Went out to see a comparatively little-known ancient artefact known as the Hoar Stone today.  Located in Enstone in North Oxfordshire, the Hoar Stone marks the remains of an ancient burial tomb built some 4500 years ago.  The site needs some care and attention, and hopefully one day it will get it.

Had a business trip to Berkeley today and got plenty done with the very nice crowd that work down there.  The only bad part of the day was the awful sweet-and-sour pork that I had for lunch, I felt bad for most of the afternoon and will make a mental note not to have that again in a hurry.  LOL.

Happy birthday to me!  My 38th birthday today, and thanks to everyone who remembered and sent me good wishes!  I sometimes look in the mirror and think I could knock a few years off, but then I see the twenty-somethings at work and how young they look compared to me, and I realise that I'm deluding myself!

An exceptional heat wave has hit the UK over the last few days, and today it reached 95 degrees F in the shade.  Luckily I have an air conditioner but conditions must be hell for those who don't have one.  Hopefully it will get cooler soon - and in any case come January we will all be grumbling that it's too cold!  Also had two new tyres fitted to the car, for the princely sum of £250.

Had a day off from work today and took the opportunity to go and visit White Horse Hill and Wayland's Smithy, followed by the Wittenham Clumps in the afternoon.  The visit to White Horse Hill was spoilt slightly by the arrival of a huge coach load of tourists, but on the other hand it's nice that people want to come and visit these places.

Added some new web pages to this site and had a bit of a play with the other site today.  Otherwise, a very quiet weekend, characterised by the fact that it did very little other than rain.  I will be watching the World Cup final tonight, and I think I will support the French to win.

A bit of a stressful day today as I had a meeting with an overseas visitor to talk about things that I haven't worked on for some time, and at one point I could feel beads of sweat running down my face!  I just hope I didn't look too stressed out in front of Slavka!  Luckily the weather has cooled down a bit, which is very welcome.

The weather here in the south of England has really got hot in the last couple of days - the temperature reached 33 degrees Celsius a little earlier today and I was very glad that i bought an air conditioner last year.  Having said that, it is July and you don't expect frosts and icy winds at this time of the year.  Summers seem to be getting hotter in the UK, too.

So England go out of the World Cup at the quarter final stages once again, this time losing to Portugal in a penalty shoot out at the end of the game.  I don't blame the players - the manager Ericksson chose poor tactics and didn't let the players show what they can really do.  The new manager (an Englishman) should do much better.

Another trip to Berkeley today, and for the first time I managed to make a visit while the sun was shining.  I intended to take some photos of the region but couldn't, as I forgot to take my camera.  I managed to get myself snapped by a speed camera on the motorway, which means a £40 fine and three penalty points on my license.

Well, no diary entries for some time now, mainly down to lots of hard work for me, both at work and in producing a new website with some pictures and photos of England.  Hit the Photos link on the left to go and see it.

The meeting went very well, though I didn't appreciate having to do the 200 miles in pouring rain for the WHOLE journey!  I don't mind a drop of rain, provided I'm sitting snugly in my living room, and not on the M4 motorway.  LOL.

The usual boring weekend for me over the last couple of days, with plenty of rain thrown in for good measure.  Next weekend is a long weekend here in the UK, though it's interesting that we don't get as many holidays as our continental colleagues.  Very important meeting tomorrow, meeting the UK nuclear regulator for discussions.  A 200-mile round trip too, so lots of work for me tomorrow!

I'm back from my holidays and I had a wonderful time.  The sun shone every day but it wasn't too hot, and it was great to get away from work for a week.  I can start thinking about my annual trip to the USA now!  Today was rather hectic at work but that's only to be expected after a week away.  Also, and even more importantly, today is Day 2 of my experiment with a duvet on the bed instead of blankets.  The burdens of life, huh?  LOL

Well I'm off on my holiday to Exmoor, via Stonehenge, in a few minutes.  I'll let you know how it went when I get back.  Finally, before I go, congratulations to Connie for her excellent exam results at school!

Had this afternoon off and went out to take some more photographs.  Photography is becoming quite a hobby now - if only I knew what all the buttons on my camera do.  LOL.  Surprised some of my penpals (unintentionally) by saying that I won't be writing emails on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays any more, unless I have time on my hands.

Had a lovely weekend this weekend, plotted the first day of my holiday this Friday, which will involve going to visit Stonehenge and some of the other interesting ancient sites in the Salisbury Plain area.  On Sunday I went to visit the Rollright Stones again to spend some time there and to take some more photos.  I'm very fond of the Rollright Stones as they are a very spiritual place to be.  While I was there some kind of New Age ceremony was taking place, though I couldn't quite hear what they were saying - perhaps I should have asked them to speak up a bit!  LOL.  Yesterday was the first day of the Celtic summer, and maybe it had something to do with that.  Anyway, it has been a really good weekend and what's even better is that I only have a three-day working week this week!

Not much happening today, I had the afternoon off and just spent the afternoon and evening lazing around. I've had a tune running through my head for much of today - Catch Us If You Can by the Dave Clark Five - isn't that annoying when a tune is so catchy that you can't stop thinking about it?.

I was supposed to be giving a course today, and in the end I gave it to two people.  I think everyone else was too busy to be educated in the ways of how to do a performance assessment of a nuclear waste repository.  Hard to understand why anyone would want to miss such a course, don't you think?  LOL.  Downloaded some great tunes this evening - I wonder how many other wonderful tunes there are that I haven't yet heard.  Thousands, I bet.

Well I had an excellent Easter and I hope you did too!  I spent much of mine taking some new photos for this website and just chilling out.  My next work deadline is 23rd May, which hopefully I should make with some ease.  Finally, good vibes over to Melissa's father, who isn't too well right now.  Also, good luck to Connie in pulling Brandy through his troubles.

Went out to take some photographs today of the Uffington White Horse.  The white horse is a carving on a hill side about 15 miles from Didcot.  The weather was awful but I did manage to get some reasonable snaps and they will appear on this website at some stage in the not-too-distant future.  I'm off to spend the weekend with my parents, so no entries here for a day or two!  Happy Easter!

My Easter holidays began about lunch time today, and like most Brits, I will be on holiday now until next Tuesday.  This is a most welcome break after busting a gut at work for the last few days.  I think that tomorrow I will go out and take some more photos for this website, and I will spend the rest of the long holiday putting captions to the photos already on the site.  Sounds like hard work to me ...

Was greatly amused to check my web logs this evening and find that someone had surfed onto my site by searching for "pee videos" on AltaVista.  I bet this guy didn't quite get what he was expecting!  I now have all my reports finished at work for the Easter break, and so can look forward now to a nice long holiday weekend - most places in the UK get Friday and Monday off as a holiday.  Very nice.

Actually I was wrong - the next diary entry is coming up just three days after the last one!  Why this sudden burst of enthusiasm?  Well, I finished the last important report that I have to do before Easter, and may even get in a day or two of holiday around the Easter break!  I spent this evening turning a load of home video MPEGs into Windows Media Video format.  Why?  Because it means I can store them in 4 GB of space rather than 92 GB of space.  Simply really, though perhaps not the most interesting thing I could have chosen to write about.  LOL

Well I guess I could use the same first sentence for this entry as for the previous one.  Nearly two months have elapsed this time.  This is due in part to an extremely hectic work schedule that has seen me writing reports since the beginning of the year.  It's all good fun though and helps to pay the bills.  I added a new page today, a tribute to those who died on 9-11 and 7-7.  Feel free to email me an entry if you want.  Oh well, I guess the next dairy entry will come about June ...

Oh dear, the time between diary entries seems to be getting greater and greater - over a month this time!  I do have a partial excuse as the last month or so has been exceptionally busy at work and finding time to keep this updated has been hard.  The weather here in England is freezing at the moment, but the days are bright and clear and very pleasant.  At work I've been very busy producing an assessment for so-called on-site disposal.  In this technology you decommission a nuclear power station and bury the low activity wastes in the hole that's left once the power station buildings have been removed.  Clever stuff - and interesting too, even if it doesn't sound it!

Wow, so it's been over a month since I last added something to this diary - my word, doesn't the time fly by!  Well we had a very nice Xmas visiting my brother and his family, and they prepared a lovely Xmas dinner for us all.  They gave me a bottle of vintage port for a Xmas present and I enjoyed drinking it, even if my head didn't the next morning!  Right at this moment I find myself very busy with work, though that doesn't concern me too much as it's good fun.  I did make some new year's resolutions, though keeping this diary up to date wasn't one of them!