22 January 2006

A better weekend....

I had been looking forward to this weekend for the whole week - and more - and it turned out just great! Well, apart from today's weather!

Work on Saturday morning turned out to be nothing more than checking off a very small order that came in - took about 10 minutes - and then a full clean of the fish tank in the showroom. That took just over two and a half hours as it was time for a full sort out! At 12:30pm it was out the door, a quick drive into Derby for a hair cut and back home for some lunch.

By 5:30pm, we were back out of the door and on the road to Lincoln. The traffic was good and that, coupled with the new roads built between Nottingham and Lincoln in the past few years, meant by 7:00pm we were parked up and looking for the venue for the evenings gig. As it turned out we had passed the place we were looking for, a new music venue and bar called Christopher's, about 400 yards before the car park!

With drinks in hand, Lynda and I got settled into a rather nice leather sofa and listened to the sound check going on upstairs. The Band From County Hell have been a favourite of ours for a few years now but this was the first time we had seen them since the Derby Beer Festival last July. I was ready for this one!!!

At 9:00pm, they started playing to a packed house! I'm not sure just how many the room should have held, but I'm pretty sure that is was not as many as were packed in last night! There were even people stood four or five deep on the stairs that led into the room!

Many of the old favourite songs came out in a set that lasted for just under two hours, including "Do These Things Happen To You", "Boom, Boom, Boom", "Irish Rover" and "Roddy McCauley". In amongst these were also a few new songs from the latest CD, "Ghosts & Spirits", such as "Glasgow Hills", "The Ballad Of Charlie Dowd" and "Billy Allen".

All too soon, the last song was played and it was time for us to head for home. Happy, but wanting more! The band already has quite a few festivals lined up so it looks like it could be a fun summer!

BFCH gig photos here!

So onto today. Whilst driving home last night it soon became clear that the weather we had enjoyed during Saturday, nice, clear, and sunny, was going to cause problems for Sunday! Mist and fog was starting to form over the Lincolnshire fields. Sure enough when I looked out the bedroom window at 6:45am I was met with thick fog - not good for bird watching! Back to bed for an hour. By the time I had had breakfast, driven the 30 minuets or so it takes to get to Carsington Water the gloom had lifted a little, but it was only a little. Visibility was down to around 200 yards all morning.

I did manage a total of 39 species in just under 3 hours, not bad in the end. Highlights, if you can call them that, included 105 Ruddy Duck, 10 Snipe, a pair of Bullfinch, 2 Tree Sparrow, a single Lesser Redpoll, 1 Willow Tit and a party of 12 Long-Tailed Tit that showed down to less than 10 feet from me.

It was also nice to see that the first signs of spring are showing in the form of some early Catkins. Now if only we could get a run of dry and bright weekends I may just shake off the winter blues and get out like this more often on a Sunday!

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