Twilight Alehouse

I've been decamped in my favourite hotel on the outskirts of Oswestry for the past four nights. Just to be clear, it's my favourite hotel on the outskirts of Oswestry, not my favourite hotel. It's always a sticky wicket when you talk about your work on blogs - customer, employer and employee confidentiality and all that - suffice to say we've spent usual ridiculous hours deploying our latest software masterpiece onto the Great British telephone network.

Each evening the team has flicked coins to decide where to eat. Except for Friday night, when we were too knackered after the drive up, so we ate in the hotel restaurant. And Saturday night, when we were too knackered after a 12 hour shift and got back so late that the only place we could go was the hotel restaurant.

At least the six of us got out last night, but then the majority vote went with a trip to the Simla Tandoori in downtown Oswestry. It's a decent enough place, and my Jalfrezi was perfectly palatable, but it seemed a waste of an expenses-paid opportunity.

With half the team heading back to Kent at lunchtime, the three of us who remained behind were able to finish the last bits of work at a sensible time and head to one of our preferred hostelries, the White Lion in Whittington. There's always plenty of mouth-watering dishes on the menu, and a nice guest ale to wash it down with. So I was a tad surprised and disappointed to walk in there tonight and see Shepherd Neame's Spitfire on tap. This ale is synonymous with Kent, where SN own about 50% of the pubs (probably not that many, but it certainly feels like it) - it's a not unpleasant beer, but I certainly wouldn't drive halfway up England for it. Still, the food was lovely.

We set off home straight after breakfast tomorrow. I've really missed the family and I believe they've missed me - apparantly Oliver won't play with his train set without me, and Emma is asking whether I'm bringing her a present back. I'll have to pick up some motorway service area tut on the way back to make up for my absence. And probably a nice bottle of Burgundy for Lin too.

My only dilemma now is whether after four nights away I can get away with going to band practice on Wednesday night. We're meant to be working on Carpet Crawlers this week, so I think they might miss my arpeggios if I'm not there.

Rock 'n' Roll!

I'm in a band. The last time I could say that was sometime in the last century, so this is a definite novelty. A few of us at work have been discussing this for a while, and finally we managed to get together for the inaugural Tuesday Night Music Club this week.

So far we have two guitarists, a drummer, a bassist (at least he will be once he's managed to win a bass on ebay), a keyboardist (that's me), a sax player and a violinist (both absent). We didn't actually play anything this week; we just had a very democratic meeting to suggest what we'd each like to practice. As a result it looks like we're going to be a jazz/soul fusion, heavy metal skiffle band. So prog rock it is. Oh, and nobody wants to do vocals.

We reconvene in two weeks time, having all perfected "Wonderful Tonight" hopefully, to see if any of us can actually remember how to play. If that's OK, we'll have a bash at "The Boys of Summer" - a song I've always fancied covering.

We already have our first booking: The office Christmas party - so we'll need to get a passable version of "I Believe in Father Christmas" in the setlist if I have my way (which I won't).

All we need now is a name and a MySpace page.....

Picture Perfect Morning

I've downloaded a blogging app for the iPhone called Blogpress. I figured with more mobility I might be able to post more regularly, especially as I was going away on business for a few days last week and would have copious hours to fill.

This turned out to be a false hope, only surpassed in its naivety by the fact that myself and two colleagues packed our golf clubs - these remained locked in the cars for five days.

So we had a pretty scary rollout - but it was the biggest hardware and software release we'd ever attempted. In amongst the 60+ hours spent getting the platform stable I did manage to visit my hotel room for an occasional sleep and snapped this picture from my window of the Shropshire Union Canal and the mountains of North Wales beyond.



Shame. It looked like a lovely day for a round of golf.




-- Post From My iPhone