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Well, it's been a few days now since “the event”. Everything seems to be back to normal now so I think I can safely write this article and maybe it will help some of you out there. As with most of you, I've read all the articles on disaster recovery and the need to have an adequate plan, but do you ever really think it's going to happen to you? I certainly didn't. But at least I had a plan (well sort of).

So, as most of you know, I've been traveling and that’s where this story starts. I returned to the US on October 29th all well and good. Actually, better than all well and good as Karen and William were spending another 10 days in the UK which meant I had some peace and quiet and could spend some quality time with my cats. Karen had done her best to prepare for my being alone and had gotten in enough microwave meals to last me until she returned and all of that good stuff. Except for one thing. An underestimation of the increased beer intake that comes with being alone.

In hindsight it’s obvious that this would have been an oversight and I should have known that Karen would not have a true appreciation for the beer intake before she came along, so I totally accept full responsibility for this.

As you can see, that’s bad, but would you really call it a disaster – probably not yet. Now lets add in that it’s Friday night when you open the last beer in the fridge, realize that there are no more and the shops are shut. Yes, it’s panic time. Then ….. it dawns on you that the rugby is on at 6:00 the following morning and you’re not going to have any beers to drink during the match. You really are left with no choice but to declare a disaster.

I’m sure I’m going to get asked, looking back, what went through my mind? What was I actually thinking at the point I realized there would be no beer in the house when the match was on. To be honest, I’ve heard the saying “it was enough to make a grown man cry” and I have to say I was pretty close to being reduced to tears. It was like my whole life’s drinking flashed before my eyes – which, lets face it didn’t take very long as typically you don’t remember much from the nights you’ve been drinking, so thankfully that didn’t get in the way of rational thought. Then the training kicked in. I just thought to myself “you’ve planned for this. You hoped it would never happen, but now it has you need to deal with it.”

I had heard that the stuff in those tall bottles contained something that could be drunk as a substitute for beer, but had never tried it. Now was the time. Weirdest thing though, the bottle was bloody difficult to get into as someone had stuck a cork thing in the neck. I tried poking it out with a knife, but that was just taking too long and didn’t seem to be getting me anywhere. I thought about just breaking the top off the bottle but was worried about the mess. In the end I just pushed the cork type thing into the bottle. It worked – out came something red.

Well, it wasn’t pretty and I’m not sure I want to do it again, but a couple of pints of something called something like “Cabinet Servinyon” and then some white stuff called something like “Servinyon Blonk” managed to get me through the match until the pub opened later on.

I feel luck to have survived this disaster and can only hope if doesn’t happen to you. But you need to ask yourself “are you prepared?”

... oh it goes on and on and on ....
... and it goes on .. and on .. and on ..

it's Heaven and Hell

They'll tell you black when it's really red
I think you should have stayed in bed
'Cus the words you're singing to this song
Are being made up as you go along

It's Heaven and Hell
Fool, fool!

Well, the trip to Concord to see Heaven & Hell (Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio), Alice Cooper and Queensryche unfortunately wasn't the best. I picked Mike up as I wasn't going to be drinking and headed off to pick up Curt, but unfortunately was unaware that it was the Folsom Street Parade.

The Folsom Street Parade is one of the gay, lesbian, transexual etc. etc. dealies that goes on. Basically where blokes walk round wearing very little leather - the “assless chaps” being one of the favored items of clothing. Now, to sidetrack for a second, this to me is not really playing hard to get is it. You're kind of putting it out there on display. Now if only I could get straight women to do the same for straight men ..... Not going to happen is it?

So, back to the story, I'm sat in traffic as they block the roads off for this event with the choice of either staring at the back of the car in front or the back of some bloke showing his arse. Well, I'm now very familiar with what the Chevy Impala looks like from behind.

Finally, we get to the event in time to see the last song that Queensryche played. Which happened to be the only bank Mike was going for. I couldn't say anything, but this happened the last time he went to a gig in San Jose when he got there late and missed the first band (in that case Whitesnake).

Next was Alice Cooper and I have to say totally fantastic. Thankfully this was the one I was really interested in seeing - I've seen Sabbath and Dio many times before. Cooper put on a fantastic show including a medley that started with Welcome to My Nightmare where these strange creatures came on (one of which was a woman), then went into Only Women Bleed where Cooper had a mock fight to beat up the woman, turning into Dead Babies as the woman came back on with a pram from which Cooper pulled out a baby and drove a stake through its heart before being grabbed, put into a straight jacket and then hanged to go off with the band singing I Love the Dead. I'm sure I'm missing another song in there somewhere, but you get the idea. A fantastic rendition of Halo of Flies and Schools Out, finishing with Elected. And don't you just love the bit in the middle:

San Francisco's got problems
Hell, California's got problems
And you know what?
I don't care!

Sadly the night didn't end there. Heaven and Hell came on. To give credit, Tony Iomi, Geezer Butler and Vinnie Vincent were great. Dio really wasn't on top of his game though. Some of the first songs were alright - I got into Children of the Sea, but it seemed to be a really short set of about 45 minutes into which they put about 20 minutes worth of solos in Heaven and Hell. And when Dio came back after the solos he seemed to be singing different lyrics to those which I know. I had the same problem with quite a few songs. I thought it was me at first as I hadn't heard some of the songs for a long time, but it wasn't. Several people said the same thing.

Anyway, it was still worth it - if not just to see Alice.

Well, it's the last full day in the UK before heading back over the pond. It's a lovely British summer day - overcast, grey and drizzling. Unfortunately the sun only shines two days in England each year and we missed both of them. Nevermind, we still managed to get out and about. I've created two more sets of photos:

• A day out at Belton House where we took photos of William playing in the grounds of the stately home.
• Some pictures of houses in and around the village where my parents live. The sun was actually shining on one of the days, but it later apologized and went back in to give way for more drizzle. Didn't get as many photos as I wanted given the poor weather and poor light which also means that some of these are not that interesting. There's also a photo of my parents house in there.

I suppose I better finish by saying that we won the bumpkin quiz last night. As much as I'd like to take credit for this victory, I feel that this needs to go to my co-auther, the mysterious “Mr O.”

My first chance to try out macro photography. This is apparently quite hard and, after my first feeble attempt, I have to agree. A rather large spider was to be my subject. The problem is that this was on my bed at my parents house and Karen doesn't much like spiders. Between the screeming and me fumbling around, my subject didn't stay still for very long and with those legs seemed more than capable of scooting away pretty quickly. Anyway, this is the same photo, just zoomed in a little bit more on the second one.

It's not too bad, but I haven't really got it all in focus. You can see its hairy legs though which is quite cool.

Back in the UK and what could better than a trip to the local steam railway to take the little one on train journey? So off we went for a visit to the Nene Valley Railway to see Thomas the Tank Engine (as, along with many of the other steam railway's, they have one).

Well, it was a great day out, but poor old Thomas was being serviced, so we only got to see him from the back.

For more photos, click here.

Now, where did I leave you? Oh yes, in a hotel room in Kenya. Well, to cut a long story short I made it to Johannesburg and out onto the holiday. Didn't have internet connection (nor did I really want one) so haven't updated any blogs since then.

All I can say is that I had the best holiday ever. I still can't believe the variety of animals we saw and some of the photos I managed to take. Massive thanks to Kenton for recommending this place. Rather than bore you with the details here, I kept a little log of what went on and have posted it with the pictures. Click here to see the pictures and notes from the safari.

I'm currently back home at the in-laws and have just picked up the little one. It's great to see him again and I can play with him whilst uploading the photos to the site.

Next stop is my parents ...... Lets have a quick look at the agenda ....... yep, it's back to beer and rugby (seems to be a running theme here). If memory serves, tomorrow is England against Samoa. Hopefully we will put on a better show than we did against South Africa, but I'm not holding my breath. Instead I shall hold a pint!

Well, this was going to be a very funny entry based on the witty title I’ve come up with, however things have gone (how we say in the trade) “tits up” since I last wrote. My journey back to Johannesburg is through Nairobi, hence the idea behind the title, however, I was never intending to enter Kenya as I only had a two hour transfer window. That was until my flight leaving Lagos was delayed by three hours.

So I’m in Nairobi for “wan” day as there are no other flights today. I’m on a 7:30am flight tomorrow morning that gets into Johannesburg at 10:40 which is going to make it difficult to connect to my 10:30 flight to the safari. I asked if they had a faster plane, but they really didn’t get the joke. I have to be honest, I felt sorry for the folks on the Kenya Air missed flights desk. The queue was about an hour long when I get there. The staff were great, I have to say, pity they have to do the job they are there for. It would seem more efficient to run the planes on time.

Anyway, all is well as I’ve spoken to the people running the little puddle jumper in the morning and there’s another one that leaves about 1:30. Barring another three hour delay, we should be in time to catch that one.

Now, one thing I need to do is map out this journey when I get back. I’ll try and do some whizzy thing where the plane flies over the map to show the route as it’s not exactly logical. If you were going to do this trip, you wouldn’t do it the way I’ve done it. Even I can see that now, so I’ll know better next time. I’ve not just done a loop round Africa, I’ve done an up/down then loop. By the time I get back I will have done 11 flights. At least the next trip will be on air miles.

Hopefully I’ll get to take a photo of something interesting in Kenya. In the meantime, they’ve put me up in this really trendy hotel, but rather than take an interesting photo, I thought I’d take on of the light / phone ensemble. (As I don’t think I’ve taken a photo of a light before).

Stunning isn’t it!

I have four and a half hours before I get picked up for my flight in the morning. I’ve ordered a pizza in my room which will hopefully be here soon so I can decide whether to go to sleep or not (which, given that I want an hour in the morning to grab a shower and all that seems like it’s hardly worth it).

Fingers crossed for tomorrow – or later today really.

Not an article about that fine, upstanding, young man of the Bash Street Kids, but rather an analysis of electrical sockets.

But first, lets start with last night. Went to a fantastic (local??) Lebanese restaurant - good food, great time. Now, I know there are those amongst you who think/know that good wine is wasted on me. Well, let me assure you, you have nothing to worry about here. We had what I was assured was the “good stuff” which normally bothers me because I'm really not that much of a connosseur. Not knowing much about wines, I can't really describe it properlly, but let me say that the first taste in your mouth was unbelievably fruity - like a very suggary Ribena. Then the back taste on your throte was like sulphuric acid .... no, maybe more like diesel. Honestly, I only managed two bottles of the stuff before having to go back onto the beers.

Thinking about it this morning, I think “good stuff” probably relates to its paint stripping qualities. My guess is that if you threw this stuff on the wall it would spread, soaking everything and turning it a bright red before abruptly turning black and making the paint peel right off.

Now to the plug. First, this gives me another opportunity to add to my collection of very boring photos that you can double click if you really want to see a bigger image (which I do think I'm getting rather good at):

So, what this arrangement is showing (from my hotel room) is that the plug socket is a UK socket, there is an adapter and on the bottom left the plug for the TV. Well, the adapter fits into the wall OK. The TV plug looks like it fits into the bottom holes of the adapter and, indeed it does, but the diameter of the plug is about half the diameter of the hole it fits into, so it keeps falling out and you have to wiggle it to get the TV to come on.

On a side note, you may also see that the top hole of the adapter is there for the three pin UK socket. But wait, it's an adapter to get to a UK socket! Yep, this ingeniously designed adapter allows you to convert a UK socket into a UK socket.

And the fun doesn't stop there. Yesterday morning I couldn't get my shower to work. There's actually two in the room, one in the bath and a separate shower so I just used the one in the bath. Being the good person I am, I notified reception so they sent someone up to fix it. Anyway, turns out there are three levers and I hadn't been pulling them in the right order. You have to pull the bottom lever up first, then pull the middle lever out towards you and then pull out the shower handle and turn to the desired temperature.

And then there's the bathroom light switch. Whilst being shown around my room upon arrival, I was informed that the bathroom light had to remain on as they had wired the air conditioning into the light switch - so, if you turn off the light, you also turn off the air conditioning. The porter was kind enough to point out the work around which is to close the bathroom door and, being the helpful chap he was, he demonstrated this for me (just in case I hadn't activated a door mechanism before. Mind you, I couldn't figure out the shower, so I suppose it's fair to wonder whether I'm capable of closing a door).

I really wish I was staying longer here as it's so much fun. You discover new things all the time, it's great.

Well, time to go do some work and then to watch the rugby with the English and South African expats. Should be a laugh.

First, there's a couple of very tired gerbils somewhere after running on a little wheel to power my less than 1mbs internet connection so I could upload these three files. Not really sure what's going on as the connection has a habit of breaking, so I've been submitting each file and keeping my fingers crossed that the connection will last the upload.

Anyway, technical difficulties aside, I had this morning to look round before doing some work. I went to Lekki market which is basically a load of shacks at the roadside interconnected by little alleyways. I don't think the images below really do it justice and they certainly don't capture the number of people running around (all of whom seemed to be rather camera shy).

First thing is that when you get there, all of a sudden hundreds of kids appear from nowhere and start running alongside the car. When the car stops and you get out, you're mobbed like a pop star. A rather daunting experience I have to say. The kids seem to enter into a competition to see who can accompany you around the market to carry your stuff for you. Thankfully I was being shown around by a US expat who just said to shoo them away and proceeded to literally walk through them waving his arms in the air shouting “shoo.” After a couple of minutes they got bored and disappeared. Anyway, the market was really nice and I ended up with a couple of wood carvings (hippo pictured below) and a couple of paintings.

I've been asked a couple of times “is it safe?” to which I wittily reply “it's safe and zipped away in my trousers, but thanks for asking.” (And that probably explains why I didn't try and be a professional commedian). On a serious note though, safety is a concern, but when I think that this time last year my trip was to Asia instead of Africa and I was in Indonesia I feel very lucky given the earthquakes that have hit.

Anyway, time to go out for dinner and beers.

There's my next idea for a film (obviously following the snakes on a plane theme), but first lets start with the journey to Nigeria.

From Cape Town to Lagos, you need to connect in Johannesburg. Seems fairly straight forward you would think. Well, first problem was that I got stuck in loop in the domestic terminal and only after walking a full circuit of the airport did I realize that the sign saying “all departures” really meant all domestic departures. In fairness, it should have been obvious as they do color code the airplane symbols - yellow for domestic and green for internation. Stupidly I was just reading the words though and hadn't stopped to work out their code.

OK - after walking what seemed to be miles, mainly because it was hot I ended up in a building site which was, in fact, the international terminal. Bit of development going on. After stepping past people that were working - well, supposed to be working, but they seemed more occupied with watching all the people trying step over their equipment that doing any work - we got to the check in desk.

Already checked in, so zipped past that bit and onto security. Straight through there. The metal detector beeped as I walked through, but nobody seemed to be worried about that so I just picked up my stuff and carried on to passport control. This is where things went (to use a technical term) tits up! The passport controller shook my passport trying to get something out of it, then turned to me and said “I can't find your residency card” so I appologized and handed him my green card. It was confusing me as to why a) he needed to see it and b) how he knew I was not a UK resident; but not worth the arguing so I gave it to him. “Not that, your South African residency card” he replied. Becoming more confused I told him that I was not a resident of South Africa. Apparently, according to this chap, you need a visa to get into South Africa - I think it's one of those things that they give you, then they take back when you leave. Well, I didn't know that and was not given one when I entered the country. This seemed to be my fault - he kept telling me I should have asked for one and that I was in the country illegally.

Next, I did one of those things where you think you're going to help yourself and you're actually making it worse. I told him (which is all true) that I had been pulled out of the queue on entry, on account of the fact that I'm disabled and sent to a separate line with the residents and maybe nobody had told the person on that line what the procedures were. I then produced my customs entry form and told him that nobody seemed to want to collect this from me. (This is one of those forms that you need to declare stuff on when entering the country). When I produced the form, he just looked at me and said “you're here illegally and I need to take you to the office to sort this out.”

Not good at the best of times, but, as I pointed out to him, I only had 10 minutes before my plane started to board. Obviously then next thing he saw fit to do was to start explaning things to me in a language other than English - maybe Afrikaans, I don't know, but I didn't understand it.

So, we march off across the airport to “the office” when he just turns round and walks back telling me to carry on. I said I didn't know where the office was and this seemed to annoy him further as I just got a barrage of non English back at me. Anyway, he wandered back to log off from his terminal, came back and picked me up, took me to the office. After being asked a bunch of the same questions by more people, particularly the “why didn't you get a visa when you came into the country?” which after telling them that they didn't give me one, they created one for me, gave it to me, then took it back.

Hopefully this hasn't put me on some watch list or anything as I have to go back in a couple of days.

Anyway, hurried along to the plane. The sign said it was boarding, but the sign just comes up with that based on the time - nothing to do with whether or not the plane is actually boarding. Talked to the person on the desk to be informed that the plane was delayed on account of the fact that they had parked it on top of a bees nest and the bees had come out and onto the plane. This is an airport where you walk onto the tarmac and climb the stairs to get onto the plane - not one that you walk across a jetty from the terminal.

Thankfully that was the last bit of fun. After that it was plane sailing and I'm now here in Nigeria. Just about to head off out.