In the meantime we’ve both been getting into the swing of the work schedule. Luckily I managed to get ahead on my TODO list having done the ground work before I left to get married. There is still an impossibly long list of things that need doing, but it’s more about whats required for the current approaching deadline. As a result I accepted an invite from the company to represent them at some engineering awards in London. Although advertised as 14 courses it was more a 5 course gala meal with 14 individual types of food. It was very nice with the good selection of Champagne and free flowing wine. I felt kind of guilty as out of the 7 of us there I was the only engineer, the others in my team all being to busy too go.

This weekend is being treated with a little more measured respect. I went to a mini-beer festival in town on Friday while Fliss attended the local LRP clubs interactive. I joined her on site the next day to monster her first linear adventure. Given her only experience of LARP so far has been fest systems it was interesting to watch her reaction to the adventure format. She was playing with a group of new recruits to the club and the way they came off the dungeon all so enthused made me very nostalgic for those first adventures all those years ago. The next day aches are also very familiar.

We will start the process of re-syncing social calendars next week and see how quickly the rest of the year fills up.

* This is a joke, I think

I have secured a 30-45 minute slot for back to back rocking out. I have the beginnings of an over populated play list which needs honing but any suggestions for classic rock material will get a passing notice from me. Hopefully.

Both my brother and dad did well at the Bridge scoring a number of crucial rubbers. The Batman through the ages retrospective gave us plenty to ponder about the development of this seminal character. I think we all came away from Saturday’s advanced driving lessons having learnt some new skills to make us safer participants on our nations roads. The food was simple but nourishing with plenty of healthy herbs and spices to supplement the modest amount of meat in our weekends diet. We also enjoyed a modest selection of wines and other fermented goods made from harvested berries and other natural organic ingredients. Although I did take my PS3 up with me it was mainly used to introduce Andy to a new realistic driving simulator.

I have to thank my best men for organising the weekend and generally removing the need for me to think too hard. I also valued the advice from all those present who had already partaken in the august and revered institution that is marriage.

While the Facebook group is a handy solution for those on Facebook we are actually managing the responses via our own website. For those (very few) interested people the hacked up version of the Events Manager plugin can be found on my github pages.

We are up in Manchester next weekend and the following weekend we climb Snowden. It certainly feels like I’m awakening from hibernation. Today was the first day I got into work without having to massage the live back into frozen fingers.

Otherwise it was a fine wedding which we saw through the prism of noting ideas for our own forthcoming nuptials. Highlights included the classic Routemaster Bus which shuttled us between the hotel, wedding and reception venues. It was the bus companies reserve bus as the other one had developed a fault but this just added to the excitement as we climbed, nay crawled, up the rather steep hills in the area. The cheers as we crested and moved out of 1st gear were much fun. The caterers should also get recognition for serving out more than a hundred portions of Beef Wellington from a shed hidden behind the marquee. There was also the launching of Chinese Lanterns which provided some lovely background to the evening sky.

Hotels aside it was a lovely event