Easter...

So, let's compare the list of plans with what happened:

Major gardening (by my wife with as little involvement from me as possible).

Hm, got a bit more involved that I had planned - hauling concrete slabs and bags of gravel around. My calves are still complaining...

Revision for my exams.

Managed to read a couple of papers, which is great!

Trying to finish painting my Saxon and Norman soldiers - nearly there!

Got my Norman knights finished, just a few elite Saxons to finish now. Photos soon!

Going to a friends for a major GuitarHero session.

This was great fun. I actually sang for the first time on this game and did rather well! I sang Living on a Prayer (Bon Jovi), Everlong (Foo Fighters) and Rebel Yell (Billy Idol), scoring in the 90% plus range. It was on Easy so I didn't read too much into that, but the fact that my youngest found be frighteningly good DID do a lot for the old ego! If I had sucked he would have been the first to say so!

Whatever else comes up, I guess!

We had an Egg Hunt around the house! Mrs RC got up early and hid them all for us. It was quite surreal, really, doing this with the kids the size they are now, especially the two 15 year old boys (Number 1 Son and his friend who is staying with us for a couple of weeks) who are almost as tall as me now! I love that they are still kids at heart.

We had a BBQ yesterday, with a few friends around. This was my first time doing this with non-family around, so I was hoping to impress. The first batch of sausages (I always start with sausages) burst and oozed out of their skins, turning into a nasty mess - not a good sign - but after that everything went fine and soon we were all pigged out, adults sitting in the garden while the kids were indoors playing MarioCart on the Wii. A great way to end the weekend!

Hope you had at least as much fun as I did!

Weekend!

Wow, that was a nice short week! Finishing at lunchtime today, back on Tuesday!

What are we doing?

• Major gardening (by my wife with as little involvement from me as possible).
• Revision for my exams.
• Trying to finish painting my Saxon and Norman soldiers - nearly there!
• Going to a friends for a major GuitarHero session.
• Whatever else comes up, I guess!

Should be fun, anyway!

Have a great weekend!

Malta - more photos

Delayed...

Good bye Blighty!

We spent a day seeing the sights - from a geographical view point - rock formations, strata, etc...

...and the impact of tourism on the island...

Want to be a caveman?

Mdina from the outside.

A close up of the battlements.

You can tour the city in a carriage if you want to! Don't worry, the horses are all in amazing condition!

The main gate. Can't you just feel the history?

The top half of the co-cathedral in Mdina.

Not a clock - a calendar!

Fighting through the bamboo jungle.

The most dangerous stepping stones since Vlad the Impaler invented a new party game...

There IS a stream in there somewhere...

A strange mix of natural rock formations and dry stone walling to hold the fields in place!

One of the locals.

Given that there was an endless supply of oil drums from the old airforce bases on Malta, the locals made good use of them to fence off their fields. The government is trying to get them removed now, but a few still remain.

St Paul's Island. This is where St Paul was shipwrecked. You can just see the statue.

Part of the national garbage mountain. That is a truck on the top.

Some things cannot be escaped...

Finally, I found this on a bar wall in Malta Airport. Not a big fan of Styx, but it is a lovely guitar!

Hope you enjoyed that!

Videos to follow if I win the fight with them!

Malta, Part 3

Let's look at who was at our hotel.

There was us.

There were a few families.

And there were a load of retired British people, mainly women, a lot of them seeming to be long stayers hiding from the winter. The hotel entertainment was aimed at this group...

One evening there was a disco. The DJ and his wife must have been well into their 70s. They were great fun. The DJ even did a Michael Jackson routine to Billy-Jean (minus crotch grabbing for some reason). Most of us ended up joining in at some point, dancing with the oldies who seemed to really enjoy the young blood - yes, even at my age I was young again.

Near the end of the evening (and near the end of another bottle of wine) "Summer of '69" came on - this is MY SONG! Before I knew it I was up and head-banging, finishing off with an Angus Young dying fly routine (spinning around in circles on the floor). Soon after that an inflatable guitar appeared from somewhere and we were all at it! Great stuff.

I think I picked up a fan or 2 that night, and found myself in long conversations with a few of the women after that - one even openly declared that she was chasing me! Well if everything goes down the pan at least I might have one last career path open to me...

Malta Part 2

We were walking along by a stream - the nearest Malta has to a river.

The stream ran along the bottom of a gully with high (10-15 feet) stone walls along either side.

We came to a part where the stream was criss-crossing the path, causing everyone to tread very carefully to avoid too much in the way of wet feet. I was at the back of the line and stopped to look around. I had an IDEA!

Leaping across the stream, I landed on the far bank and was able to walk along it, hugging the stone wall. Others started watching to see how I got on.

The team leader, a colleague of many years, told me that I was going to end up getting wetter than the rest.

Worth a gamble, I replied!

A stand of bamboo blocked my path, so I pushed and smashed my way through.

The crowd was getting excited.

I emerged from the bamboo to see the path ahead.

There wasn't one. A sheer drop straight into a wide meander of the stream. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted! Another RC short cut goes wrong!

I did dry out eventually...

Malta, Part 1

The flight out was delayed by an hour while the engineer check the plane. Hm.

Take off wasn't very nice...

But we made it!

This is in Mdina, The Silent City, once the capital of the island.

This is a fairly typical stretch of coastline - isn't that wonderful? I won't bore you with talk of limestone and blue clay...

Next we have a view across the Grand Harbour at Valletta - a bit of a gloomy day, unfortunately, but it was wonderfully atmospheric there. There was some sort of fextival going on with people in uniforms and grand brass bands playing!

A typical Maltese landscape - terraced fields (often abandoned these days), dry stone walls, stunted trees, the odd cactus...

Finally, I found an amazing confectioners just outside Mdina. This was the most amazing lunch EVER! Don't even think calories....



More soon. Need to sort the video clips, which have managed to save themselves into one huge file instead of lots of little ones!

Back!

Hi

I made it back!

The Hotel only had a very slow connection and hated Blogger....

Had a great time, except for the day I was ill, but more on that later....

Photos and videos to follow soon....

Missed you all!