HUGE GRIN!

The motorcycle club that I belong to at my company had a club night last night that was hosted by a local Yamaha dealer (NO not keyboards!).
I had a test ride on this bike which is a 1300cc semi automatic gearbox machine. MINDBLOWING! 1300cc is as big as a lot of cars here in the UK and no need to use a clutch. In fact that was the weirdest thing I was continually trying to grab the clutch lever and it wasn't there. The gear change itself could be done using the conventional foot lever or by using two triggers on the handlebars

I definitely came back to the dealer's after a 30 minute ride with a HUGE grin on my face.

Allotment Inspiration

Just for Anna to prove that you can win with a neglected allotment!
Before

After

Bank Holiday

Wow what a surprise a Bank Holiday weekend with some decent weather for a change!
So I have has my Mum staying for the week and at 86 she can't get around too much so to end her stay with some weather that she could enjoy in the garden was a real result. I spent a good deal of the time also in the garden but unfortunately at some rather menial tasks as opposed to sunbathing. I have put up some trellis in a sort of a 'tunnel' so that I can eventually train the yew trees around it to form an archway. The erection was not a problem but painting with fence paint was very messy, boring and fiddly.

Sadly I lost two of my pond fish this weekend. I am not sure why, but I suspect that they were at the surface because it was so hot and then became entangled in the floating plants. I have had seven of them for over 6 years so will have to replace them sometime.

Milestone Alert!!

Well, I never thought I would be here watching my 1000th read clocking up in less than 12 months of posting.
In fact I wasn't even sure that I would still be posting after 9 months, but I am and I am planning to continue doing so.

I wonder who #1000 will be?

Promised photos of Zurich and Humph

ZURICH


I just couldn't resist this one of the dashboard of a taxi we used.
I offered to send him one from the UK but as you can see, centre stage, he already had a London cab


HUMPH
These are not too good as they were taken with my camera phone which didn't cope too well with the stage lighting

HUMPH (Humphrey Lyttelton)

Mrs DeeJay and I went to see the Humphrey Lyttelton Band on Friday and it was well worth the trip.
I knew that he was 'getting on a bit' but hadn't realised that he is actually 86! He has obviously slowed down a bit, spends some of the set sitting on a stool and has definitely handed over much of the limelight to some of the other band members, but WOW can he still blow a trumpet.

The only disappointing thing about the gig was that he did not play Bad Penny Blues.

Once more, no pics yet but if the ones I took on my camera phone are any good I will post them later

Back home from Zurich

Another successful project trip, this time to Zurich

Due to a slightly different format to the agenda for this office, we managed to get an additional night’s stay as we finished too late on the last day to get a flight home. This meant that for once we had a few additional hours to be able to ‘sightsee’.

The weather was extremely hot at just below 30 degrees C so it would have been silly of us not to sit at the pavement bars by the river and to keep up our fluid intake!

Our hotel was about 15 minutes from the city centre so we also had the opportunity to use the city’s very good tram system, which was fun seeing as we didn’t know where we wanted to go and whether we had paid the right fare.

I haven't downloaded my photos yet, so I will post them tomorrow

Schmooze Award

I have been awarded my first blogging award. I feel proud!

Liz has honoured me with the Schmooze Award and now I have to award five bloggers in turn who, I believe, have the power of schmooze: the ability to chat informally on their blog.

This is so difficult but here goes in no particular order I nominate : -

Suzanne, who is probably the most outrageously funny person that I regularly read

Dave, who really has the knack of describing his job as an airline pilot in such a way as to make the most uneducated flyer understand it

Shirl, who although she is taking a well earned rest from blogging to aid her recovery from recent bouts of MS is the most sensitive read I regulary take

McCrary who has the ability to home in on the most important factors in life

Frenchtoastgirl who makes me so jealous of her talents and drives me to attempt things such as my guitar playing

My new hobby has commenced!

Well may not be in earnest just yet until I return from my business trip next week and then my holiday in 3 weeks after that, BUT, yesterday I bought my guitar.

Woohoo, I am a musician!!!

Here come the sore fingers, the frustration of being tone deaf and the formidable task of persuading my aged brain to memorise all those notes and chords.

I am going to get accustomed to it gently over the next few weeks and then get serious about some lessons when I get back from holiday and the winter months set in

I will keep you posted.

Has it been over a week?

I have just realised it is over a week since I last posted.
I just don't seem to have the time recently. There has been so much going on at work and at home.

I had a round of golf at the weekend with an ex colleague that I haven't seen for almost a year.
It was an extremely enlightening time as well as having a good round of golf in some brilliant weather. He is very much into NLP and we always used to have some pretty deep discussions about how to control your own emotions, attitudes and consequently your destiny. It was therefore great to talk about my current employment situation that he has not been involved with for over a year and to see how I had missed the debates that we used to have. It was obvious that I have let slip some of the principles that we used to encourage each other to adopt. ACTION - re-visit some of these and talk to said friend a little more often than I have been recently.

Next week I have a 3 day business trip to Zurich. Somewhere that I have not been before, so I am looking forward to a little sightseeing after work and to sampling some typical swiss cuisine and beer. Watch this space for the report back and photos