Busy times

We have just returned from two busy weekends, weekend of the 20th and 21st, we went to the wedding of my cousin Gordens oldest daughter Wendy, just outside Farnham.
We had an excellent weekend, staying as guests of Angela and Ben, Gill and Angela grew up together in Thailand and have remained in touch ever since. Ben is a fellow petrol head, used to drag race in the States in his youth, even owning his own speedshop at one point!
Weekend just gone we went to London to see BB King at Wembley Arena with friends Trevor and Sue.
Gill and I went down on Saturday and fought our way from Wembley to Richmond (two and three quarter hours!) to see Gill's friend Barbie, another longstanding friend from South African days.
Had lunch with Barbie, got back to the hotel just as the heavens opened on Saturday evening.
Trevor and Sue came up on Sunday morning, Trevor having returned from the States on Saturday afternoon after being delayed at JFK for seven and a half hours, put our problems on the tube into perspective!!
Great concert at Wembley Arena, BB King was supprted by John Mayell's Blues Breakers, but BB was the star, 83 years old, on stage for 2 hours and then after the last song, put his hat and coat on, waved goodbye and left. Brilliant!
Came back yesterday morning, back into work today where the A/C broke down after 5 minutes and they cannot come and look at it until tomorrow.
Joy.

Election night

Having done the job of poll clerk at the last District Council elections, I decided that this time, for the County and European elections, I would like to be a counting assistant to see the other side of the democratic process. I arrived at the South Holland Centre in Spalding just after 21.30 hrs and took my place at one of the tables. Nothing much happened until around 22.30 when the first of the ballot boxes started to arrive, and the first job was to verify the returns, in other words make sure that there were the number of voting slips in the box that the presiding officer had declared. I thought that this would be a mere formality before we got on to the real work of counting votes. Wrong. We finished verifying just after 03.00hrs! The counting itself was a much quicker process, that said, it was 05.30 hrs before I got home, too late to go to bed and be back in the office for 07,45, so I did a few jobs and was back in the office at 07.30.

I must say that unlike being a poll clerk, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and will definitely volunteer again, might be as soon as October, who knows!