Our family is like the united colours of benetton...

Hello Strangers!

Sorry I haven't been updating this as often as I would like.
After being in Wales for Easter and then being in a 3-day course at head office Weds - Fri, I haven't had much chance to sit down and do anything really.

Wales was good, if a little on the cold side. It was also snowy, windy and rainy if the truth be known. It was great to chill out for a bit and stuff my face with chocolate too! Also cool to catch up with the family and to spend some time with the new puppy we recently got.

I had Tuesday off too, so spent that doing jack shit before heading Southwards again for work.

Wednesday evening was spent watching the footy (what a waste of time that was) and eating what can only be described as the worst pub meal I have ever eaten. This therefore makes "The Kings Arms" the first recipient of the Moan of the Week award. This prestigious title will be awarded to whatever or whoever riles me in a given week.

It should come as no surprise to learn that this particular pub is rated as 1.8 out of 10 on one of my favourite websites, Beer in the Evening. Which I should hasten to add is great for planning a pub crawl, which is exactly what myself and Homie did on Thursday evening. ( I should point out here that Homie is a good friend who bears a striking resemblence to Homer Simpson, hence the nickname).

And thus, Thursday night was spent in the Provence of Richmond, London - the only place so far where I have seen an Aston, Bentley and a new Jaguar, all within 500M of each other. Had a cracking bite to eat at a pub near the station, then we worked our way towards the river stopping at 4 or 5 pubs in total.

After being rather disappointed by the front lounge that was supposed to be the celebrity spotting pub of Richmond, I headed for the bus as according to Homie, that would have been quicker than getting the train back to my hotel.

Only it wasn't. Not only did the bus not actually pass through the suburb I needed, it dropped me off at the M4. Which meant a good 45 minute walk or so to get back to my hotel. On the plus side, it did mean that I worked off the calories in the beer I guess :-)

Last night was spent chilling after a hard couple of days - it's amazing how much courses take out of you. I had to laugh at the very funny Friday Night Project, this time hosted by Dr Who - David Tennant and if someone could explain why they would name a child Bertie Gilbert, I would very much appreciate it.

And finally, after another good friend - Princess Janey emailed me to tell me it was on, I Sky+'d the new series of Peter and Jordan, for sheer entertainment value. Which is where the quote "Our family is like the united colours of benetton... comes from!

Yes, I am a lazy get!

I've been a bit lazy this past couple of days in keeping this up to date, but I do have a number of excuses:

Manners was in London training on Wednesday, so we went for a beer in the evening near Waterloo and the London Eye. For the best part of two years we had been meaning to go to the All Bar One which serves one of my all time favourite beers - the Munchen brewed Paulaner on draft. We discovered the slug and lettuce next door lacks a decent menu, but the food in the All Bar One was pretty reasonable.

The journey home was marred slightly by witnessing someone get their lights punched out in what the BBC News would describe (in a very politically correct way of course) as a racially motivated attack.

It amazed me that no one on the tube stopped to break it up - but then again, I guess you never know what anyone is hiding in their coat anymore.

Yesterday was spent at work which included spending an hour in a Hi-Def video conference which was pretty cool. Incredible when you think that 10 years ago everything would have either been done over the phone or in person and that now we can all sit in rooms anywhere in the world and see and speak to people face to face.

After work I drove back to Birmingham where I'm spending the majority of my Easter break, although I'm in North Wales for some of it too. Whether that's a good or a bad thing I'm not sure yet!

Called into central brum for a pint with my uncle on my home, only to discover the local social club serves only Carling (which, together with Carlsberg, will herein be known as "Cooking Lager" to blog readers) and Grolsch - which was off. So a bottle of bud it was - but it's the company not the drinking that matters as they say.

Today (Good Friday) has been spent chilling out. I promised myself no work laptop or BlackBerry over the weekend, however I broke that rule first thing this morning when I discovered I'd forgotten to put my out of office on.

Other than that, I took the beast into the local town earlier to get some hot cross buns and dropped Mommy Bedders off at the gym. The afternoon has been spent messing around with the new dog and catching up with relatives - all pretty tame by any standards!

That's a rather boring entry completed, but at least things are kinda up to date!


Bedders.