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We saw the purple Prince live tonight. What a great concert, well worth the visit…..  and at the old Dome…..  We thought it was a good venue. Well the sound was good from where we were.  Anyway more about ‘Prince’, how petite is he?  About 5′ 2″……  but those stilettos made him taller….they would make fantastic wedding shoes!

He started with all his old hits, and played snippets of each, just him and a guitar.  One big medley really, but it was so well done, just a real subtle change between each song.  And it got rid of a whole lot of old hits that everyone would like to know he played too. And the highlight later in the show was when he played Purple Rain – kinda had to really, you can’t go to a Prince concert and not hear Purple Rain.

We had a great time, I’m even contemplating going again.  At 49 he’s still got it, a great entertainer that can still sing! Honestly it was a real bargain  at £31.21 along with a free CD, it makes me wonder how artists like Madonna, Elton John and all those others charge such extortionate amounts.

Sorry to bore you with such a pic, but it’s so unusual here this summer that I just had to make sure there was a record of it somewhere! It’s been a stunning day here. It’s been probably the hottest day that we can remember this year. Lovely jubbly! We’ve had a nice day trying to find all the sunny spots around where we live. Originally we were going to go for a 10k walk, but we soon decided that that was possibly pushing ourselves a bit further than was necessary!

But spare a thought for the poor buggers doing the triathlon that is going on past our place today. An full Olympic triathlon in this heat must be killer! Good on them!

Thursday the other week I was working at home and kept hearing this loud buzzing noise. Kind of like a massive weed-eater having a go at a large flax bush. Hanging out on the balcony to see what was going on I spotted little planes twisting and turning up the Thames. Not very far away from the Thames at all really. Height wise, that is! Practice for the Red Bull air race was going on right on our doorstep! Entertainment for a while, and I didn’t even have to leave the house!

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, these guys race time-trial style through a course of blow up cones. These cones sit on the ground, or on the Thames in this case, and they have to go through them. At up to 400kph. Madness! The official site is here, if you want more detail.

As a bonus, on the Saturday we managed to get some spare “Local Residents” free tickets that meant we could sit in the grandstands right on the river and see them all up close, as well as put up with the pretty awful commentators. (They should really have done more homework about London and the area. Would have made them seem less like muppets!) As well as the racing, there was a neat display by a helicopter doing all sorts of things that helicopters were surely not meant to be able to do, like loops and rolls etc. Impressive. Mighty impressive.

A good day out, but I wouldn’t pay for a ticket, I think.

You might have noticed that we’ve been away off line for a few days now. In fact, a couple of weeks at least! It’s been a bit of a mission, but we’re back!

Most of the delay can probably be blamed on the last tenants of this place deciding for some strange reason not to get their old internet cut off for a week and a bit after they’d left, and some on the strange way this all seems to work here in that we were able to get a new phone number here, but that still doesn’t automatically cut their old net off.. Sigh.

And then another few delays of a day or so here and there as things bounce around the system, and then, whoopie!, net access again!

The good news is (and this almost makes it worth the wait) is that the signs all point to this being a much, much, much, much faster connection. Over 4 times as fast as the last one. Yipppee! Just have to wait to see if it settles down at that speed over the next week or so.

The bad news is now we have to try to remember all the interesting stuff (to us, at least) that we need to write up! We’ll see what we can do…

For some reason (presumably to do with large amounts of cash) the Tour de France started in London this year.  And, just like the marathon, all the mad guys on bikes came pretty much past our house.  Well, not quite as close as the marathon, but close enough so we felt we had to go down and have a look.

A lot of standing around in the hot sun (for a change!  yay!) and then they raced past in a few minutes.  Not that they were actually racing at the time, merely heading down to the start at Greenwich.

That all started a good day of sport.  British Grand Prix, Tour de France stage, and Wimbledon mens’ final.  All on a sunny day that we should be outside in the sun, but what can you do?!

Now that the Zimbabwe Bird Peppers have started ripening, you can see all 4 types together.

Now I just have to pluck up the courage to grab a knife and fork and taste them all to get some idea of what they taste like, and how hot they are!

Whenever a Kiwi band makes the effort to come over this side of the world it would be a bit rude if we didn’t make the effort to go and see them. This year Crowded House were playing on the Saturday of the Hyde Park Calling gig, so we popped along.

Good set from the guys, as you’d expect, but it was just a pity about the weather! Massive downpour towards the end of their set that kind of put a bit of a dampener on the whole thing, but we coped. Just. At least we’d had a little bit of sun before then to warm us up for it.

Peter Gabriel played after that, but to be honest, after a couple of songs we realised just how wet we were and decided to toddle off home to warm up again. Still, it was possibly better than being stuck at Glastonbury this year though!

The only time we normally looking at all our photos lately is when we’re sitting at the PCs. So it seemed a bit strange to be looking at a huge pile of printed photos for a change. 264 to be exact.

We decided to get the good photos of the Egypt trips printed so we could put them in an album for a change so we could have something to entertain guests with now and then if conversation ever gets boring. (If we got all the photos printed, people would get very, very bored! There are still over 1,200 in the full set.) It has been a long term plan to do this. We even bought some camel-skin albums when we were there to put them in. But now, faced with the job of trying to work out if the order is right and actually get them in the little pockets, I’m a little loathe to finish the job. Maybe on Friday night in front of boring TV or something

And the biggest unsolved problem is that we’ll have no idea what they are any more as the names aren’t on them! Bugger! But then I guess we can just make it up and see if anyone can tell.

Update: Someone got pretty keen, and they were all finished tonight!  Guess that means we’ve the weekend free after all!

The Ring of Fire’s have been sneakily turning colour over the last 2 days too. So I was really completely wrong about how long I’d have to wait for them.  I obviously completely missed taking a picture or note last year when they turned, or maybe it was when I was back in NZ that it happened. Whatever.  They’re red anyway.  Not the best photo today though.  Sorry.

So that just leaves the Zimbabwe Bird Peppers to go.  There are a heap of them on the plants, so they should look great when they start to turn.

But I have to say that I’ve been a bit slack with my flower flicking lately, and a lot of flowers have just been falling off unpollinated. And when that happens I get in trouble for them all falling over the place.  So must try harder to keep up with them all!

In the last couple of days there’s been a sneaky Prairie Fire chilli that’s been colouring up right in the middle of the plant. Tricky little thing thinks I won’t notice! But I did, and it’s going to be the first to get chomped to see what they taste like. Putting that off until I have a fully ripe chilli on the Riots as well so I can compare the taste. Won’t be long now!