Google Earth

I have finally found my new addiction. Anyone who hasn't discovered Google Earth yet must have been living in a cave for the last year, but only recently have I realised that I can quite happily waste hours on it, scouring the world for places of beauty. After all, the World is a beautiful place. It's massive too.

Obviously, the first place to look for is your own house. Could that be Beverley parked over the road?



Second stop - Bedminster. This shot features our local haunt the Baccy Factory, plus the mighty Ashton Gate, Only Fools and Horses' Nelson Mandela House, and Greville Smyth Park where Jonny once got knocked unconscious when he got elbowed in the back of the head playing for Hope FC, in a vicious cup game a couple of years ago.



Having checked out the local hood it's all too tempting to scour the world for famous landmarks...





Not sure why anyone would want to go here, mind you...



Inevitably the temptation to find some places you've been on holiday will then hit you.

Dahab, Egypt:



Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam:



Frankfurt Am Main, Germany:



Savanakhet, Cambodia:



Bangkok, Thailand (Yes, it's the Khao San Road)



Dubai, UAE: (Admittedly, I never left the airport)



Next on the list are the politically sensitive areas.

Pyongyang, North Korea:



The border of the West Bank, Israel: (I was looking for the wall for some time, to no avail)



Huge Palace in Baghdad, Iraq:



Personally, the thing I enjoy the most is seeing the huge contrast between different parts of the World. For example, Hollywood and Mumbai:




Avonmouth and Antigua!




So anyway, that's what I've been doing recently. Good riddens poker.

Anyone for an Ice Cream?

I've just had one of those strange experiences that could probably only happen in Bedminster, or maybe Royston Vasey.

I had returned home from work via a quick stop at Lidl, and just as I had dumped the first couple of shopping bags in the house, I heard the distinctive song of an ice-cream van coming from outside. Over the last couple of weeks this has become a familiar sound on the streets of Bedminster, so perhaps it shouldn't be considered unusual other than the fact that it was absolutely pissing it down with rain.

For some reason I considered it to be so odd for an ice-cream van to be out in a thunderstorm that I decided to get my phone out and film it as it passed my house. As I followed the van down the road I suddenly noticed that the neighbour's youngest of three kids was standing outside her house and looking right at me. For some reason I panicked, as if I had been caught doing something naughty, and instantly moved my camera away. You can almost get the sense of me hanging my head in shame...



My first instinct was to shut the door of my house and hide away until the coast was clear, but then I realised that I had left the boot of my car open and my groceries would be starting to get pretty wet, so I carried on as if nothing had happened and returned to my car. This involved walking between the now stationary ice-cream van and the neighbour's barking dog, prompting the girl to shout "Shu' -uup!" at the dog as she was buying her ice-cream.

I gathered my remaining groceries and shut my boot, and just as I turned round I noticed that the local nutter was wondering down the road towards us in a lovely floral summer-dress. I can say that she is the local nutter with some confidence, as I recognise her from my days at barrow hospital.

"Are you buying an ice-cream in this weather?" She enquired.

"You're buying an ice-cream! In this weather?"

The neighbours kid, understandably, ignored her. The local nutter looked in my direction.

"She's buying an ice-cream in this weather!"

"Yes, and you're wondering down the road wearing a summer dress in the pissing rain, just to comment on it." I thought.

The dog barked.

I returned to the relative sanity of my house and emptied the shopping bags, just praying that the kid next door told her parents about the nutty woman from up the road, and forgot to mention the fact that the bloke next-door was filming her on his mobile phone.

The Weather

There's no denying it any longer - it's getting cold.



Today was a stunning day, as you can see, but just a bit too chilly to feel comfortable in a T-shirt. So that's it then until next April (unless you happen to live in Sydney or are going to visit at Christmas - grr).



So anyway, I've obviously not been up to much this week so I thought I'd just post some nice piccies, all taken from my back garden in the last couple of weeks.

Sunsets...









And Sky...

Breakout Rocked Again...

...Although, it was quiet compared to our last event.

It was always going to be though, after all there's a big difference between a Bank Holiday Saturday and a Thursday night, especially as most of the students that live near the venue won't be back until next week. Our theory that the venue would be full of Bristol Uni freshers did not come to fruition. It seems that all of the venues in the centre of Brissle had the same idea, and obviously, the students went there.

Still, the night itself was quality, even if I say so myself. My confidence that we are putting on an original, entertaining night is growing stronger with each event, and we got loads of great feedback from the twenty odd people that were there, all of whom were jumping around on the dance floor by the end of the night.

Representing, we had:


King Kong vs. Hornblower


Olly_hands


Original Breakout members, Tom & Will (H2O and Wilbur back from their 2003 glory days!)


King Kong drops Jonny's favourite d'n'b tune; the Marky & XRS Classic, LK. (It's there behind the trumpet and conga's, honest. My mic seemed to pick them up more than the music)






One more video for you: Benny Page's "Turn down the lights" gets people's feet moving.

Finally, Jon 'hornblower' Winder proves that not only can he play the trumpet, but he knows how to dance to drum'n'bass too...


So, despite being half empty it was a fun night. I guess we're still in the very early stages of building up a reputation and getting our name recognised, but we'll keep plugging away.

Plus, here's an advanced warning for you. Eagled-eyed readers may have noticed next month's posters in some of the pics. We've already secured a quality line-up and we've got a full six weeks to promote it so we're hoping for a better turnout. It also gives people plenty of time to sort out getting the Friday off work ;)

It's basically the same again (why change a good thing?), but we also have locally renowned DJ James Small coming along to play an eclectic breakbeat set, a second bongo player, but the thing that I'm looking forward to the most is the live double-bass player who's coming to join in the fun...

The Black Swan

Just in case anyone was wondering how Bev & I got on at Easton's Black Swan on Saturday night, it was a bit of a disaster. Having been told that we would be playing from 10-11:30, we actually ended up playing from 10:45 to 11:15, our set cut short by a combination of dodgy sound system and gabba.

Yes it seems that even though a dodgy mixer set us back 45 minutes, the promoter insisted that he had to "get some gabba going" at 11:15, and that we could have a proper slot later in the night. Actually, it was even worse than gabba, if that's possible. It was described to me as "fast gabba or breakcore". This was one of the more chilled moments:



We decided not to wait around for another slot, in fact I could only bear it for the time it took me to gulp a pint of guinness, which tasted more like cider. The taxi's set me back £20. Lovely.

I suppose I can learn from these experiences. I'm not sure what, exactly.

Anyway, on to brighter things. Only two days to go...