The End of Winter?

Well today is the last day of February. Tomorrow the Stringer calender say we should be entering springtime and the nights and mornings will continue to get lighter and lighter. Please do not take this as a green light to start packing those warm woollies away in the cupboard as we are usually due a cold snap sometime in March. Make sure that the bird hopper is continually filled with nuts for at least the next three weeks or so and that the bird bath has clean bird towels placed next to it.

Isle of Thanet Yomp 2007: Update

The Yomp has been brought forward to Saturday May 19th 2007 (FA Cup day).

The Yomp Fellowship is now as follows;

Keith Silk
Steve Kempton
Steven Bradley
Dan Harris
James Taylor
Myself

Keith, Steve K and myself will be yomping for Cancer Research UK.

Tried this one on Saturday night brewed by the Brains brewery in Wales. If you like brown ale there is a chance you will like this but I'd rather drink my own bathwater.

Kings of Leon at the Leas Cliff Hall in Folkestone last night. They were superb. Unfortunately all of the beards have been shaved off but they still rock!

Whilst enjoying a pre-gig beer I stumbled across Pale Moonlight which in brewed by the Phoenix Brewery (based in Heywood, Lancashire). It is an IPA-style beer and is wonderfully hoppy and best savoured on a hot summers day.

Isle of Thanet Yomp 2007

On Saturday May 26th later this year Keith and I are going to walk the 43.5 kilometres / 27 miles around the Isle of Thanet following the Viking Coastal Trail (pictured left). We will start and finish the marathon trek at Ramsgate harbour. We set off at 8am and hopefully finish around 8pm in the evening. I will be sorting out sponsorship for this event but it is yet to be arranged.

Should anyone else want to do it with us please let me know - if we get enough people together we'll do it naked. More updates to come over the coming weeks.

Saturday night was spent in the smashing company of Jus, Kirsty, Dean & Sarah and Parkes of course. We ate in the Cavallino restaurant in Ramsgate. Jus baked me a birthday cake (pictured left); moist sponge with a jammy and creamy filling. Nice.

Last night for the first time I was offered a dimpled pint glass instead of a standard pint glass in The Oak in Ramsgate. What a wonderful moment and on my birthday as well. The contents tasted sweet.

Halfway House

Well it's my 35th birthday tomorrow and I am halfway through the 'three score years and ten'. Whilst I wouldn't swap my life with anyones I want to achieve more on a personal level over the next thirty-five years. In no particular order here is a list of stuff which I am determined to accomplish;

• Finish decorating the house in Ramsgate
  
• Enjoy family life with Parkes
• See Ramsgate flourish and realise its potential
• Master conversational Spanish
• Buy a property in Spain
• Improve my guitar-playing skills and play a Real Beards gig in a foreign country
• Take Parkes on holiday to Alaska
• Visit Argentina & Chile and revisit New Zealand and the Caribbean
• See a UFO in Thanet
• Walk the Pilgrims' Walk to Santiago de Compostela in Spain with Keith and an ass. Alternatively on motorbikes
• To get Parkes drinking real ale
• Visit parts of Europe which I have not really explored i.e. everywhere apart from Spain, England and Ireland
• See a non-white Prime Minister of Great Britain with the ability and character to bring Britain closer together
  
• See Pink Floyd live with the original line-up (obviously minus Syd Barrett)
• Go whale-watching

That is about all I can think of at the moment. If anything else comes up I will write it down. Mil gracias y hasta luego.

Haircut Dilemma

I had a bad hair day today. My hair is quite long now and I feel that if I start losing my hair on top I will end up looking like Terry Nutkins (pictured left). Time for short hair maybe.

Papa Strings' Supreme Jerk Burgers. Made with the finest (and I repeat finest) ingredients sourced locally from East Kent. Makes your mouth go ting!

Tasting notes: Cumberland Ale brewed by the Jennings brewery in Cumbria. This one had a hoppy taste and is a very pleasant drink. Some might even call it a 'session' beer but I wouldn't know what that is.

Student Wonderland

I have taken and passed my first multiple choice assessment for my GCSE Spanish course and scored a whopping 95%. There was no cheating. Honest.

Attention. Calling all ale drinkers and those of you who are 'ale-curious'. It's the Planet Thanet Easter Beer Festival 2007. We all had a splendid time at the same beer festival in 2006 when we were blessed with lovely springtime weather and good ale. This year I am told they will NOT run out of beer on the first day so it promises to be a cracker!

Farewell January

Well it is normally more cold and bleak in January and despite the mild'ish weather I am still glad to see the back of it. Roll-on the spring and the lighter nights.