Latest Happenings

Oops, forgot to blog last week. Perhaps that's because nothing exploded for a change.

Last weekend (i.e. the 23rd) we went to the British Motor Show at eXcel in London. Was pretty good, especically as we had free tickets courtesy of the nice people at Land Rover, to celebrate the launch of the "all-new Freelander 2". We also had some "VIP Passes" to go onto a yacht moored at the riverside there, to meet the design team, examine the cars in more detail and have some free food etc. Well, the free food was, literally, one canape each, and a glass of (very nice, admittedly) fruit juice. We then got spoken to buy some marketing guy, then went out on-deck to see the cars, and had a design guy speak to us for a few minutes. The cars were very nice, although not hugely practical for us now as they are too small. Much nicer than the old Freelander though. Still, it was a bit of a disappointing "do", compared to the last one for the launch of the revamped Freelander a couple of years ago, when they invited us to a place where we could drive one on-road for 5 or 10 miles, then take one off-road, then got driven around in a Freelander rally car by a nutcase rally driver, and got a nice, proper lunch all for free, complete with souvenier photo's of us in the rally car. Now that was a much better day out!

Still, apart from that (and the price of food!) the motorshow was pretty good. So, this weekend we went to the Croydon Motorshow (We like to vary what we do on weekends). This was held in some fields off the Purley Way, and you'd expect it to be rubbish, but it was actually really good. There were no supercars or anything, obviously, but it was actually a good day out, and they had different types of cars come into the central "arena" and parade around a bit, which was more than you'd see at the London one. Even better, it was hosted by James May from Top Gear, and I got my photo taken with him. It was not at all busy there either. I suppose most people were at the London motor show!

Yesterday we went to Southampton on the Great Cheap Laptop Hunt. Tesco's are doing a laptop for £299 which is a mega bargain so I wanted one. I've been calling stores for ages trying to find one, but nobody can tell me exactly when they're getting them in. I found out they had some in Bognor Regis, but they'd sold out, and then found out they had them in Southampton. We rang and they were happy to reserve us two (Saffron wanted one as well), so we jumped in the car and headed down to Southampton. When we got there, they had only reserved us one (grrr), as by the time the girl had got to the shelves to reserve them for us, there was only one left. Fair enough, and she was apologetic. So we only got the one. We felt guilt about not getting one for Saffron, but (as she pointed out), we did go to Southampton to get it, so it was only fair we kept it. The store near my work has indicated they might get some in this week so I'm going to go there every day until we get another one for her.

Last, but not least, Jessi has gone away to her Dad's for 10 days, so the house is strangely quiet!

-Neil