blmweb

I’ve been lucky enough to meet David Peat on a few occasions through my involvement with Mark Beaumont. What a truly nice guy and such a sad loss. Lorraine and I shared a meal with him in a wee quiet restaurant in Paris and he regaled us with tales of his past endeavours. He was Mark’s documentary maker for the first one if not two of his cycling expeditions.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-17741893

This year with the arrival of Jess our black lab I did a wee picture of our attempts to get her wearing antlers – not entirely successful but almost got there…

I got round to editing and uploading a video of some forked lightning from the top of our hotel in Pisa, Italy

Instead of giving up the booze for the new year this time we are considering a TV free month. Now that Strictly and The Apprentice are over there’s nothing much exciting on anyway!

Can’t get away with TV on iPhone or PC or laptop either…

Probably find myself listening to radio 4 even more:)

Well not quite… But I’ve put an editted set of photos online of our Italian travels.

Pisa2010

54 Photos

Florence2010

165 Photos

Assisi2010

171 Photos

Rome2010

248 Photos

We flew in to Pisa for one night – basically just for the cheap flights and to see the tower obviously.

Then on to Florence for 5 nights or so

Then sunny Assisi where we had an apartment for a week.

Finally 3 nights in Rome before jetting back home 16 days after we left.

With holidays just over the horizon the money was ordered and on its way… darn Edinburgh funny holiday monday meant I wasn’t at work when it was schedule to arrive, but the slip was through the door okay so all I had to do was pick it up. or so I thought…

The man at the sorting office went off with my slip after checking my ID, he came back without the package. I started to be concerned.

‘Someone has already signed for it and picked it up’.

Gulp…

Much checking of delivery records later and still no package – someone had indeed signed for it – I could even see the signature.

Okay, what to do, head home for now and talk to Lorraine, talk to the supplier and see what the position is. Can we get more money? It was insured, but how long would that take? Do we call the police?

While Lorraine had a rant down the phone to the supplier who seemed to be less than helpful, I gave the postoffice a phone to see if there was anything else that could have happened.

‘Ah, Mr Murray, I’ve some good news!’

Phew says I, and managed to stop Lorraine’s verbal lashing down the phone, jumped in the car and headed back to the postoffice.

Some bizarre mixup/occurence meant that two packages had the same ID, so someone had signed for their package but it updated my package…

Very relieved dude on the counter and very relieved Lorraine and Bruce…

Up to a variety of things this weekend.

Early start on Saturday heading through to Fife for a 30 mile cycle with Simon

Followed by wander down the Water of Leith with Lorraine to check out some of the Gormley sculptures.

Followed by cinema to see ‘The Other Guys’ (well worth a look btw)

Sunday was cleaning for house viewing (we had one viewer yippee!) then food at Kebabish Original in Dalry Road with entertainment from bollywood dancing, belly dancing, violinist, and Indian drummer. Charity thing for Children First.

Then lazy morning at last on our odd Edinburgh holiday followed by nephew sitting for 3 year old Ryan. We had great fun while Lorraine, Lorna (my sis) and Mum headed off to boring old art exhibition. We doodled on the PC then played with some silly effects on the webcam then headed off to see the skatepark at Saughton. Played on the swings and roundabout before heading back home 10 mins before the everyone got back.

Then I did roast chicken for dinner. Yum!

Since my old flat is about to go on the market it has had some new pictures taken.

Following a spruce up with new carpets it is looking really great. Spacious and bright.

You can view it here on the ESPC

[Show as slideshow]

Maybe because it’s easier to tweet than write a decent length post but I seem to be tweeting more than posting these days. Shows up worst here on the blog front page with all these ‘latest tweets’.

All too easy to just use one web tool to post to facebook/twitter/blog these days.

Anyway, been a busy weekend of things – Lost was excellent last night. Just as well we watched the catchup because I totally forgotten about the nuclear bomb! Not sure where it is going at the moment since we seem to have a bit of parallel existance going on.

Heroes to catch up with next.

Looking forward to a lazy evening watching the first couple of episodes of the final Lost season. Need to watch the resume of the previous series first as I’ve forgotten a lot of it! Quite a busy weekend half over but hopefully all good.