I was invited to play at a recorded session last night for ‘BBC Introducing’ with Jenny Eells at BBC Radio York station studio 1 with a friends band: Lobo. Introducing is a show that spotlights new / unsigned bands – some really cool stuff on there. The show goes out this Saturday at 20:00 and will be available on the iPlayer for 10 days after that. There were 4 of us – an acoustic bass played by lead vox Lex, an acoustic guitar, a djembe and me on Cajon / Cuban Box Drum.

Quite an odd experience – the format of a radio show is extremely familiar, but to actually be part of one – immersed in is studio is quite surreal. Liked it a lot.

Tune in at 8 on Saturday!

I pretty much squeezed my whole weekend into one day. I was up at the crack of dawn and deep in in the Dales first thing on Saturday – dropping Jaygo off for a Scout challenge called Tohunga. Whilst I was in the area I thought I’d go for a walk with Elsie (a dog). As the river was close to full flood a few days prior, I thought the nearby Aysgarth Falls would be worth a look. I wasn’t disappointed! I had a look at all three falls (lower, middle, upper) and had the whole place to myself, due to the pre 09:00 arrival – judging by the number of coach  and car bays in car park, I’d guess this place gets packed with tourists. Amazing place to have to myself. Did a geocache there, then headed up a hill for a look at the view. Pen Hill, overlooking West Witton (where I’d dropped Jay off) proffered (and delivered) amazing panoramic vistas.

Came home, spot of lunch, siesta, then headed out to our local to meet up for a stag do. We all had to wear hats. I tried to give mine away several times – and I guess I must have done at some point because I came home sans hat. Great night – started out in The Millennium Square Revolution in Leeds – pretty much exclusively Stag and Hen parties – a completely different feel to Rev’s from the one in Harrogate or even the other one in Leeds. From there we went to Jongulers comedy club and from there, Oceana which was in the same building as the comedy club.

A bit of an afterparty back in Harrogate nearly broke me – felt very rough the next day – but managed to motivate myself to doing a cracking Sunday Roast for 9 people. Much fun.

- Simon at The Segesta Temple in  Sicily.

Elsie won a rosette!

The weekend was fun. It involved two birthdays – the first of which was a garden / house party. Dogs and kids very welcomed. People with exactly the same footware (pictured above – me and Ricky), also welcomed. I think at one point there were 7 dogs and at least twice as many kids. Hard to tell them apart at times. Food and drink, chats and choons. Elsie (a dog) came and told me it was time that I took her home to be fed and put to bed around 8pm by sitting in front of me with very flat ears, gesturing to where I’d put her lead. We took her and the wee’ns home then (it being just around the corner, Felix now eligible to babysit (yay!) for local stuff) we headed back, for much of the same, plus a bit of a jam and a a fire bin in the garden.

I had a notion that Sunday would be chill to the max, but it turned out that I’d forgotten that one of my oldest close friends Jamie P was having a 40^th ! we went round a few pubs and ended up having the hottest curry available – a Phall, which, when the waiter said “is that hot enough for you” Jamie said – “yea, not bad, could be a bit hotter”. The chef himself came out of the kitchen to corroborate the waiters story before bemusedly heading back to his galley to rustle up a something even hotter. I had a small dab – probably about 1ml on a nan bread and I was crying my eyes out for over 10 minutes. Jamie? Waded through the lot without even breaking a sweat. There’s either something very wrong with that lad, or very right. I suspect both.

I’ve just had a Graze Nibble Box delivered to my desk at work. A brilliant idea where they post you a box of tasty healthy snacks on days that you specify. They have 100 recipes – you can either have random, or tweak to what you like.

They’ve given me a grazebox.com voucher code – KX7WVNN –  to use, so you can try out graze and get your first box free.. http://www.graze.com/p/KX7WVNN  Enjoy!

nom nom nom nom nom.

It’s World Book Night day today and I’m a giver (again).  I’ve been selected to give away a box full of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It is a fantastic book – an easy, fairly light read, very engaging and does that thing a good book should do – leave you thinking about it for quite some time after you’ve read it. The book’s “I’ve sold over 65 million copies” status could be further testamount to the brilliance of it.

The title itself is one of 25 titles in this years World Book Night give-away list. The project is celebrity enforced, big London event backed and a really good initiative (in my humble opinion). It seems to mean a lot of things to a lot of people but to me its about championing the joys of reading. I’m proud to be involved in such an ace project. Get back into books, get back in the library. Curl up with a good book.

If you’d like a book I’ll try and get one to you (get in touch). Or better still – come and find me. I’ll be out walking the dog near Christchurch on The Stray in Harrogate tonight at around 7.30 and I’ll have a bag of books with me.

PS. Happy Birthday William Shakespeare.

Hightlights for me, were… Chilling out in or by one of the Hotel Costa Calero’s x4 lovely pools. This inifinity pool we christened ‘the top pool’.

Drinking in one the hotels 3 bars – this was the view from the inside bit of The Piano Bar

Hiring a car and exploring the island was amazing. We hit a few of the places the guide books said “must visit”, and did a hike and a picnic. Here’s a photo of Felix holding a geocache he’d just found aloft..

El Golfo is one of the maddest places I’ve ever been to. It’s a volcanic crater on the coast of the island. It’s got a crazy colour scheme going on.

We visited the sleepy little town of Teguise where I snapped a few photos of a garden that I loved.

Loads more photos here

Miss the place already. Blissed and sunkissed holidays are super-doop.

We’re staying at a lovely hotel, weather has been OK – rained for 10 mins this morning then blue sky. Yesterday was amazing – we hired a car and went on an adventure to look at volcanos and tour the island. More on that to follow.

We’ve never done a proper ‘all inclusive’ type holiday before. Hotel Costa Calero is our digs.  3 buffets a day and several bars, 4 pools, a spa, two kids club and it’s 22decC plus. Very nice! It’s not as busy as we would have expected. Anyhoo – two mins of time left, I’m going to read through and hit publish…

We wen’t to a party on Friday – a fancy dress party when you had to go dressed in something from one of the last few years worth of Newby Hall Easter Fun Day – an Event we’ve been involved with since 2004 (first blog on Newby | Collection of photos from Newby). My favorite was Ickle, who turned up dressed as Fraser. For those that know either, this is funny. Ver ver funny.

Bit of a shame that this event has closed its final curtain – but we have all got a great bunch of lovely friends and memories as a keepsake.

4th April07:52

Taken A59, Kexgill, Yorkshire. 

Myself and 3 of my cricket buddies went to see Henry Blofeld at the Harrogate Theatre last Friday. ‘Blowers’ is a stalwart commentator for the BBC’s Test Match Special. To me, he’s got the most crickety voice in the world*. His voice is to cricket what Murry Walker’s voice was to F1.

He’s knocking on a bit now, but still dancing. His delivery was gently bowled and his anecdotes, silky smooth and pitched at a perfect angle – perhaps a slightly older angle than for where I was sitting. Very enjoyable though, he waxed lyrical about (amongst other things) his relationship with the Queen Mum, Noël Coward and Ian Flemming. The latter of which named his Bond Villan ‘Blofeld’ actually after his family – his father – a good friend of Mr. Flemming by account – his brother and he were all members of the same club and when he turned to the members list for inspiration, he had a three lined whip shouting their suggestion out to him.

He also talked cricket. One of those enviable professional sports journalist qualities of being able to recall every ball, score, bowler, test, series and year for each and every story – or had the knack of being able to skirt around the missing bits so succinctly, one didn’t notice.

He  poo-poo’d and cleared up the “The bowler’s Holding, the batsman’s Willey” story that was alegedly voiced by Brian Johnston when Peter Willey faced Michael Holding during the ’76 England West Indies – it wasn’t.  He also agreed to a suggestion that a moat instead of a boundary would improve the  game. I quite agree my dear old thing.

*Yes, more so than Geoffrey Boycott and Richie Benaud.

It’s been a cracking few days for sun. Possibly the sunniest March I can ever remember. Note to self – scoot back over the last 10 years archives and see if there’s a sunnier memory stashed away.

I’ts fairly likely that the sun will dry up for a bit now due to the arrival of these – my new sunnies. They’re a bit brighter red than I was expecting but they are still super ace. I’ve wanted a pair of Ray Ban’s since I tried on a friends pair last summer. Not especially for ‘the look’, even though these are officially design icons, as worn by anyone who’s ever been cool, and his cool dog for the last 70 years, but more for the quality of the actual glass lenses designed and optimised for the US Airforce. Putting ‘cheap’ sunnies on after trying Ray Ban’s on isn’t much fun. Vowed to get some. Got some.

Hoping I manage to retain these without breaking them long enough to join me on a few sunny adventures.

If you put Goole into Google it comes back with Google. If you click the search instead for Goole, it comes back with a bunch of info on an inland port in the East Riding of Yorkshire. We went there yesterday to visit Felix’s friend and family. Had a lovely until Elsie ( a dog ) picked up an Ian Durey.

Our time involving ice cream and a walk along a canal in the sun with Felix’s friends dad, his dog and his friends and their dog. I had been stuck on geocache 249 for ages which I decided to try and turn into a quarter K. Thanks to the skills (/ beginners luck ) of Felix’s friends dad, we found it. Around the cache was some water. Elsie (half spaniel) had to wade in for a splosh. A while later someone noticed bloody footprints and I then found that Elsie had a deep cut to one of her pads and deep slash to her doggy thumb pad. We got her back and thankfully Felix’s friends mum had a great first aid kit and knew what she was doing with it so before long, we got her cleaned and bandaged up. I’ve since re examined and bandaged it this morning and I’m hoping she’ll be right as rain soon. It’s deep but she’s not showing much sign of discomfort.

We were just saying on the drive down that it was about this time last year that all the trouble started with Jaygo’s 2+ month hospital stint. If you look at him now (handy picture above) you’d say he’s the picture of health. We are so grateful to have our health and happiness (albeit now with poor poor Elsie dog who has a cow print leg over bandage.)