Photo update

Finally finished putting together and uploading some new photo pages for Reidnet. The new pages include a collection of photos from the Wedding kindly contributed by Uncle Tommy, Aunt Trish, Aunt Ann, Chris, Martin and last, but certainly not least, the wonderful Jillian. Thanks very much to all of them for supplying me with a good amount of photos - especially since I did not take any. The most important day of my life and I barely clicked a camera button!
The other new pages include photos from our holiday in Rome and Venice. Both of these collections having been heavily filtered as I think I went kinda camera crazy after taking none on the Wedding day. Hopefully both collections show, to some extent, how beautiful Rome and Venice are and what a great time Ka and myself had walking around the Italian streets.

Father Gaffney and the video nasty

Thankfully Auntie Patricia held back the tears at the weekend when we all settled down to watch the wedding video that my Uncle Tommy had been spending the week working on. Apparently Tommy had plugged the camcorder into the tv on the Sunday after the wedding and had Tricia and my other Aunt, Ann, who had had been visiting from London for the occasion, both in tears as they watched what he had recorded. Personally, I'm not sure I believe them and think they may have been exaggerating a little. My mum and her sisters were born in the Gorbals which makes me believe it must take a hell of a lot for them to shed any form of tear. Thanks to Tommy though, the wedding now exists in televisual format to help us remember our special day (I certainly hope I never wake up one morning and wonder who this female is that I'm living with). Of course, it also exists for women to cry and gossip over which is what will probably happen next week when Ka's female friends all pop round to the flat for a viewing. I very much doubt I shall hold such an occasion especially since my brother, the best man of the piece, turned down his invite to the BBQ/film showing on Saturday night describing it as a video nasty. Thankfully it was not so nasty, except from the fact that I looked as if I had a bean pole stuck up my arse as I spent the whole time in the church standing straight and rigid with a look of extreme seriousness on my face, seemingly unable to move without some great difficulty. Kenneth laughed, Ka cried, Angela cried and laughed and the priest, a rather entertaining Father Gaffney, forgot my name, at least twice. He even called the ceremony a baptism at one point. In fact, I'm sure Father Gaffney may well require the video to remember the day more than the rest of us.
Ka picked up the phone to him on Monday night and he asked her how the holiday in Paris went. Paris was great thanks but that was two years ago now - we were in Rome and Venice for our honeymoon! Father Gaffney would no doubt have took a trip at one point to go and see the Pope? I wonder at what point it was climbing up the Eiffel Tower that he realised..?

Mr Topsy-Turvy and Hannah Montana portraits

After having the parents round for a thank you dinner on Saturday night, which involved boring them with many a Wedding photo and Rome or Venice snapshots, it has been birthdays all round in the first half of the week with Aunt Linda's on Sunday, Colin McG's on Monday and my cousin Megan's yesterday.
So on Monday we were round at the McGarva's to celebrate Colin hitting the grand old age of 29. He got a doll of Mickey Rourke as the Wrestler for his birthday and a Nintendo Wii. We didn't get a shot though as we were all too busy eating (not that I wanted a shot of his Mickey Rourke figure anyway - humpf!). Grace and Dougie treated us all to a Chinese take-away which caused a few arguments as people tried to taste other people's choices, nick other people's rice and nick chips from other people's plates. As a result many people were shouting, complaining and slagging in true family fashion. Colin himself even stooped to the level of nicking chicken from Morgan's plate while she was looking in another direction. His very own niece! Can you believe it? He gave the excuse of "I'm the birthday boy", with which he managed to get away with it.
More chaos ensued when the pass the parcel started. The now traditional pass-the-parcel for birthdays was introduced as Morgan got a little older and liked winning the funny prizes Grace buys in for these occasions. The last time I successfully finished a game, narrowly beating the father-in-law, I won a plastic thermometer shaped like a guitar. Bearing this in mind, I hurriedly volunteered to control the music on Monday night and thusly opt out of the actual passing of the parcels. It then turned out that Monday night's prizes were far superior with actual novels being won. As I stopped and started a Small Faces track I grumbled jealously, complaining under my breath about rubbishy, guitar shaped, plastic thermometers.
Thankfully there was no pass-the-parcel last night when we popped round to my Uncle Laurence and Aunt Maria's for Megan's party. Instead there was bowls of chilli, sausages, meatballs and cakes as well as a game of tennis on the Nintendo Wii. It was the first time I'd attempted the tennis and it proved more difficult than it looked as Megan played me off the court as Lauren (Megan's little sis) done her very best at impersonating one of my Mum's cackling laughs. Before this there was arguments about chicken and why it tastes better eaten from the bone, realisations of having worn a ripped shirt to work the whole day and not having even noticed and a test of my Hannah Montana portrait drawing skills. Unsurprisingly, I'd never drawn Hannah Montana before and have barely seen her on TV (the only time was a Jonthan Ross interview in which she talked him off the set) so my Hannah ended up looking a little like Miss Piggy. Luckily, I don't think Megan noticed (she probably doesn't even know who Miss Piggy is!). Megan was also fairly impressed with my Mr. Men knowledge as I knew Mr. Strong was red and had eggs for breakfast while Mr. Funny wore gloves and drove a shoe. She did catch me out with Mr Topsy-Turvy however, as I thought he was a green man. Turns out he is actually orange. Fancy that, Mr Topsy-Turvy - an orange man, who would have guessed?

Do you believe?

40 years ago a couple of guys hopped down from a dodgy looking space pod and set foot on the small rock called the Moon. It was at this moment that a whole new era began and the human race suddenly realised that maybe dreams of setting foot on other planets and other outer space bodies was perhaps possible. That is until it suddenly occurred to someone, somewhere that it was perhaps all a big ploy just so the Americans could say they'd done it all before the Russians and the whole thing was actually filmed on a film set somewhere. Could that really be possible? The more I think about how incredible the whole landing was in '69 and how they managed it with the technology at that time, the notion of it all being a completely elaborate fake seems more realistically possible. Nixon was President at the time after all!
I've always believed the moon landings were completely real and will continue to think so but there's always going to be a small part of my mind that wonders how crazy it would be if it was all revealed to be fake. Imagine how gullible we would all feel?
Here's take one:

Well, I'm back

Well, back to reality. A slightly different, married reality that is.
Ka and myself got back from our Italian honeymoon trip late on Tuesday night arriving back in Glasgow Airport, greeted by the rain and a grumpy bus driver to take us back to the airport car park. That morning we had been leaning back in a gondola, basking in the italian sunshine, watching the small streets and large buildings of Venice slide by on our way down the Grand Canal. It's now Thursday and it all already seems so long ago. Venice was a fantastic little city and truly one of a kind, probably for obvious reasons. Apparently July and August are it's busiest months with us tourists and you could easily tell that as you walked down the tightly packed streets but it did not take away from the city's beauty. On our first night we got lost in the streets trying to make sense of the nonsense map the hotel had given us and ended up walking nearly the whole circumference of the main islands but by the third day we had the place sussed and were soon coasting along from St. Mark's Square to the Rialto bridge with ease.
Before Venice we had been in Rome for four days exploring another fantastic Italian city - probably THE main Italian city. The Colosseum, the arch of Constantine, the Vatican City, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, the Terrace of the Quadrigas, the Spanish Steps, just a few of the sights and buildings we seen, explored, climbed or generally walked around in with our jaws hanging open.
Of course, before all this was the Big Day. July the fourth flew by in a whirl of ceremony, cars, photographers, eating, speeches, dancers and drinking. The day kicking off at St. Leonards Church in East Kilbride and then continuing at House for an Art Lover in Glasgow's Bellahouston Park which, thankfully, was not playing host to the local orange walks of that day as had been previously feared. The happiest, most wonderful and memorable day of my life and I took the grand total of two photographs. So it would seem Ka and myself are pretty much relying on everyone else copying some snaps for us to go with the professionals' efforts which we have yet to view. Probably the most arduous task of the day was posing for all those photographs, more so that the dreaded thank you speech - which I, perhaps unwisely, had not planned, penned or practised in any way shape or form. Kenny done very well with his speech though, as did the father in law, Dougie. In fact, the day went swimmingly thanks to everyone involved including all our fantastic guests, family and friends. So if any of you are reading out there, Ka and myself would just like to shout out yet another big thank you to you all. Here's to married life!

Word floundering and inflated condoms

Yesterday I strolled into work to find everyone looking at me. Unknown to everyone, my desk just happened to be over in planning this week, as cheery Cameron is off on holiday, so as I sat down over in the planning area I felt eyes on me. Rather disturbed by the staring I asked the office why they were looking at me and as I did so turned to see my usual desk and chair covered in banners, streamers, a wedding helium balloon and a number of inflated condoms. Later in the day I was talking on the phone to Ka and did not even realise everyone milling up the office towards me and surrounding me before. With a heavy tap on the shoulder by the boss, David I was then taken up to the floor and forced to make a speech, accepting presents and bottles of various sizes and content, some of rather questionable content. To tell the truth I was rather surprised by the generosity of my colleagues at S&UN. A digital photo frame, a set of glasses, a bottle of sparkling red, a bottle of brut champagne, a bottle of Asda's Blue Charge (an energy drink apparently), a box of energy capsules, a box of paracetamol and a bottle of durex tingle gel. I'm sure what you can guess the energy products were for as well as the tingle gel. After my rather awful acceptance speech, which ended up sounding like a leaving speech, I sat at my desk for the rest of the day, inflated condoms bouncing around my head, and began thinking about speech preperation and how I should probably prepare something for Saturday. All this time I had not planned on writing out cards and reading from papers and such like but after my word floundering yesterday, it may well be a good idea.
Sitting at my desk now counting down the minutes. In a few hours I'll be stopping work for over two weeks. Fantastic. It'll be a busy holiday, of course, but it will be great to get out of the office for a break.