Wonderbrass!

Hugh has opened his inaugural brass instrument repair workshop in the spare room in Godmanchester. He has all the tools he needs now and is set to go after training with Trevor Head last year. He's already fixed a bunch of Trumpets and Trombones and even a vintage heralding trumpet, like in old medieval films! It's a pretty sweet set up, and he's hoping to fix up a bunch of instruments from the schools around his borough. he's called it Wonderbrass, but it was a real tough decision between that and Kiss My Brass.

Engagement!

It's old news by now, but myself and Hugh are engaged. This is a picture George took for us with the glitzy ring and Hugh's best smile. We will be getting married in July next year and have finally settled on a place - Ampleforth college where Hugh went to school. The Abbot has kindly agreed to celebrate the wedding, and we have dresses and suits already, so now we can start thinking of the reallly important stuff, like the cake. I want something like this masterpiece:

Beer Ball

Hi everyone, it's been a while since I've blogged about anything, but I'm going to try doing a few updates a week from now on, especially for the folks in Australia.

This is a picture from a softball tournament my team hosted this weekend in Finsbury Park. It's called Beer Ball and the rules say that you have to have a beer in hand from the early morning, and you have to chug it if you do anything stupid. And if you do something particularly stupid, like getting the start time of the tournament wrong and showing up after the first game was finished, oops, you get spun around in the air while chugging. Also you had to play with a ridiculous hat on and every now and then you would have to do pretty unhelpful things, like batting left-handed and everyone swapping fielding positions. It was great fun, and only one injury; poor Claire hurt her ankle pretty bad tripping over one of the bases and got carted off to hospital.

Fancy Cars

Myself and Hugh went driving cars in an abandoned airfield outside Oxford yesterday. It was with a company called U Drive Cars. They have a range of kick ass cars, and you can take your choice of cars out for a few laps with a professional driver as a passenger to make sure you don't plough yourself into a wall somewhere. Hugh drove a silver one, a red one and a green one. For any more detailed information you'll have to ask the man himself. One was a ferrari and one was a James Bond car. Here's Hugh with all of them.




Hugh didn't drive this one, but I thought it was hilarious. It's some form of crazy English car.

Sleepy puppies

These are Hugh's parents' puppies. We rented a boat recently and they were good as gold on board. They alternated between ripping things up and sleeping, but at least they weren't running around or jumping out. The first puppy is Jaffa. She is small but diabolically clever. The next is Beamer who is a real pedigree looking beagle, and Jaffa's Igor type servant.

Godmanchester

Hugh's family had a big house party a few weekends back. Ian and Roisin came to visit us for it. We took a rowing boat out in Finsbury Park near our flat, and we got mobbed by baby swans looking for food. Ian managed to pet one but the rest of us chickened out for fear of having our hands pecked off.


Then on the way to Hugh's parent's house we had to go through a field of huge cows who took rather a fancying to Ian and Roisin. There were also millions of rabbits in this field which we tried chasing, but they are fierce quick. And Ian tried to catch a squirrel, but it was like lightening.


One of the neighbours in Godmanchester rebuilds monster trucks and he has a yard full of them. Here's Roisin expressing her disbelief.

Maple Tree Race

The race is on here in XBridge to grow the fastest Maple tree. My friend Kat went home for a visit and came back with some Canadian Maple tree seeds. One set has gone to the BView developers, one set has gone to us. So we have gotten off to a flying start and have already planted the little fellas in a little compost pellet thingy (technical term). More progress as it unfolds...