Firetop

So the weekend was a bit of a heavy one with VIP tickets to the annual dance festival ‘Global Gathering’ to be enjoyed on Saturday. Now in its sixth year, ‘Global’ takes place annually just outside of Stratford-on-Avon, at an old airfield near the village of Long Marston. As luck would have it, there are some Pesketts in that neck of the woods, so ‘Suzie_Q’ and I had somewhere local to stay (Bidford), and marvellous hosts my Aunt and Uncle were too; even insisting on picking us up from Global at whatever time of the morning we liked - which turned out to be the slightly earlier 2:30am (it rained). Thank god we didn’t choose to walk. (more…)

It might be a bit rough around the edges compared to the mainstream Hollywood Bowl chain that lives in our main cities and new towns, but the Horsham Superbowl, situated in Horsham park, is certainly value for money. Last night ‘Suzie Q’ and I went with some visiting Antipodean family and discovered the ‘three games for £6 per person’ Thursday night deal. That’s more than 50% cheaper than the Hollywood Bowl in Crawley (would cost £12.60). There were a few downsides however, the main one being the lack of air conditioning - so it was almost as hot as the tube, which meant the ball would slip out of your hand and go down the lane the wrong way (or at least that was my excuse!).

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In theory the pay per click networks such as Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing have had click fraud detection covered for a while by blocking the charging of multiple clicks from the same IP within short time periods – but this has never been explained, or it has to be said, believed, in its entirety. Industry reports say fraudulent clicks range from about fourteen percent to as high as twenty percent of total clicks. Now Google is revealing all and settling claims made in a class-action lawsuit from advertisers at a cost of ninety million dollars.

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Before I was interrupted by a woman using her mobile on the train, I finished watching Million Dollar Baby on the laptop, probably the most depressing film I’ve watched since Angela’s Ashes but well acted and strangely enjoyable. Clint Eastwood plays Frankie Dunn – a retired boxer turned coach and gym owner, with no direct family (you never find out why his daughter doesn’t speak to him anymore). He’s a daily visitor to the local Catholic Church where he asks daft questions of the angry priest there, but again you never get to the detail of his issues. He’s also learning to speak ‘Gaelic’ but yet again, that seems a bit odd and isn’t explained in full, presumably he’s interested in his ancestral roots. (more…)

I’m always irritated by people who have conversations on their mobile phone whilst on the train. I’ll sit happily with those quietly updating partners on an ETA but not full blown discussions that we all have to listen to. Today, the lady opposite me was so loud that I could hear every word over the music on my head phones. As I had no choice but to listen, I thought I’d just jot down what she was saying and blog it. Not quite as good as the time I heard a salesman describe his entire sales pitch for Great Ormond Street hospital and his minimum acceptable price, or the time I heard somebody talking about confidentially making fifty staff redundant at a Natwest in Peterboro, but anyway… (more…)

The more frequent visitor to this blog will have noticed the distinct lack of postings made during the latter part of last week. Other than being incredibly busy, this was due in part to the fifty or so attempted spam comments made each day from somebody keen to drive my visitors to numerous sex related websites. I got pretty annoyed by this and on Friday night, before heading off to Cardiff, accidently deleted an entire post whilst moderating some spam links (that’s rushing for you). I then had to wait for one of my freelance contacts to restore the comment that I had deleted. I’ve found a good plug-in for Wordpress which addresses the spam attack issue, it’s called Akismet (Automattic Kismet).

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Every now and again I come across a group of ticket inspectors at a railway station who seem to be have been vastly over-resourced. At Dorking railway station this morning I found three ticket inspectors sitting outside the Full Monty refreshment shack having a smoke, a gossip and a play on their mobile phones. I’m not surprised they were doing this as Dorking station has only eight trains an hour (and one had just been cancelled), with a lack of people around there really isn’t much to do. So who’s bright idea was it to allocate three ticket inspection staff to such a relatively small station? (more…)

The Bosphorus Turkish Restaurant in Cardiff was a strange place, the service was probably the worst I’ve ever experienced in my life, I’m not even sure I’d call it service, it was almost self-catering. I can’t fault the food though, very nice indeed. Presumably it’s the food that draws the punters in, and was responsible for the queue which was twenty strong by the time we were seated at our table. Despite our local guide for the evening having telephoned ahead and booked a table for six, we ended up crowded around a table for four; apparently when they confirmed the booking on the phone for ‘inside the restaurant’ it was a mistake, they meant ’sit outside in the cold’ - which we didn’t want to do. (more…)

Saturday night took us down to Cardiff’s harbour area for drinks in a few seafront bars and a meal at the Bosphorus Turkish Restaurant on the Mermaid Quay. I was very impressed with the harbour area in Cardiff on the walk down. It looks quite continental for somewhere in the UK and in some ways it reminded me of Barcelona with its modern architecture. In the background you have a typically picturesque British harbour which reminded me more of Scarborough. (more…)

I spent much of the past weekend staying with friends in Cardiff. A trip had been on the agenda for some time, so it was time to pull off the M4 at junction 29 instead of going straight past Cardiff to some other area of Wales. Got up early on Saturday (well early for me is anything before 11am as I’m usually hung over). I nearly fainted because it wasn’t raining outside (all my other Wales trips have featured A LOT of rain). Had a lovely traditional English breakfast at an Italian cafe around the corner and then headed off through the park for a tour of Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium.
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