Balloon Fiesta

Well hello again. It has been a while since I wrote so I'd better fill you in with the events of the last few weeks. I'm still unemployed, but have got two weeks cleaning the school over their holidays. And a right mess it is too. Some classrooms are absolutely filthy and one wonders what the cleaning staff have been up to. Actually I am beginning to find out: there are too many slackers there taking the pay but not putting in the work. If I ruled the world, or at least the cleaning staff, I'd be looking at contracting the work out. But I don't, so I'll just clean the walls.

It's been raining for weeks but on the weekend it came out sunny and warm. It must be autumn. It happened to be the Bristol

balloon fiesta so the timing was perfect.

We had missed it when we were living there in '07 because we went to Italy, so we were determined to see it this time. I'm glad we did. We joined several 10s of thousands on the Saturday to watch various entertainments. There were skydivers, soldiers playing at soldiering, the Red Arrows team and of course the balloons. We got some wonderful photos, some of which you can see here.

And it was a good day if long.

There was slight sour note to the finish as we missed the last train and had to pay £35 for the taxi back (on top of the train ticket we'd already paid for).

The Red Arrows are very impressive. To fly a plane so close to another at such high speeds take some concentration I am sure. To have nine planes makes it all the more complex. Those maneouvres that involve head on passes must involve some nerves.

The balloons were something else. There were so many for a start - somewhere around 90 - so to see them taking off and in the sky at the same time was 'awesome'. And of course they are all very colourful so it makes for quite a spectacle. We saw the mass launch, then hung around for the 'night glow' where they fire up the burners to a choreographed programme. Getting the photos was a bit trickier as we had no tripod and J refused to let me use her head as a support. It's so hard to get good help. The night was rounded off with some fireworks, but we have plenty of those pictures from Edinburgh. Still, there's always a little reminder of one's youthful excitement.