Staying In

Yes, I know that Saturday night is for going out to enjoy yourself, but last night I stayed in on my own while Tom & Moonface went their various ways with their various friends. Admittedly I was tired after a day spend mostly walking or cycling around town and a short night's sleep following Friday's band, but I just fancied a night in on my own.

So I settled down with the Saturday paper, a bottle of red wine, a film on the box and the laptop to distract me and had a thoroughly restful and pleasant evening. Very nice.

:o)

The Ex

It's all mosh-pit at the Fleece.
Last night Moonface & I saw the Ex there, in a sold-out sweaty gig which really was the best I have seen for years. Imagine a line of seven blokes ranging from their late thirties to late fifties, consummate musicians, putting their souls into making jazz and punk come true. Nominally Dutch, the band includes an American, a Swede & a Sicilian trumpeter with a clit-tickler 'tache, and a generous pot belly, a pair of saxophonists whose spit sprayed into the spotlit air like lawn-sprinkers in summer, guitarists whose fire had never left them (were two of them father and son??) , and a wild trombonist it a '70s safari suit. I know that's more than seven, but I don't know the nationalities of the individual players. The drummer was a fine Dutch woman, who sang us an Hungarian folksong at some stage in the gig, presumably to allow the dancers (us included) to slow down.

I still haven't worked out what genre the band plays, but it's not relevant. We had a fantastic boogie evening, dancing and grooving. It's good to know people, as we (Moonface, to be honest) had a couple of festival friends and an ex-colleague come up to us to say "Hi". She wasn't that pleased that the ex-colleague told her that he'd spotted her silver hair across the venue. It's the penalty for being the greyest girl at the gig.

We walked most of the way home with Graham & Dave. It's the next day now, and we're shattered.

:o)

Knight's Move

Work's interesting at the moment.
After working for three months unpaid, I was told at our recent sales conference (for which I have received my expenses, at least) that I am now back on the payroll with new duties.

There will be less pure sales and more "account management", which looks like meaning that I'm sweeping up after the bits that my colleagues have left. This may mean that I take the blame, but it may also mean that I keep out of the firing line. More travel, more big accounts, more interest.

It's two along and one across: a knight's move. Let's hope it gets me somewhere.

:o)

Dangling

The other "clumsy" thing I did last week was to totally mess up my climbing. Admittedly it had been a months since I'd been, but there was no strength in my arms, and I found that simple climbs became hard.

But this week was different, I seemed able to find routes and scale walls that I hadn't before. It helped that I had an easier partner, but things just went right. I climbed around an overhang, made effective stretches, and generally enjoyed myself.

Climbing up an artificial chimney I found it easy to swap feet and handholds, and positively enjoyed it when I had to hang from my hands when both feet were reaching into fresh air.
It's coming together.

:o)

Getting Off

One of the great things about giving parties, or being sociable in general, is that it allows us to introduce people to each other and let them talk.

We gave a party in (I think) March '08 where a friend and a woman whom he was interested in, "got off" with each other. We received the invitation to their wedding today, and I am so chuffed.

And at November's party, another couple of single friends seemed to get on together. We had to drop some hints to get them to go out, but that special friendship has at least started. Let's hope it goes well, too.


:o)


Oh yes, that's another memory from years ago: E & M. They met at one of our parties, too.
She was 39, two kids, divorcing. He was a fair bit older, a bit of a roué but a charmer. She told me later that he was the first man to giver her an orgasm, is spite of the several lovers in her past. He was something of a rebound special in that case, as she soon found another man with whom she is still settled.

:-0

Fluoride

I've just returned from the dentist where I had a root canal cleaned & filled, so I'm unable to speak properly and cannot make the work calls I should be doing.

With my mouth full of anaesthetic, one of the things which I bitterly regret about being born when I was, is the poor state of my teeth. Brought up in the 1950's in a soft-water area, it was before the days of water fluoridation and fluoride toothpaste so as a child I suffered lots of fillings and a few lost teeth. The poor post-war diet didn't help, either. My children seem to have fared much better, with very few fillings at all inspite of Tom's disregard for dental hygiene.

It's expensive, too, is having bad teeth. Each major treatment seems to be hundreds of pounds, and the NHS doesn't seem interested in this aspect of health, as there are few dentists who take NHS patients. At least the fillings are white, my dentist seems pretty good, and I'm in a much better state than many of my contempories.

:o(

Sunlight

We arrived home from showing Michele around Bristol, on the first truly sunny day for some weeks. At just around 3:45, the sun shone in the notch between our neighbour's kitchen roofline and the facades of the rows of houses below us.

It lit the far end of the kitchen, giving it a glow we had not seen for months.
Spring is coming.

:o)

Butterfingers

I don't wreck stuff, don't cause much damage at home, and it's been ages since I broke more than a glass or so in the kitchen. Except for this week.

On Tuesday I took a full bottle of milk out of the fridge. It was still damp from the snow that had fallen on it during the night, so it slipped straight from my hands onto the floor. Ugh. One pint of milk mixed with tiny shards of broken glass: just what I needed to clear up before breakfast. I hope the stuff that ran under the work-units won't smell too much.

Then today I took a pyrex dish out of the microwave, half-full of venison stew and cous-cous. Then I dropped it, smashing it to pieces. That wasn't fun to clear up, either.

My biorhythms must be at a low phase, or I'm just getting old & clumsy.

:o/

Van II, Stage 1

The Iveco van has been great fun over the last three years, so much so that we have decided to go better, and have a newer & better one built for ourselves.

This is the shell, bought on New Year's Eve. Stage 1 completed.

New Year's Eve

I hate this. I've had a great evening with people I like, but I'm drunk. My head is spinning, there's nothing I can do to stop the forthcoming headache and hangover - I just have to wait. Why do I do it? I'm a fool. I know that I've had too much alcohol, but once it's in my system, I am helpless......