We went to Cropredy. More later. But first, this from Richard Digance’s set on Saturday lunch-time…

Congratulations, guys.

Update: More here and here.

I was hoping to back Bulgaria.

Bangin’ choon! Yeah!

But they didn’t make it through the second semi-final whereas the tedious pap from “Have I got my widescreen settings wrong?” Portugal did get through.

There is no justice in Eurovision.

Really day 3, but real-day-2 consisted of gym, telly, feet up and that sort of thing… so…

After day 1.5’s relaxation, a busy one. A cup of tea with pals then off with them to Taylor’s Bell Foundry. At £7.50 a head, the tour seemed expensive - we reckoned that if it was a really good tour, then that would be a fair price… if not, it’d be a rip-off.

Taylor’s Bell Foundry

The sand pit where the bell forms are buried for casting

Turns out we were a very small tour group - 6 adults and 1 kid plus guide. It was good that way - the guide had an excellent sense of humour and really went deeply into the science of bell making. It was fascinating to see how material science, heavy industry, craftsmanship, technology and extreme musical talent all come together in an industry which has changed little in the last few hundred years.

Being a real working factory, there were tea-cups, newspapers and jars of pickled onions around… it could only have been more alive if the workers were present, pouring their molten alloys into their beautifully crafted moulds.

The inside of the giant oven used to dry the sand forms

We saw old bells in for repair - notably one cast in the 1400s. We saw new bells - a giant gold-plated Sri-Lankan temple bell which had just been blessed and was ready for shipping. And all sorts of stuff in between - partly-tuned examples, cracked rejects, examples made of the wrong materials.

A Sri-Lankan temple bell. Blessing done, good for shipping

And would you believe… hidden in the corner of the back yard, almost as if ashamed to be there, is the multi-part casing used to make Great Paul, the largest bell in Britain. Our guide said they’d really like to dispose of it, but you just know that the moment you do, someone else will come along and ask for a 17-tonne bell!

Great Paul’s casting mould

This is a highly recommended tour!

Free Fest

FreeFest

After the tour, back to our place for a cup of tea, and then on to the university for Free Fest - a two-stage, free, outdoor music festival and showcase of university talent.

Students relaxing as only students know how

Lots of Pimms (me) and Wine (H) drunk, and a good time had in a great atmosphere where no-one has a care in the world.

There were a mix of DJs and student bands, as well as apparantly-annual guest Carlton Cole - a well-known local blues guitarist. In addition, there were fair rides, ice creams, a small beer festival and other assorted gubbins.

BBQ

And finally from Free Fest on to a friend’s BBQ. Good chat, good food, and more alcohol late into the night. A perfect round-up to the perfect weekend.

We may have been a little tiddly walking home. I spent over half the journey with hiccups, and H spent the same proportion giggling uncontrollably, especially after jumping out at me slowly from behind a road sign, pausing and laughing for a good three seconds, and then declaring “Boo”.

Did we do it?

Oh yes we did!

This was my third of five dips in the water…

The temperature difference was greater than previously estimated… The sauna was at just over 110° C and the water at -0.4°C

I had a birthday party and H had a house-warming party and it was the same party so that was good and it was very nice and lots of nice people came and we had a lot of fun and didn’t need to play games like scrabble and monopoly and chess and cards and cranium and things because everyone got on very well and chatted and played the piano and sang and threw paper aeroplanes around and ate really really nice cake which H made and blancmange and jelly except they didn’t eat it for ages and then someone pointed out that maybe if there were any bowls and spoons maybe they would eat it then and they drank salmiakki vodka and beer and cider and lots and lots and lots and lots of wine and things like that and nobody invited 2000 people off myspace and so no-one trashed the house and so it wasn’t very hard to clean and it was lovely to see lots of happy people and we love you all and baklawa is a difficult word to spell.

Anyone know how to get paper aeroplanes out of absolutely everywhere? We’re still finding them.

We met Superman… and he even let us have our photo taken with him!

So that time of year has come around… dark evenings, cold, post-Christmas blues… it finally got me and I have absolutely no inspiration for a blog.

So let’s have a look what’s coming up in the not-too-distant future…

Birthday and House-Warming

My birthday, which I always look forward to through winter - and this year, it’ll be combined with a house-warming party for my most lovely lady.

I’ve home-made a bottle of Salmari - that’s vodka with Tyrkisk Peber salmiakki dissolved into it. It’s a rather dangerous drink because its sweet liquoricyness causes you to forget you’re drinking alcohol at 40% by volume.

Finland

A trip to freezyland. Just a short one, but I’ll be going to Helsinki for the first time ever (in my 7th trip to Scandinavia). It’ll also be my first Scandinavian capital city. And H’s first trip to Scandinavia.

And it’ll include seeing old friends from previous trips.

And going ice swimming (in theory).

There is a temperature gauge and a couple of links on the top right pertaining to this trip.

Scotland

We’re off up to the top of the British Isles’ highest peak in May. There are only about 150 metres difference between the Ben Nevis ascent and mount Fuji - mainly because Ben Nevis is climbed from 30m above sea level, whereas you begin walking from about half-way up Fuji. It’ll be a perfect warm-up for the real thing.

We might have a little potter round bits of Scotland on the way back, hopefully visiting the Falkirk Wheel, which is one of those feats of engineering I feel the need to visit. By the power of Archimedes, it can carry up to 600 tonnes of canal boats up and/or down 24 metres using only the power of eight kettles. Neat stuff.

A Wedding

H’s brother is getting married. Hooray!

Japan

Wow. What can I say? One of those places that was always on my “I’d love to, but don’t think I ever will” list. We’re mostly flexible on plans so far, but the trip will certainly include an ascent of Mt. Fuji, and an amount of time in Tokyo.

Cropredy

If that’s not enough, it’s then a return to Cropredy. I enjoyed it so much last year, that we’re planning to do it all over again. Despite the completely unacceptable facilities.

and…

…that only gets us as far as mid-August.

Funny… those blues have just blown away.

Ok, I didn’t take many photos at Cropredy… I was too busy having a chilled time. But here are a few…

The main arena, I think this was Thursday afternoon…

We did a spot of Darwin-dodging on behalf of a frog we found in the middle of the field’s major thoroughfare. It’s been a while (over twenty years) since I was an expert frog-handler, but I managed to carry it to the side of the field in just about the direction it had seemed to be heading in…

Beattie, the best-behaved festival pooch in the world (and expert scrounger)…

The weather was glorious, giving a really spectacular golden hour each evening…

A photo of me being subjected to extreme ridicule at the hands of T. Still, it was much better than the 20,000 gallons of water dumped on me (and each of us, in fact) by Omally’s super soaker the following day…

And finally, the Sunday warm up was Richard Digence, who incited approximately 8,000 people to morris dance to ‘Little White Bull’. I’m not sure how.

I think a good time was had by all… great company, great times, when’s the next one?

It’s nice to get this sort of reaction to something you’ve created… this was the encore

You can download the code here, but bear in mind you’ll need an Atari 1040ST to run it on.

Congratulations Helsinki on a great show! Se oli oikein hyvä!

Ukraine shoulda won though.