Bristol Balloon Fiesta, Saturday 8th of August, awesome day out except for the beer tent running out of beer, and it taking nearly three hours to get out of the area when normally it would take fifteen minutes.

The Red Arrows flew at about five O’clock and as always they were quite simply bloody amazing, and that’s all there is to it.

I couldn’t be bothered lugging huge cameras and lenses around so I took the trusty Holga and the little Leica as well. The Leica doesn’t zoom much, so I had to settle for some wider stuff, which I think came out fairly well.

Later on some balloons went up which is pretty much the point of the entire day, so I’m duty bound to post photos of them balloons I suppose. Harvey Nichols were the sponsor so their balloon shot off first:

The rest followed a few minutes later:

I think I know which was the favourite balloon amongst the men present:

The night glow at 21:30 was fun but hard to capture properly as at ISO800 things start to go awry on most compacts, the Leica being no exception

So there you go, balloons and planes in one post, a departure from my usual stuff. In about four months I’ll also probably have the results from my Holga as well, how exciting.

Right, so it’s been a while since I spent money unnecessarily on something of an electronic gadget nature, and the call of spending became too strong for me to resist.

Despite already having a 20″ widescreen with a 15″ widescreen alongside it, I flogged the two old ones and got myself a pair of these bad boys:

Which are BenQ E2200HD 22″ LCD sex bombs! They have something called “High Definition” which apparently is the future. Then again I remember them saying flying cars would be the future and I’m still driving around on rubber tyres so what do they know eh?

Anyway, I plugged them all in and they I’m happy, I have the warm afterglow of having something shiny and new in my life.

That’s it, except I’ve got the Holga films back (finally) from our Cornwall trip so I’ve scanned those in and I’ll whack those up in a blog post soonest.

Yours sincerely.

Me.

x

Menorca.

So the good lady wife and I took a little week off work to go to Menorca. We’d neither of us been to the Balearic’s before so weren’t really sure what to expect, in addition it was a last minute “bargain” style booking so it was a gamble for sure.

Upon arrival it was raining. Yes that’s right, RAINING. I know. Happy holidays. It was basically colder and wetter than the England we had left behind three hours earlier. Abby was not impressed, I think she secretly blamed me for the rain as well, which I suppose is only fair since I’ve learned that as a married man everything bad is basically my fault.

The weather stayed pretty gray for the rest of the day but by day two were were in full beach holiday mode. The beach at Cala Galdana is pretty special I have to say – we certainly liked it.

On the second day of our holiday, we went to the Fiesta de Sant Joan in the city of Ciutadella. This was to put it quite simply, nuts. The rep sold us down the river really, explaining about the historical significance of the festival, which involves men in costumes riding around the city (picture Venice without the rivers) on horseback, saluting the mayor and so on. The information from the rep said “Find a quiet bench in a square and sit down with a glass of Pomada and watch the festival go by”.

The reality was this; two hundred Menorcan Stallions ploughing through a crowd of about 15,000 people all crammed into a small town square. Health and safety, what’s that?

It was hard to get a sense of the scale as we were jammed up against a wall by a several hundred drunken Spaniards, but this just about gives you an idea:

Menorcan stallions are famed for rearing up onto their hind legs – the locals think it’s good luck to touch the shield on the chest of the stallion when the horse does this – watching the stallion’s front legs working the air, I think it’s only actually good luck if you survive without fatal head injuries or massive brain damage.

When the horse wants to go sideways, regardless of where it is and who is around it, it goes sideways, ploughing 50 or so boozy locals out of the way as it goes. All in all, it was bedlam, and despite the slightly inaccurate description from the rep, I’m glad we went!

The rest of the holiday was your more standard beach holiday fayre, so I’ll take you back to a more peaceful scene. We went on a little walk from Cala Galdana to a nearby beach called Cala Macarella, on the way the views were pretty special:

And because no post from me these days would be complete without a panoramic or two, on the walk back to Cala Galdana I go this – click to make it bigger:

The beach at Cala Galdana is a nice place to be – it’s where they filmed the movie “The Blue Lagoon” which I’ve heard of but never seen.

I hope you like these,  I can recommend to you a holiday in Cala Galdana,  it’s alright there really. Except did I mention it rained again whilst we were there? I know.

Recently I’ve been hard at work at home doing gardening, hanging curtains and generally being a busy person. This has meant that I haven’t had a chance to take photographs of anything much at all.

I’m starting to get withdrawal symptoms so I’m hoping to get out this coming bank holiday weekend and get some photos taken!

In between pressure washing our decking (how common) and painting the fence I did manage a trip down to take a picture of the new tourist landmark in these parts. Weston-super-Mare has it’s very own “eye” to temporarily replace the pier which burned up last year, this is the – slightly less impressive than the local paper would have you believe – Weston Eye.

Just like London except not at all like London really. It’s like London would be if it was rubbish and crammed to bursting point with Brummie tourists and heroin addicts in rehab. The best bit is that we couldn’t go on it, because less than one week after opening it had already broken down. Brilliant, who needs that pier eh?

The one “pod” that is black is the V.I.P pod – I kid you not. They may be waiting a while before any V.I.Ps visit Weston…

In other unrelated news – I’ve been drinking far too much of this:

I’ve managed to make my car look like this, which is how it’s been for the last three weeks. Must try harder.

That’s all folks.

Oh, except this random one.

Cheery bye!