Quite fitting that I just found this recording from 5 May and only just got around to posting it.

Ding dong.

Well here we are again on one of Virgin’s finest replacement bus services from Crewe to Preston at the end of another full weekend.

On Friday I Travelled from Preston to Epsom via London. I was feeling pretty under the weather and came very close to cancelling. But it was Martin’s Girlfriend’s birthday and last October she had honoured me by coming to Preston for my birthday. So it was only right, no matter how shockingly rough I was feeling that I make the effort.

Friday evening the 3 of us went to an excellent French restaurant and ate steak, drank Californian wine and listened to British and American music and were served by a lady called Rebecca. And while the place wasn’t very French, it most certainly was very excellent. The service was fantastic as was the steak. Definitely up there in my top 5 steaks of all time.

Saturday Martin hosted a barbecue. The rain held off although the wind was a tiny bit on the chilly side. I met Tina and Paul who sells heart valves, Dan or went to the same college as Martin and I, Dan’s girlfriend who has recently given birth to Zakk their first child, Steve is the proud owner of the world’s greediest dog, some bloke called Patrick who seems pretty cheesed off with the world right now, and hmm did I forget anyone?

Following the barbecue, which incidentally was cooked by Dan and Paul, we all sloped off down to the Riser which is Martin’s local. A couple of pints of the award winning Surrey bitter later and it was time to head back to the flat for copious cans of John Smiths Smooth.

Amongst the birthday celebrations I was keeping in contact with some of the crowd from last weekend via SMS, and coordinating with Geoff and Rachel to support ACB Radio’s coverage of the Florida Council of the Blind’s state convention.

Today was definitely beer gardening weather, and I enjoyed a roast lamb and new potatoes Sunday lunch, while Martin and Dan had curry, before I caught the London train on my way back up to Preston. I had to be back for 9:30 as we were having a staff meeting. And it’s now stupid o’clock again and I’m pretty exhausted after the meeting so it’s time for me to sleep. Lots of work to do tomorrow. Or is that today.

There’s one or two people I can’t stop thinking about right now. But that’s a topic for another day. Get a grip Williams.

Night.

Ok 3rd time lucky. the last two times I tried to write this I managed to hit the back button on the laptop and lost it.

The Mesh box babbled a load of cack at me on Wednesday before diing never to reboot. I took it down to 1st Computers in Preston who are promising a dianosis by the weekend. so now I’m getting a ton of email which refers to the old email to which I don’t have access.

Had several rather incomprehensible conversations with: Rachel K on Skype, Rob and Martin on the phone, and myself in bed. This may be partly due to visiting both the Market and Stanley public houses earlier in the evening where I bellyached about the cost of beer, the injustice of Liverpool not being able to defend the European cup should we win it for a 5th time at the end of May, and sundry women troubles. don’t ask.

Well I better catch some zzzzs and yet again try to contact my employer to see if I can get a vacation any time soon.

Pip.

What is? You may ask. Ho hum. At least 3 people have contacted me today who read this little opus, this little feeble attempt at a blog, this stream of consciousness which is basically a way for me to remember that life actually still goes on outside work.

Although the fact that I put this nonsense on the web, and the fact that some folks are now bored enough to read it presents me with an interesting dilemma. Should I continue being honest and unrestrained? Should I go back to just blogging news stories? Or now I know I have a small yet devoted readership do I pander to the whims of that readership in some vane hope that they will stay with this blog and continue to grow? And in the hope that I don’t hurt any of their feelings.

While I may launch the occasional diatribe, it is not my intention to offend. Just tell ya what I’m thinking, take it or leave it.

Right, it’s 3:07 and I’m getting far too exhausted and serious. Good night. Normal service will resume shortly.

Well apparently I hit a couple of landmarks in my processing of SETI@Home units. I’m now ranked in the top 50,000 of 5 million and I’m processing an average of over 5 work units per day. you’ll sleep well tonight now knowing that. Oh and in the group Q5 to which I belong I’m second behind the group found who hasn’t processed anything for months so I may just sneek up on him yet.

Arrived Cardiff around 5 on Thursday and met Jo and some bloke called Tofara from Zimbabwe in the Prince of Wales. Within an hour the group had grown exponentially to include Gail and Tom plus 4 or 5 people I didn’t really know. Pubbing pretty much became the trend for the rest of the weekend, which was no bad thing, although it’s all beginning to catch up on me now.

Friday included a string of ATMs which refused to work instead prefering to throw out random bits of paper and make dialing up to the internet type noises. Eventually found some money from a working machine, or at least a machine which would take my card.

Food was the order of the day on Friday, starting with a full English Breakfast in a café in an area called Canton. Later Gail, Jo and I visited Henry’s, a lively bistro in town where I got me a 12 ounce steak. Think I’m putting on waight. Ug.

The Classical concert was great. At the aptly named St David’s Hall Gail and I heard Schubert’s unfinished symphony, a concerto for double strings by Tipit and Beethoven’s piano concerto number 5. Met Jo and Toff in a pub afterward.

Saturday we met up with Del, Lee, and Anne. Toff was still around for a little while as the trains were disrupted as a woman was threatening to jump off a bridge on to the line on the approach to Cardiff Central. Saturday night was not quite as carried away as the previous two evenings, although I did manage to spend substantially, and a decent enough time was had all round.

During the night, Del’s snoring rocked Jo’s flat to it’s very foundations. One of our number made a hasty exit pretty early on Sunday. It’s unclear if these two events were related.

Sunday afternoon Del Jo and I rounded things off with a tremendous Sunday lunch in yet another of Cardiff’s finest public houses. The Rumma I think it was called.

And at around 6PM Jo did the honours and walked me to catch my train from Cardiff Central back to Preston. I’m expecting a replacement bus service for part of the journey as the work on the west coast main line seems to be continuing. Oh joy. Hope to be in before 11PM as I have work tonight.

There are many anecdotes from the last few days which are probably deserving of a blog post of their own. But I really don’t have the energy to write them up and they probably wouldn’t work as well in this medium.

So back to work now.

I wrote this on thursday but couldn’t get it to post.

It would appear I am on my way to Cardiff via Bristol. The 12:28 service from Preston is running 12 mins late, but with any luck we’ll make up that time before we get to Bristol.

This morning was pretty frantic, catching up with email and doing some washing, but I did manage to find time to vote in the UK General Election. It was all pretty painless. My nearest polling station is about 5 mins walk from the flat and as always the staff were very helpful. And while I was able to cast my vote in private with the aid of a tactile template, blind people still can not verify their vote, and I had no way of knowing if the pen was actually working. So I made sure to press pretty hard so there was little room for doubt.
There seemed to be quite a few people around outside the polling station, mostly older people, and apparently the turn out has been pretty good thus far. This may be due in part to the rain holding off. It’s a real shame that something so fickle as the weather can impact turn out.

Well I’m off to get stuck into my bacon sandwich and coffee and catch up on a couple of podcasts.
If I can find the courage to avoid feeling foolish, I’ll try recording some audio before I get to Cardiff.

Just trying out the Sharp minidisc mic on the Thinkpad.

It’s doing my head in. Why does blogger screw up the line breaks when posting via email? Is this an outlook thing or a blogger thing? It’s driving me bananas. It means I have to bugger around reformatting posts which takes just as long as writing them in the first place! Blogging … Pffff.