Netbook

I have bitten the bullet and treated myself to a Samsung NC10 Netbook. It is extremely light, very portable, and as long as you accept it is never going to be as fast as a full size laptop, it is fine for everyday tasks. I have also got a mobile broadband dongle to go with it, but not sure yet whether I will keep this. It is on a month by month contract so I will give it a couple of months evaluation to see if the 5GB allowance is enough.

Combined

Today we have been combined, the field of Oilseed Rape that has surrounded our house on three sides disapeared in the space of around three hours, having taken since last September to grow.

It had effetively blocked our view when sitting in the garden as it had grown to around 2 metres high (I'm trying to go metric, it was 6 feet high really) and now we suddenly surrounded by open views again.

nigelburch.wordpress.com for drag racing related comments and pictures.

The Kitchen is finished!!

The kitchen is officially finished!!

It has taken the best part of 5 months, but three weeks last Tuesday the new kitchen was declared finished and open for business. It has been a bit of a learning curve but we have got there and it was worth the wait, we will be having a kitchen warming party in the next few weeks to celebrate.

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!