Remember, Remember...

...the fifth of November.

But this year make sure you call it Guy Fawkes' Night. That title has been reclaimed, because it's the 400th Anniversary of the attempt he and a bunch of Catholics made to murder the king and blow up parliament. What we have been celebrating all these years with a bit of bonfire toffee and some sparklers has suddenly become a shed load of serious, with people on News 24 talking of "regime change" and "terrorist assassination plots" as if it were Iraq.

There's actually a "stop the terrorist atrocity" game on the BBC Website.

Anyway that doesn't dwell in your mind if you go to Mayflower Park in Southampton for Bonfire Night. The first issue being that there is no Bonfire, so scrub that and let's call it Firework Night instead.

Pre-display there's a fair you can have a go on. I failed to win a cuddly bulldog from one of those grabber machines. Surprisingly, the dog seemed slightly too heavy or the grabber jaws were just not tight enough. I wonder if that always happens?

I also failed to have a go on Froggit, probably the least thrill-seeking of all the rides. Paul and Dominic had a go though..



(Well, you try getting a decent photo. I deleted twelve others of people I didn't know because I had counted wrongly...)

Nikki and I decided to be officially "soft"...



It's not that I mind fast moving boisterous rides, but I tend to avoid seeking the additional thrill of the ride having being bolted together off the back of a lorry that morning by whatever the politically correct term for gypsies is this month.

(There is a spelling mistake above, as is, of course, mandatory on fairground notices and on pub menus.)

Still more excitement before we get to the fireworks. Annoying local radio Wave 105 was there too with annoying local radio DJ, whose name escapes me. He was broadcasting from a very small trailer in which there was hardly room to swing a cat, never mind room for the very awful ABBA tribute band he had brought with him to do symmetrical dance routines. But they tried, bless them...

At least it wasn't The Cheeky Girls, like it was last year.

Finally to the fireworks. Regular readers of this blog - yes there are some - will be aware that my camera is really bad at taking photos at night time where I have to use settings other than the completely automatic ones. But here goes...



Oooooooh!!! (A bit blurry...)



Aaaaaahhhh! (A bit colourless...)



Hmmmmmm... (Not really all on the picture...)



Ouch! (A bit overexposed...)

And then they were all over. It was universally agreed that it wasn't as good as last year, not because of the absence of The Cheeky Girls, but mainly because the fireworks were a bit rubbish. Even the tea was weak and not very hot. But the Russell's overpriced bacon butty was good! I include the photo below to celebrate that one piece of good news, and also to mention the man who stood in front of us for the whole display, talking into his mobile phone telling his friends he was standing near Russell's Burger Grill. He missed most of the fireworks looking for them.



They never did turn up...

Here Comes the Rain Again...

It must be half-term at the seaside.

Came back to Southampton via Devon and stayed with my sister, brother-in-law and my Dad at Branscombe. And the dog was there too.

Didn't see much of Devon as there were copious amounts of rain, fog, wind, more rain and some rain.

We did go for a walk to the beach. Here is the dog, looking slightly demonic, pulling us down a 1 in 4 hill...

...and here is the sea. Also looking slightly demonic...

...but very grey and British and just how we like it.

Got back to news that Gill and Calum were safely back in New Zealand, and that other friends from college, Steve and Lynn had had a second daughter, Emily Rose.

Croeso y Gymru...

Bore da!

(There seems to be no Welsh word for Hello, so Good Morning will have to do...)

Anyway, brief weekend away to Caerdydd to see Gina. Not much time for sight-seeing, but did get to see the Wales Millennium Centre (Canolfan Mileniwm Cymru - don't know whether Minnellium is easier to spell in Welsh or not...)

It wasn't finished last time I went and looked a bit like this:

(That was in 2003 - it's the big thing in the background with the scaffolding. All the people were there because Sinead Quinn off Fame Academy and Marc Almond were performing...



...people didn't know who Sinead Quinn was, and they threw bottles at Marc Almond, so it was a classy crowd...)

Anyway, back to the point...

It is finished now, all made out of slate and rain. As is so much in Wales. It is also five years late to have anything to do with the Millennium, but I guess they think they can get away with it here. It looks impressive...



...featured in Dr Who...



("Never mind Cardiff, it's going to rip open the planet!!!")

...and the inscription on the front isn't actually an inscription, it's windows. They say...

Creu Gwir Fel Gwydr O Ffwrnais Awen
In These Stones Horizons Sing



It's a symbol of the Welsh culture, its beautiful language, its history of music and song...
What's on? Saturday Night Fever, Harry Hill, The Wizard of Oz and, next year, Jerry Springer -The Opera.

Also saw the new Welsh Assembly building...



...not yet fully assembled, but assembled thus far of slate and glass.

(It's obviously some kind of law that all new building of any consequence in Wales must be made mostly of slate - as if the weather didn't make it grey and depressing enough...)


And just before I came back to England. This is SALT in Mermaid Quay...

Allegedly, Charlotte Church falls out of here in the early hours of the morning, three sheets to the wind, with great regularity. And once, Gina saw Noel from Hear'say there too. It all happens.

Mae f’ysbiwyr wedi dweud wrtha popeth amdanat...

More in the Mirror...

And this makes three...

Up the Spinnaker Tower...

Had a lovely evening tonight with echoes of New Zealand - although it made the summer seem such a long time ago!

When I saw my college friends Gill and Andy over in NZ, Gill said that she was coming over to the UK in October with their youngest son, Calum. Well, suddenly it's October already and I met them over in Portsmouth tonight. This is Portsmouth...



...and it's a view of it you couldn't get until Tuesday of this week. When this opened...



Five years late. But quite impressive...



...which isn't bad when you consider that not long ago, it looked like this...



Anyway, enough of that. It officially opened on Tuesday and in true British style, the scenic glass lift broke down and stranded some dignitaries. The Great Glass Elevator still isn't open, but the ordinary one was open, so up we went...

They checked us to make sure we weren't terrorists...



...and then there we were, with panoramic (nearly, I'd estimate about 270°...anorak) views of Portsmouth!







...and bits of Gosport, where Gill and Andy used to live.

The second echo of New Zealand is that it's a bit like the Sky Tower in Auckland, and has a glass floor. Bigger than the one in the Sky Tower and the biggest one in Europe. Here are some people trying it...



(You have to take your shoes off, but are obviously allowed to keep your crime-against-fashion pink poncho on...)

Adults were nervy and unsure, but children, including Calum, were fearless..



...and his Mum (and my foot) also got in on the act...



...and here's how far it was down...



We had about an hour up there altogether and visited all three floors. The top floor is called the Crow's Nest. The other two floors are called Floor 1 and Floor 2, which being as they had five years' delay seem remarkably dull names. (You can get all the stats about how many double decker buses would fit up there and how far the foundations go down to hold it still at the tower's website.)

We even managed to get a shot for the Mirror Project website...



...to go with my other two.

We came down and tried to take some spectacular photos of the tower. Here's my effort...



...and here's Gill trying to get hers, with Calum looking on...



...and I even tried the night mode on the camera with limited degrees of success...



Hope Andy and Beck will see these back in New Zealand. I apologise in advance for the commentary Gill made me do on the video. (She could've picked up tips from the BBC, who were up there too...)



Thanks Gill and Calum for an excellent evening - I'm looking forward to seeing you again at Christmas 2006! x

Call me Diarmuid Gavin...

It's now 5pm on Sunday and, contrary to the forecast, it's chucking down. However, Jerry and Nicky came over this morning and we managed to get a lot done in the good weather.

Garden started off very overgrown...



...as did nothing to it during the summer while in New Zealand. Actually, that is a just an excuse, because I wouldn't have done anything to it during the summer anyway.

We worked very hard...



...and found interesting wildlife...



...took loads of stuff to the tip (where there was a big queue and lots of slightly chavvy people picking over the crap other people had left...)



...and wore trendy waterproof kagoules (is that how you spell that?) when it rained...



Have no gate at the moment (Thanks B&Q Stock Control), but I actually bought things to grow in the garden today - see firs above, rather than ripping everything out, so my fingers are ever so slightly greener than ever before...

Roll on the Chelsea Flower Show.

You see! I am not the only one!

I now have an ally in my, seemingly until now, one-man war against the abhorrence seen left.

And he runs a big dictionary too, so he's a good person to have on side.

Read his thoughts here.

Especially all the people I know who do it to annoy me.

(And by the way, the plural of "text" -noun - is "texts", not "textses". You know who you are.)

Rant over.

Ian at Jo and Ian's in Eyam

Had a busy, but really enjoyable, time at Jo and Ian's wedding up in the North (where people say hello to you in the street and any type of small cake is a bun and petrol is 4p a litre cheaper.)



The village is very famous as the villagers quarantined themselves during The Plague and most of them died, but the fact that they isolated themselves meant the disease didn't spread to other areas. There are plaques on most of the buildings telling you the names of the dead.

But fortunately, not one on...



...Crown Cottage, where several of us were staying.

The wedding was in Eyam Hall, just across the road from the B&B...



...and bride and groom (which is the photo you really want to see) looked lovely.



There was a very Swing-Out-Sister-stylie jazz band in the gazebo with a singer who hadn't ironed her dress...



...and the fireworks were good too...



...and here's the proof that they really did get married...



Congratulations!

Near Miss and Narrow Escape...

Some mad bloke tried to crash a stolen light aircraft into the Sky Tower in Auckland yesterday.

A Near Miss beacuse he did, landing in the sea...



And a Narrow Escape because look where I was a month and a bit ago...



Anyway, it turns out he wasn't some Radical Fundamentalist Extremist Kiwi Terrorist, just some bloke who was trying to get his wife back...

House! (or not...)

As you can see, I didn't come home tonight any richer. However, I did come home feeling considerably relieved that I don't spend every night feeding a pile of pound coins into a light-up table, chain smoking and eating chips, getting ink from my dobber pen on my shell suit and generally being too obese to walk up steps.

Yes, Portswood Mecca Bingo, that's you, that is.

But it's good fun once in every eight months or so.

NB. They don't do it like you remember from the seaside, ie."Two little ducks," long pause, "Twenty-two", longer pause, "On its own...number 3" etc. It's quick-fire stuff with pens moving over cards so fast it's a blur... Concentrate now...

The other side of the story...

After telling the story of meeting up with my friends Gill and Andy on the New Zealand trip, they've started a blog, so that (and presumably not only so that) you can read their version of events too!

Where has New Zealand gone?

I've finished posting to the New Zealand blog now I'm back, but you can still see it here, or by clicking the link on the right. I posted a few things when I got home, so you might need to catch up!