From the vaults

Colindale, London, England // 12.13 am // Mostly cloudy 16c / 61f

Coming towards the end of my long weekend, and it's been a really good one. It started on Thursday night, when I cooked for us. It was a really simply recipe this time, which was hoi sin and garlic steak and noodles stir fry. I stuck to the recipe, and therefore added no spices which it, in hindsight, probably could've done with, but it was still really good nonetheless.

On Friday, rather than get my much needed lie in, I needed to wake up early as the handyman was due to come round at 9am and reseal the silicon around the bath. Only, the guy never appeared. I called him three hours after he was due to come, and there was no answer. And he failed to respond to the voice message that I left. Two days later, and I've yet to hear anything. I'm pretty sure I'll be taking this up with the landlord tomorrow, and this isn't the first time it's happened.

It's just as well I didn't really have any plans on Friday anyway, so I wasn't put out too much. I ended up doing a lot of cleaning and tidying, and lots of DXing, plus catching up with stuff I meant to do ages ago. Later that evening I headed into town to meet Elle and her friend Olga, and then a load of my workmates for a rare, pre-arranged get-together in a bar in Soho. Elle and I were the first ones there, and true to form the last ones to leave. It was a good evening, and nice to chat to the guys in a non-work setting. I was also glad that Elle had the chance to put some faces to the names she's heard so much about over the last year!

Saturday morning and afternoon was definitely a chilled affair. Elle was definitely suffering more than I was too, due to a slight bit of overindulgence the night before. Still, that evening we went out for a gorgeous Indonesian meal at a restaurant in Colindale that I've wanted to go to since we moved here, "Jakarta". The food was fantastic, as was the service, and it was really well priced too. After that we had a couple of drinks in Wetherspoons and our local before coming back home.

We were going to drive to the restaurant, but we discovered that Elle's car had absolutely no power at all. Not even enough to power the LCD clock on the dashboard. God only knows what drained the battery - nothing was left on - but something did. So that has just compounded the initial problem with the car that caused us to break down on the M1 last month. The joys of driving.

This morning Celtic played the first of their 6 pre-season friendly matches, and the first match the new manager Tony Mowbray has been in charge of. And it was a great start with Celtic beating Brisbane Roar 3-0 in Australia. It sounds like we had a great game, and a very convincing performance. And someone who went to the game told me on Twitter that there was no less than 4 streakers during the game! Next up, Cardiff City a week on Wednesday.

Today has been another really chilled day, again spent catching up with stuff, and doing lots more DXing.

Tonight, thanks to help from a friend in Los Angeles, I came across a series of Earth Wind & Fire demo recordings from the sessions for the Raise! and Powerlight albums of 1981 and 1983 respectively. They are horns demos, and from the sound of the tracks, the songs (which eventually made the album) were in their very early stages, mostly with no discernable vocals, and slightly different structures. And the biggest highlight of coming across this series of recordings is the fact there is a complete, full-length track that has never even been heard, never mind released. And it's vintage EWF. I'm hoping to play that on the show on Tuesday.