9th to 10th June - Karen's 40th at the Manoir 3

As the sun sets gently beyond the tree...(?!)..
the butcher and chef get started on that lamb!!! David and Daveed hack away.
The 3 Wise men start checking to see who is hiding the incense, or is it the See no Evil, Feel no Evil and Tweaky Bird. Do not even ask me what they were up to! Ah...the voice / face of reason... of course.

David and Sheian look surprised to be there still and Graham shows us where his heart is, or where he hid what he took from Leon earlier...I just don't know.

But luckily we had Wendy and Cobus there to keep us all sane and sober...and I shall never be the one to tell tales of cause.

9th to 10th June - Karen's 40th at the Manoir 2

The tables are set... Robyn applies the final touches.. The Birthday Girl is ready with the manslave in attendance...nearly ready for lift off!!!

The guests start arriving..all scrubbed up and fully clothed...

Karen and Donna start relaxing...calm before the storm. Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths...(nor ours)

9th to 11th June - Karen's 40th at the Manoir 1

The sheep were impaled and set to dance to the music of a car battery propelling a few bicycle spares, whilst turning a warm honeyed colour. The famr labour keeps a close watch on the proceedings...

The tent is up...(again). It was erected the previous night but a small breeze stirred up and whipped the tarpaulin off so the resident beefcakes performed some magic tricks and the banqueting hall was finally built.

4th to 9th June 06 - Germany

I spent the week in Germany in build up to the Football World Cup. We stayed in Heidelberg but unfortunately never got much time to see a lot of it as we were working in Walldorf and seemed to have fairly long hours sitting in SAP's offices. Heidelberg was a very pretty little town with a river winding through and fairy tale inspired buildings dotted around, all overlooked by an old castle on the hill. Two of us managed to go for an early morning run along the river bank on the first day there so at least we saw a little of the town in sunlight and traversed a street and park with Islamic sounding names so I can only imagine an intriguing history of slaves and spices and marauding tribes passing through, no time to do some homework around this though!. We managed to eat and drink in some quaint spaces and if there were places in town that never served asparagus on the menu, we never saw them.

I left Frankfurt on the Friday to meet up with the rest of the crew at Karen's 40th at the Manoir. The airport was pretty hectic and the excitement of the pending opening game of Germany vs Costa Rica added to the heat of a European summer's day. It took me about 9 hours to get to the Manoir but I still got there before Graham who had travelled with Cobus and Wendy, they took longer than me to get from England to the Manoir due to road closures on the M25! Nightmare journey!!