Hello It's me!

Blimey I know you all thought I’d died!

I’ve had a complaint (okay more than one actually) that my blog hasn’t been kept up-to-date recently. I’d like to point out that whilst I’m out doing all the exciting things I write about in my blog I don’t actually have time to write it and since the Chelsea Flower Show I seem to have been constantly busy.

So first was the Chelsea Flower Show. Always a good day out and this year was no exception and we were lucky enough to have the best weather of the week. Personally I wasn’t all that impressed with some of the show gardens – all that green and white that was so fashionable this year was rather boring. As usual I didn’t like the garden that won Best in Show (the Laurent Perrier garden) but I also missed all the television coverage so have no idea which garden won the People’s Choice award. I did notice that the gardens in the final were generally the ones with colour rather than the boring green/white combos, which says something about the taste of gardeners as opposed to garden designers. We did attend two interesting talks, the first given by Julian Dowle, the designer of my favourite ever Chelsea garden ‘From Darkness to Light’ for the Salvation Army, who discussed the differences between modern and old fashioned gardens and the second by Andy Sturgeon who gave a slideshow of the building of his fabulous show garden for Cancer Research. It was fascinating to see exactly what goes into building those amazing gardens. How they manage it in three weeks I’ve no idea.

Hopefully if this works there should be slideshow of my Chelsea photos below. If not they can be found at Chelsea Flower Show 2008, but be warned there are over 300 pictures.



The day after Chelsea Mrs H3 and I went to see ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’. I have to say I thought it was dreadful. As a devotee of the first three films I was very disappointed with the effort. There were many special effects, but a lot of them seemed to be done just because they could rather than because they were needed. The story was ridiculous and pretty boring in parts and the ending was poor too. Cate Blanchett was underused as the baddie and the worst thing for me was that Harrison Ford’s Indy reminded me very much of the ‘Headcases’ version and it really put me off. Whilst I would always watch any of the first three films I can’t imagine even bothering to turn on the television for the latest one. Will it be a classic in 20 years time? I can’t see it, but then I know a few people who aren’t quite such fans of the original three who thought the film was good so maybe the passage of time will improve it.

So onto ‘Potted Potter’ the play about the Harry Potter books. I’m not sure what Mrs H3 thought about it but I loved every minute. Incredibly funny and irreverent, the thing had me in stitches from the moment it started (watch out for the terrifying dragon!), through the Quidditch match, right till the end of the last book and poor Severus Snape’s upset at his fate. For the first time ever I ended up in Slytherin (hurrah!) but we lost the Quidditch match to some precocious child who added a great deal more laughter to the proceedings. I haven’t laughed so much in ages.

Then it was time for the Eurovision Song Contest. I love this trashy pop fest and try to watch it every year. This year was just as good as usual, although the proliferation of Eastern European countries in the final mean that the Western Europeans are likely never to win again. The voting has always been dodgy, but this year was extreme and our (poor but better than in several previous years) entry was given hardly any points again (not even Malta voted for us this year). Anyway unsurprisingly Russia won (although my personal favourite was Azerbijan with their wonderful angels). It will be interesting to see if the BBC and other Western European countries continue to fund the competition when they have no chance of even getting in the top ten any more let alone winning. I hope so because for camp entertainment value if nothing else it’s worth the licence fee – but only as long as Terry Wogan continues the voiceovers of course.

So we’re still considering the Mighty Boosh Festival, but are now booked to see Gary Numan in September at the O2 Indigo.

With summer coming it’s wedding time and my friend Kelly married Mark a couple of weeks ago (31st May). Next Saturday (21st June) my Sinner friend the Doc (Jen2) and her other half Michael are tying the knot in Essex and I look forward to catching up with friends old and new there.

Finally the biggest news (and the reason that I haven't updated the blog as quickly as I should have done) is that Mrs H3 and I went off on holiday. Yep after spending months (and I mean months) thinking about it we finally headed to First Choice at Bluewater on the Friday before our holiday started to see what last minute deals they had. After two hours we emerged with our holiday choice – 7 nights in Crete at the Golden Bay Apartments. We flew out on Tuesday morning (3rd June) returning the following week.

The weather was hot, the hotel basic and quiet and Crete was a wonderful place (although Greece seem to be rather taken with the Spanish Eurovision entry ‘Baila el Chiki Chiki’ – they played it a lot). I am intending to do the Crete Odyssey holiday blog once I get Mrs H3’’s photos (she took lots more than me), hopefully with input from her. The hot weather wasn’t too good for Mrs H3 though and she got bad heat rash which turned nasty when we got home culminating in her ending up with steroid cream and the possibility of cortisone injections, poor thing.

Unfortunately the holiday worked out quite expensive and it meant that we had no money left for the Elbow & IAK concert at Delamare Forest (and believe me I am bitterly disappointed as I haven’t seen IAK for almost two months now although Guy Garvey is playing them on his show tonight on Radio 6 so I'm listening in specially) however it did give me a nice relaxing weekend at home before having to go back to work.

So next Thursday is the premiere of Prince Caspian at O2. Look out for Mrs H3 and I on the red carpet with all those celebrities.