From the Orient

Sunflower 1, originally uploaded by sarabian.

I’ve been playing with the Sets feature from Flickr. This is my “Flowers and Butterflies”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/49503190365@N01/sets/13452/ set.

Paul Photography

This morning my wife and I visited the school where my daughter will be starting a nursery class in September. It was strongly reminicent of visiting the hospital and looking around the delivery ward. Was it really four years ago?

My daughter is starting uncommonly early at school, in fact she starts two days before her 4th birthday. This comes from having a September birthday which will make her just about the oldest in her class. She has a friend whose birthday is two weeks before who will be in the class above. This confers great advantages on her all the way through school. She will have a full year in nursery, and before three full years at lower primary school. Time it wrong and you can be left with two and a half years.

Of course, this levels out by the time she is eighteen, but being the eldest at that age gives out an even better gift. She will be legally allowed to drink before any of her peers. She will also be able to learn to drive first. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I’ve got twelve years before I have to start worrying.

To compensate, I’ve gone back to school myself. I’m starting an “Open University”:http://www.open.ac.uk/ course in November. About time I got some proper qualifications to go with all this “experience”.

Paul Personal

Bill Bailey was fantastic. I won’t go into any details or attempt to pass his comedy over to you as it would fail to give any real insight into his performance. At one point I was in a lot of pain as I couldn’t breathe from laughing so much. There was a real mix in the audience which was nice to see.

What wasn’t so good was the self created problems I caused myself before the show. We had to leave quite early, so Maggie the baby sitter turned up before the kids had gone to bed. This, of course, meant Kid A had to stay up with the baby sitter, and then got quite upset when we left. As a result we left without any money. As luck would have it, Gina had her cash point card with her as we had lost the tickets to the gig and had to show what we had paid with. I had to run across town to a cash point machine, run back and grab some bottled water (the girl serving was giving out a lot of bottled water and each time she went to the back and had to explain it wasn’t chilled. There was an empty fridge just behind her, you work it out) and race into the theatre.

We were further delayed because instead of real tickets we had a written piece of paper with out seat numbers on which the usherette couldn’t read. I had to run out and find out what the girl at the ticket desk had written. It wasn’t doing my foot much good.

Afterward, I found out that in my haste I’d stuff the car park ticket into a back pocket and bent it in half. Of course, when we came to leave the machine wouldn’t take it, causing another run over to the car park ticket office. Still, when we got home, France had been knocked out so everything was right with the world.

Paul Culture, Personal

I’ve just got tickets for Sunday at “V Festival”:http://www.vfestival.com/vfestival/pages/index.cfm which means I’m going to see “The Pixies”:http://www.ilovepixies.com/. (+ Badly Drawn Boy, Starsailor, Strokes, Zutons, Primal Scream, Snow Patrol). A week later, and it is time for “Morrissey”:http://www.morrisseymusic.com/ at “Reading Festival”:http://www.readingfestival.com/ (+The White Stripes) . It’s funny how neither are the main act on the night and are supplanted by the young americans.

But wait there is more because to keep me occupied until then is “Euro 2004″:http://www.euro2004.com/ which is guaranteed excitement and disappointment all rolled into one. Which team will have all the stars and yet fail to deliver? Or will Holland be this year’s Holland? Can England get past the group stages and the mighty France?

But hold on a minute longer, because this Saturday is the “FA Cup Final”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/fa_cup/default.stm and I haven’t been this excited about an FA Cup Final since 1996. Sure there was 1999 but that was the nervous middle cup on the way to the treble. The European Cup final overshadowed it.

Paul Music, Personal

Some pictures
from my son’s birthday.

Paul Personal

Saw Shaun of the Dead last night. Best comedy film I’ve seen in a long, long time. This is a must see, must buy the DVD, hell if there was a game brought out where you have to choose which of your old LP collection to throw at zombies, I’d get that too and spend all day and night becoming good at it.

Paul Personal