Today has been a little strange. I am still suffering from a bit of a cough (3 weeks and counting), so took the opportunity for a sneaky lay-in. I was 'excused' a trip up to Covent Garden to visit my Mum as I was booked up to escort a team of Cubs to the Surrey County Cub Scout Cooking Competition. The 5th Reigate Gibson Cub Pack had won the Reigate District Competition earlier in the year, so was representing Reigate at the County gig. We arrived at the venue and my colleague Baloo realised that he had left the recipe sheet, together with other required paperwork at the Scout Hut. After recovering from that, the competition started and our Cubs managed a very good 2nd place, being 3.5 points (of 50) behind the winners. Anyhoo I digress, and once we got into the hall, I was greeted by some old friends who I have cooked with and known since I started my Scouting. Once pleasantries had been exchanged, they asked if I was busy the first weekend in December. As it happens, there is a Cub Sleepover at the Scout HQ on Saturday 4 December and a Cub Scout Carol Service on Sunday 5 December. A discussion ensued and it seems that there is a small (8-10 attendees, 3-4 tutors) at the County Training Centre and little help to do the catering (in fact Jan and Kevin who I was talking to were both tutoring and also in the frame for the catering). Perceiving their need for some assistance in the kitchen, I thought about what my timetable would be for that weekend and decided that the logistics could be possible to help at both the training and the sleepover. Admittedly, I will have to miss the Carol Service on the Sunday, and I will have to leave after doing the lunch time washing up at the training course on the Saturday to get to the Party / Sleepover, and leave the Sleepover after breakfast on the Sunday morning to get to spud bashing at the training course, but this is a done deal. If you can lend a hand, do so - that is what I try to do. Apart from ignominy (is that the word?) in the UEFA Champions League, my beloved Gunners are in fairly good shape so far this season. Luckily Alexis Sanchez seems to want to play and play and will show a fine work ethic to his team mates. In today's game at Watford, he showed up and put in a shift even after arriving back on Friday from International Duty and scoring two goals in South America. He is a class act I was booked for a small gig on 6 October (Meadowlark, at the Lexington) but realised on the preceding Thursday that I had not received my e-ticket. I emailed the customer service and heard nothing until Monday 5th. Their advice was that I should not worry as the concert was not for several weeks and the e-ticket would be sent about 3 weeks before the gig. If this is not received 7 days beforehand I should call them on their (premium rate) number. So Dear Reader, I called them and explained that as I had said in my email the gig was NOT in several weeks, rather the following evening. The operator kindly told me that she would resend the e-ticket email in the next two hours as they would have been sent out in August. No email came my way, so I decided to write the date off as the ticket value was low (£8) and I was feeling sick in any case. Weirdly a couple of days later, I received an email asking how the service had been and I replied laying into the agency somewhat and declaring that I probably would never use their services again. Even more weirdly, last Sunday I received an email containing an e-ticket for the gig. The gig date was the 14th of December. It seems that the date had been re-arranged and no-one had actually told me. For the want of a single email, all of this unpleasantness would have been avoided. On the up-side, I will get to the concert after all and it will be my last of this year. Finally, a little about my visit to the Victoria and Albert museum.
I was not really looking forward to this, as the V&A was the least favourite Kensington museum when I was a kid (too many dresses and fabrics). In the event it was a great day out - the Photography Fascists were noticeably absent as evidenced here. That's enough for now, so
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4/10/2015 0 Comments Change of plan for the last weekend of June 2016 or "The Big Festival has had it's day".Hello again, Dear Reader, The initial ticket sales for the Glastonbury Festival 2016 have been and gone with no success for this fan. The first sale for 15,000 coach package tickets on October 1st lasted 15 of your Earth minutes. Today's sale of 120,000 general admission was at 09:00 this morning, and was all done by 09:31. I have been through the disappointment of sale failure before, and can live with that - but what rankles me is the fact that for 25 minutes of today's sale I could not even access the See Tickets website due to traffic volumes. All is not lost, however - there is a resale of tickets not taken up next April, and if that doesn't come off there are other good festivals around - maybe it will be the year to experiment. It has been a strange week or so. I have been struggling with a cough and cold and actually took a day off sick a couple of Fridays ago. I missed a Cub Scout meeting and a District Push Cart event. I had to miss a gig in Brixton so I had a chance to recover. The cold element is persevering, but at least the cough element has abated. Although I missed out on the Wolf Alice gig, I did venture up to Shoreditch last week to the Village Underground and after getting hopelessly lost because of building works saw my old pals Summer Camp. They put on a good show and the support acts were interesting. Although my view was brilliant, my selected spot made for awkward photo taking, but some some results were OK and can be seen <here>. And finally... There is the County Cub Scouts Cooking Competition coming up in a few weekends, so as representatives of Reigate District, our Cub Pack will have to "up our game" and practice cooking a new two course menu.
The week after that we have a Pack Holiday at Frylands Wood Camp Site - no canvas and in a hut, so it sounds luxurious. I hope I have shaken this damned cold by then! Adieu. |
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