A Walk Through The Woods

Yesterday I and my son visited my parents, to get my mum's new computer up and running (which it is very nicely, although it needs a network cable to get the internet at full speed - it's currently using a WiFi adapter I actually bought for my Raspberry Pi, and I'm quite surprised that it works at all on a normal PC).  Once we'd finished, and ate whatever I could find in my parents house that we could categorise as lunch, we made our apologies and farewells and left.

While heading back to the car my son expressed his enthusiasm for "an adventure", and having the afternoon to spare we decided to go for a wander.

After walking through a couple of fields and through an echoey tunnel (I should note that my son enjoyed hugely discovering a landscape feature that allowed him to be even louder than usual) we took a stroll through the woods near my parents, down to the river bank, where he spent a good while half way up a cliff playing.

We had a really nice time, I used to walk through those woods all the time when I was a kid but it must have been years since I went through them, so it was nice to make the memories come back.  And on the way back my son told a dog that it was cheeky because it came up to him and viciously wagged.

Today, meanwhile, we've been to the park, run around a good bit, found a ladybird, and then took a detour to the pub for lunch.

My son with the aforementioned ladybird

Pub!

The pub we went to had a jazz band, Adrian Ingrams Jazz Dawgs, playing, which helped the time pass pleasantly, and I even got to eat most of my lunch except for two pieces of toast which my son informed me were actually his.   All in all it's been a nice weekend :)

How's your weekend been?

PS - Mike is still gathering sponsors for his Robin Hood's Bay roadtrip next month! From just £1 you can sponsor a third of a pint of beer... :)

The Pub

All the essentials for a good time in the pub - a pint of "Seven Deadly Sins", a Bill Bryson book, and a plugin keyboard.

So, the other evening I repaired to the local public house for an evening of jazz which initially appeared to consist of three people watching a man fiddle with a double bass, but eventually the other three got their act together and the group launched into some rather pleasant music. Geeky note: When the band launched into a decent rendition of "The Way You Look Tonight", I immediately thought of the finale of Deep Space 9, when Vic Fontaine sings it to the crew the night before they separate.


Periodically a man (the singer was female, or at the very least a very convincing facsimile) said something in what was possibly french over the microphone, and every time he did this he was met with applause, I'm not sure if. it was the content of.his speech or if it was just so impressive having someone speaking a different language in Hull, but nevertheless he was consistently met with a great deal of enthusiasm.

An interesting point of jazz is that, unlike other forms of music, within a jazz song a goodly amount of time can be spent with only some of the instruments in action, and it was fun to watch the rest of the band try to entertain themselves during these parts. The singer was quite good at this, whenever it. came time for a double bass solo she would gamely bounce along, the keyboarder, however, he looked bored to tears whenever he had to take a time out.

The evening was only marred by my phone running out of power, despite it assuring me that 8% of battery was plenty for a whole extra day of usage, in practice it took less than half an hour for the phone to tell me "You have 30 seconds before I shut down", resulting in a frantic bit of typing and pounding the Save option.

Lies.

Before I left a total stranger came over for a fistbump - which had to be provided!

In other news, I've had an idea - you may, now and again, get a piece of junk mail offering you a new credit card, or loan, or some such thing.  Well, I've written a letter.

A letter with a liqueur coffee decision tree, no less.

And this letter can go in the freepost envelope provided by the company. The letter thanks them for the offer, and in return tells them what wonders they can find on my blog (yes really). I look forward to entertaining thousands of financial support workers, who must be desperate for any kind of entertainment that they find even this enjoyable.