of sort of slabs (walls leaning away from you as you climb, makes it loads easier!) and I have free climbed these though must admit to pounding heart and liquid knees at first.... so the confidence has been growing a bit.. and I have progressed to doing the harder climbs on the easy slab...... last night........ wandered around and tried free climbing a wall that we had top-roped on the course. It has massive bolt-ons and chunky holds mainly because it has a very severe overhang at the top of the wall... so I looked at it and remembered how easy it was to climb with a rope.... actually felt a bit like walking up a ladder sooooooooo I decided to free climb but only up to 15ft when I planned to jump............. thing was when I was up there I was really enjoying the challenge and decided to continue.... and it was fun, not too difficult and even at the overhang bit the holds were solid ....... until the end.......... the wall ends on a platform, a flat platform with a couple of bolt-ons to grab and pull yourself up with.... trouble was there was nowhere for my left foot to go to push myself up from... and I was at this point about 25ft up dangling on an overhang with steadily growing panic /adrenaline coursing through my veins! hmmmmmm luckily someone saw my plight and offered a hand (how embarrassing but very very useful) sooo next time I am determined to do the same climb tho' this time I will look first before I start climbing to see exactly where my left foot can go. This is totally the advantage of using a climbing wall, you can go over and over the same climb until you get it right whereas climbing outdoors you generally do a route once and move on to something else...........

hmmmm the little Glastonbury bubble that I have been happily floating in for the last few days seems not to have burst but gently landed........... it was an excelllent, wonderful, chilled festival I am totally converted and want to return again and again, in fact I want to live that life.... though with fully flushing toilets as an addition!

So much was going on a time machine is a real necessity.. you could easily have so many different festival experiences with the use of a time transporter....... one could be where you squeeze in to see all the big named bands that are on, another could be spent in the Greenfields and Healing space getting wiped out and amazed, another could be trying out the new bands in the plethora of smaller stages and drinking beer and having a laugh with yer mates, and yet another could be wandering around the lost space and marvelling at the fully intentioned mayhem that is Lost Vagueness

Glastonbury

an excellent weekend....definitely the best festival I have ever been to...... the sun helped but it was so much more!! will add more later but as my blog has been updated I'm off to explore

I realised this morning that I have a 'pet hate' odd term but that was the one that came to mind, so it's the one I'll use for now, unless you can suggest a better term.... anyway my particular pet hate concerns the use of grossly oversimplified, often gendered, generalisations......... you know the sort -sentences that start 'women (or men) usually do/think/react...... ' I really resent being herded in with half the population and expected to behave in just one particular way.. I do feel this biologically deterministic viewpoint irritating to say the least, surely the spectrum of behavior is inordinately diverse and although there are differences the differentiation between gendered behaviour is so overemphasised with such generalisations being commonly repeated that it sort of becomes too difficult to step away from and people start to believe that the behaviour is set in stone and irrefutable. i.e that men do behave in one particular way and that women do behave in another particular way with no leaway for looking at behaviour patterns more along a spectrum rather than distinctly grouped........

anyway moving on... have signed up for a refresher climbing course at Mile End Climbing club. went the other night and was pleased at the friendliness of the place and the diverse range of people there... so have paid up for a 2 day course in early June!

AND have got tickets for Glastonbury!!!!!!!!!

Finished reading 'If nobody speaks of remarkable things'....... a lovely book quite the best read I've had for absolutely ages, a totally absorbing and poetic journey, a journey through a day, a journey through the mundane, a look at the detail of people's lives in such a way that the mundane becomes extraordinary... even the title is a delight in that in the book the sentence 'If nobody speaks of remarkable things' is completed by the words 'then they cannot be so'..... wonderful! a pure delight indeed! It even made me cry! Right from the start you knew something dreadful was going to happen.. there was much exploration of life and death issues and how they affect the individuals. The characters were described in perfect detail but without names, all the people in a street were watched in absolute detail and described in an innovative way, conversation was not demarcated. it flowed along with all the other flotsam of the street..... it WAS a good read.. definitely recommended as a truely remarkable book

What a weekend! It seemed to start thursday.. with a visit to Highgate in the fun car, met up with Pete's two brothers and girlfriends in The Flask which was a really nice pub where we sat outside and drank copious amounts of wine and ate pistachio's! Very nice indeed, we than went on to an Indian and then it becomes a little blurred, well to be exact I fell asleep so it is less than just a blur it's not even a remote and hard to reach memory! Even managed to sleep all the way home which in an open topped no suspension 2 seater buggy is remarkable really! So friday I thought I'd give up alcohol as I don't seem able to do the sensible stopping after 2 glasses sensible thing.

Friday night was the Club Moto BBQ night and I was a bit of a party pooper really ....... though the one advantage of not drinking was that I drove myself home in the fun car having decided that I didn't really fancy the trip to Chelsea Bridge to watch old bikers and lads on scooters....

Saturday was meant to be the big day for moving the boat! It didn't happen, Enfield dock were just not ready! Jake came to visit though so I went to meet him in Kings Cross and we had a quiet evening with a BBQ .. sunday I had booked a jet ski so Pete and I left Jake in London and headed to Wyboston Lakes. had a wonderful ride there. the A507 was a lovely road all sweeping curves and picturesque countryside.. Pete enjoyed the trip down which I was pleased about as he didn't seem too excited about jetskiing!!

But we got there and we got kitted up in wetsuits and went to play! Loved it and so did Pete... we were both zipping around the lake in the sunshine until somewhat from nowhere it went horribly dark and the heavens opened up and tipped buckets on us and at speed on a jetjski rain hurts...had half an hour of play and was unable to work my arms properly! Muscles just gave up, getting the wetsuit off afterwards took ages!

Just had a look at Rose Darling (see link on the left under 'Blogs') Rose agrees with me about a recipe for youthfulness... forgot to mention the gig we went to ... the 'Godfather' boys were excellent in their usual sleazy way...... bit of a problem with their CD though ... the music is excellent, the CD design is very very polished I was really impressed and then I played the music video on my computer! All I can say is............ Lip sync ....!!! It really didn't work .. in fact it made me think of a A level art student who had big intentions but then just smoked too much weed and didn't quite get to finish the project off... but still had to hand in something!! Oh dear....

it's monday and I feel like spending money!! have an need to buy hmmmmmmmmm well anything really, though I'm trying to decide what I actually need...... after getting soaked yesterday in the fun car a waterproof jacket seems like a good option. Went to Chelsea in the sunshine, well almost sunshine and had a walk along the King's Road, looking at shops, had a coffee and sat in a pleasant little Italian place drinking my Americano and the heaven's opened up! It was pointless rushing back to the car as it's not really a convertible, there is no roof! So we just had to linger over the coffee watching the rain. When we finally got back to it we were presented with a crowd of people looking at it and two good size puddles in the seat wells!! Oddly after borrowing a sponge from another little Italian coffee house we managed to soak up most of the puddles so we weren't actually sitting in water but nevertheless it was still very very damp....... rather than driving via Hoxton on the way back we went straight home.

In the evening watched Twelve Monkeys as Pete had never seen it and was reminded how good a film it is as I'd forgotten most of it anyway.....

so might pop along to Field & Trek to purchase a suitably expensive waterproof...........

Feeling very lively and bouncy today and suddenly amazed that I am 45. How on earth did that happen?? Anyway decided to impart the secrets of eternal youth..... well this is what has worked for me anyway! And without being too vain or stuff like that I reckon I'm not doing too badly for someone who has attained this age......... oh dyed my hair red this weekend.... mmmmmmmmmm not too sure about it so giving it a week to either get used to it or decide to go back to the more 'normal' brown!

Anyway I digress........ what has got me feeling sprightly and youthful mid forties......... is a recipe made up of;

a plentiful supply of alcohol
sitting under a hot sun whenever possible
drugs (a bigger variety the better, spread over at least 30 years!)
financial hardship.... (the more of a struggle the better i guess... cuts out unnecessary expenditure on stuff like cakes )
and loads of frenetic shagging

seems to have worked for me

Well I like the new look, seems much neater and cleaner but I'm really struggling with the top line! can't find an appropriate code to complete the border?? Oh well! Nice font I think. Gill sans.... very clean indeed

I'm keeping the stones, and no I'm not refering to that band but to the image at the top of this blog... it was part of the original template .... and still in keeping somehow....... a nice link to the weekend ahead.. Pete and I are off camping, heading off tonight on a Honda Hornet with tent in panniers! We really haven't given too much thought as to where we are going, it's more a 'getting away from' idea rather than a 'going to.. ' so this afternoon I have randomly selected some maps and Dorset seems to have landed on top!........ there are stones there are there not? Big ones! and fossils on beaches and a coastline and beaches and cliffs and beaches ......... ahhhhhhhhh cliffs.......... seems a good choice! Hardly heading off in search of stones but hopefully will trip over a few.........

Time to start working on this blog, a bit of an update is required and as the boss is out today it seems the ideal oportunity.......

just did a google search for Delilah's Palaver and it came up!! Whether this is because blogger and google are now inextricably linked or because there are a few more links to the actual page I guess I just wont ever know, but I like to think it's the latter!!