aftermath
speed limit
Originally uploaded by
perlmonger (old skool, innit). It occurs to me that I’ve posted nothing here for weeks. This is largely because nothing much has happened that I’ve felt inspired to write about (no change there), but even more that I’ve been too busy in meatspace based activity.
Whatever. Here, at least, is a brief report of the perlmonger’s weekend:
Friday night was the annual WoodspringNorth Somerset LibDem dinner, featuring the dulcet tones and political stylings of Steve Webb MP as guest speaker. He spoke a deal of sense, as it happens, which is probably as well as he’s head of the group charged with writing the next manifesto. He’s certainly the first MP I’ve heard of who’s using MySpace as an outreach tool for contacting his constituents.
As the wielder of the biggest camera (fnarr...), I was drafted as official photographer of the event; mostly shots of prospective Council candidates posing with Steve and/or Graham Watson MEP, who was also there for the night.
The food? Well, the less said about that, the better probably. Duck it was, and edible, and non-poisonous, but I suppose that on-site catering for no-trivial amassments of human (or near-equivalent) bodies isn’t the easiest of tasks.
Saturday was a beautiful day, clear and cold and sunny, so I went out on my bike. To and across Ashton Court, up the Avon cycle path to Pill, over the Avonmouth bridge and thence to Avonmouth itself. Oh, and then back home again. This is the longest ride I’ve had since becoming re-enbiked and it went gratifyingly well: I stopped for a brief rest before tackling the steep bit out of Bower Ashton to the Ashton Court East car park, but that aside I felt like I could easily have done more.
Meanwhile, ramtops had, amongst many other things, purchased a Gressingham duck; we briefly pondered whether eating it that night would leave us overducked, but concluded that there really was no such thing and, in any case, we needed an antidote to the mediocrity of the previous night’s effort. Mac crafted a honey, shoyu and fivespice glaze which worked spectacularly well.
While preparing our dinner, we watched part of the bizarre what-passes-for-a-documentary-these-days about Aubrey de Grey that annajaneclare deconstructed far better than I could, before slumping in front of Question Time and the Culture Show off the TiVo, and thence to bed.
The Tribe pulled a blinder on Sunday morning. First, the power cut off; No obvious problem, so I flipped the trip and continued with what I was doing. A minute later, and off it went again. This time, (1) the study UPS decided it’s battery really was shagged and cut off its output completely without so much as a by your leave, and (2) one of the server room UPSen carried right on beeping after I restored power. Turns out that somebody (/me peers with jaundiced and suspicious eye at golden spotted beast) had decided to let bladder rip on the monitor on the server room desk, blowing it up with a lovely smell of fried electrolytics and taking the mains fuse of the UPS it hangs off with it. Luckily, no other hardware problems ensued, we had a spare monitor, and the UPS is humming happily now with a swapped kettle lead. I just hope that RedBus don’t have cats wandering in and out of our cages in Docklands as I really would have a sense of humour failure if this happened to a live server...
Having had our day set up nicely by all this, we took the dead LCD to the dump, along with a few other bits awaiting final disposal, and I cooked us a sustaining fry up for brunch before we set off the regular First Sunday village walk. Big turn out, thanks to the fine weather, and Harry took us round the antispinward half of the village circular walk.
Dinner was a tub out of the freezer (beef in beer), with spuds and steamed cabbage, before we set out once more for the monthly quiz at the Legion. Our team, The Aliens, composed of Pat and Dave WANOLJ, ramtops and myself came a fairly dismal tenth, but it was fun and we did win the first raffle draw.
My weekend exertions have caught up with me now, though, and my thigh muscles are protesting their unaccustomed use today. Still, things can only get better, eh? Just like in 1997...