Presents - get it while you can

My much better two thirds is very good at buying presents. Some months ago - I think around January - I read an article about Howard Tate, a legendary soul singer who'd gone off the rails and vanished for twenty years with just a single album to his name (Get it while you can). The more I read the more I wanted to buy his new record - sadly it wasn't out and the release date was many months hence. Displaying a gift for prophecy that comes with experience I said 'I'll never remember to buy this when it comes out' and lo and behold I didn't.

So you can imagine how happy I was when my much better two thirds produced said CD for no reason at all. At this rate she'll be my exceptionally good three quarters soon, especially if I can't come up with a great birthday present. Suggestions to this address...

The increasingly English Mr Lloyd (part 2)

What better way to spend an evening in Oxford than to punt leisurely up and down the Cherwell watching the wildlife and greenery go by in blissful Oxford weather?

That was the plan, and at times it almost seemed like that. When we weren't getting in the way of rowing eights, being threatened by swans (local swans have learned that if you terrorise a boat they may give you food, we had none, but got threatened anyway) and cursing about the aluminium pole (nasty banging noises, heavy) or the fact that the river seems to have developed many inches of thick muddy silt this summer it was indeed fun.

Possibly not as much fun as the post punting beers though.

The increasingly English Mr Lloyd (part 1)

This weekend was a friend of mine's stag do. Forgoing the usual destinations of Dublin or London the chosen destination was Oxford - scene of his juvenile crimes. Well actually it's kind of hard imagining him committing any crimes but that's by the by. A comfortably intoxicated evening occurred followed by the main attraction on Sunday - Cricket.

Now I don't play cricket, indeed it's fair to say that of the twenty odd people there maybe three had ever played cricket, and not recently. As the Pembroke groundsman looked on in amazement we knocked out forty odd overs (in something like 500 balls) with entertaining combinations of underarm, overarm, sidearm and just plain bizarre bowling. The batting and fielding wasn't up to much either. Still a great time was had by all and it felt terrible authentic to decamp to the pavillion for tea and sandwiches, almost as if we knew what we were doing.