Woo! I have quit. No more commuting to Nottingham*

Instead I shall be exploring "How to spend £30k I don't have on my career". Wish me luck.

* After mid-September anyway.

Another day, another drive up the M42/A42/M1. I sometimes worry I am in a rut.

Tags: gig, music, photo, sheffield

Things happening. Been places. Less busy now. Here are some photos from Leipzig. Not a lot. But you'll like them.

Tags: gig, music, photo, wgt

Apparently it's 9 weeks since I posted. Ooops. If only I was having a real life that was keeping me from lurking...

Anyway, here are some pictures from last August. Shamefully I've not finished the WGT ones from last June - but my plan is to get there before I go there again this year (which might be with, might be without a camera!).

So, enjoy. There are quite a few here but you can all be impressed by the new navigation on my site if you do go through and look at the individual band pages.

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Tags: gig, infest, music, photo

This excites me. Not because I'm on GNER (which I don't do a lot) but because it has Free WiFi. And even better than that, it seems to be working.

To be honest I've had enough of trains already though. The first of the day was the 0610 to London; this is the 1100 from London and I'll get to Hartlepool about 1530 this afternoon after seeing parts of the country I only ever heard about as rumours. Then tomorrow I sped about 4 hours getting back to Nottingham.

This is, I fear, the highlight of my day.

Tags: london, train, work

This time next week it will have begun. All I have is 16 working days between now and the end of January.

Woo!



( More photos by Toby )

Tags: skiing

Another entry? I must be home-early-from-work-for-governors-meeting.

After going for a run the other week my knees were giving me trouble so I took a week off from exercise. Last night, after I promised to return berrega's spare key, I went out for a short cycle. A slight wrong turn on the way home turned it from about 10 miles to about 13, but this was good fun - until the point I had a RTA.

It wasn't much of an RTA - but some dumb woman decided to push her bicycle across a pedestrian crossing as I was shooting down it at about 25mph (with lights and paying attention having just successfully overtaken a skip). I screamed, she pulled back, I clipped her bike with my pedals. Much swearing later I have a bruise on my inner thigh from my saddle but am otherwise unharmed; and the other party skulked off after assuring me she was ok.

I'm just glad I managed to escape the pedals rather than fall over in the middle of the street with the bicycle attached.

Bloody cyclists.

Tags: cycling

Just two more sets of photos to pimp, but in the meantime I'm going to take advantage of the fact that I'm not in work to do a bit of an update.

Firstly thanks to all for kind birthday messages. I feel very much of the age where a birthday becomes less of an event, so that people sent best wishes and came out last night to watch me fall asleep in my curry was appreciated. I get the impression from now until about 65 it's the wilderness years of increasing bitterness about lost youth and other opportunities.

The weekend itself was spent in a muddy field. Sometimes this is just shorthand for "LRP" but in this case it's true. Though "cold muddy field" would be more accurate. The advantage of modern/sci-fi LRP is that wearing layer upon layer of technical ski thermal is not only permissible, but advised. At least (with a nod to a Labyrinthe experience) the "cold moon" was represented by a "cold campsite" and very little imagination was required.

The game itself had a slow start for us, but Saturday picked up and there were lots of bits and pieces to play around with to keep us busy (or not). My fear of dancing kept me (literally) in the cold for brief periods but at least my reputation survived. Do spare a thought for poor bacony though who had to drink two bottles of port on her own, then was literally rained out of bed by a hole in the tent. One new crew member recruited and if the MIA ever do return it's going to be very cosy onboard.

After the game were brief moments of "Oh, I recognise your shape - you normally wear a big pointy mask" and "You made me a cake - and I have only just realised". Unfortunately these were in the car on the way home so I must try and be more observant in the future to avoid appearing rude. Thankfully being in an observant mood by this point meant that I was able to survive the driving snow and rain.

Sheffield tonight is off, which saves me some driving - so more chance to attempt to absorb my OU course by staring at the covers. I must take some more photographs (concluded over curry) but at least it's nearly time for skiing. At which point I'll disappear from LJ again but suspect few of you will notice!!!

Oh yes, photos under the cut from (other) LRP.

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Tags: holiday, lrp, ou, photo, sheffield, skiing

I'm in London with work next Wednesday night and am considering going to see LotR the musical. Anyone fancy joining me?

See - I'm back in the habit.

Yesterday I had an email from Country Music Television about this show where they'd like to use my pictures of Dee Snider.

Ooh, I thought - fame at last. Then they offer me $25 for "all rights". Even assuming that they mean "all rights relating to this use in the programme rather than "all rights on the images" this is pathetic. So, I say no. Bless her cotton socks the woman I'm talking to realises the offer is derisory but apparently that's what people will work for in Hollywood.

Fame will have to wait.

Tags: gig, music, photo