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Ursula, one of my MBA classmates who buggered off to Australia (and who is/was definitely too clever by half), was back in the UK for a visit and holding one of her once regular barbecues down at the family spread down in Guildford so ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) aeshna_uk and I headed down that way on Saturday. Elaine and Nick, another two of my ex-classmates were there too. Four of us from our year isn't a huge number but that's still four times more than there were at the Management School alumni party! Nonetheless, it was great fun reminiscing and catching up with them. It was also interesting that we all seemed to miss the intensive learning from the MBA, even after all this time. The barbecue did mean we were fairly late getting back into London but we decided to head in to the LOTNA meet anyway as there was a discussion/debate about Torchwood Children of Earth planned and it was indeed an entertaining discussion. New pub too, the Leather Exchange, due to the usual pub(s) not being available. Nice venue, I'd be more than happy about switching to it. The novelty of the Thai menues at tge Miller and the Horse have long since worn off... Almost as importantly, Tim mentioned there's another UNIT-themed lasertag game planned for September. Guess I'd better check in with Phil about that AUG he was tagging up for me! Currently working my way through Primeval again from the start. Yep, no question about it, Claudia Brown is definitely still terribly cute. However, I'd forgotten what a wonderful character Lester is - "You know, I'm really beginning to regret not staying in management consultancy", "I suppose just bombing somewhere is out of the question" Really should continue packing for Beltring and Kelmarsh... Tags: fan., imperial, lotna, mba, primeval
Current Location: Firebase Finchley
Current Mood:  relaxed
Current Music: TV
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Not the most successful day of airsofting yesterday at Ultimate Wargames' Limpsfield site. If I'd been sensible, I'd have headed down to mrmrsmith's on Friday night but I'd not been to Beer & Blake's 7 for a while. Surprisingly well attended but I think that may have had something to do with multiclassgeek inviting a bunch of Potter fans along. Nice to see tlanti there too. Anyway, the airsofting itself was actually pretty enjoyable. While I was able to do so. Alas, I had a series of equipment failures. The Thompson fired a couple of times then just stopped when mrmrsmith tried it (I'm starting to think the two of them are destined never to get on!) and the AUG jammed straight away. Fortunately, the jam was cleared quite quickly by stripping out the barrel and clearing out the jammed BBs out. Alas, the AUG then also just stopped in the late afternoon. Whatever it was, it blew the fuse but bypassing it still didn't restore operations. Guess I need to strip down both of them and see what I can figure out with the aid of the airsoft DVDs. Failing that, I guess I'll have to take them to Wolf to sort out. Still, the AK-47 performed fine. Shame I'd brought that down for Giles... One other weirdness - I got myself a King Arms tactical scope, a 1-4X red dot scope. It wouldn't fit properly on to the AUG rail but I then found it does on to mrmrsmith's M4. Seems that the AUG rail doesn't have as many notches on it as the M4's but at least it looks like can be removed and, hopefully, replaced with another rail. Oh well, good thing I'm still not short on guns although, that said, I do find myself thinking I may actually want to get rid of one or two (and some sets of camo - maybe it is possible after all to have too much of something you never needed in the first place). The P90 is the main candidate for disposal. I haven't used it in ages, I have near-zero interest in Stargate these days and, even for CQB, I'd still rather use the AUG (when it's working!) or SA-80. And yet, I suspect my desire to cut back on my collection may at least partly be because I am aware that there's a Vietnam M60 and Sten in the production pipeline somewhere... One very surreal thing yesterday: while it's common to have a few "punters" - non-airsofters hiring guns - but we had a group of some *25* mainly Somali teens along yesterday. As might be imagined, I heard a few less than politically correct comments about the sight of quite so many of them all toting mainly AK-47s (very common rental guns - simple, robust, big battery, high capacity magazines). Hell, I heard (I was back at the safe zone trying to sort out the AUG) they even celebrated end of day's play by firing the AKs into the air! Tags: airsoft, b7, fan
Current Location: Firebase Finchley
Current Mood:  irritated
Current Music: TV
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I went down to fence at Polytechnic Fencing Club for the last time last night. Alas, one of the oldest fencing clubs in this country (founded in 1883) closed up yesterday. Basically, we never fully recovered from our enforced one year shutdown when the University of Westminster essentially redeveloped the sports hall at the Regents Street venue and the new school venue we found (with first rate brand new facilities) took longer to complete construction than we (or the school) expected. By the time we started up again, too many of the old regulars had moved on to other clubs or even activities. I must admit that while I went back on Mondays, Thursdays were now Saxon fencing nights. End result was the membership never got back to sustainable levels (we used to get people coming because we had a good regular core of fencers) and two years on, we'd pretty much run through the cash reserves so a decision was made to close up the club. While no doubt it had good reasons for its decisions, let's just say the University is off my Christmas card list for the forseeable future... So, I went down last night to fence a couple of bouts and get one more lesson before ducking out early to join Neil and Kate for a few drinks (Neil had to leave early) before being joined by the rest of the club. I realised then that I'd been a member of Poly for longer than any other fencing club, even Highgate School's! I also now appear to be tasked with organising a wake for the club... So, where now? Obviously, I'll still keep going to Saxon. Jes, the coach, is going to start at ULU on Tuesdays so I might go back there. In addition, various people have suggested the likes of 126 or City. A few of the guys are quite likely to show up at Saxon and/or ULU too. One consolation - I was looking at doing a dressmaking course at the Hampstead Institute which takes place on a Monday evening so that's one clash I no longer need to worry about... Tags: fencing
Current Location: Firebase Finchley
Current Mood:  sad
Current Music: Goanna Country Radio
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Went to the White Horse team fencing competition in Abingdon today, fencing ep&eamp;e for the Saxon B team (aka the Fyrd as opposed to the Huscarles A team...). I am so badly out of shape. Format was teams of 3, 1 of each weapon, with a poule unique for each weapon, combined to derive a team seeding and then direct elimination relays (3x10 points, 4 minutes per leg) with order of weapons done randomly. 15 teams so 14 bouts. Ouch. I could definitely feel my rear leg starting to cramp up towards the end. I did OK, better than expected given my recent sporadic attendance - won 8, lost 6 but, overall, team seeding wasn't great. We drew the Veterans A team for ep&eamp;e, sabre and then foil. I got us off to a good start (10-3) but, alas, we ended up losing 30-21 in the end. Once again, I could feel my leg cramping up but, fortunately, while one of the other team noticed this, the actual person on the piste didn't or I'd have been dead in the water is she'd started moving me back and forth! Fortunately, the A team got through to the next round but went out 30-28 (I think) in a very close and exciting match. And now my left leg and right arm are terribly achey and stiff and, yet, I have this strong desire to go fence at Poly tomorrow! Totally unrelated: my DVD player refused to load up and play my Primeval season 1 DVD. Not sure if its dying or has achieved sentience... Tags: fencing, tech
Current Location: Firebase Finchley
Current Mood:  tired
Current Music: Is This Love, White Snake
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