Beer!

It’s Monday morning (boo), I’m on the train heading for work (boo), so thought I’d type out my blog.

Was in Norfolk last week. I’m sure that you’ve read all about that on Sue’s blog.

I will add that I managed to do some bird watching whist at the Norwich Beer Festival. At the beginning of the week a Sparrow hawk had flown in the hall where the festival is held and sat quite happily on the beans in the roof of the building. They tried to get it out and even employed the services of the local bird of prey centre, but all to no avail. The bird was quite happy where it was.

Saturday I went to the Poole beer festival. Every year its on at the same time as the Norwich one and so I’ve never been to it. However this year we came back from Norwich on the Friday. So I was free on the Saturday to go down to Poole (well Branksome) to sample the delights of the festival. The thought of going to it only came into my head when I saw that a friend at work had a spare ticket for the festival for sale. So many thanks to Rob for the ticket.

The festival itself was not as big as the Norwich one. But size isn’t everything. For me the sign of a good festival is –

Must have a selection of beers that I haven’t tried before.

Good atmosphere

Reasonable food.


The Poole festival had all three. OK the selection wasn’t as high as Norwich but there was still beers that I haven’t tried before.

Unfortunately I had to leave early as AFC Bournemouth were playing at home that afternoon. But I still had a good time at the festival and sampled more beers than I probably should have done before going to a football match. I even had to smuggle the souvenir beer glass from the festival into the football ground.

Leaves me in a dilemma for next year. Should we come back from Norwich on the Friday, so to go to the Poole festival again next year? Or stay up in Norwich for the Saturday. It would be nice to go and see Norwich FC play again and the home match in beer festival week was always a must. But if Bournemouth is home that Saturday I should really be there for that. Oh the choices.

Dirty Rotten Cheater

Had a note from my nephew Kevin the other day. He’s said that he going to be in a TV programme which is being broadcast this Friday. The programme is called Dirty Rotten Cheater. With a title like that I just hope its not a documentary*

*luckily its not – it’s a game show apparently

Phone and Popham

So what did I do last Saturday? I stayed at home and did PC stuff, working on a new long term project of a new web site. You may have read about this site in my previous blogs where I was asking for ideas for a name. Well www.planespeaking.net is now being put together.

Latest on my phone. I spoke to Neil at work, who parents live in West Bromwich. They said they’d pop down to New Street station and pick the phone up and then post it to me. Very kind of them. They did go down on Saturday but said that that Virgin Train Staff were most unhelpful. Saying they hadn’t heard about me or the phone and that they needed some sort of reference number. This had never been mentioned to me in the many e-mails sent between myself and Virgin trains. So I’m beginning to think that I may never see that phone again.

Sunday was a choice. Do I go to football or to Popham? Well it wasn’t much of a choice really, Popham! It was their end of season fly-in. Had our stall as per usual. Didn’t make as much as usual but then again the only new stock we had were some notebooks, of which we sold a couple.

Been busy on the bookmooch.com site. Sent off a few books that we didn’t want anymore. Going to list some on our intranet at work. See if we can sell a few. Is this the start of our second hand book empire?

Choices

What shall I do Saturday? You see Sue is going off to see her friend Wendy that day. So what shall I do? Options are,

1 Stay at home and do PC stuff (maybe with a trip down town) with some drum practice thrown in as well.
2 Go to London on the train and do some spotting using up one of my free tickets
3 Go to London via a free ticket and then pay to go to Birmingham to collect my mobile phone.

You see I lost my mobile phone. It must have dropped out of my pocket whilst I was on the train. Someone from Virgin Trains must have had it as they rang my friend Charlie on it, (Alphabetically he was the first person who I have on my phone.) Anyway, my phone is at Virgin Lost Property at Birmingham New Street. Apparently, I either go and collect it, or pay for a courier to collect it and delivery it to me. I know someone who’s a train manager for Virgin and he has very kindly offered to go and collect it. However, he only rarely goes to Birmingham as Bournemouth based Virgin staff usually only do the Bournemouth – Reading section. I miss the phone as seeing as I’m off to my sisters soon, it would be nice to get it back ASAP.

Things that fly

Apologies for the lack of blogs recently folks. Been a bit busy. Our sort out has slowed down a bit. We have gone through all our books now and weeded out the ones we don’t want anymore. Listing them on bookmouch.com. Sent a couple off already to other people. Been meaning to produce a list of the books to put on our intranet at work to try and sell some of them. Sue has this dream of us setting up our own second hand book shop one day. Anyway every shop has to start somewhere, hasn’t it.

Been on my annual trip up to RAF Shawbury recently. Its where the RAF store all their surplus aircraft that they haven’t got the money to keep flying. Full of Hawks, Tucano’s, Gazelles etc. Nice. Went on to RAF Cosford afterwards to look round the Ground Maintenance School. This is where they train the Staff who look after the planes when they are on the ground. Some nice old aircraft in there. Pictures are available on the Air-Britain Site

Went to Pulborugh Brooks RSPB reserve on Saturday. Not as good as Tichfield Haven, but as RSPB members we got in free. Highlights were a snipe and a green woodpecker.

Football season has started again and have been off to watch AFC Bournemouth play. Hasn’t been good. Keep on loosing. The match next weekend is on the Sunday. They don’t want it to clash with the England match on the Saturday. Trouble is that it clashes with the last Popham Fly-in of the season. Which do I go to??