Some friends of mine

Some friends of mine are about to embark on an adventure. They’re leaving the UK for good, and are cycling their way from Stockton, UK (where Banz is from) to Brisbane, Australia (where Vic is from). From what I remember, they’re planning for it to take a year or so. Good look guys, I’ll enjoying reading about your progress.

ve just had to

I’ve just had to post my Canon G3 off for repair. There’s a little plastic tab on the cover for the CF slot which presses down and allows power to flow to the camera. Without the tab it doesn’t work. I know, mine just broke. :-(. Jessops (who we bought it from) told me it could take 4 -5 weeks to repair, so we rang Canon who said 10 – 15 working days. So we’ve sent it straight to Canon using the helpful people at Mailboxes etc on Western Road, Brighton.

We went to our

We went to our last “planned” Festival event last night, it was The Complete Lost Works of Samuel Beckett as found in an envelope (partially burned) in a dustbin in Paris labelled ‘never to be performed. Never. Ever. EVER! Or I’ll sue! I’LL SUE FROM THE GRAVE!!!’ at Komedia. This was what I would class as Fringe theatre, although it was part of the main festival. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t quite as polished as some of the other performances we’ve seen. That said there were some great bits in it, and it really is quite silly in places. I think starting it at 9.30pm was a great idea as it gave us chance to get some beers in before hand which I think helped… after all, they expect an element of audience participation!

got an email from

I got an email from a friend today, and almost didn’t bother to read it, as it started “Zingo Taxis: IMPORTANT INFO”. But I did, and actually it sounds like a good service. When you’re in London and want a cab, you ring Zingo and they automatically connect to you the nearest for hire taxi (they use GPS based on your phone signal) who will then come and collect you wherever you are. It costs £1.60 on top of the usual rate, and I can certainly think of times when I’d have been glad to do this.

The BBC did a review of this service in April, and a quick look at google also supports this as being a genuine service and not some form of spam.

As cycled to work

As I cycled to work this morning, they were starting to setup for the third round of the British Kite Surfing Championships. It gets underway today, and continues until Sunday (although Sunday is an all amateur day). The itinerary can be found at Boost Sports. I’m hoping to get down there tomorrow to watch the proceedings.

We went to see

We went to see Horse Country at Komedia last night. It won some prizes at last years Edinburgh Festival, and boy did it deserve them. It’s a fast moving, conversational piece between “Bob” and “Sam”. It’s clever, and must be hard work for the actors. But, and here it comes, it wasn’t as funny as I’d expected it to be from the things I’d read. In fact, it was a bit hard work at times listening to the relentless string of words. Possibly the weirdest thing for us was that the guy who plays “Sam” had the same mannerisms, and words that Jono has, which was somewhat surreal…

In our quest for a good Margarita somewhere that we don’t have to buy food as well (the only criticism of El Mexicano) we popped into Quod, a new place, on our way home. The Margarita’s were ok, but not as good as Sunday‘s. Quod was ok, but it seemed a bit too London for our tastes. Still, I’m sure we’ll eat there one day to check 🙂

Well the non event

Well, the non-event of the Festival so far was The Glow Project. This sounded like a cool, very Brighton event so on Saturday evening we collected a couple of friends and wandered down Kensington Place. And found nothing, absolutely no art of any kind. Lots of people were milling around, but there was nothing to be seen.

So today I emailed them to find out what happened and got this reply
Due to unforseen circumstances I had to return to France and postpone the Glow Event until October 2003. Life can be unpredictable! Sorry for the inconvenience, the Glow Project will be back if the sky doesn’t fall on my head this time. Check the local press and hope to see you there.
So at least we know what happened to it.

Yesterday we were in

Yesterday we were in a packed house at the Pavilion Theatre to listen to Heather Couper and Nigel Henbest talk about The Red Planet.

The talk was a kind of summary of their book,
Mars: The Inside Story of the Red Planet
, and it was entertaining and interesting, as I’m sure the book is. Three things stood out: 1. Heather Couper’s praise of Brighton, and the North Laine in particular, as cool place and a cross of San Francisco and Sydney; 2. Heather’s feelings for why people need to go to Mars (lots of emotions there); 3. They believe life has already been found on Mars.

Regarding life, the interesting question becomes: is the life on Earth and Mars based on the same kind of carbon? If it is, then maybe there’s a common origin. But if it’s not, then life developed independently so maybe there’s life everywhere out there.

was cycling down Preston

I was cycling down Preston Street this morning, when this huge blue American truck started driving towards me. Now, I only know of one person who drives a truck like this in Brighton, Chris Eubank. And it was him. No time for a photo, I was too busy getting out of the way!