Janey

I spent last Saturday on a Treasure Hunt for a friend's 50th birthday.  Dan, me and our friend Catherine from city choir set out at the rather early hour of 0830 from Birmingham to the starting point behind the beautiful Abbey in Tewkesbury.  After picking up 10 pages of directions, questions and instructions (I'm not exaggerating) along with 19 other teams, we got back in the car and started out.  To be honest, I was a bit apathetic initially but then suddenly got fiercy competitive and decided that we were in this to win.  So on we travelled, passing through some simply stunning villages in the Worcestershire and Gloucestershire countryside.  I hasten to add that I suggested on more than one occasion to Dan that I wouldn't mind living in a £1 million house in the Cotswolds but he just pretended not to hear me and claimed to be focusing on driving the car. 

Around 80 miles and 8 hours later, we reached our destination point, a lovely pub in Beckford.  We prided ourselves on the fact that we'd answered every question, hadn't argued on any of the answers (well, maybe one or two!) and had had a thoroughly good time (We particularly enjoyed seeing the nuns and the Mad Hatter's tea party - but that's another story entirely!)  In the evening was the prizegiving.  We'd found out that we'd scored 88 overall; not bad we thought but probably not enough to be in the top three. 

Wrong, we won the competition.....................and all because of Dan's duck throwing abilities!  Let me explain: One of the tasks whilst stopping in Broughton-on-Water was to throw a plastic duck into the river.  The quicker the duck, the more points you scored.  So in the end, even though there were two teams that scored the highest mark of 88, Dan's duck was by far the quickest thereby making us winners - quack, quack.  We even have a medal on the side in the lounge to prove it.

Such good fun.

I went to see Avril at the NEC last Sunday.  It was all in all an enjoyable experience.  For once the support band, Glitterati, were actually good - true old fashioned rock a la Guns and Roses.  With the exception of a few bum high notes, Avril proved that she could sing well enough and performed a solid 90 minute set which demonstrated the art of 'skipping' most expertly for those of us that are less talented in that area.  But the whole experience wasn't a touch on Kylie's Showgirl tour which I had seen just 4 weeks earlier.  I'm sure there are those that disagree with me, but to me, Kylie is up there with the best of them.  Even if you don't like her 'poppy' style, you can't deny her talent, or her beauty.  I've never yet met a man that's moaned about having to look at the 5'1" Australian. 

I only hope that Showgirl wasn't Kylie's last ever tour.

Ok, I have to confess that I stayed up to watch the election results as they trickled through late last Thursday.  I hadn't intended to, it just kind of happened.  Although a completely predictable outcome, I found the TV coverage quite fascinating.  Election 2005 highlights for me include: seeing Kilroy-Silk lose - badly; watching Tony squirm when Reg Keys made his heart-felt speech in Sedgefield about losing his son to the Iraq war, and also witnessing a truly odd result in Blaenau Gwent where Independent candidate Peter Law thrashed Labour's Maggie Jones.  Previously a member of the Labour party, Law had chosen to stand as an independent candidate in protest to the Labour party's imposition of an all female shortlist.  The Welsh obviously don't do the feminist thing...

The whole voting system does strike me as being grossly unfair.  Whilst it's sold as and believed to be 'democratic', the Tories needed nearly twice as many votes to win one seat, whilst the Lib Dems needed three times.  How can that be true democracy?  How and why should someone with only one third of the country's support have the right to govern all decisions?  I'd like to see a move to proportional representation although I doubt that would get me a job as one of Blair's babes........

Now that I'm married to a geek, I thought it would be good idea to wean myself gently into the geek mindset - thus this blog. 

I hope that my entrance into the blogging community will be a happy one, although I realize I will be a disappointment to geek purists who will quickly realize my utter lack of knowledge of code (other than the morse type). 

So, my starter for ten: I’ve posted pictures of mine and Dan's wedding in my gallery which I hope you will enjoy (he's a lovely husband)  Honeymoon pictures can be found on Dan’s blog: http://blogs.ipona.com/dan/