Insight into the Mind of an Eight Year Old

When I got hold of those old photo's from my mum, which I scanned into my mac, with which I attempted to embarrass my brother and subsequently managed to lose all of due to a hard drive failure, I also found a few of my old text books.

One of them was from 'Class Four' which I think means I was about 8 years old. I was perusing the pages and found this gem of a short story (potentially eligible for some kind of literary prize) which I thought I should read out:

Sam said "coming for a walk by the river?"

Robert said "yep".

When they go there Robert said "I bet you I can swim across the river".

So he jumped in and went down down down and died.

Funny thing is, I am still friends with Robert (often referred to a 'The Artist' of this story and this story), he still is a competitive git, and I still hold him in just about as much contempt.

(p.s. what I want to know is why te teacher didn't submit me for psychological testing after that one)

Notes from a Small Island

We got back from our Cyprus adventure last night (or early this morning). I am not a massive fan of Cyprus I have to say. 

Due to its colonial past there is a very large British ex-pat population mixed in with the Greek and Turkish residents and large swathes of the coast are covered in concrete apartment blocks, partially completed luxury villas and strips of cheap restaurants and bars. 

Though I don't doubt that there are other aspects of Cyprus we were unable to see, those parts which we did manage to get to within a few hours drive which were not covered in concrete monstrosities were also very touristy though with a little more authenticity and intrigue.

All this, however didn't stop us having a great time as we were also bombarded by the exceptional generosity of Lucy's parents who were out there with us, and paid for a pretty huge villa for the week, and we managed to get up into the mountains which was pretty cool.

I struggled a little with photography, partly because the sun was always so high in the sky and set very quickly, meaning that interesting light was hard to come by, and partially because it was so hot that I couldn't be bothered to exert myself for good angles for photos.

However I did manage to take a few nice ones of Lucy during a sunset at the villa:

This one was taken at the 'Tombs of the Kings' in Paphos, which was pretty spectcular:

Other photos should be available on Flickr shortly (when I get around to uploading them).

Hours of Fun

I am soon to be off the blogging circuit for a week or two as I am heading off on holiday, first to Cyprus and then to Wales for a week of sun followed by a week of rain to cool my sun-burn. 

The Hadrians Walk event seems to be in full promotional rage at present, so one of the first things I need to do when I get back, is to whip team Bandicoot into shape. We are at present at around 18 interested parties I think, and I may just stop the recruitment activity at that (in order to preserve my own sanity whilst doing the organising).

So whilst I am away, I will leave you with a great game which was brought to my attention in Riga. It goes as follows:

1. Loosen your cheeks and shake your head from side to side as quick as you can
2. Take a photograph of yourself
3. Hold amusing props such as fists / cricket bats / beer bottles close to your face
4. Repeat for approximately 5 hours until you get a good photo

Our best result after hours of practice is below:

Losing My Right Arm

I havent actually lost my right arm. What I have lost however is my Mac hard drive, all of my photos, all of my music, and all of my videos at the end of a pretty unsuccessful fortnight in the household (in which i had my sat-nav nicked, lost out on a job at work as well as the whole cat-thing). It did feel like my right arm.

It is for this reason that there has been no communication from me on the Hadrians Walk, little blogging and very little commenting. Wordpress, blogger and flickr have been blocked at work, and I have been confined to Lucy's virus infected tortoise like PC.

However, I have been to the Genius Bar at the Apple shop which I have to say is fantastic, you can say what you want about Apple trying to take over the world, but they do have a unique approach to customer service. On their recommendation, I have bought a 500 gig (non-apple) internal hard drive.

Screw you failed hard drive - now I have a hard drive five times your size! Ha!

Now I find out how much of my stuff I actually backed up properly.