My Thirty Fifth Birthday Barbecue

A few weeks ago I was having a little crisis of self about turning thirty five and yet not having completed some of the things that were high up on my bucket list.

This Friday just gone was not only Easter Good Friday, but also my birthday and so as it marked the midpoint between being thirty and forty I decided it was reason enough to hold a party.

Being a lover of barbeques, I had planned and sent out invitations over a month ago inviting my nearest and dearest, mentioning that it would be a barbeque if the weather was good and a chilli con-carne if not.

Thankfully as the week progressed and Friday neared the weather forecast improved from dry and warm to clear and hot, the perfect conditions under which you should hold a barbecue.

Having ordered the food and drink online to be delivered a few hours before the party started, when Friday morning came all I had to do was clear up and clean a little, making sure that everything looked as nice as they possibly could.

The first guests arrived almost bang on time, being my eldest sister and her three young daughters, and we were soon joined by my friend Sue who is loud enough to be a party all by herself.

Within an hour the house and garden filled up, so much in fact that I doubted that my small garden would be big enough to accommodate them all, certainly I did not have this many garden chairs.

As per the Springate's custom, I was not expecting to receive any presents, having passed the age of twenty one many years ago, but I also knew that my mother would probably smuggle a little gift into the party anyway.

I had chosen to use round charcoal briquettes to cook with, as they last longer than wood or the black imitation wood splinters, but they do take a bit longer to get good and hot.

Another of my bright ideas was to get a few extra large burgers instead of a bargain bucket load of cheap smaller burgers, an idea which ended up being a bad one as although they were very tasty there was also not enough to go around and they took up so much of the barbeque that most of my guests had to wait quite some time before there was anything for them to eat.

Despite this minor hiccup a great time was had by all; there were no tears or crying and nothing got broken or damaged that I noticed, not even my bank balance.

By the early evening most of the guests had ate, wished me a happy birthday and left, yet Paola and Lendel were still due to arrive, having had to wait for Lendel to finish off his shift before they left.

As they had never visited Gillingham before I ensured that I met them at the train station and together we all walked back, remarking at how different Gillingham was compared with Central London.

Being a typical British party and a small house, it was quite different from the loud Latin parties that they were used to, but they still seemed to enjoy just chilling with me and a few friends till it was finally time for everyone to go home and catch their train home.

As is my own custom, I decided to delay the massive after party clearing up session until the morning, made myself a bacon sandwich and then spent the last few minutes of wakefulness watching the last few episodes of Boardwalk Empire before I retired to bed.

Constructive Critism

There is an old English saying that goes, "If something is worth doing, it's worth doing well" and though that may be, it doesn't exactly end the argument.

When I first set up my blog back in 2006 I spent hours and hours trying to get it to look just right, and I had done well.

Then a little over a month ago I decided to give it an overhaul after witnessing the new template and widgets that blogger had to offer, and again I spent hours and hours on it and again I did well.

Which brings us up to today, as I have spent much of the last two days rejigging my blog yet further, after a friend suggested that it now encompassed so many different elements that it had lost its direction, purpose and identity and was thus beginning to sink under the weight of its own content.

So what I did was to create several similar websites that all ran from the same main account, transfered across all the entries and comments, gave each website its own identity and feel and then linked them all together again, with an end result that I feel proud of and again I feel I have done well.

So getting back to my original point, at each stage I had done a worthy blog but as the software, my skills and my understanding increased between each effort I felt that I had to go back and redo a former good job that ended up looking old and not as polished as it once did.

Dickopaideia

Having recently had a run-in with a rather annoying bunch of Irkites, I have decided that rather than attempt to continue to shout down the masses, I will instead simply provide my own educational tidbits every now and again under the terms of my own encylopedic reference henceforth known as the Dickopaideia.

The first of my new words is of course, Irkite - [people who I personally find to be irksome - pronounced (Er-Kite)]

Another of my new words or phrases is alg - [alg, acronym for 'a little giggle', used in preference to the much overused and tired expression 'lol' meaning to 'laugh out loud']

Finally, as it seems clear that these particular bunch of Irkites are a waste of space I furthermore spent a few minutes playing about with my internet browsers and have now set up defaults to enable me to search the web without being swamped with their biased opinions and search hits.

Blog Formatting

Having decided that my blog was due an overhall I have been playing around with the formats and layouts during any my freetime in the hope of finding a perfect layout.

Not being a whizz at computer lingo anymore I had to resort to modifying a default blogging templates, but the problem with this is that there was no one type template that I liked the look of.

I have always been one for shading and curves, yet the template that had those in abundance also had some rather ugly bits stuck in as well, which took more than a few minutes to find out how to get around.

A lot of it was trial and error, and as such I am not even sure if I could do it all again if I tried, so I am very thankful that by the end of a weeks playing I had come up with a layout, design and colour scheme that I was happy with and didn't look too blocky.

It might not be everyone's ideal colour scheme, but it seemed just fine and dandy for me, and so hopefully I will not have any more sudden urges to muck around any more and I can get back to the serious matter of what sketches to stick up, my next poem or even - heaven forbid - cracking on with the second volume of my travelling escapades.

All I can say is that I am glad my blog's fans and friends have stuck around long enough for me to get back into the habit of regular postings and looking forward I intend on updating it with at least one picture, recipe, photograph or journal entry at least once a week.