Okay, yes.  It's been a while.  I'm not actually terribly sure what I've been doing between the last entry and now.  I think it's involved an endless repetition of the cycle of "sleep badly", "try to catch up on sleep - fail - interesting programme on TV", "try to catch up on sleep - fail - mind in full flow - sleep tricky", "try to catch up on sleep - yay - feeling fine".

There's probably been more going on than that, but I've slept since then (possibly!).  Like I can remember any of it!

Still, on the plus side, I've been making good progress with my free worship projection software lately.  Have been optimistically touting "Christmas/New Year" as the release date for the first useful version (although it will probably still be labelled "pre-release" for a little while), and actually think that I might have been being vaguely realistic.  And tonight I've bought myself a shiny new domain name for it, to celebrate - www.screen-giant.com, hurrah!

Oh, and the opportunity has again arisen to learn to play drums for church, so I might do that.  And my plans to go on the Atkins diet are gradually coming together - I've learnt to cook an omlette!  (not actually sure if I'd ever eaten one before a week ago!)  And I'm spending more time at the laundrette than I used to.  Must get that thing fixed, but it's MOT month, so it'll have to wait.

Urk!  Christmas stuff keeps turning up on telly and that.  Urk!  That was a year?  Erm, okay, if you say so!

Ooooo - managed to get myself all shattered again there for a while. Thankfully this weekend just gone was a nice chilled out one, and I've nearly got myself back together again.  A few good nights sleep (not the pattern lately it seems) and hopefully I'll be back on track.  Hope so, anyway, when you think for a living, it's always nice to have a functioning brain.

The big news from my point of view right now, is that I'm going to be an uncle.  Apparently this may mean I become known as "Uncle Phil".  I'm hoping this will quickly swing around to something more catchy, like "Dodgey Phil" or "Uncle Dave".  Fingers crossed.

Well this weekend just gone, was mostly quiet - and it needed to be too.  I did get through quite a few items on the "to do" list, but it was all lightly peppered with a bit of chilling out.  Interestingly found that my rear indicator light stopped playing up when I replaced the bulb too, despite the bulb I took out looking fine.

The weekend before that (and I'm sorry I forgot to get photos), Matt came to visit.  He was at a wedding vaguely local to me, so turned up late Saturday looking for a bed.  Shockingly he also hung around until about 6 on the Sunday, which involved hanging out playing rounders with our church's ever expanding youth group.  He's pretty good with teens you know.  Even better, that morning was baptisms at church and this year it wasn't just me and a few who decided to throw themselves in the oversized paddling pool - most of the kids/teens did - yay!  Finally - can't believe it took them a year to catch on.  They threw Matt in too, which was definitely a good idea.

And on the Friday preceeding Matt's arrival, me and Becky, had a bit of a phone call, and it's all off for now.  Hope that hasn't upset anyone!  As far as I know, neither Becky or I, are amazingly upset anyway.  I think we were both a little bit unsure because it all felt a bit more like friendship than romance - like it could use a little extra spark.  So for the time being we're leaving it, but I don't think it's necessarily ruled out in the future if we feel that way inclined.  We'll stay in contact a see what we reckon.  That's the plan anyway.  If there's any more developments I'll make sure you're all the first to know (I won't really, it'll probably be Tom).

And there's a Vic Reeves Big Night Out DVD released very soon, which is quite exciting news too.  And Gary Skelton is marrying the lovely Jenni in Bermuda this coming Sunday as well.  Tom'll be there lapping up the sun as well (the lucky blighter).  Hopefully Tom'll provide photos later on. 

So, it turns out that Becky's old uni friend Helen lives in Northampton, which it turns out isn't so far from me.  So Helen and her bloke Rob had a bit of a barbeque over the weekend and Becky tootled off there.  She slept over and I drove there on the Sunday and met everyone - nice bunch.  We checked out the Northampton Balloon festival - you know hot air balloons and that.  They had a fair, and the rides were really very good - log flume, roller coasters etc.  We didn't actually go on anything in the end, but still - the photos should be v. nearby indeed.

I've also uploaded all those old photos from my old website - there's nearly two thousand of them.  So click here if you want to see them.

Not too much news this time either, but last weekend I went to see Becky in Southampton.  Actually, we went camping in the surrounding areas to avoid the cats that infest her house.  Still managed to get a bit icky, but not too badly.  Anyway, there's a new photo album of the weekend added to the photos section.  A lot of it is shot a Paulton's Park - like Alton Towers, but with animals and with much tamer rides.

I've been nicely run into the ground this week, so thankfully this weekend is -a little bit- tamer.  And the weekend after that, it's time for a visit from Tom, which is always nice.

Been quite busy lately.  Thankfully, next weekend I'm due a chill out - absolutely necessary, really.

Still, the big news this time is that I'm not actually single for a change.  I went to visit Becky in Southampton, probably about a month ago, now, she came here this weekend just gone and we've decided to give it a shot.  There are still quite a lot of unknowns, so we're taking it easy, but rest assured she's a lovely lass, an active Christian, owns a horse and has a good understanding of the humour of Vic Reeves.  The tricky parts at the moment are the distance (3-4 hours drive), and my cat allergy.  When I went to visit her I came back feeling pretty rough - probably because I was in a house full of cats all weekend.  I'd nearly recovered by the time she came here.  Then on the day she left I started feeling quite ikky.  Could be something else, but could also be that she brought some cat nasties on her clothes or something.  Hope it's something else.

The weekend before the one just gone I had the amazing Tony T., Josh and Heather to visit.  It was really smart - bit like old times, but with less bus catching.  They arrived on the Friday, and left Sunday afternoon.  On Saturday we went off to Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk to visit one of Heather's old Uni friends (Hannah).  She was dead nice and Matt met us there too.  She took us to her parents house (they were on their hols) too, to check out the pigs they have in their back Garden!  Apparently her mum -isn't- Felicity Kendal (I did check, I can assure you!).  There was also a nice country walk on the cards, and the temptation to buy a Hillman Minx (think it was a Hillman, anyway) for £750.  V. nice - we all wanted it!  We also left Heather with Hannah for a while and explored Bury St. Edmunds (dead nice, actually).  We popped into this Ye Olde Tea Room (established 1999 as far as I remember) - so that explains the photo of Matt with the ye old pretty tea waitress.  Anyway - there's photographs of the weekend here if you take a look around, and on Josh's site too.

Other news:  The Mighty Boosh Series 2 starts tonight on BBC Three.  Have already watched it in really trashy quality video over the net, as each episode is going out a week in advance on the BBC Three site.  Will probably just video it tonight, as I'm going to try and get to bed, as I'm feeling well ill.  Also, GSP have just released "Puzzler Suduko" - every line of code is mine, and none of the graphics are (probably a good thing, too).  Can be seen on the GSP web-site here and Amazon here.  Hoping somebody will say something nice about it on Amazon, as Postman Pat (which was 85% my code) got a bit of a below average review there.  Thankfully, the criticisms weren't really about things I was responsible for.  Oh, and, I've bought myself a 19'' TFT flatscreen monitor, after my mate insisted that my 7 year old Sony CRT was bad for my eyes.

 

And apart from the fact that there's oil leaking slowly but surely from the bottom of my car, that's your lot.  Thanks for popping by!

"Poop-poop"

Today I set off in search of some decent countryside in my motorised wheelchair.  Wasn't so sure about manually crossing the A14 without a bridge, but thankfully it's quite quiet on a Sunday.  Perhaps didn't find any outstanding countryside, but there were at least some hills involved.

Corene recommended a tiny little village called Little Gidding which she says is lovely, so I popped there.  It's certainly not bad - perhaps not up Northern standards of countryside.  Well, okay, no perhaps about it!  Anyway, she also recommended a little Christian retreat called Ferrar House there.  Popped my head around the door and quickly found myself sat with a plate of party food and a glass of lemonade yakking to some middled ladies about the history of the house.  Shockingly hospitable folk!  Apparently T.S. Elliot had visited at some point and wrote a poem about the place!

Yay!  The nice man at the garage has fixed my car!  New gearbox and clutch.  Cost about £400, which is roughly what's left of the car insurance money, so that's not so bad, really.  Now if that bloke would stop nicking my parking space...

Good news, also is that Catterick is now available on DVD at Amazon.  Grand.  That's not, the price, obviously.  I'll probably buy it soon, but everyone else should pick it up if they see it for a pound at a charity shop sometime in 2015.  It's probably worth at least four, actually.

Yesterday went out delivering leaflets in St. Ives with Jason for The Bridge Church's Fun Day.  A pleasant, if slightly sweat inducing experience.  It's on Saturday and will feature a Bouncy Castle and Sumo Suits.  Not sure if I'll go or not at this stage.

Plus, if anyone's interested in some music theory, particularly directed at song writers, I've been recommended some that lives here.

It must have been the cheese.  First, that crept under the film and spilt all over the show, and in a hurry to get on with watching the film, I just stuck a plate on top and stuck the bag on that.  Seemed to take ages, but eventually the popping began, but, then, after a minute or two, the plate cracked clean down the middle.  So I guess it must have somehow reached too high a temperature.  Nevermind eh?  Settled down to watch the DVD - "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events".  It's quite good.  Vastly superior to the Harry Potter films, although probably aimed at approximately the same audience.  Concluded that Jim Carey is actually very talented.  The microwave pop-corn was good too, and I'll be careful with Waitrose lasagne in future.

Good news is that the other day, I took my flagging Micra to the "good with Nissans" garage and they reckon they'll have it sorted for under £400.  Which just so happens to be the amount I've got left from the insurance payout, after the bump in December.  It's gearbox is gone apparently, but they guy also said that he reckoned that the car, more generally was perfectly safe to drive, and that the bump couldn't have done anything serious.  So, come Tuesday night it should be sorted with any luck.  Driving to the garage was dead nice too.  Haven't driven it for a few weeks and it was sooo nice to get out into unfamiliar territory - down some nice country lanes, sun shining.  Ooooooo.  Not bad, I reckon.