At the Sign of the Prancing Pony
As I’m currently averaging one post a month, so I couldn’t let this month down. My excuses for not posting are:
- an unreliable 56k connection which disconnects every 10 mins on average and chugs along very slowly
- the library only offering 20 minutes free Internet access per day (which has since been cut to 0)
- a lack of motivation
- my graphics card in my PC overheating due to playing Oblivion too much in the summer heat, rend(er)ing my PC unusable
The reason why I’m online now is because Tom was generous enough to lend me a wireless card (not to mention his PC so I can continue kicking ass on Oblivion! Thanks Tom!) for me to use on my mum’s laptop. I’m sure a few people are thinking of a silly quote that I said when referring to Tom’s genorosity, but I’ll leave that for a quote of the week. I have since found that the absolute only place that I can connect to an unsecured wireless connection in my house is in my porch, about 2 feet from a comfy sofa. But nooo the connection won’t extend to somewhere comfy, it wants me to sit on the floor. Still I can’t really complain, after all, I’m not paying for the connection, but whilst what I’m doing technically isn’t illiegal, it is a bit immoral. Therefore I assure you, I’m checking each time I go on, to see if any other computers are using the connection, if they are, I won’t use it because I don’t want to slow a paying customer’s Internet connection. That doesn’t help whatever ISP that I would be normally paying for Internet access but it makes me feel slightly more honest. Anyway if you’re getting annoyed with my name that keeps popping up when I sign in on messenger as I teeter in and out of range of the wireless connection, just tell me and I’ll stop.
As a fair bit of time has travelled since the last post, I’ll continue where the last one left off, for those of you who don’t know what happened. Even so the good old Harcourtians (ex-housemates) will probably make up the majority of the people reading this, try not to moan about me writing about something that you already know and happened about a month ago! I’m trying to keep it chronological.
Good ol’ Matt funded me to go to Byrdfest 2006, from the Big Bad Web coffers, which was very kind of him (or it if you are referring to the company). I wish all ISP’s were that generous when wanting to get somewhere…
Before I left the house to get the train to Peterborough, I found a package from the ever generous Tom who bought me SWAT 4-just out of nowhere. I think I remember telling him that I wanted to get it before I left university, but I never expected him to get it for me, expecially the deluxe version. As this was before my graphics card died and having no wireless card, I was considerably miserable at having nothing to do in the day and having no Internet, so I guess he took pity on me.
The train ride to Peterborough was fairly bearable and afterwards, rather embarassingly, I found out that the blogless Simon was on the same train as me for an hour, didn’t sort of click when he rang me up and we learned that we were coming into the station at almost the same time. Anyway, Geffy and Tom were on hand to meet us at the station and we proceeded to Market Deeping (Home of Helm’s Deep?!) Home of Chris’s mansion. to give you an idea of how big Chris’s garden is, it could probably fit a jumbo jet in it…nay an airport! Well it was big enough to fit 13 or so tents in there, which is pretty impressive. The main attractions at Byrdfest, apart from seeing the old faces of course, were a stage where live bands played, a drinks tent and perhaps most importantly a food tent. The night consisted of much eating, talking, drinking and listening to music and was a fantastic event apart from having to endure a headache which managed to subside after I took something for it. I even enjoyed playing a fairly long game of snooker on Chris’s full size table with Luke even so from memory, well, we both utterly sucked at it. The pool room is of course situated next to a mini bar, complete with proper pub sign that I thought looked remarkabley like the pub in Bree, the Prancing Pony, but then that’s just me, likening everything to something out of Lord of the Rings.
As the evening drew on Luke and Faith politely offered their tent porch to unprepared fools like myself who had neglected to bring any form of shelter, I kindly obliged until I found that Neil had some space in his. Unfortunately this turned out to be an utter mistake as throughout the night, what can only be described as a swarm of mosquitos plagued the tent, praying mostly on my ambrosia of the gods O type blood which I’ve since found out that mosquitos enjoy the most. Anyway, I left soon after that morning, sporting a small amount of bare skin where the mosquitos didn’t have time to bite me. I had to leave quite abruptly (so abruptly that I managed to forget my beloved jacket and mood ring!) as I found out that I could get a lift. Public transport was on form as ever with my train from Peterborough being cancelled and having to get a replacement coach back, but it was still a very enjoyable weekend.