« October 2004 | Main | December 2004 »
Back again to London today to start on Christmas shopping. This was very much a fact finding mission but I did manage to sort Alex's birthday presents and get some ideas for other people. Now I need to finalise it all and get the stash purchased. It was a cold wet day so a glass of mulled wine at Covent Garden as I stood watching the roundabout was a nice way to get warm and unwind from all the shopping stress.
Today I was up early and into London for Amanda's graduation. It became a running joke between us that I'd have to push her up a ramp to collect it but she managed with a lot of dedication to complete it, pass and walk up unaided. It was years since I went to Senate House and then it was the Student Bar. The building is impressive and managed to escape the bombing of London as Hitler had his eyes on it for the HQ should he ever invade Britian. Part of the building's success is the use of the Cornish self cleaning granite. There's a discussion of the building, in which Orwell worked and was later to be the Ministry of Truth in 1984 here.
This was the largest ceremony this year and the range of students was wide both in age, country of origin and studies. I expected people to get the same kind of scroll I got when I did my Certificate of Management but all you do is shake a hand, kneel and get an addition to the bat cape you are already wearing.
After the event we went to a local pub and then on for food. It was a nice time and good to catch up with family and friends on such a happy day. Afterwards, I drove back for more celebrations with Fhai and Martin for celebrations for Loi Krathong : no krathongs but some nice paper laterns from Thailand, great food and a lot of fun.
It's been a while since they were up on a Friday but tonight we managed to get together and share beer and orange squash. Whilst Richard did battle with the CBBC site and drank orange, Martin and I emptied the fridge of beer and wandered musicaly from Tony Bennett, via the Dirty Dozens to Stan Tracey and the black music of the 60s and 70s.
It's been a great end to a long week and with a little tme left on the history channel and clean bedding and a dusted house a great end to a long week. Tomorrow it's up early to London.
OK well I thought tonight would be a note here and then that was it. In the end I have upgraded Gallery, converted all the albums, chosen a new skin, altered the PHP random block code, converted the blog to PHP and added in the random picture block and a link to the main Gallery page....
That's enough, I'm off to bed.
"He was a true British hero," said Sir Peter Torry, the British Ambassador to Berlin, adding that Foley's activities were conducted at great personal risk as he did not have diplomatic immunity. "Frank Foley risked his life to save the lives of thousands of German Jews."
It's amazing that these stories are still appearing and revealing the most amazing of characters. Mild mannered, tubby and balding Frank saved the lives of 10,000 Jews and stopped key information about the atom bomb being passed on to the German high command.
So what did Frank do after the war ? Returned to normal life and died quietly. He's buried at Stourbridge where there is a small plaque.
Theres more of his life in Micheal Smith's book.
I really want to change the front door here but I've yet to find one that I really like. In the meantime I packed out the gaps around the current one with wood. All was going well until I went outside, closed he door to check the gap then tried to get back in with the key, which then twisted off in the lock. After 20 minutes of wondering around trying to get back in I finally managed it. So, I had to change the locks then go back to gap removal. It's done now and the gale howling down the hall is less and I have a shiny new steel key. I'm tired so I'm planning a movie, early night and as much sleep as I can grab. See you all tomorrow.
Sausages with lentils and root vegetables by Jill Dupleix
The rise and rise of the humble sausage
There's places on the Internet where this isn't the sort of thing you want to read but this seems a good early winter way of cooking sausages and apparently next week is British Sausage Week......
I've never been to the Cenotaph for the National Service of Remembrance. Today was a cold bright day and I parked up off Tottenham Court Road and walked down to Trafalgar Square. I was wondering around with the camera and it happened again, "Would you mind taking a picture of us?". These weren't the normal tourists, two elderly ladies with a medal and poppies and happy to be in the sun. Both had husbands on parade today and both had decided to avoid the 2 to 3 hour wait in the cold and go instead to the service at St Martins in the Fields. "Its just as good, with the last post and its warmer" they said, happily arm in arm and standing in front of the fountain. You can tell how the world's changed by the fact that an event like this is surrounded now in concrete and steel with airport style scanners to pass though to get access to it. We seemed more trusting of the old soldiers at Horseguards who had to show a ticket to a burly Guardsman before being allowed onto the parade square. This side of the formality there were anxious faces seeking out friends from years gone by and acquaintances of recent years. Time is taking it's toll and every year the ranks thin more.
After being searched and emptying the bag for a man with a bullet poof vest I wandered down past the ranks already formed up to watch the last columns leave Horseguards via the gate to Whitehall, the sun catching their faces as they marched along, wreaths in hand or pushing a comrade in a wheelchair. Soldiers don't change over the years and nor do men. There's a grateful recognition of others marked with polite applause and as the Women's services form up some wolf whistles and admiring glances. In these early parts of the day there's the same collective spirit which must have got them through so much.
Standing there hearing the familiar tunes, played every year in the same order I watched those faces in the sun. How they changed with each stage of the parade from looking for friends, to the solemnity of the two minutes silence, the way they strained to get the first view of the Queen to the grateful smiles as fellow Regiments walked by.
We all need our time in the sun, the recognition of others of what we are capable of or what we have done. More than anything these people should get there's every year. After all, for your tomorrow some of their friends gave their today.
See the photographs here
After a delay for adjusting the timezones we had the fireworks at last !
We all huddled around the Chimena, watched the flames and oooohed and arrrred at the sparkly fireworks then went in for sausage and bacon bits and sausage rolls...
Watch some fireworks here.
Already I'm thinking about how I could continue to update this if I wasn't in front of a PC 24 / 7.
Looking around I found Audblog. It uses a USA access number which means international calls but perhaps it would be OK if I was traveling.
Ideally some kind of update to MT via Email which I could do from a phone might solve the issue. Theres a few interesting posts on the MT site like this one and some talk of pop2mtblog.pl. Clearly people are doing it and here's a good example and here's one using B2B.
After a little digging I found mail2blog.pl but all the talk of CPAN modules is kinda scary right now like this
Perhaps this is something to put on the back burner for a while - I have enough to do with the look and feel for now....
Well as you can see the best laid plans fell at the first hurdle. Whilst four of us were awake one was very decidedly asleep and stayed that way until she woke, grabbed Teddy and stalked off upstairs. So the fireworks live to fight another day.
The meal was excellent, but no way am I used to the chillies from Thailand and it took half a mango and some beer to calm the fire down.
I'm not sure what it was - perhaps the collective sleeping sickness of their household but today I'm drowsy and can't settle to do anything. I made it into the town today but I felt so ill I had to come home straight away.
I've added a new sidebar to this blog which is powered from another weblog so it makes the editing consistent and easy to do. It uses the MT plugin Multiblog. I've tried plugins before but had no real luck with them so this has gone very well. The rest of my day has been taken up with a trip to Blockbuster and a stack of DVDs to watch. Sometimes the sofa is the best place to be.
Tonight is the annual fireworks extravaganza, without bangs but with lots of oohs and ahhs and us all huddled in my back garden with a designer bonfire in the chiminea.
Very kindly, Fhai has invited me to come around for a meal with them with ingredients brought back from Thailand yesterday. The last time we all ate together was in the sun in their back garden, talking about Fhai's trip and how long the parting would seem. The sausage rolls I bought for later on seem very plain all of a sudden...
Today brought the cold. clear crisp days of Autumn back.
I'm still really tired from last night and it's hard to settle down to work and life in general. My walk to get a paper was a short one, kinda like the sleep I had last night.
It's a shame that Kerry lost. You have to admire the morals of the man to conceed, with votes still left to count, in favour of keeping the American political process, and the country, away from devisive and petty fights. Politically, fiscally, environmentally and morally he would have been better. Now we all face issues with America and Europe.
Maybe tonight I will sleep ....
It's unusual lately for me to sleep badly but this is an exception. Maybe it's the American elections playing on my mind, the fact I get drawn to American history every now and again maybe it's just a bad night to sleep.
So here I am sipping mint tea and watching the elections, with a copy of Jack Kerouac's American Haikus open on my lap. There's a sense of history and wonder : what will the result be and what will the shape of the world be for the next four years.
As Jack wrote,
Snap your finger
stop the world -
rain falls harder
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
Full Site Feed