The General Election

As the title indicates, it was the general election yesterday. Labour swept back in to power (by the looks of it) - although they have 100 less seats they still have a very large majority to play with. Very interesting though the breakdown of results - the lib dems have gained further seats - principally from Labour - so we are getting closer to three party politics. I as usual voted Conservative - I did an on-line test and I was hugely conservative with greens second. I'm independent on the local council - do not believe party politics should interfere with affairs at that level - and I think I mentioned before about the local party calling an election for a parish councillor to be elected and cost the parish £1500 - 1.5% of the yearly budget - just to get one of their cronies in. Anyway....

The spending continues, having a new boiler fitted on Monday - we are fed up with repairing the old one so biting the bullet on it. Apparently they are only supposed to last 7 years now - how awful is that.

Also upgraded my NTL connection so I have 2mb - well apparently - I can't spot any difference to be honest. A right palava getting my tv and internet package reloaded on there - meant i was without my internet for about 24 hours.

Went to a couple of meetings on Wed evening - Chamber of Commerce informal get together - good to see so many people wishing to get involved - great news - hope they all pull as one from now rather than the danger of fragmenting as appeared to be happening.

Then went to a sports club meeting in the Sreethi - had a jalapeno chicken - not bad but not spicy enough - was supposed to be simon's last board meeting - but apparently he is turning up to the next one as well. Oh well, hope there's another curry then ;-)

Drove to the Packhorse pub last night with martin, geoff and neil. Martin was voted most valuable player whilst at an international softball tournament in Jersey at the weekend - he is hopefully going to the world championships in florida in the autumn - i felt humbled to be in his presence. In my life I've achieved in sporting circles um... thirds player of the season.

Finished old PC

Finished tarting up my old PC to give to Charlie - for all those who know him - he will hopefully be joining the digital age this Friday - great news!!

Worked until 11.30 last night - so a bit tired this morning.

Put a ball of food up on a thin pole in front of my study window for the birds and they are just starting to take to it which is good. Hopefully no more sparrowhawks for a while to remove the birds!!

Busy week this week, end of month, a pile of normal work, several new projects in the pipeline later this month, a business get to gether in the white hart tonight, followed by a sports club curry (I didn't realise there was a sports club meeting as well tonight so still trying to do both), tomorrow another evening out with my Cater For You business, Friday installing Charlies machine and then its the weekend.

The bank holiday weekend roundup!

As usual we had a very busy weekend. Sarah didn't go to the Wallingford tournament on Saturday as it was cancelled. We had worked on the garden until about 9pm on Friday night and I continued on Sat morning. We had purchased 25 rolls of turf so I laid that out over the course of the day. If it all takes it is going to look so much better than before.

Saturday afternoon we (Neil & Dan principally) upgraded the Sports Club forum from v7.1 to v7.9 and from Access to SQL to improve availability and performance. I'm hoping more of the sports club committee will post on there to raise its profile (the forums and the committee!!). Then we upgraded the Chalfont St Peter forum from Access to SQL to improve performance. Each upgrade cost £160 + VAT. Hopefully on the latter forum we can put some company advertising to fund it and then any profits distribute to a local cause of our choice - that is what we muted whilst we were upgrading. I just need to finish the rest of the site to make it more complete.

Sunday we did some more gardening in the morning - I went down to the garden hut of the garden club and bought some bits and bobs. Work was curtailed though as we had lunch with the neighbours at 2pm and it went downhill from then.

Monday was a very enjoyable day, went down to the South Coast and to Sarah's parents boat in Fareham and then her brother John's new 40ft boat in Gosport. A most relaxing day.