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Is anyone interested in seeing the touring production of Mamma Mia at the Bristol Hippodrome in December? I am thinking the first weekend of the month, either the Friday or the Saturday.

I have aquired myself a brother-in-law. Last week my younger, and only, sister Hannah married Stuart Munn on the Greek island of Rhodes. I flew out to the island to be a guest at their wedding. It didn’t feel very holiday like was I was only there for four nights however it was a lovely ceremony and the island itself, while excessively hot at the moment, was nice.

Stuart managed to leave the rings in the hotel room safe and had to run up many flights of stairs in order to rescue them. In 30’c heat. Just before the ceremony was due to start. Oh how we laughed. He returned saying “Don’t anybody tell Hannah, she will kill me”.

On the day before I was due to fly back to the UK my parents and I visited Rhodes town, looking around the harbour and also the old town. The Knights of St John spent over two hundred years in Rhodes and built a large castle, called the Grand Master’s Palace, next to the harbour. This building, and in fact the entire walls of the old town, were very impressive and you could imagine soldiers having sword fights on the huge marble covered staircase.

I have just got back from a short holiday on the Greek island of Rhodes. More on that later but for now I thought I would share this photo that I took while in the Valley of the Butterflies. It reminded me of the Banksy painting shown on the right.

What is loud, fast, very hard, and makes this happen to cars:

A train going over a level crossing when the car shouldn’t have been there. Don’t play on the railways kids!

This car was left in the car park at work by Network Rail. It was recently used as part of their campaign to convince drivers that driving over level crossings when the lights are flashing is generally considered a bad idea.

As a race us humans never cease to amaze me. Driving south along the M5 motorway this afternoon the radio warned of a serious multi-car accident on the northbound carriageway. As usual this affected the traffic going south as people slowed down to rubber-neck, a term that I dislike but will use. The accident on the other side of the road involved several cars and must have happened at high speed. The police had closed two of the three available lanes, with traffic able to use the third lane to get around the collision. The fire-brigade had just managed to cut someone out of their car, the paramedics had him on a stretcher with their bare feet out in the open air. But this wasn’t what amazed me. I  also understand that when a traffic accident occurs it is natural human inquisitiveness for us to want to find out what happened. As I was driving slowly past I noticed that on the hard shoulder, about 200 yards after the accident, a BMW had parked up. The BMW hadn’t been involved in the collision as far as I could see. What I could see was the driver leaning round in his seat holding a video camera. This individual had the audacity to film another person being cut out of the wreckage of their vehicle and attended by paramedics.

Sick.

You may remember that a few weeks ago I posted about the dumbing down of GCSE physics. As a follow-up to that post the instigator of the complaint, Wellington Grey, has created a petition on the No. 10 website. If you agree with his stance, that the dumbing down of GCSE physics is generally a bad thing, then I would urge you to sign his petition.

I have been very busy over the last two weeks or so. I won’t go into detail but I would like to thank Becky and Dave for a lovely housewarming and birthday party that they had last weekend. I made my own burgers to cook on their BBQ and it was all jolly good fun. I also went to see Pirates 3 this week which I thought was very swashbuckling. It was almost as good as this video found by Colin:

Pirate video

Don’t let the song get stuck in your head!

I went to the Brake Road Safety Awards on Friday evening with work. The company that I work for won an award for our risk management product which I thought was pretty cool. Nothing like drinking on company expenses.

I am going to have a Pimm’s party. It is called Pimm’s in the Park and will be on Saturday 11th August at 2pm in St Andrew’s Park, Bristol. Everyone is invited, just bring along a picnic, some chums and a bottle of Pimm’s!

I follow an online blog and cartoon published by Wellington Grey. For the last three years he has been teaching physics to high school students in the UK. Recently the examination board AQA changed the physics syllabus from what was a science based course to what is increasingly becoming a political debating subject. Please read his letter of complaint to the government. I received a C at A-level physics, I don’t recall what I received at GCSE. However the sample questions that Wellington posted are not the physics that I was taught and in my opinion belong more in a politics class than a physics class.

I sit here hot and restless. The weather is threatening and I am sure I just saw some spots of rain on the glass of the window. I feel like my life has turned into a whirlwind of busy this week yet I can’t pinpoint why. I look back to when I last blogged and realise that it was only last Friday, yet even this seams like an age ago.

I have visited my parents, met up with Lauren who is a friend from high school and now works in the same hospital as my Dad, been bowling – a sport that I definitely need more practice at, done a five mile walk over Cannock Chase, ate in multiple restaurants, been to the gym twice, wrote two Facebook applications on their new Facebook platform, washed the car, visited the Festival of Nature in Bristol and many other things besides.

Successful bowling is very much a combination of skill and luck. Dad was surprisingly good at sending the ball down the alley to remove all the pins in its path. However he did manage to slip over while showing off and cut his hand. Stuart, my sisters fiancé, had a quietly accomplished bowling technique while my aunt managed to get the ball into the gutter 99% of the time. The other 1% was when she got a strike halfway through the second game.

On Thursday I visited Casa Mexicana on Zetland Road in Bristol. A subtly themed Mexican restaurant with bored waiting staff greeted James, Jacky, Ross and myself as we chose a table by the window. Our drinks order was taken three times by three different waiters although we couldn’t complain when it arrived – the sangria that Ross had ordered certainly had a kick to it. The food was spicy and good although I think they were a bit stingy with the rice that was served with my Chimichanga.

Facebook is a social network site that began with American college students and has now rolled out across the world. Last week they released Facebook Platform, a development API allowing programmers to connect to and produce widgets for Facebook. I have created two Facebook applications this week. The first allows users of PleaseGetMe.com to display their wish lists on their Facebook profile page. The second, LifeKarma, allows you to give good or bad karma to your Facebook friends – and lets them retaliate. Your karma score is shown on your profile and you can even access a graph of your karma rating over time. If you have Facebook then please give them a try.

I have signed up to Last.fm so if anyone else is on that then add me as your friend

Is anyone going to the QFC party in November? I was thinking of getting myself a ticket but only if others are going too.

Ok so this one isn’t that inventive but I made it up on the spot so I think that is good enough.

Take one chicken breast and slice a pocket in it length-ways. Shove some slices of lemon into the pocket you created. Grill in a George with some slices of red pepper until the chicken is cooked all the way through. Discard the slices of lemon and place the entire chicken breast and peppers into a wholemeal pita-bread. Consume with a side salad.

You get a sweet flavour from the red pepper mixing with a very light lemon flavour that permiates the chicken breast. An easy quick weekday evening meal with minimal washing up.