Mark's anniversary - 25th June

It was the anniversary of my brother Mark yesterday, so I spent a quiet moment (or several, in fact) thinking of both him, and my dear Nan and Granddad. He died on the exact same day as my Granddad which was the 25th of June, and my Nan on the 26th (today) so they were all in my thoughts. It was the first time that I hadn't been in the UK so it all felt quite distant - but in a way not so distant, since Mark had always been travelling to far-flung parts of the world ;-)

On a tecky note, I received our big screen TV back yesterday from the 'menders' and I was able to do video chat on the PS3 with my goddaughter, Hannah, along with Sue Currrrtis and good old Fuzzy/Beanie aka Ian. It was great to seem them all. The connections dropped a good few times but hey, I'm 6,000 miles way and I'm grateful for small mercies. It makes the world seem a smaller place.

Ale met up with some old acquaintances from the Richard Anderson school last night for a reunion, and she seemed to enjoy it. A bit of a late one for her as she arrived back home just before 2am. You can only imagine how difficult it was for her to wake-up this morning!

And last but not least, I actually remembered it was Neil's birthday yesterday for the first time in ages. Neil has been a mate of mine for almost 20 years, and his birthday is inextricably linked with my brother for obvious reasons. So I made the call yesterday and he seemed genuinely pleased (and surprised). I took the opportunity of winding him up about his age, but the usual retort came back that no-one is as old as me. I'll just have to shrug my shoulders and admit defeat on that one, Fleecy!

Tonight - legendary house DJ Seb Fontaine is playing at a club called Lotus here in a rather foggy and cold Montevideo. Not sure if we're going yet, but it would be a great chance to see one of the pioneers in action from the UK. The DJ played in Chile yesterday, MVD tonight and I believe he's off to Pacha in Buenos Aires tomorrow. Rather amazingly, I looked at his Myspace page and listed under his interests was the game 'Call of Duty'. What a good man!

That's all for now.

JB