April 2007 Archives

Just thought I'd give you all a quick update!

 We're having our first AGM this Thursday at 7pm in the Menai, Upper Bangor. I'm a bit nervous because it means all we're having our first committee finalised by the club - I could end up never being the official Equipment and Training Officer before I'd even started! And that would be a shame.

Really enjoying working with the boys so far - we all make a great team and its so nice that we all get on so well.

Next weekend we're having our next Demo Days, 2 and 3; we have to pray the weather's going to be good because we're looking at a very good turn out this time with at least 5 cars going over!

Anyway. I will inform more as I know more!

Since I've been back I haven't really stopped!

 I keep meaning to write about my tadpoles over Easter and how whether or not Dennis and Owyn survived the Easter break (I can see you are all on the very edge of your seats now) but I haven't got round to downloading the photos from my camera yet!

Missed the dive meeting yesterday by accident because Liam, Sam and myself spent the day on Llanddona (checking Sam's new 3m Sammy honest) which means I don't know what's going off with diving this weekend. Oh well. Guess I'll have to go kiting again.

 The kite club is flying along now, with the help of my fantastic committee (some more than others). A trip to see Frodo at the SU yesterday confirmed that we'll have bank accounts set up for the club shortly to enable BPKA affiliation to be that little bit easier, he's drafting us a constitution, we're allowed to hold our events (because Kev is insured). Turbulence have given us details on places to get stuff printed, like t-shirts, sweatshirts and hats, banners, stickers and all sorts, as well as starting giving us 10% discount with Liam buying his harness there. So that's all going well!

I promise soon I will get some pictures up and write more soon and give you news and stuff. It won't be exciting (apart from the stuff about the fish, obviously).

And so my three weeks of lazy studenting are up.

 Tomorrow I catch the train back to Sunny Bangor and back to my being at Uni being lazy but doing work occasionally. My days of vegging about watching television are numbered until summer comes and I return home. Back I go to all those people I've spent the last 3 weeks blissfully unaware of. Away from my bed, living in the fields, the warm fire etc.

 On the other hand, my alter ego (honest) is enjoying setting up the kite club and being a fairly upstanding member of the sub-aqua club, and I can't really do those from here.

 I really hope that Dennis and Owyn haven't passed on, shuffled off their mortal coil, climbed down the curtain and joined the choir invisible, begun to push up the dasies or become ex-fish in my absence. I don't hold out a lot of hope for the minnows.

 But if the goldfish have died my bedroom is going to stink.

Well, it has to be said that I'm not particularly a big fan of the Arc's from Peter Lynn generally, they've always seemed to spongey, a bit lazy, and pretty underpowered even for their projected size...

But my mind can be changed. I've flown Angus' 16m Venom before in some decent winds, and it was, to say the least, a bit hairy because of the gusts, but still lacked that edge you get from most de-powerable foils (eg. the Speed I also flew the other day... thats another story). Unusually though we were blessed with some directly onshore, smooth 15-18mph winds the other day at Stevenston and Grahams 16m Venom 2 was flying beautifully, boosting pretty darn big considering the wind, and all the time it was still easily in the realms of comfort.

Photographs courtesy and copyright: James McGoldrick

Well, I haven't posted for a while, but just for you, heres something pulled up on one of the forums today,

A puppet skeleton dancing to some music for money, 2 different vids from youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdIsPOfRkbc

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhzsfycvdMQ

On the way to Kev's lectures today we stopped off at Strathclyde Country Park for a wander in the warm April sunshine. Along the way we found a number of buoys high in trees which was puzzling, as well as some ducks and swans and then a pond wherein two small boys were looking for toads. After looking to see what was in the pond ourselves the taller of the two offered me a toad to keep for myself and offered to catch Kev one for himself. I held it for a while before putting it back into the pond as far to the middle as I could. We continued on our way.

On the return we bumped into the boys again and were then followed most of the way back to the car by them, and learning all about how toads eat daffodils and like to hop onto logs.

 I did want to rescue the toads but the boys did not seem like they were the toad-leg-pulling-off kind and so I saw no harm in letting them learn how to keep toads alive. They are not so different to myself, who has a bowl of frogspawn in the wood shed in the yard at Hartshorne and the ongoing desire to keep small creatures as pets.

Hopefully they will become upstanding citizens in their community for our caring deeds today.

I can hope!