Quick Anna photo on sofa, watching the news. Backlog of her photos clearing soon. Cheltenham visit this w/end poss http://twitpic.com/4bpsw
Apr 18 2009
City Link Shit Everywhere
Having paid extra to ensure birthday presents arrived on time (next day delivery), I was eager to trace the consignment from Amazon. Having entered the consignment number, I was presented with the following…
13:06 Friday, April 17, 2009 On route to delivery depot
05:58 Saturday, April 18, 2009 Arrived at Delivery Depot
06:16 Saturday, April 18, 2009 Goods loaded onto a van
09:24 Saturday, April 18, 2009 Delivery point closed (Carded)
10:03 Saturday, April 18, 2009 Goods returned to depot
9:24am this morning, people were up in this house. No one rang the doorbell, or even bothered to leave a card. Ringing the company, I was presented with a message informing me that they closed at midday on Saturdays. Drove down to the depot, in case they just stopped answering calls, but still had staff there. No joy.
So this Monday, on my 30th birthday, we will need to wait inside the house, for a package that had been sent with next day delivery. Instead, it will now take three days. I should not be surprised really, we often had problems with City Link being lazy and lying in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire – I’d just hoped this was a one off, and that Swansea’s branch wouldn’t be staffed by inefficient lying bar stewards as well. My mistake.
My thanks to Amazon for being very efficient and actually fulfilling their end of the deal, and also to one of the companies that sells second hand XBox 360 games, as their delivery arrived fine (Royal Mail) FOUR days early!
Nov 24 2008
Back In Britain
OK, so we have actually been back in Britain for five days now, but sorting out things and settling down is bound to take a while. In the mean time, the blog managed to publish a post for Alex on her birthday 🙂
All is OK here in Clydach, and I’ll try and post a little more regularly soon; if you have already read this post, why not click on one of the category or tag links on the right to be taken to posts you may be interested in. To friends in Cheltenham, I’ll be around next week so look forward to seeing some of you.
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Jul 04 2008
Natalya Returns To Astana
Natalya (as in Ms. Kim, rather than the Dr. Natalya that gets mentioned more often on this site) should be arriving later today (Friday). We’ve not seen her in a while, so it will be good to catch up. She used to live with us in Cheltenham a long time ago, before returning to Kazakhstan. Dave is also supposed to be popping over for a drink or two, as well as some haute cuisine created by yours truly. (OK, it will probably be some processed & battered meat product deep fried with chips & beans, but he didn’t complain last time 😉 )
Finally, before I forget, Happy Birthday to the friend who doesn’t want their name or photo on this site. We hope you enjoyed your day, and we look forward to meeting again soon.
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May 22 2008
A Wee Wait To Get Into Wimbledon
Some twelve or thirteen years ago, a friend and I had decided to go down to London to watch some Wimbledon matches; now obviously we were just going to be queueing up for normal admittance. As we were still in school, we didn’t have the funds available for proper Wimbledon debenture tickets, but we were still happy to be there, and just to sample some of the atmosphere, even if we couldn’t necessarily get to see any of the big stars.
Anyway, we left Cheltenham at about half five/six in the morning, hoping we’d at least get in a good afternoon’s viewing. How wrong we were! When we arrived, a massive queue had already formed, with little movement discernible. We’d thought to bring along some food and drink, and got chatting to a couple of Australian students who were next to us in the line. At some point, someone passed a long a fat, loosely-rolled cigarette (what else would students produce ?), which helped matters go with a swing. Anyway, there were two toilet stations within the long queued-up roads, but past these, you were herded into barriers that stopped people from easily moving in and out of the queues. Seriously overestimating just how much capacity my bladder had, I ended up almost doubled up in pain, unable to risk leaving the queue after so many hours, but seriously wondering if it was possible to ‘tie a knot in it’. When I had finally turned a strange colour, my friend told me that despite only being some twenty metres from the gates (but no movement for a while), I should just… well, water the plants. This led to the odd scene of my friend and one of the Aussie girls standing with their backs to me, to provide some decent cover from others in the queue, but directly in front of me was Wimbledon itself, with all the people who’d already got in, milling about. Anyway, several minutes later, with all matters resolved, we moved on, and eventually got into the grounds. It was now 4.45pm, and so we had spent most of the day queueing up. We managed to walk around and see a few matches, but the alcohol had effected us enough that we didn’t really remember who was playing who. The moral of the story? Book your tickets in advance, and don’t drink too much if you do need to queue to get into Wimbledon 😉
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Apr 20 2008
Happy Birthday To Me
If all has gone to plan, today Ira and I are in Amsterdam, celebrating my 29th birthday. Or should that be 30th – the day you turn 1 year old, is surely your second birthday, 365 days (or thereabouts) after the day you were born…
Anyway, despite the meandering style of this post, I’m not writing this live from our apartment in smokeland Amsterdam – I wrote most of the next two weeks worth of posts whilst still back in Kazakhstan. I wanted to keep my readers coming back for more (if you stop posting for more than a few days, you are guaranteed to lose return visitors), and as most of my friends are too lazy to guest-post. ChrisD would be a prime example – 18 months later and still no sign of his post on holidaying in Astana. So, I finally got around to clearing out all the collections of bookmarks I’d made on topics that I wanted to blog about ‘one day’.
Anyway, I hope all who read this do so in good health, to my friends in Britain, I hope to see you soon (we’ll be near Swansea 25th – 29th April (approx.) then some time in Cheltenham and Evesham, before heading back to Swansea once more, as my cousin is getting married. 4th May we head back to Astana, so if I haven’t seen you by then, you’ll have to survive until Xmas again.) To friends elsewhere, I hope things are going well, and that our paths cross again sooner rather than later…
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Apr 19 2008
Almost Gone
We will be leaving for the airport in the next hour, and things appear to be sorted in time. Everything has been packed, I think I’ve replied to all outstanding e-mails, and this blog has two or three posts scheduled to be published each day we are away. We are in Amsterdam from 19th – 24th April, then on to Clydach until the 28th/29th April. From there, we go to Cheltenham and Evesham until 1st/2nd May, then back to Clydach for my cousin’s wedding, finally returning to Kazakhstan on the 5th May.
I hope everyone is OK, and that we’ll be seeing some of you soon 🙂
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Mar 10 2008
Rain And High Winds Hit Southern UK
How are people? For those readers not in the UK, the south of the country is currently being hit by quite a bad serious of storms. Click on over here for a BBC report on it so far.
So, if you have a moment (and electricity and a working phone line 🙂 ), leave a comment, let us know if your area was affected by the 80mph+ winds or the rain and resulting flood waters.
As you can see from that last photo Cheltenham’s famous race course was hit by the winds, with some of the temporary structures in place for the National Hunt damaged. Swansea was also effected, so if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and phone around friends and family…
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Jan 24 2008
Flooding Still A Possibility?
Could any of my readers in the Gloucestershire region leave a comment if they know whether the danger has now passed, in terms of flooding near them? As you may remember from last year, Rich (Alex’s brother) posted a video on YouTube of the flooding around Cheltenham. Although I obviously hope no one is as badly effected this year, if things do get a little watery, that our intrepid correspondent will be letting us know what’s what…
Anyway, whether the river is lapping at your front door, or all your neighbours are already getting rid of their sand bags, let us know how things are going.
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Jan 21 2008
Do You Remember?
When we recently returned to Cheltenham, I discovered that the Night Owl club had reopened. For many people my age, this club was the first they were able to get into, originally because the bouncers didn’t look too closely at the patrons, in terms of their age, and even when there was a town-wide crack down on under-age drinking, the Night Owl bouncers tended to let you in with just the flimsiest of fake ID cards. Anyway, after it was called the Night Owl, it went out to be called Mistys, and then The Attic. Sadly, the club shut for a while, then someone decided to try setting a “gentleman’s club” there, and also a gym. Before all of that though, it was originally called the Blue Moon, where they played Jazz, and who knows, perhaps the live bands played some in the smoky rooms?
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