WEEKLY DIARY

ROGER & FRANS PAGES

DIARY FOR
WEEK ENDING 27th APRIL 2008

MY WEEK

I had an adventure on Wednesday evening when the Pay Day Curry Club met at our employers sports and social club for a Quiz Night. When I say "our", I mean two of us. The others all used to work there but with the exception of a little part time from Steve, all the others now have proper jobs. We acquitted ourselves well coming fourth out of twelve teams - and only three points behind the winners.   After we had established our credibility as wizards on every subject except "sport", "dingbats" and "musicians called Rhianna" , we decided to move on. Andrew went off to sing with All Saints (we wanted his autograph until we heard it was a church choir and not the very fit girlie band) while the rest of us sought solace in a curry. It was a good night.
Fran had another cortisone injection in her spine on Thursday, at first sight it doesn't look as if this session has been quite so successful as the first one, but they do take a day or two to take effect so we wait in hope.
Apart from a nice lunch with the girls from the office on Wednesday, it has been a quiet week at work until Friday when suddenly all hell let loose. While I was out of touch with the world and deeply involved in a key internal meeting in London on Friday, one of my lovely customers participating in a technical meeting got somewhat disconnected from reality and by the end of the day what had been a small - and apparently easy to resolve - problem had escalated into almost an International incident which required a lot of Friday afternoon and evening to defuse.    Never mind - I guess having to help fix issues like that makes life interesting and stops the day job becoming mundane.

Rich and James - parachute works

The Lynton Band, Sunday evening

I got home about 5pm on Friday evening, but was glued to my phone and e-mail until 7:30 - then I needed a big relax, and luckily we had one planned! Once I had concluded the seemingly non-stop calls and mails I had ten minutes to clean my teeth, change into jeans and a T shirt and grab a bottle of wine before we picked up Trudy & Colin at 7:40.   By 8pm we were at Jacky & Colin's and sipping champagne with Liz & Colin, who were already there.   Dinner at the Pattenden's is always good - and tonight I was the only non-Colin there !
It was an excellent evening and because Fran had decided to drive I "relaxed" totally.    Colin P has acquired a new wonder of technology - a 42 inch screen TV - which seems like a small cinema ! After a fantastic dinner we played with it for some time and eventually found a DVD of Manfred Mann's Earth Band with lots of shots of a very young Mr Pattenden strutting his stuff to some excellent music. What with that and the fantastic entertainment which is just a part of being in Trudy's company, it was almost half past one before we decided to head for home.

I woke to the 8am news on Saturday which - apart from the sad news of Humph Littleton's death - was mainly about the panic buying of petrol as the workers at Grangemouth (up in Scotland) go on strike. Last night my car had displayed a little pulsating picture of a petrol pump - indicating that it needed feeding - so I jumped out of bed, pulled on some clothes and headed for the local Tesco store to fill up before anyone at this end of the country started panic buying. I wasn't alone. Although we are several hundred miles from Grangemouth the garage already had a long queue tailing out onto the main road. I drove round the queue and into the main shop car park - then out the other end of the car park to join a much much shorter queue to the same garage coming out of the shop.    Fran and I stopped by to do some real shopping much later that afternoon and found that the queues had vanished and the garage was its normal busy - but manageable - normality.
I spent a bit of time after breakfast with my business problem from the previous day - most of my team work 24x7 when required. I also managed to fix some publicity material for Keith Allen (Campbell Band) and Spud (Nashville Teens) as well as setting up a plan to take delivery of a new Alembic bass guitar on behalf of Karl Green (Hermans Hermits) before Fran and I set out toward Didcot around half past ten.

Mike and Colin in Nirvana while Jack sings

James was at a friends birthday party over the road, but we had a good time - and a nice lunch - with Rich, Liz and Matthew. As Matthew went upstairs for his afternoon sleep, James returned and we proceeded to have a good time with him. Mid afternoon we set off for home via some shopping at the Tesco store where I had queued for petrol before breakfast. In the evening I had intended to go to see either Wots Cookin' (Neil Korner's band) all the way down the M23 in Crawley - or to see The Jackie Lynton Band, who were playing a private party at the Jolly Butchers in Staines. In the end I didn't get to see either because there was too much to do progressing my business problems !

Sunday morning was all about preparing for a big adventure next week and loading lots of CDs into iTunes - and thence onto my iPod; and the afternoon was spent doing my regular monthly receptionist stint at The Thames Valley Hospice. Very useful - it helps me recalibrate my personal value clock regularly. When I got home I discovered that our good friend Tony Matthews has become a grandfather. Well done Daniel.

After dinner I set out to visit Scratchers at Godalming - and sat with Vanessa Lynton to watch The Jackie Lynton Band - another useful recalibration of personal values. I think I'll go and take all that jazz off my iPod and replace it with Chuck Berry ! There were lots of friendly faces about and it was especially good to see Keith-The-Stalker and his posse again. They are a sort of "seal of approval" to a gig; it's always good when they are present. It was a good gig - although Chris looked a bit unhappy. He has given up alcohol and is suffering with mouth ulcers. As Jack pointed out the band is generally very unhealthy and it's a bit of a miracle they are there at all. Jack has prostrate problems, Colin has a hernia, Mike and Chris are both diabetic and Greg needs a haircut - what hope have they got?

Tomorrow we plan to visit The Theatre Royal at Windsor to see three Agatha Christie plays which were written for the radio. Not sure what to expect, but we plan to share it with Colin & Jacky. No doubt I'll let you know eventually.

THE WORLD'S WEEK

Priest floats away

Balloon Priest Lost Father Adelir di Carli, a Brazilian priest from Paranaguá, has vanished during a stunt to support a campaign to provide more rest stops for lorry drivers. To raise awareness he tied himself to 1000 helium filled balloons with the intention of raising himself into the sky and floating gently West. Unfortunately the wind suddenly changed and rose in force as he ascended . The Padre was swept Southeast where he disappeared into the distance over the Atlantic Ocean. He is still missing and since rescue workers have now found many bits of balloons scattered along the coast he is presumed drowned.

Back to the Land Interesting to learn that sales of vegetable seeds have this year outstripped sales of flower seeds for the first time since 1939. The press speculates that this could be a response to the squeeze on household budgets from rising food prices, or perhaps a reflection of the growing interest in organic food. I suspect it is actually a reflection of societies need for instant gratification. Who grows flowers from seeds nowadays? most of us get them ready established in pots at a Garden Centre. So while vegetable seed sales may have increased - I suspect that flower seed sales are in decline anyway.

Ten P tax crunch This week I've seen some real examples of people earning less than £19000 who have actually taken home less pay after their pay rise - because the tax they pay has increased with a proportionately greater impact than the pay rise since the abolition of the "ten pence tax band". Roll on the next election when we can vote for a party that really cares about people. But which one is that ?

Nosey Local Councils. We all reacted with shock the other week when Poole Council admitted to using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to spy on the movements and sleeping arrangements of a local couple to prove that they really did live within the catchment area of a school they wanted their kids to attend. It has now emerged from a survey of less than 100 local Authorities that they alone have used (abused?) this power more than 1000 times in the year since the law was enacted to check on such serious crimes as dog fouling and littering. Not one had used the law for its intended purpose of discovering terrorist threats. Another opportunity for the fat cats of local councils to abuse our funding.

Roger 27/04/08