In yellow at the Smithfield Nocturne

its enough to make u all wet

Originally uploaded by lomokev

HP and I at the start of the big storm during the Rapha Smithfield Nocturne.

As the rain started we felt quite smug as we donned our rain jackets while everyone else dived for cover into doorways or under awnings.

That smug feeling lasted as long as we remained dry, ie. not very long at all. The upside was while everyone took cover we nabbed a spot by the finish line.

the falsettos

During my lunch hour I went to my local barber, Robertos, for a haircut.

The barbershop is small and quite scruffy but they do a decent enough job and it’s handy being able to go there during the week. Robertos is owned and run by Roberto (Rob) who I would guess is a second or third generation Italian immigrant. There is a big Italian community in Peterborough where there was a nearby POW camp during WWII and many stayed on afterwards.  There are photos on the wall: stills from The Godfather, photos of Old Trafford, traditional barbershop posters. There is usually at least one of Rob’s mates in the shop, sometimes more. They talk about all sorts of things (women, drinking, deals, other mates) but are always very opinionated and very loud. Sometimes I can’t understand a word they’re saying as it descends into a series of grunts and shrugs. Today, an Asian lad came in (a friend of Rob’s) and was obviously pleased with himself after only being fined for a driving offence. Interestingly, during this exchange Rob’s accent took a strange turn towards that of a stereotypical Italian gangster (think Fat Tony from The Simpsons). Normally he speaks in the typical Peterborough mixture of Fen and generic southerner (I’m a Geordie so anyone south of York sounds like a cockney to me).

Anyway it was a bit weird – like he was trying to out-immigrant the Asian lad or something.

And I didn’t give him a tip today because mid-haircut he spent 5 minutes on his mobile grunting his way through a conversation.

losing it

Oh dear. I’m too fat. Having to retire from football (dodgy knee) and winter curtailing my cycling, I seemed to have crept up to almost 15 stone. I can get away with it to a certain extent because I’m 6′2″ but that’s only when I’m in “normal” clothes: figure-hugging lycra is a different matter!

But this week I’ve had two sessions on my turbo trainer and last night, HP and I went for a 30 minute walk. I’ve stopped eating anything at work apart from lunch which should also help. I’m taking part in a weekly weigh-in on a cycling forum so that should provide some extra motivation.

Now if I could only motivate myself to start exercising my core muscle group…

catchup

Here’s a brief summary of stuff that’s happened or changed in the meantime.

Jack ran away. We got Tilly

I sold my Honda and got Herman

I sold my house and bought another one nearer home.

I replaced my two aging PC’s with a 24″ iMac.

Between us, me and HP have 7 bikes.

We are now officially into camping. We even have two tents.

fast forward

Not a resolution as such but it’s time I started blogging again so here goes…

because I can

I don’t really have a good reason for doing this but I’m going to set up my own mail server. I have my own domain and an always-on net connection, so why not?

I’ve already setup a web server (the highly recommended, Abyss) which at the moment will host images only – the sort of stuff I might post in a discussion forum, for instance. And even though I love TypePad and it’s limitations, I’m also thinking about using Movable Type: either that or write my own site using ASP.NET.

rollin’ rollin’ rollin’

More decorating this weekend. On Saturday we didn’t finish painting until 7.30 in the evening which buggered up our plans to go and see Alfie (the film, not our kitten who we can see any time).

On Sunday HP’s parents came to visit and her dad criticised my edging in the kitchen. We hired a van and went to the Nottingham IKEA on Monday to get some wardrobes for the spare bedroom os that was another long day. While it’s nice working 3 days a week, spending 4 days decorating and stuff takes away some of the pleasure.

More decorating this weekend… and wardrobe assembling too, of course.

the great one

A sad day today as my cat Gretzky had to be put to sleep. Depite being named after Wayne Gretzky, she was female. For the past couple of weeks she’d been very ill with a lung disease and she was having great difficulty breathing which was distressing to see so must have been awful for her. At 16 she’d had a good life and her last year had been a bonus as she was within a whisker (sorry) of being put down last year but she pulled through at the last minute. She was a nice cat: very affectionate and talkative.

don’t don’t don’t

I just tried Skype at the urging of some colleagues. Unbelievably good. I spoke to Gerd in Italy and it was crystal clear. This is hardly cutting edge news seeing that Skype has over a million users but I’d never heard of it.

down on the upside

A downside of blogging is when your girlfriend stops you buying stuff that you don’t need. And she knows this because you wrote about it in your blog.

So… even though I’m just a beginner, I really enjoy playing my guitar and having a new electro-acoustic/PRS/Roland MicroCube would benefit my playing enormously. Fact.