50+ and proud of it.

Occasionally there are times that my wife calls "bottle it" moments. This evening was one such moment. The local school was holding a Fete & Music Night for St George's Day. It had been going all day and my neighbour had already complained that "if you can hear the music indoors, then it's too loud". I tended to agree, as the bands who were booked to play in a small village, probably deserved to be booked, well, for small villages. I simply turned the TV up a bit and watched "The Voice". A while later, my wife called me from upstairs. "Listen", she said, "it's a Pink Floyd tribute band". We sat in the loft extension with the window open looking out over the estuary with the stars just starting to show against the deep blue & dark red of the sunset. The band played "Comfortably Numb", by Pink Floyd as their last number. Jeez can that boy play the lead guitar. Wow.

This was going to be entitled "The Missing Link", but after today, I feel that "morale" is more appropriate. Chapter 1: I went to our Devon office on Monday for an "analyst meeting", it was in fact a shameless excuse for a free lunch and to say "bye" to the people who were leaving when the office shuts at the end of the month. There were four of us in the company Skoda, plus luggage and laptops so I was quite irritated to be asked, "By the way, can you take back that Development AS400 that's sat in the hallway and those disks?". Humph. I went out and rearranged the boot and made space for the "office environment server", or "large-slab-of-useless-metal" as I fondly call AS400's. It rained. I got soaked. I went back indoors. "Oh, don't forget the tape drive and all the cables.". Humph. I went out and threw all the luggage into the back seats and wedged the drive next to the AS400. I then filled ...

Midway through our Beach Buggy Safari, there was a planned stop for lunch. I was told that "it was in the middle of a river". This didn't overly concern me as surely there must be a bridge or something to get to the restaurant? I was wrong. Quite wrong in fact. The restaurant was indeed, in the middle of a river. The tables were located in the water and we now realised why we were told that bringing swimming trunks was mandatory. When we got there my wife took one look and announced "There's no way I'm walking through that water with my gammy toe". (Never mind the fact that this water was probably better quality than Evian even though there were children swimming in it). "I'll eat on the bank". This naturally upset the locals. And one returned with a chair. "Seet down...", his friend, quick as a flash, whipped out a carrier bag from behind his back and tied it around her foot. "Don't move", and the two of them carr...

A quick plug for my son's band " CzechMate ". They're playing the 100 Club in Oxford Street, London on 17th August 2012. Worth a trip there. Good value for £8. ...and the Nambucca too, July 15th.