‘Base Camp’
Driving out to the airport this morning, I heard on a newspaper review that one of the tabloids is using this headline on a story about the fact that gay and lesbian couples in the armed forces will be eligible for shared accommodation once civil unions are in place from December, assuming they have a civil union of course.
The paper points out that this is liable to cause anger among heterosexual couples who won't be eligible if they choose not to marry.
I can't believe that people are still trying to get away with this kind of disingenuous crap.
Well if they choose not to marry, they'll be in exactly the same situtaion as gay and lesbian couples who choose not to have civil unions. The point being that they've *always* had that choice, and its associated consequences and benefits. Now, we're just putting everyone on an equal foooting as far as this stuff is concerned.
Shambolic
Went, this afternoon, to Vinopolis with a group of people as a birthday weekend outing. I'd booked us into the Premium Wine Tour (extra premium tastings, a 'how to taste wine' session), and while the afternoon ended up being fun because of the people, I was less than impressed with the place.
To start with, my advance, pre-paid booking was apparently not on their list, and they 'couldn't get into the system'. The hen party group in front of us also had trouble because the Vinopolis employee didn't believe the number of people they'd booked and paid for, despite them having brought their confirmation email along with them.
Then, though I was standing in plain site of their desk, no one bothered coming to tell me that actually they had found my booking, so when I went back to be told 'yeah, your tickets are here', we'd missed the 'how to' session at 2pm. "The next one is at 2.30" I was told, so we waited a while to go in and start, thinking it would be the best thing to do it at the start of the tour.
Having waited and then entered, it turned out that the next session was at 3pm, meaning we wandered the first third of the place with neither 'how to', nor any wine to sample (missing the point surely). By the time we'd gone back through the tour at 2.55, there was already a sizable queue for the 3pm and we barely all got in.
And once on the tour, everyone remarked that there's almost nothing of the 'museum' itself that's really engaging - just a lot of boards with wine/region information and some photos. There's one point where you can smell and touch some of the fruits and spices that are associated with wine tastes and smell, and that's about it except for some tastings of what in fact turned out to be in some cases very, *very* uninspiring wines.
Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of fun, but that all came down to the people, definitely not the place, its people, or its organisation, all of which were decidedly unimpressive.
Life Begins….
....here apparently.
So this is it - The Big Four-Oh.
And how does it feel? Curiously similar to The Big Three-Nine.
Crazy-Bonkers
As noted in the past, I don't tend to blog the detail of my dreams, but this morning I feel the need to mention to nature of last night's.
One thing which I suspect isn't that common, as I tend to get surprised looks when I mention it, is that I have 'serial' dreams, in that sometimes weeks after one dream, I'll step back into its narrative in another and pick up the situation as I left it.
Last night was one such, in which I was once again in a situation I first dreamed myself into about a month ago. This situation was pretty intense, and challenging in many ways, and when I woke up in the middle of it at about 5am, I couldn't shake it. On some levels, I knew that I'd been dreaming, that I was back in my familiar bed with David and Gramsci, and that I didn't need to worry about what I'd been dreaming. But on another level I was still locked into it. I lay there for an hour until the alarm went off, fretting about sorting the situation out, and trying to get my head round the possible implications of the various solutions I was contemplating. All the while, laying in my real bedroom, in my real life, and not actually affected by the fictional situation at all, and desperate to stop worrying about it, because I knew I could.
It was a thoroughly creepy situation, and not one I'm in a hurry to repeat.
The Joy Of Wireless
Look at me! Blogging from the airport.
It is a joy how many places have now got wireless hotspots available.
Heading home to David and Gramsci, ahead of a weekend heading north (well, north-ish - Beverley of all places), for my brother's UK-based wedding party.
It's all a bit hectic in the next few weeks. I've got this weekend, and a trip to Hamburg on Wednesday, then next weekend is my birthday, so I'm expecting to be out a bit.
The Monday after that I'm off to the US for the week, getting back on the following Saturday. Then there's a weekend in Swansea, and the weekend after that we're off to Cornwall for the week.
It's just non-stop, my life.
Paul Daniels’ Blog
Everything you ever needed to know about Paul and The Lovely Marvellous Debbie McGee's lives. Here.
September
The arrival of September, as I've remarked in years past, tends to provoke a slightly melancholy turn of mind in me. To start with, there's the recognition that another year is into its final third, and so will soon be over. Couple that with the steady turn towards the autumnal, and the arrival of appreciably shorter days, and the sense that we're falling towards winter becomes inescapable.
And of course my own personal progress through time becomes more tangible as another birthday hits.
But this one feels rather different. Maybe it's because the first two days of the month have been so gloriously warm and bright (and I'm enjoying them in Stockholm, clearly a city which benefits from sunshine more than most). Maybe it's because everyone else seems to think that this particular birthday (a 'biggie') is so much bigger a deal than I think it is myself that I'm not really thinking about it.
But whatever, melancholy or not, I like September.